Salmon (Boaz's father)

The Greek repeats the verb ἐγέννησεν ("begot," literally "fathered") in every link of the chain. For oral reading the verb is carried over from the opening of the list, so each name is joined simply by "the father of" — a rhythm that lets the long roll of names move without a stumble. The preposition ἐκ ("out of, from") marks the mother from whom the son came; rendered here as "by Rahab" and "by Ruth," the traditional English idiom for maternal descent. Alternatives such as "whose mother was Rahab" or "of Rahab" are equally faithful but heavier on the tongue. The names appear in their familiar Old Testament English forms (Boaz, Obed) rather than transliterations of the Greek spellings (Boes, Iobed).

Greek manuscripts differ over the spelling of these two names. For Boaz some read Βόες, others Βόοζ (closer to the Greek Old Testament) or Βοόζ; for Obed, Ἰωβήδ, Ὠβήδ, or Ἰωβήλ. The differences are matters of transcribing Hebrew names into Greek and do not affect the identity of the persons or the sense of the verse; English renders both by their standard Old Testament forms.

Boaz renders Hebrew Bōʿaz, a name of uncertain meaning, often explained as "in him is strength." Obed is Hebrew ʿŌbēd, "one who serves" or "worshipper." Rahab appears here as Ῥαχάβ, with a consonant reflecting the Hebrew guttural, whereas the Greek Old Testament writes her name Ῥαάβ — one of several signs that the writer knows Semitic forms of the names as well as Greek ones. Note also that ἐκ τῆς Ῥαχάβ uses the feminine article, which alone signals that the person named is a woman.

Rahab was the woman of Jericho who sheltered Israel's spies; Ruth was a Moabite widow who came to Bethlehem with her mother-in-law. Old Testament genealogies of this line (in the closing verses of Ruth and in the Chronicles lists) name only the fathers; the mothers are added here deliberately. Both women stand outside Israel by birth, and Moabites in particular were excluded from the assembly by law — yet both are remembered as ancestors of the royal house. The span from Salmon in the generation of the conquest to David is compressed into very few names, which suggests the list is arranged to be memorable and schematic rather than exhaustive.

Four women are named in this genealogy — Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and the wife of Uriah in the next verse — and each comes with an irregular or foreign background. Their presence at the head of the family tree of the Messiah has long been read as a quiet announcement of the Gospel's reach: that God's saving purpose runs through outsiders and through broken situations, and that the nations are woven into the line of Israel's King from the beginning. Some interpreters stress instead the theme of God's sovereign grace working against human expectation, others a defense against later slander about Jesus' birth; the readings need not exclude one another.