Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Luke · About this commentary
The Son of Adam, the Son of God
Luke 3:23-38
23 Jesus himself, when he began to teach, was about thirty years old, being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph, the son of Heli, · WEB
A genealogy that runs backward and does not stop at Abraham.
Jesus himself, when he began to teach, was about thirty years old, being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph, the son of Heli Luke 3:23.
Thirty was the age at which a priest entered service Numbers 4:3 and the age at which David became king 2 Samuel 5:4. And the parenthesis is careful: as was supposed. The writer has spent two chapters explaining why the supposition is inexact, and he inserts the qualifier at the one point where a list of fathers would otherwise assert it.
The list itself repays three observations.
It runs backward. The other genealogy in the Gospels starts at Abraham and comes forward to Joseph Matthew 1:1–17. This one starts with Jesus and goes back, which is the direction of an investigation rather than of a claim — the same movement as the preface, tracing things to their source.
It does not stop where a Jewish genealogy would. Abraham arrives at Luke 3:34 and the list keeps going, through Noah and Enoch and Seth, until the son of Adam, the son of God Luke 3:38. A pedigree exists to establish membership of something; this one goes past the covenant, past the flood, to the first man and then to God. Placed immediately after a voice saying you are my beloved Son, and immediately before the wilderness where the accusation will be if you are the Son of God, the last three words of the list are doing deliberate work.
And it means the line includes everyone. A reader in Theophilus's position, with no share in Abraham, finds himself inside this family tree at verse thirty-eight.
It differs from the other list. Between David and Joseph the two run through different names, this one descending through Nathan Luke 3:31 and the other through Solomon. The honest explanations are ordinary — one may follow legal succession to the throne and the other physical descent, or one may trace Mary's line, with Heli as her father. Scripture does not say which, and nothing is gained by insisting on one. What both lists agree on is the thing they were written to establish: he is of the house of David, and the promise made to David has an heir.
What the position of this list adds is a further claim. He is Adam's son, and the next paragraph puts him in a wilderness facing the tempter who took the first Adam in a garden.
settled What this mark means