Was Jesus a Jew? (Matthew 1:1-16)
God directly indicates that Jesus Christ would come in human likeness, or form, in Romans 8:3 and live a fully human life until His death (Hebrews 2:14). As such, Jesus Christ, as the
prophesied Messiah of the Old Testament, was to be born of the tribe of Judah, of the sons of
Jacob.
In Genesis 49:10, among other places, it is stated that, “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh comes; and to Him shall be the obedience of the people.” The clear implication is that the ultimate lawgiver, Jesus Christ,referenced here by the name “Shiloh”, will be a descendant of Judah, the progenitor of the tribe of Judah. It is from the first syllable of Judah that we derive the ethnic term “Jew”.
In the New Testament, detailed genealogies attribute Jesus’ line of descent to the tribe of Judah, both through Joseph and Mary (Matthew 1 and Luke 3). Also, through these genealogies Christ is a descendant of the royal line of David, as He was prophesied to be in Isaiah 11:1, a“Rod from the stem of Jesse”. Jesse being the father of King David.
In Matthew 15:22 He is recognized by a non-Jewish woman, a Canaanite, as a descendant of David, as well as by Jewish followers in Matthew 21:9. Indeed, Jesus also personally identifies Himself as a Jew in a conversation with the Samaritan woman in John 4:22. The apostle Paul was also inspired to identify Christ’s lineage from the tribe of Judah in Hebrews 7:14. And,finally, one of the twenty-four elders in the throne room of God identifies Jesus to the apostle John as “the Lion of the tribe of Judah,” in Revelation 5:5.
There is repeated corroboration in scripture that Jesus Christ was born of the tribe of Judah and was a descendant of King David, and by these circumstances, clearly able to fulfill the prophecies set forth before His human birth, qualifying Him to be identified as the Messiah, the Anointed One, and our Savior.
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