What Does Matthew 1:7 Mean?
And Solomon brought forth Rehoboam, and Rehoboam brought forth Abijah, and Abijah brought forth Asa.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And Solomon begat Roboam; and Roboam begat Abia; and Abia begat Asa;THE KEY
“Begat” turns this genealogy from a static list into a chain in which each name is received from another and becomes a source for the next.
THE MEANING
Your life is not isolated from what came before it. This verse names a chain in which each person receives life through another and carries it forward. Each name is both an arrival and a source.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that you are self-originating or separate from those who came before: every name here is received through relation and carried onward.
THE ROOT
ἐγέννησεν
egennēsen
GROWS FROM
γενν-
gen-
To beget or bring forth; to cause another generation to come into being.
The repeated Greek verb makes the line more than a record of names: each person is both brought forth and the one who brings another forth. The same word family also speaks of offspring and of being born, holding source and arrival together.
ALSO GROWS
gennēma: What has been brought forth; offspring or produce.
γέννημα
The branch names what the repeated act of begetting leaves behind: a next life that comes from a source.
gennētos: Born or brought forth.
γεννητός
This branch describes each person in the line as someone who first arrives through another.
שְׁלֹמֹה
Shelomoh
GROWS FROM
שלם
To be whole or complete; the related noun shalom carries the sense of wholeness.
Solomon’s Hebrew name belongs to the consonantal family of שָׁלוֹם (shalom, wholeness), a connection the English name obscures. The genealogy begins with that note of wholeness, then shows life continuing through a chain of distinct people.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness or well-being.
שָׁלוֹם
The name Solomon carries an echo of wholeness at the start of this generational line.
shalem: Whole or complete.
שָׁלֵם
This branch makes the name’s connection to wholeness audible beneath its English form.
THE PATTERN
Life is named as something received from a source and carried forward into another.
And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and brought forth a son in his own likeness, after his image, and called his name Seth.For though you have ten thousand child-leaders in the Anointed One, you do not have many fathers. For in the Anointed One Jesus, through the good message, I have brought you forth.Who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of a man, but of God.THE THREAD
Who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of a man, but of God.Matthew repeats ἐγέννησεν (egennēsen, “begat”), while John uses the same γεννάω (gennaō, “beget, bring forth”) word family for those “born ... of God.” The shared root connects family descent with the language of life received from a source.
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