No man can be physically the son of two brothers, consequently we perceive

that Joseph is the begotten son of Jacob, and so the son of David through

Solomon; while Mary, the wife of Joseph and the daughter of Heli, was

descended equally from David, but through Solomon's brother Nathan, and so

Joseph was the son -in -law of Heli.

In the Rabbinical writing (Hieros Chag.) a certain person in his sleep,

sees the punishment of the damned.  Among them he saw 'Mary the daughter of

Heli', a strange confirmation, yet valuable.

Genealogies must occupy an important place among a people like Israel,

divided as they were into twelve tribes, with inheritances that could become

involved by intermarriage.  The following taken from the writings of Josephus

will illustrate this point.  'I am not only sprung from a sacerdotal family

in general, but from the first twenty -four courses ... further by my mother

I am of royal blood ... I will accordingly set out my progenitors in order

... Thus have I set down the genealogy of my family as I found it described

in public records'.  Writing to Apion, Josephus speaks of the extreme care

that was exercised over the genealogies of the priests, the wife's genealogy

being scrutinized also, not only in Judaea but wherever Jews may live, 'even

there an exact catalogue of our priests' marriage is kept ... we have the

names for our high priests from father to son, set down in our records, for

the interval of two thousand years'.  Josephus speaks of 'public records' and

it is a fact that while the Lord's enemies levelled many evil charges against

Him, no one ever questioned His claim to be of the house and lineage of

The taxation or census enjoined by Caesar Augustus compelled each

family to register in their own city, and so we find Joseph and Mary,

travelling with great inconvenience from Nazareth to Bethlehem.  Normally a

man has but one genealogy, and that through the male line, but occasionally

we find in the Scriptures a departure from this rule for specified or obvious

reasons.  In connection with this there is a peculiar feature in the use of

the Hebrew words translated 'man' and 'woman'.  One such word is zakar,

'man', which means 'to remember', the other word is nashim, translated 'wife'

and 'woman', which most lexicons refer to enosh.  Parkhurst, however, places

it under nashah, 'to forget'.  When a genealogy was compiled in the ordinary

way, the woman was 'forgotten', only the man was 'remembered'.  All

genealogies originate with 'The seed of the woman' (Gen. 3:15), yet Eve finds

no place in the book of the generations of Adam (Gen. 5:1).  Women's names do

occur in the genealogies, however, as 1 Chronicles 1:32; 2:3,4,16,17 will

show.  We shall discover that the law of property sometimes took precedence

over the law of consanguinity and blood relationship, and this at times

necessitated double genealogies, even as we find in Matthew 1 and Luke 3.

For example, the generations of Jair are given in 1 Chronicles 2:21,22:

'And afterward Hezron went in to the daughter of Machir the father of

Gilead, whom he married when he was threescore years old; and she bare

him Segub.  And Segub begat Jair, who had three and twenty cities in

the land of Gilead'.

Now we learn from Numbers 32:41 and Deuteronomy 3:14,15 that Jair was

the son of Manasseh, and from Numbers 26:28,29 we learn that Manasseh was of

the tribe of Joseph, and of him came Gilead or the Gileadites.  Hezron, the

father of Jair, was of the tribe of Judah (1 Chron. 2:4,5) and had, in his

old age, married into the tribe of Gilead.  The property (twenty -three

cities) being more important apparently than association with the tribe of