which we are already acquainted from the Old Testament, are in St Matthew passed over and left to be understood, the Evangelist has not omitted in the New Testament a single generation, which was subsequent to those that are mentioned in the Old : and in the Old Testament, not a single generation is omitted. The first Four teen, therefore, is so in fact, the second and third are so in form.
X. TJie number of generations ivhich St Matthew omits, accords with the numbers which both he and St Luke mention.
Between Jehoram and Abihud, St Matthew omits in all fourteen generations, see Sect IX. ; and though he only mentions three Fourteens for the sake of the number of the periods from Abraham to Christ, he nevertheless implies, in accordance with his system, that there were really four.1 In this way Matthew has by implication, from Abraham to the birth of Christ, fifty- five generations. St Luke expressly enumerates fifty-six genera tions to the time when Jesus was thirty years of age. They therefore agree.
XI. The equality of the Fourteens is not fulfilled in the actual number XIV., by which they are distinguished.
The Talmudists are fond of reducing the proximate numbers of different things to actual equality. Lightfoot has collected examples of this in illustration of the present passage, and they afford a satisfactory reply to the Jews, when they sneer at the Fourteens of St Matthew. He defends, however, somewhat too slackly the actual truth of the Fourteens. What James Rhen- ford adduces on this passage is far more to the purpose, viz., that the fifteen generations before Solomon, and the fifteen after him, were so enumerated by the Jews, as to correspond with the days of the increasing [waxing] and waning moon. But this
1 The words in the original are, " Oranino XIV '. generationis inter Joram et Abihud prater mittit Matthseus, § ix. Concinneque ab Abraham ad Christum tessaradecadas, tribus pro numero periodorum expressis, quatuor tamen innuit." The meaning is, that though St Matthew mentions thrice fourteen as the number of generations, he means that there were three periods of fourteen generations, and implies, that to make up the num ber of actual generations, another Fourteen, or fourteen generations more, must be added, q.d. the Fourteens of generations expressly mentioned by St Matthew are periods of Fourteen ages ; to make up the sum total of actual generations, the number Fourteen, which is the normal regulator of the system, must be brought into play once more. Cf. § § Sqq.— (I. B.)
100 ST MATTHEW i. 17.
line of argument also is somewhat weak. St Matthew did not follow any technical1 or masoretic^ aid to the memory, or any thing else of the kind. For what great purpose could it serve to retain in the memory the names and number of these ancestors, in preference to those which are omitted, or to adopt a method never before employed in the many genealogies and other im portant chapters of the Old Testament, for impressing them more fully on the minds of the Jews, who retained them in their memory accurately enough of themselves. But if he had wished to secure the integrity of this enumeration by a kind of Masora, it would have been better for the purpose to have made one sum of all the generations. In the last place, it would have ill suited the grave character of an apostle and evangelist, first to enumerate the generations as suited his own convenience, and then admire the equality of the Fourteens. The number Fourteen is not men tioned for its own sake, but for the sake of something else : it is not an end, but a means to obtain an end of greater importance.
XII. The Equality here intended is Chronological.
The apostles, looking back from the New to the Old Testa ment, have great regard to the fulness of the times ; and the Jews are wont to describe the chief divisions of chronology bv