This is the place to notice the pvininent position which has been assigned to Solomon, as an indis pensable link, binding Jesus with David, and with the great cluster of promises which God 1N'as pleased to hang around him. Whoever expunges Solo. mon from Christ's genealogy,' says Calvin (Harm. E0(171g. on the Genealogies), 'does, at the same time, obliterate and destroy those promises lRy which he must be acknowledged to be the son of David.' (See also the less emphatic indeed, but equally eminent use of Solomon's name in the modern ad vocates of the theory ; Lord A. Hervey, Gencal. ch. iii. sec. 1; Smith's Dice. vol. i. p. 666 ; Patri trius, Dissert. ix. cap. 9). This view, as it appears to us, is not consistent with the entire case which Holy Scripture presents to us. Between the great promise made to David (2 Sam. vii. 16) and so frequently referred to afterwards (I Kings xi. 34, 38 ; Ps. lxxxix. 20-37 ; Is. lv. 3 ; Acts xiii. 34) and so beautifully described by the sweet Psalmist oj Israel himself, as an everlasting covenant ordered in all things and sure ' (2 Sam. xxiii. 5); and the promise made to Solomon (1 Kings iii. 14) and re newed to him afterwards more impressively (t Kings ix. 4-9), and alluded to by David (t Kings ii. 4) ; there is this great difference, that the former was absolute, partaking of the unconditional cha racter of the protevangelic assurances made in Eden (Gen. iii. 13) and to the patriarchs (Gen. xvii. 7 ; xviii. 18 ; xxii. 18 ; xxvi. 4 ; 14; Ps. cv. 8) ; whereas the latter was strictly conditional, resem.
Wing that which God made to Jeroboam through Ahijah the Shilonite (r Kings xi. 3S), and that which is mentioned in Sam. ii. 3o respecting Eli and his family, and again that referred to in Judg.
ii. 1-2, 20, 21.
The promise of perpetuity was only made to the house of David, who is eminently the father of Christ ; not to the particular branch which imme diately inherited the throne, whose iniquity might suspend or forfeit the promise ; accordingly, the writer of the Psalm Lxxxix. most pathetically la ments, in the stanza between verses 3S and 45, the too sure accomplishment of that wrath, which the dynasty of Solomon provoked, by those impieties of which Solomon had himself set the first example (see r Kings xi. 6-to). To us, therefore, there ap pears a wonderfully rainute exactness in the fulfil ment of prophecy on the house of David. Solomon himself is nowhere included ill Me direct ancestry of Messiah. Great things are, doubtless, said of him ; but the utmost issue of them was, that he was near to David, and near to Christ, in his last lineal de scendant, the blessed Virgin's husband. But he attained not to the glory of his elder brother Nathan, who, through his ` highly favoured ' (Luke i. 2S) daughter, became the link which connected the royal David with David's Lord and Son (Matt. xxii. 45, etc.) We disparage not the dignity and privilege of the excellent Joseph, the foster-father and legal father of Christ ; on the contrary, we believe that in a great and real sense, as the hus band of His only parent, the lowly-conditioned but high-souled carpenter of Bethlehem did (in strict and unrepealed Hebrew law) convey to Christ the residuary legacy of the diadem and crown,' which had remained unworn since the days of Ezekiel's profane wicked prince of Israel,' waiting for IIim to come, whose right it is ' (Ezek. xxi. 25-27). But great as was the prerogative of Joseph, he could not impart to his foster-son that right,' for there is a complete hiatus and separa tion in descent bctwcen him and Jesus Christ. St. Matthew must be understood to intimate such when he adds to the name of Joseph the words which give weight and validity to his preceding genealogy, Tor dv8pa Mapias, 4 e,,,,,*,,,Incroog 6 Ney6pevos Xpco-r6s (Matt. i. 16). We look on this sequel as itself suggesting an answer to the question, which has been (in ancient times especially) often asked : Why is there a second genealogy of our Lord in the N. T. ? Since Joseph's lack of parental relation to Christ incapacitated him from so connecting Christ with His royal ancestor David as to satisfy the great prophecies* which made Him his son, as St. Paul says, gK 0-71-gpgaTOS Aavt8 !car&
ercipica (` of the seed cf David according to the flesh,' Rom. i. 3) ; or, as St, Peter says, in perhaps still stronger terms, 6, Kapra 60-cboor abrof) rarpuipxov Acq316] rb Kara, adpka (` of the fruit of his [David's] loins according- to the ifesk,' Acts ii. 3o) ; it was required (in order to complete the proof which the N. T. was designed to give of the exhaustion of the promises of the O. T. in Jesus Christ, Rom. xv. 8, 9 ; 2 Cor. 20) that another genealogical record should be added which should indicate our Saviour's lineal descent (060-61. v6dcup) from David ; hence the genealogy of the third Gospel.
