The Captivity to Christ

As the result of their bondage, the people were cured of their idolatry. Israel was more spiritual after the Dispersion. Only a small remnant returned to Palestine. The rest remained in Babylon or were scattered abroad (Jas. 1:1).

In the fulness of time Christ came to realize all the promises made to Abraham and David and to the people scattered abroad through the prophets. The heavenly descent of Christ is told with exquisite simplicity and delicacy.

Since the first promise that the Messiah would come as “the seed of the woman” (Gen. 3:15), generation after generation looked forward to the coming of the great Deliverer. Such a Monarch was to come in the direct line of descent from certain ancient sovereigns and saints, and every Jewish mother had hopes of bearing such a Saviour. This was why barrenness produced unutterable sorrow, as the distress of Hannah reveals. Jewish mothers hoped that out of the number of their children, God might raise up one to sit on David’s throne. At last, Mary was the one to be favored above all women.

The genealogies of Old and New Testaments alike then are signposts pointing to Christ as the end of the old dispensation and the beginning of the new. Specimens of depravity are dragged from the long-forgotten past to take their places among the lineal ancestors of Jesus to prove that the glory of the line is not in the line itself but in Him in whom the genealogies end.