The Church reveres Joseph of Nazareth as one of Christianity’s greatest saints. The reason for this is fairly straightforward. Only one man in history was entrusted with caring for the Virgin Mary and her divine Son, and so had to be a man of deep faith and heroic commitment to the Lord. This man had to be spiritually alert, able to discern the Lord’s will for himself and his family and ready to obey at a moment’s notice. This man had to have
the wisdom and courage to flee with his wife and newborn when danger threatened, even if that meant escaping to another country for a time. Such was the man we know as Saint Joseph.
Joseph’s royal dignity
Curiously, however, the holiness of Joseph is not the first thing that Scripture says about him. Before a word is spoken of his sanctity, we first learn of his royal ancestry. We discover in the Gospel of Matthew that Saint Joseph had royal blood in his veins. He hailed from an ancient dynasty; he was a descendant of kings.
In my experience, Catholics are often surprised to learn this. We typically think of Joseph as a humble carpenter from the backwater village of Nazareth. We know him as one who lived in obscurity and on the edge of poverty. He was not powerful or socially prominent. Joseph was a man who worked with his hands and supported his family by the sweat of his brow. He knew nothing of purple robes, palace banquets, or the privileged life of a king.
All of this is true, of course, but it’s not the whole truth. Behind the simple exterior of Joseph’s life stands a remarkable family pedigree. Matthew 1:1–17 tells us that Joseph had a royal genealogy. Among his distinguished ancestors we hear of David, Solomon, and the kings of Judah who ruled for more than three centuries in Old Testament times. A closer look at his family tree will help us understand what’s being said.
Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus
It’s sorely tempting for modern readers to skip over the genealogies of the Bible to get to the “good stuff.” Truth be told, we just don’t find the monotonous repetition of so-and-so begot so- and-so all that spiritually uplifting. Most of the names we encounter are unfamiliar, and at least half of them are hard to pronounce. You might say that slogging through genealogies is about as fun as reading a phonebook --an endless string of names without faces.
Part of the problem is that we don’t understand what genealogies are trying to tell us. Matthew 1:1–17, for instance, is doing far more than tracing a line of ancestry. The evangelist is telling a story. It’s the story of salvation, to be sure, but it’s also the story of kingship in Israel. Matthew is claiming that, through the adoptive fatherhood of Joseph, Jesus is grafted into the Davidic dynasty of the Old Testament. He’s next in line to be David’s successor as king. That’s important because the Jewish people believed the Messiah would be just that—a royal son of David who would rebuild the Davidic kingdom of old. Anyone claiming to be Israel’s Messiah would need to verify his descent from David. But since David had nineteen sons by his royal wives, it was not enough simply to be related to him. 1 After all, most of the family lines stemming from David were not royal lines. To be an heir to David’s throne, one had to be descended from him through Solomon and the kings of Judah.
Matthew is well aware of this. That’s why he sets forth Jesus’s messianic credentials by following the royal Davidic line that passes through Solomon and his royal successors (Matt 1:6–11). He shows us that Jesus is not just Davidic in a general sense; He’s Davidic in the dynastic sense. He’s the heir apparent to David’s throne.
Father of the Christmas King
No doubt Jesus’ royal pedigree is the primary thing that Matthew wishes to emphasize. But we should not overlook the importance of Saint Joseph in making this claim. Even though Joseph was not the biological father of Jesus, he consented to be His adoptive, earthly father. He took custody of Jesus as his own. And in the Jewish world of the first century, legal paternity was functionally equivalent to biological paternity.
All the rights and responsibilities Joseph received from his ancestors were passed on to his children.
Joseph, then, proves to be anybody but a nobody. He’s the linchpin in Jesus’s genealogy. Through him, Jesus becomes Davidic royalty. 2 Through him, Jesus is credentialed to be the Davidic Messiah of Jewish expectation.
Perhaps the next time you see a statue of Saint Joseph, with a hammer and carpenter’s square in hand, remind yourself that he also bears a scepter and crown. And remember that our Christian confession, “Jesus is King,” has much to do with this humble man from Nazareth, who conferred the gift of kingly rule upon his adopted Son.
CURTIS MITCH is a writer, editor, and research fellow for the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology. He is also the associate editor of the forthcoming Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, residing in eastern Ohio with his wife, Stacy, and their nine children.