A tax guy who can’t count

My teaching semester at the Bible school has begun, so I have decided to change my musings, from Jeremiah back to Mr Ex-Tax Collector Matthew. We’ve been there previously with Marcos,’ “delightful twisted insights” as one friend so graciously put it.

Matthew 1. Everyone loves a good genealogy, no doubt about it. It is such an interesting way to begin a book—just ask the fellow who launched 1 Chronicles with nine (!!) chapters of the family tree! I suspect he used 23andMe.

Now, I understand that Matthew took some poetic liberties in his genealogy. I’ll allow him that. And, I understand that three of the ancestors he fails to mention are bad-man Ahab’s descendants. They were deleted according to Elijah’s powerful word in 1 Kings 21:21-22. So Ahzzy, Joa and Amazing (1 Cr 3.11-12) are out of there. I’m good with that.

But, still. Fourteen is fourteen. If Matthew wants to put everything into neat little lists of 14, I can dig it. I like lists, I like even-steven lists. But don’t cheat then miscount, on top of it!

Matthew breaks things down into three lists of fourteen, but there’s only 13 names in list #3. He even brags, “So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations.”

So what gives? Is he superstitious and just does not want to mention thirteen? Or is he an ex-tax collector who can’t even count?

It’s no wonder why he jumped up from that tax booth so quickly when Jesus came along and offered him a new line of work!