The Bible is one long genealogy with a promise running through it. From Eden, God narrows a single line — one family, one tribe, one house — until it arrives at one man. Here is that whole family of blood, charted as a constellation of light, every link taken from the text.
“The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” — Matthew 1:1 (WEB)
One bloodline, drawn as a strand of light. Scroll to descend the generations — Adam at the surface, Christ at the depth. The promise twines with the line; at David it becomes a double helix — Matthew and Luke — until the strands fuse at Joseph. And the thread earns its name: the color enters the story at Perez’s birth, where a scarlet thread was tied on his twin’s hand (Genesis 38:28), echoes in Rahab’s scarlet cord (Joshua 2:18) — and deepens toward the cross. Tap any star to read the very verse that names it.
Not every thread runs to Bethlehem. Abraham’s other children became peoples who live beside Israel through the whole story — Ishmael’s twelve princes, Keturah’s sons, Esau’s Edom, and Lot’s Moab and Ammon. Tap a name to read the verse that names it.
Named heads from Genesis 16, 19, 25, and 36 — the line of promise itself runs on through Jacob, in the constellation above. Swipe the chart sideways to see the whole house.
The genealogy is not a list — it is a search. Six times Scripture takes the whole world and narrows the promise: to a seed, a family, a tribe, a house, a stump — and a name.
Matthew and Luke both trace Jesus to David — and their lists differ. Matthew descends through the royal son, Solomon; Luke through his brother Nathan. The strands touch at Shealtiel and Zerubbabel, part again, and meet at Joseph. The difference is not hidden here — it is the point.
Perspective — the historic explanations
Matthew traces Joseph’s natural descent through Solomon and the kings — the line that also carries the throne-right. Luke traces his legal line through Nathan: Heli died childless, and his half-brother Jacob fathered a son in his name — so Joseph was the son of Jacob by nature and of Heli by law. Levirate marriage (Deuteronomy 25:5-6) is the mechanism; Julius Africanus, writing in the early 200s, reported it from a tradition he attributed to Jesus’ own relatives.
On this view Heli was Mary’s father, and Luke — who tells the whole nativity from Mary’s side — records Jesus’ actual bloodline through her, back through Nathan to David. Joseph appears in the list as Heli’s son-in-law, and Luke flags the step himself: Jesus was the son, “as was supposed,” of Joseph (Luke 3:23). This gives Jesus physical descent from David through his mother, while Matthew supplies the legal royal claim.
Matthew says it himself: three sets of fourteen generations (Matthew 1:17). To keep the pattern he skips three kings in a row — Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah (1 Chronicles 3:11-12) — and later Jehoiakim (1 Chronicles 3:15-16). In Hebrew genealogies “father of” can mean “ancestor of” — structure, not a slip. The skipped kings are the open rings ○ on the chart above.
Jeremiah 22:30 declares no offspring of king Jeconiah would prosper on David’s throne — and Matthew’s royal line runs straight through him. Luke’s line bypasses Solomon’s house entirely, through Nathan. On the common reconciliation, Jesus holds the legal right without the cursed bloodline — a reading, not the text itself, but one the two lists together make possible.
Luke 3:36 lists a Cainan between Arphaxad and Shelah who appears in the Greek Septuagint but not the Hebrew of Genesis 11 — a known difference between the ancient text traditions, shown openly on the chart. (He is not the Kenan of Genesis 5:9 — that one is in both.)
The honest bottom line. Two evangelists, two purposes: Matthew opens with the throne — Jesus the heir of David and Abraham; Luke reaches back to Adam — Jesus the Savior of the whole human race. However the harmony is drawn, the ancient sources agree on where both lists land: the same Jesus, son of David, born of Mary. Which reconciliation is right is perspective — the two texts themselves are the data.
Royal genealogies of the ancient world named fathers. Matthew breaks the form five times — and the women he chooses are outsiders, the wronged, and the redeemed. The Messiah’s pedigree does not launder its own story.
Genealogies charted from Genesis 4–5, 10–11, 19, 25, 29–30, 35–36, 38, 41, Exodus 6, Numbers 26, Ruth 4, 1 Chronicles 1–3, Matthew 1, and Luke 3 — text shown verbatim from the World English Bible, every link checked against it. Reconciliation views: GotQuestions · Julius Africanus in Eusebius, Church History 1.7. Interpretive notes are labeled as perspective, not Scripture.