The Crooked Line to the True King Text: 1 Chronicles 3:10-16
Introduction: God's Unblinking Gaze
When modern Christians encounter a passage like the one before us today, a straight shot of genealogy, the temptation is to let our eyes glaze over. We see a list of names, a succession of "begats," and we think it is little more than a dusty record, a page to be turned quickly to get to the more exciting parts of the story. But to do this is to fundamentally misunderstand what the Bible is. Scripture is not a collection of stories with some boring bits in between. It is one story, and every word of it is breathed out by God and profitable. These lists are not filler. They are the skeletal structure upon which the whole body of redemptive history is built.
The Chronicler is writing to a people who have returned from exile. They are discouraged. The glory days of David and Solomon are a distant memory. The Temple is a shadow of its former self. Their king is a foreign potentate. They are asking the fundamental questions: Are we still God's people? Does God still remember His promises to David? Is there any hope left for us? And into this uncertainty, the Chronicler lays down this genealogy. It is a declaration, a stake driven into the ground of history. It says, "God has not forgotten."
This list of kings is God's unblinking gaze fixed upon one family line, for one ultimate purpose: the birth of the Messiah. This is not just a list of kings; it is the designated runway from which the Son of God would take flight into humanity. And what a runway it is. It is not a pristine, polished hall of fame. It is littered with rubble. It includes great reformers and vile apostates, heroes of the faith and wicked tyrants. This is not an airbrushed history. It is a testament to the fact that God draws straight lines with crooked sticks. He is not thwarted by human sin. In fact, His sovereign plan is so magnificent that it incorporates our rebellion into its very fabric, turning even the wrath of man to praise Him. This genealogy is a sermon on the absolute, meticulous, and undefeatable sovereignty of God.
The Text
Now Solomon’s son was Rehoboam, Abijah was his son, Asa his son, Jehoshaphat his son, Joram his son, Ahaziah his son, Joash his son, Amaziah his son, Azariah his son, Jotham his son, Ahaz his son, Hezekiah his son, Manasseh his son, Amon his son, Josiah his son. The sons of Josiah were Johanan the firstborn, and the second was Jehoiakim, the third Zedekiah, the fourth Shallum. The sons of Jehoiakim were Jeconiah his son, Zedekiah his son.
(1 Chronicles 3:10-16 LSB)
The Royal Line: A Mixed Inheritance (vv. 10-14)
The list begins with the son of Solomon and proceeds, father to son, down the line of Judah's kings.
"Now Solomon’s son was Rehoboam, Abijah was his son, Asa his son, Jehoshaphat his son, Joram his son, Ahaziah his son, Joash his son, Amaziah his son, Azariah his son, Jotham his son, Ahaz his son, Hezekiah his son, Manasseh his son, Amon his son, Josiah his son." (1 Chronicles 3:10-14)
This is a relentless drumbeat of succession. Son follows father, king follows king. This establishes the central fact: the covenant promise to David, that he would not lack a man to sit on the throne (2 Samuel 7:16), was being kept. Despite every wobble, every rebellion, every foreign invasion, God preserved the line. This is a testament to God's covenant faithfulness, not man's.
Consider the men in this list. We have godly reformers like Asa, Jehoshaphat, Jotham, Hezekiah, and the great Josiah. These were men who, for all their faults, turned the nation back to God. They tore down idols, reinstituted the Passover, and called the people to repentance. They are bright lights in the deepening gloom. Their presence in the line shows that God raises up faithful men to steward His promises in their generation.
But for every Hezekiah, there is an Ahaz. For every Josiah, there is a Manasseh. Ahaz was a wicked man who shut the doors of the temple and sacrificed his own sons in the fire to pagan gods. Manasseh was perhaps the most wicked king in Judah's history, filling Jerusalem with innocent blood and pagan altars from one end to the other. And yet, here they are. They are not edited out. They are not redacted from the official record. Why? Because the promise was not contingent on the moral performance of the kings. The promise was contingent on the character of God. God includes them in the list to show us that the messianic line was preserved not because of human goodness, but in spite of human wickedness.
This is a profound comfort for us. Our salvation does not depend on our consistency. The security of God's covenant with us in Christ does not depend on our flawless record. It depends entirely on His promise. He includes the scoundrels in the list to show that His grace is greater than our sin. The line to Christ was not a pure, unbroken chain of righteousness. It was a chain of sinners, saved and sustained by grace, so that the ultimate King, Jesus, might come and save sinners.
