Judaea but wherever Jews may live 'even there an exact catalogue of our

priests' marriages 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 David.  The taxation of census

enjoined by Caesar Augustus compelled each family to register in its 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, 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

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 2:21-23:

'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 that Manasseh was of the tribe

of Joseph and of him came Gilead or the Gileadites.  Hezron the grandfather

of Jair was of the tribe of Judah (1 Chron. 2:5), who had in his old age

married into the tribe of Gilead (verses 21-23).  The property (23 cities)

being more important apparently than association with the tribe of Judah, the

double genealogy is provided, assuring the Gilead rights to this son of the

house of Judah, and all this through his mother, the daughter of Machir.

The two genealogies of the Saviour given in Matthew and Luke present a

number of problems, among them the presence in both genealogies of the names

of Salathiel and Zorobabel, who, on the surface appear to be descended from

two brothers, Solomon and Nathan, which is, of course, physically impossible.

When we have sorted out the problem raised by these two names, we shall be

well on the way to discerning the purport of the two genealogies of Matthew

and Luke.  Matthew tells us that Jechonias begat Salathiel; and Salathiel

begat Zorobabel (Matt. 1:12).  Luke tells us that Zorobabel was the son of

Salathiel in which it accords with the record of Matthew, but differs from

Matthew by saying that Salathiel was the son of Neri, who traces his descent,

not from Solomon, but from Nathan.  Jechoniah is said to have had sons

'Assir, Salathiel his son' (1 Chron. 3:17).  Jechoniah's name was changed to

Coniah, removing from his name the letters 'Je' which form parts of the name

of the Lord, and of this king, Jeremiah was moved to say: