Is there something significant in the number fourteen in Matthew's Gospel? Because Matthew had to manipulate Jesus' geneology to have something significant happen every fourteen generations by leaving out some of the names, we are justified in wondering whether the number fourteen was of importance to him. Curiously, though, in the final geneological sequence, there are only thirteen names although Matthew claims that it contains fourteen.

Through the years, interpreters of Matthew have questioned Matthew's rule of fourteen and have theorized on the reasons for it.

In ancient Israel, as in other ancient societies, numbers had a symbolic significance. The number seven was of supreme importance as a symbol of perfection or divinity. The days of the week were divided into seven days because they believed there were seven planets. For some ancient Jews, there were seven stages in a person's life, and seven parts to the human soul. Additionally, there were seven heavens, seven compartments of hell, and seven divisions of Paradise. There were also seven classes of angels and seven attributes of God. The list goes on. Philo, a first-century Jewish philosopher said: "I doubt whether anyone could adequately celebrate the properties of the number seven, for they are beyond words" (On the Creation of the World, 30).

Because seven was a perfect number associated with the divine, then what was fourteen? It's twice what seven is. It would have been a doubly perfect number. Some scholars believe Matthew set up Jesus' geneology to show the divine perfection of his descent.

A second theory ties the geneology more closely into Matthew's own portrayal of Jesus. Ancient languages typically used the letters of the alphabet to represent numerals, so that one could add up the letters in a name and come up with a numerical value. Mattehew emphasizes Jesus' messianic character as a descendant of King David. In Hebrew, David's name is spelled with three letters, equivalent to the English letters D, V, and D (ancient Hebrew did not use vowels). The letter D in Hebrew is worth 4 and the V is worth 6, so the numerical value of David's name is fourteen. Perhaps Matthew emphasized the number fourteen in Jesus' geneology to be able to stress his Davidic roots as the messiah of the Jews.

(Adopted from Bart D. Ehrman's The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, Fourth Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.)

See Peculiarities Of The Gospels