The book of the generation. — The opening words of the Gospel show that it is written by a Jew for Jewish readers. They are an essentially Hebrew formula (as in Genesis 5:1), and were applied chiefly though not exclusively (Genesis 37:2) to genealogies such as that which follows here.
Jesus Christ. — The collocation of names was not so much a thing of course when St. Matthew wrote as it now seems to us. There were many who bore the name of Jesus — e.g., Jesus the son or Sirach, Jesus surnamed Justus (Colossians 4:11), possibly even Jesus Bar-abbas (Matthew 27:17). It was necessary to state that the genealogy that followed was that of Jesus the Messiah, the true “anointed” of the Lord.
The son of David. — This, of course, was added as the most popular of all the names of the expected Christ, owned alike by scribes and Rabbis (Matthew 22:42), by children (Matthew 21:9), and by the poor (Matthew 15:22; Matthew 20:30).
The son of Abraham. — There is no reason to think that this was ever a specially Messianic title. If there is any special significance in its occurrence here, it is as emphasising that which the Messiah had in common with other Israelites. He was thus as a brother to them all, even to the despised publican (Luke 19:9), as being the seed of Abraham, in whom all the nations of the earth were to be blessed (Genesis 22:18). The former thought appears in another book specially written, like this Gospel, for Hebrews — “On the seed of Abraham he layeth hold” (Hebrews 2:16).
(1) Nothing can be inferred directly from St. Matthew’s phrase “till she had brought forth” as to what followed after the birth. The writer’s purpose is obviously to emphasise the absence of all that might interfere with the absolutely supernatural character of the birth itself. (2) Nothing can be inferred with certainty from the mention of our Lord’s “brethren” in Matthew 12:46 (see Note there), and elsewhere. They may have been children of Joseph by a former marriage, or by what was known as a levirate marriage with the widow of a deceased brother, under the law of Deuteronomy 25:5; Matthew 22:24, or children by adoption, or cousins included under the general name of brethren. (3) The fact that the mother of our Lord found a home with the beloved disciple (John 19:27) and not with any of the “brethren” points, as far as it goes, to their not being her own children, but it does not go far enough to warrant any positive assertion. Scripture therefore supplies no data for any decision on either side, nor does any tradition that can really be called primitive. The reverence for virginity as compared with marriage in the patristic and mediæval Church made the “ever-virgin” to be one of the received titles of the mother of the Lord. The reaction of natural feeling against that reverence led men in earlier and later times to assert the opposite. Every commentator is influenced consciously or unconsciously by his leanings in this or that direction. And so the matter must rest.