Pedaja

The Greek verb ἐγέννησεν literally means "begot" or "fathered." The rendering "was the father of" keeps the sense while reading smoothly aloud. In the second half of the verse the Greek repeats the verb, but the English drops it ("Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel"), letting the ellipsis carry the pattern — a choice that preserves the chanting rhythm of the whole genealogy rather than adding a fourteenth identical verb. The names follow their familiar Hebrew-based English spellings (Shealtiel, Zerubbabel) instead of transliterating the Greek forms Salathiel and Zorobabel, so that readers hear the same men known from the earlier Scriptures. Greek μετοικεσία is rendered "exile"; it denotes a forced change of dwelling, so "deportation" or "removal to Babylon" are equally possible, while "captivity" is a looser traditional option.

μετοικεσία is built from μετά ("change") and οἶκος ("house, home") — literally a "re-housing," the uprooting of a household. The repetition of the phrase from verse 11 ("at the time of the exile" / "after the exile") frames the middle panel of the genealogy and marks the hinge between the kings and the post-exilic descendants. The name Shealtiel (Hebrew Shealtiel) means roughly "I have asked of God," and Zerubbabel is commonly explained as "seed/offspring of Babylon" or "begotten in Babylon" — a name that itself testifies to the exile.

Jechoniah (also called Jehoiachin or Coniah) was taken to Babylon in the deportation of 597 BC and later released from prison there. Zerubbabel, his descendant, led the first group of returning exiles and served as governor of Judah under Persian rule, overseeing the rebuilding of the temple around 520 BC. Thus this verse spans the whole exile: it begins in Babylon and ends with the man who brought the community home.

The list follows the line of Shealtiel to Zerubbabel as in the prophetic and post-exilic books; a parallel record traces Zerubbabel through Pedaiah, a brother of Shealtiel, which is often explained by levirate marriage, adoption, or the practice of naming the head of a family line. Zerubbabel carries strong messianic overtones: he is called God's chosen "signet ring," a sign that the promise to David survived the exile. That is significant here, since a prophetic oracle had declared that Jechoniah would be recorded as childless and that none of his offspring would sit on David's throne — yet the royal line continues, and the genealogy shows that the promise is fulfilled not by an unbroken monarchy but through Christ.

The Greek text of this verse is stable; the variation among manuscripts is limited to spelling of the names (for example Σαλαθιήλ / Σαλαθιέλ, Ζοροβαβέλ / Ζωροβαβέλ) and to the presence or absence of the connecting δέ, none of which affects the meaning.

The Greek repeats the full formula in every clause: 'X de egennēsen ton Y' — 'and X begot Y.' For oral reading, the repeated verb has been elided after the first occurrence in the previous verse, so the line runs 'Zerubbabel the father of Abiud' rather than 'and Zerubbabel was the father of Abiud.' This preserves the drumbeat cadence of the genealogy in English while keeping every name and every link intact. 'Was the father of' is preferred to the archaic 'begot' because the verb egennēsen here marks legal descent in a royal line, not merely biological generation; the older rendering can also sound stilted when read aloud. The connective 'de' is a simple continuative particle and needs no separate word in English.

Egennēsen is the aorist active of gennaō, 'to beget, bring forth.' Used of a father it means 'became the father of'; in the passive it means 'to be born.' The same verb root will return at the climax of the genealogy in verse 16, where Matthew breaks the pattern and uses a passive form for Jesus. The names in this verse are Greek transcriptions of Hebrew originals: Abiud (Abihud, 'my father is majesty'), Eliakim ('God raises up'), and Azor (probably from Azzur, 'helper' or 'helped').

With Zerubbabel the genealogy passes out of the Old Testament record. Zerubbabel led the return from exile and rebuilt the temple, but Abiud, Eliakim, and Azor appear nowhere in the Hebrew Scriptures; Matthew must be drawing on family records or oral tradition preserved among Judean households. These are the obscure generations of the post-exilic centuries, when the house of David held no throne and lived as ordinary people under Persian, Greek, and finally Roman rule.

That the royal line runs on through unknown men is itself part of Matthew's point: the promise to David did not depend on visible kingship or public fame. God preserved the line through centuries of silence and political insignificance, and the covenant held when there was nothing to see. The steady 'was the father of' carries the weight of divine faithfulness working through ordinary human generations.

The spelling of these names varies among the manuscripts, as is common with transliterated Semitic names. Some witnesses read Abioud, others Abioud with different vowel endings; Azor appears also as Azōr and in some copies as Sadōk's predecessor with slight variation. None of these variants affects the sense or the sequence of the list.