Jacob, father of Joseph

Jacob, father of Joseph the Betrothed, is an ancestor of the Lord, mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew in the genealogy of Jesus Christ: the son of Matthan and father of Joseph, grandfather of the Lord by the order of the law. Our sources give no commemoration day for him and say nothing about his life beyond his place in the Gospel; according to the English source he probably lived in the first century before Christ, in the time of the Maccabean state.

In the Gospel

Jacob is mentioned only in the first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. In the genealogy, deliberately divided into three epochs of fourteen generations each, he is the second-⁠to-⁠last link (before Joseph) in the third and last group, from the Babylonian captivity to the birth of Christ (Matthew 1:17). Interpreters point out that at Jacob's generation the chain of begetting in Matthew ends: Jacob begot Joseph, but of Jesus himself it is said only that Joseph is the husband of Mary, "of whom was born Jesus", which Christian tradition understands as a testimony to the birth from the Virgin.

Jacob and Heli

The problem of the father of Joseph arises when Matthew is compared with Luke, who gives a different list and names Joseph's father Heli. The difference has been explained in two ways. The oldest surviving explanation is that of the historian Sextus Julius Africanus, of the third century, in his epistle to Aristides, preserved by Eusebius: a woman, Estha, married first Matthan (of the line of Solomon) and bore Jacob; after Matthan's death she married Melchi (of the line of Nathan) and bore Heli. Heli died childless, and Jacob took his widow as wife, according to the levirate law (Deuteronomy 25:5-6), and so Joseph was the son of Jacob by nature and of Heli by law.

Another view, held by some Christian writers, is that Luke gives the lineage of Mary and Matthew that of Joseph: Heli would be the father of Mary, and Joseph, by marriage, his son-⁠in-⁠law. Some ancient traditions, among them that of Saint Jerome, identified Heli with Joachim. Many scholars today are cautious about this view, since in antiquity women's genealogies were not kept and Luke does not name Mary among the ancestors.

Interpretations

The English source notes from Catholic theology that through Jacob, a descendant of King Solomon according to Matthew, Joseph received the right of heir to the messianic promises, and, giving the Child His name and adopting Him by law, placed Him in the house of David. Many interpreters also see a typological echo of the Old Testament: the patriarch Jacob had a beloved son Joseph, and Joseph of Nazareth is the son of a Jacob; both received revelations in dreams and both were forced to go to Egypt.