The Fracture of Judgment (vv. 15-16)
As we come to the end of the monarchy, the orderly succession begins to break down. The Chronicler's simple "his son" formula is disrupted, reflecting the chaos of the Babylonian exile.
"The sons of Josiah were Johanan the firstborn, and the second was Jehoiakim, the third Zedekiah, the fourth Shallum. The sons of Jehoiakim were Jeconiah his son, Zedekiah his son." (1 Chronicles 3:15-16 LSB)
Here the straightforward lineage fractures. Josiah was the last good king, a great reformer. But his sons were a disaster. Notice the disorder. The firstborn, Johanan, never reigned. The fourth son, Shallum (also known as Jehoahaz), reigned for a mere three months before being deposed by the Egyptians. The second son, Jehoiakim, was installed as a puppet king and was a wicked man. It was Jehoiakim who took Jeremiah's scroll, cut it up with a penknife, and threw it into the fire (Jeremiah 36). For this, God pronounced a specific curse upon him: "He shall have none to sit on the throne of David" (Jeremiah 36:30).
And what of his son, Jeconiah (also called Coniah or Jehoiachin)? He reigned for three months and was taken into exile in Babylon. And God pronounced another curse, this time on him: "Write this man down as childless, a man who will not prosper in his days; for none of his descendants will prosper, sitting on the throne of David or ruling again in Judah" (Jeremiah 22:30).
Now, this presents a problem, what looks to the scoffer like a contradiction. The curse says Jeconiah will be "childless," yet our very text here in Chronicles says he had sons. And the next verse, verse 17, lists seven of them. What are we to make of this? We must read the Bible with the Bible. The curse was not that he would have no biological offspring, but that none of his seed would prosper sitting on the throne of David. The curse was a royal curse. His line was royally terminated. He was written down as childless for the purposes of the throne. God's Word is meticulously precise.
This is the hinge of history. The royal line, the line through which the ruling Messiah was to come, appears to be cut off. The promise seems to have failed. A divine curse rests on the very branch that was supposed to produce the King. This is the cliffhanger at the end of the Old Testament monarchy. Has God's plan been thwarted? Has sin finally won?
The Sovereign Solution
This is where the glory of the gospel shines brightest against the black backdrop of judgment. The problem of the curse on Jeconiah's line is precisely why we have two genealogies for Jesus in the New Testament. Matthew traces the genealogy of Joseph, the legal father of Jesus. And who is in that line? Jeconiah is (Matthew 1:11). Joseph was the legal heir to the throne of David. Through Joseph, Jesus received the legal right to the throne. The royal claim passed to Him.
But what about the curse, the "blood curse," that none of Jeconiah's physical descendants could sit on the throne? This is where Luke's genealogy comes in. Luke traces the genealogy of Mary. Luke's line also goes back to David, but it bypasses Jeconiah, going through another of David's sons, Nathan (Luke 3:31). So Jesus, through Mary, was a direct physical descendant of David, but not of the cursed line of Jeconiah. He had the blood of David without the curse of Jeconiah.
Do you see the breathtaking wisdom of God? Through Joseph, Jesus got the throne. Through Mary, He dodged the curse. He was the rightful king legally, and the qualified king physically. Only God could have woven history together with such precision. The very problem that Chronicles leaves us with is the problem that the gospel accounts gloriously resolve. The apparent contradiction is actually the key that unlocks the whole puzzle of the messianic line. God's Word is not a tangled mess; it is an intricate, divinely woven tapestry.
Conclusion: The True Son
This list of names is therefore anything but boring. It is a story of God's relentless, stubborn, covenant-keeping grace. It is a story that runs through the peaks of revival and the troughs of apostasy. It is a story that seems to run into a dead end, a royal curse, a terminal judgment in Babylon.
But God is the God who brings life from death. The exile was not the end of the story. The curse was not the final word. This entire list, with all its saints and scoundrels, was pointing to the one true Son. It was pointing to the King who would not fail, the Son who would not rebel. It was pointing to Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham, the Son of God.
Every king in this list, good or bad, ultimately demonstrates why we needed a better King. The good kings show us what righteousness looks like, but they were imperfect and they died. The bad kings show us the depths of our rebellion and the consequences of sin. All of them together cry out for a perfect King, an eternal King, a King who could not only rule His people but also redeem them.
That is what we have in the Lord Jesus. He is the culmination of this long, crooked line. He is the fulfillment of the promise. And because He is, our place in the family of God is secure. Not because of our performance, but because we have been adopted into His family, by His grace, through His blood. He is the true King, and His throne is forever.