In the beginning of Matthew there is a geneology tracing firsborn sons from Abraham through various OT figures down to Joseph, thus making Jesus the rightful king in the Davidic line (even though Joseph was not biologically Jesus's father).
The cool thing about this line is that it connects many different people, so I had to mention some of them.
1) Abraham born 2000 BC, married to Rebekah, was called from the land of Ur to go to Cannan with his nephew Lot. Abraham is the father of Jacob and Esau. Esau is the firstborn but sells that right Jacob for a pot of stew.
2) Jacob gets the blessing of firstborn but flees home and goes to work for Laban for 14 years to marry Rachel (and Leah). He gets a family of 12, the 12 sons the become the heads of the tribes of Israel.
3) Judah, one of the 12, helps his brothers sell Joseph, another brother, into slavery in Egypt where he has some adventures, and saves Egypt from starvation. Jacobs family (the 12) come to Egypt looking for food and Jospeh invites them to stay.
4-8) Five generations pass as the Jacobs family grows to the size of a nation and are enslaved in Egpyt for 400 years (1900-1450BC)
9) Salmon is the sixth generation after Judah and is married to Rahab, the prostitute who helped Israel take down Jerhico. Therefore, even though the genealogy does not mention the escape from Egypt, the Exodus, we can put about 5 generations for the growth of Israel to a nation (not six, because Moses>Joshua is one generation) and the liberation.
10) Get this! Right after Salmon and Rahab of Jehrico is their son Boaz! He becomes the husband of Ruth from the story. Ruth comes with her relative Naomi from the heathen land of Moab, and she ends up marrying Boaz. See how close in time those three stories occurred, Exodus, Jerhico, and Ruth? About three generations!
11)Obed is the son of Ruth and Boaz. Imagine the firshand accounts of Gods work that he would have heard at the dinner table or other places, passed down through the family! Obed is the father of Jesse
12) Jesse gets visited by Samuel who is looking for a king to annoint to replace Saul, who screwed up. Samuel picks David.
13) David, 1000 BC, is the son of Jesse, five generations away from the exodus, four from Jehrico, and three from Ruth! Ruth would be his great-grandmother. How revelant all these OT stories would be to him.
14) Solomon is the son of Daivd, which most people know if you ask them, but it doesn't always come to mind for me at least. David, the main writer of the Psalms and warrior king being chased around by king Saul, then his affair with Uriah's wife Bathesheba gives him Solomon, the writer (or compiler) of Proverbs and the ruler at the apex of Israels glory.
Now, something not mentioned in the geneaology. Have you ever wondered when and why Israel split? It's because of Solomons foreign wives. 1 Kings 11:9-13.
15) Rehoboam is Solomons son, who retains Judah, while Jeroboam is someone else, who takes Israel.
16-19) Abijah>Asa>Jehosphaphat>Jehoram>Uzziah>Jotham>Ahaz. The rest of the line is kings until the Babylonian exile. Jehoshaphat and Uzziah stand out more as better kings.
20) Hezekiah, son of Ahaz, was the king over Judah when the Assyria under Sennacherib conquered all of Israel and then kept going sound and surrounded Judah and Jerusalem. They sent some trash talk back and forth, with Hezekiah holding fast to Gods help, and then the angel of the lord kills off 185,000 Assyrians in one night. Ha! 185,000 is a big number by the way. It's about twice to three times the size of an average army from Napoleons era.
21-23) Manasseh>Amon>Josiah. Three farily good kings follow, at which point the next king is not a firstborn (thus we go on a tangent off the genealogy), and the bad king, Jehoahaz is replaced when Egypt conquers them and puts in the puppet Jehoiakim, who's son was Jehoiachin.
Next Babylon comes in and Jehoiachin surrenders in 586 BC. Babylon sets up Zedekiah, who rebells and gets re-conquered, at which point Judah and Israel are considered dissipated to Babylon and Egypt.
24-25) Jeconiah is the son of Josiah and father of Shealtiel, father of Zerubbabel. During this time Cyrus the Great, the Persian, conquers Babylon in 539 BC and grants the people leave to go back and rebuild Jerusalem. They go back in three waves under three people: Sheshbazzar, Ezra, and Nehemiah.
26) Zerubbabel is mentioned in Zachariah (second to last book of the bible, we're almost done!)
27-34) 8 generations pass. Here's the history: The Persian kings move through Cyrus the Great>Cambyses II>Darius I>Exerxes>Ataerxes>Darius III. All of these kings were living at the time of the rebuilding, some opposing and some helping. After that Alexander the Great comes in and sweeps up all the pieces around 300 BC, only to be succeeded by the Romans in 100-0 BC.
35) Joseph
36) Jesus! 0 BC/AD
Whew! That turned into a MUCH longer post than I planned.
