Biblical commentary on the New Testament - The Christian ...

166 Matthew I. 1.
personage ; XgioTog, Christ, on tlie otter hand, is the official name
for the expected deliverer of Israel. It corresponds to the Hebrew
^fa, Anointed, which word is used in the Old Testament, sometimes
of kings (1 Sam. xxiv. 6, 10 ; xxvi. 16, and elsewhere) ;
sometimes of high-priests (Lev. iv. 3, 5, 16, and elsewhere) ; sometimes
of prophets (Psalm cv. 15) ; because all these persons were
consecrated to their office by the symbolical rite of anointing (on
the anointing of prophets see 1 Kings xix. 16), to intimate, that
for the due discharge of their office, they must be endowed with
spiritual powers. But the expression is rarely used in the Old Testament
of the royal prophet and high-priest of the kingdom of God.
(Psalm ii. 2 ; Daniel ix. 25.) From these passages, with which
others were connected, in which the anointing was viewed spiritu-
ally (comp. Is. Ixi. 1, with Luke iv. 18), arose the name XQiarog,
which, even at the time of Christ, had become the prevailing official
designation of the great desired one. In this view, the name
" Christ" expresses the union of the divine and human natures in
the person of the Saviour, since the humanity is the anointed—the
endowed ; the divine power is the anointing—the endowing.
Originally the Saviour was called either 6 'l7](7ovg, with reference to
his historical individuality, or 6 XpioTog, with reference to his dig-
nity; also, 'Ir]oovg 6 Xeyofxevog Xgiorog (Matth. i. 16, on which consult
the <strong>commentary</strong>). It was only at a later period that the two terms
were united into the collective appellation 'Irjaovg Xgt-orog, Jesus
Christ.
The first verse in Matthew does not, perhaps, form merely
a superscription for the subsequent genealogy. Bij3Xog yevioeug
(=n'nVin i|D Gen. v. 1) means primarily, "book of the descent/'
"genealogy," and forms in the Old Testament the general superscription
to the genealogy in question, and to the accompanying
biographical sketches by which it is carried out and illustrated.
Matthew has doubtless employed the expression here in a similar
manner. His Gospel is the exposition of the genealogy ; the proof
that Jesus was the promised seed of Abraham and son of David.
The genealogy in Matthew, compared with that of Luke, shows
plainly the different character of the two Gospels. While Matthew
begins with Abraham, the ancestral father of the Jewish people,
Luke ascends to Adam, the first father of the whole human race
heathen as well as Jews—and thus connects the Saviour with human
nature as such, apart from all national individuality. But in the
particulars we find that, from David downwards, the two genealogies
vary. Matthew traces the line of descent through Solomon, Luke
through another son of David—Nathan. Two names only—Sa-
lathiel and Zorobabel (see Luke iii. 27, compared with Matth. i. 12)
—are the same in both, the rest being entirely different ; but these
—