December 10th, 2022

Last Sunday we dealt with the difficult text of the detailed genealogy within the Gospel according to Matthew. And immediately following that genealogy, a structure was given to that genealogy, and it was one that valued the number fourteen. That was seen as a number which, in the Hebrew language, is connected to the name David, specifically the King David of the Old Testament. He reigned at a high point in Israel’s history; and that name was considered to be central (or you might say at a ‘high point’) within that genealogy.

Right after the genealogy and the emphasis given to the number fourteen, the text continues with another summarizing verse (1:18a), and since that first summary verse at Matthew 1:1 was significant, what is given below is the extent of the summary, and it may prove to be significant as well. Here are the next few words of that gospel account (1:18a; in a somewhat-literal translation):

And of Jesus Christ, the genesis was thus.

It is interesting that, in the original language of this text, the number of words is the same as the summarizing verse at the very beginning of the book, eight. It is also interesting that this is the only other time that the title ‘Jesus Christ’ appears within the entire gospel account. There are certainly times when both ‘Christ’ and, of course, ‘Jesus’ are mentioned, but this is the last time in the entire account that they are mentioned side-by-side (at least in the most reliable manuscripts).

There may be another interesting point to be shared regarding the original language of this text, that of the number of syllables within this sentence.

There was a time when I thought that counting syllables was going too far. I could understand the importance of counting words since the spaces in between the letters was very small, in order to save some space on this extremely expensive paper. And I also understand that the writer would want the reader to break what could sometimes look like a long chain of letters into the right number of words. But who would take the time to count syllables?

Then I came upon the book, The Book Around Immanuel: Style and Structure in Isaiah 2-12 [Biblical and Judaic Studies from the University of California, San Diego, Volume 4, edited by William Henry Propp; Winona Lake, Indiana, USA: Eisenbrauns, 1996]. I actually came upon the book’s author first, the Rev. Dr. Andrew H. Bartelt. He was a professor at Concordia Seminary (St. Louis) when I was there.

The word ‘Immanuel’ that is mentioned in the title of the above book is in Isaiah 7:14. There is obviously a lot within this book of almost three hundred pages. And obviously a lot could be quoted from this book. But perhaps a good summary might be from the last page of the conclusion, that the two phrases ‘and you shall call his name’ and ‘Immanuel’ divides Isaiah 2-12 into equal halves of 3200 syllables each (see page 256). I think that is amazing. That took some time to count. But the topic is important enough. (By the way, I think it is also interesting that the above verse from Isaiah will appear in just a few verses in this text of Matthew.)
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And by now you may have even guessed the number of syllables within the above sentence from Matthew 1:18a. If you guessed fourteen, you are correct.