On St. Luke's Genealogy. —1f it be objected that this table is made out as literally as the other, in yoseph's name, and that we violate the literal statement of the Evangelist if we transfer the line to ; we answer that as Joseph cannot have had two fathers [which yet the genealogies seem literally to assign to him (Matt. i. 16 ; Luke iii. 23)] some explanatory accommodation is necessary to all theories. Lord A. Hervey makes Joseph Jacob's nephezo, and so violates St. Matthew, i. 16. Dr. W. H. Mill seems to agree with Africanus and his copiers ; and not only makes Jacob and Hcli uterine brothers, thus deviating from the letter of Matt. i. 14 and Luke iii. 24, but adds a second explanatory accommodation by making Joseph the son of Hell, against the letter of Matt. 16 ; St. Ambrose, on the other hand, while closely embrac ing the uterine theory* of Africanus, inverts the application of it to Jacob and Heli, and so still more strongly violates the text of the evangelists, inasmuch as he affirms Joseph to be the true son of Heli, and only son-in-law of Jacob, contrary apain to the letter of Matt. i. 16. Any way, t161en, some violence must be clone, and is done, to the literal statements of the evangelic stems. Our proposal involves the very least amount of explana tory accommodation, for we only make Joseph the son-in-law of Heli ; and can this indeed be regarded as any deviation at all from the letter of the original, 'Iwaii0 rob' '11X2, .7osepli of Hell? We think not. How, then, is Joseph son-in-law of Heli? Simply by marrying the daughter of Heli—the blessed Virgin.* No brothers are mentioned in Scripture as belonging to the Virgin ; and this silence (the more remarkable because the name of her sister is given ; see John xix. 25) has led to the reasonable opinion that Mary was an heiress (1-n-iicXnpos rapgyos),.-1. and as such came under the law of Num. xxxvi. 8, which she complied with by marryin, her kinsman Joseph, the heir of the col lateral aanch of her own most illustrious, though. DOW much reduced family. • The opinion that Mary was an heiress is strongly corroborated by the circumstance that she found it necessary, contrary to the custom of women, to travel to Bethlehem to be reuistered (Luke ii. 5). She must, therefore, have It'ad an inheritance at Bethlehem, although it may have been mortgaged till the year of jubilee ; and, consequently, her husband Joseph must have belonged to the same tribe with herself, and probably been of the very same family, e., a descendant of David's (Michae lis, Laws of Noses, art. 78). The effect of Joseph's marrying his kinswoman, the heiress Mary, would legally be just what the genealogy of St. Luke discloses ; those who married heiresses were oblig-ed to pass into the family of their fathers-in-law, and let thenzselves be reckoned their sons. The principle of inheritance among the Israelites implied as much ; for the inheritance was given to daughters in order that the name of their father might not become extinct in the tables of succession, and, consequently, the sons of such marriages were ne cessarily connected with the name of Mar maternal grandfather:1: (Michaelis, ut antea). lt is some.