Matthew’s gospel is the very first thing we read in the New Testament, and we tend to think of it as coming early in church history; I know I used to before I looked into it. In fact, Matthew circulated his gospel close to three decades after the events it describes, long enough for Galatians, both Thessalonian epistles, both Corinthian epistles and Romans to predate it and make the rounds of the first century churches.
Question: Did Matthew understand the allegedly-Pauline doctrine of justification by faith when he recorded his version of the Lord’s genealogy in chapter 1 of his gospel? You betcha.
Four Women of Faith
In fact, if we look hard for justification by faith in the gospels, we will most certainly find it there, and not just in John, where it is almost too obvious. We find the Lord Jesus commending and rewarding faith repeatedly in Matthew while criticizing his disciples whenever they failed to exercise it. Does faith please God? Matthew answers that conclusively. Is it possible to please him without it? He answers that too. We can be sure that in three decades of study and meditation on living as a disciple of Jesus Christ, Matthew had inferred nearly everything Paul taught so explicitly in his epistles. It was all there in seed form in his own personal experience.
So when I tell you all four women Matthew namechecks in his version of the genealogy of Christ were women of faith, can we imagine that truth was lost on Matthew? I don’t think it was. Many women had the privilege of being mothers to sons born in the Messianic line, but few scratched and clawed their way into it. At least three of these ladies did, and the other suffered enough to get a pass from me, if that matters.
1/ Tamar
A woman of faith, you say? Tamar posed as a prostitute and seduced her father-in-law! Ahem, yes, that does take some explaining. I’ll let the men, women and elders in the gate of Bethlehem who blessed Boaz when he redeemed Naomi’s property do the talking:
“May the Lord make the woman, who is coming into your house, like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of Israel … may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, because of the offspring that the Lord will give you by this young woman.”
This sounds like more than a spontaneous outburst of enthusiasm to me. It sounds like half a millennium after the fact, the story of the tryst between Tamar and Judah had made its way into some kind of local benediction. The distasteful aspects of what Tamar did had long been forgotten, and she’s almost held up in Hebrew culture as a role model, not because of the way she went about getting what belonged to her, but because her goal was fair and reasonable, and because her indefatigable pursuit of justice by the divine standard ultimately produced good things. The household of Perez, one of Tamar’s twins, was one everybody wanted to emulate.
How about that?
As Judah himself conceded about Tamar when all was revealed, “She is more righteous than I.” Relatively speaking he was correct, and history reflected that. Just as Jacob was more righteous than Esau because he valued the blessing and birthright that his brother didn’t, so Tamar valued her rightful place in Judah’s household compared to whatever else might have been out there for her. Objectively righteous, no. But she sought blessing and was ultimately blessed.
2/ Rahab
It’s awfully easy to play the fly on the wall, criticizing the decisions other people make without making allowances for the options they were faced with. Sometimes a person’s choices are between bad and awful.
For Rahab, who believed God was with Israel, her choice was to double down and die with her people, or become a traitor to her kin. She chose the latter. We don’t generally think much of traitors. We accept their defection, make use of the information they give us, then shove them off in a quiet corner of the country to get old thinking about what they’ve lost. To her credit, Rahab didn’t do that. She went all in with the people of God, marrying an Israelite and finding herself by grace incorporated into the Messianic line. Hebrews confirms: “By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies.” Her faith produced works, demonstrating its reality.
In discussing Rahab, the New Testament writers give no weight whatever to the effects of her betrayal on people who would never have repented in any case. James, a plainspoken writer if there ever was one, commends her faith too.
3/ Ruth
The scripture doesn’t comment about it, but leaving Moab required the same sort of 180 degree reversal of direction for Ruth that leaving Jericho in the company of its conquerors required from Rahab. Bear in mind that, like Rahab, Ruth was coming from a nation that thought nothing of sacrificing children to their foul, fake deities.
Ruth’s confession of faith is glorious, one of my favorite moments in the entire Old Testament. She doesn’t end up in Hebrews 11, I assume, because her conversion to the worship of YHWH was so obvious it didn’t require elucidation. Here it is:
“Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.”
The Bible doesn’t say much about Ruth’s son Obed other than that he was David’s grandfather, but you can bet he was raised in the training and instruction of the Lord. Ruth is a classic case of the pagan who “gets it” far more intensely than many raised in the faith, because she has something vividly real and horrible to contrast it with. Even in her sad state, Naomi clearly had quite a testimony.
4/ The Wife of Uriah
Here’s the thing about the loss of a loved one, especially when you have some part in causing it, however minor: you can accept comfort or you can refuse it, becoming bitter and isolated. I’ve seen both.
David’s repentance for his disgraceful behavior with Bathsheba is right there in the Psalms for us to read. The wife of the late Uriah didn’t write psalms to express her grief or repentance, if such was needed. But we do read this concerning the aftermath of her child’s sickness and death:
“Then David comforted his wife, Bathsheba, and went in to her and lay with her, and she bore a son, and he called his name Solomon. And the Lord loved him.”
Some people can’t accept forgiveness if it involves admitting one’s own guilt. Others can’t forgive those who have wronged them. We don’t know which it was for Bathsheba; perhaps a bit of both. But it’s apparent she moved on and let God be God, without long-term bitterness or rancor. She also let David be David. Whatever we might say about her apparent naivety in the matter of Adonijah’s request after David’s death for the hand of Abishag the Shunammite, she was right there with David at the end, making sure his will was executed when others defied it.
Saving Faith
When we see examples of faith in Hebrews, they are divergent and surprising: for every prophet stoned, sawn in two or killed with the sword, we have a Sarah who “considered”, a Jacob who bowed over the head of his staff, or a Joseph who gave directions concerning his bones. Faith is a funny thing, and it displays itself in ways appropriate to the circumstances in which it is tested. We cannot do more than we are asked to do in our day; we should not do less.
So then, if Rahab’s faith was desperate, risky and gigantic, Ruth’s methodical and steadfast, Tamar’s crafty and Bathsheba’s passive and accepting, none of this should come as a surprise. Each woman responded in faith appropriate to her circumstances.
That, and Matthew made a note of it for us.
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