Abijah

The Greek repeats a full clause each time: "Solomon begot Rehoboam, and Rehoboam begot Abijah…" The translation renders the repeated verb with the compact phrase "the father of," and after the fuller sentence in the previous verse it lets the verb be understood rather than repeating "was" in every link. This keeps the list moving at a steady, chant-like pace when read aloud, which matches the deliberately rhythmic character of the Greek. The older rendering "begot" is accurate but archaic; "was the father of" states the same thing in ordinary speech. The connective δέ occurs at every step, but translating it as "and" each time would clog the line in English, so it is carried by the rhythm instead.

The name of the third king appears here as "Asaph" rather than the more familiar "Asa," following the earliest and best Greek witnesses, which read Ἀσάφ in this verse and at the start of the next. Many later manuscripts correct it to Ἀσά, the form matching the Old Testament king's name; that correction is almost certainly a scribal harmonization. The unusual spelling may reflect a variant popular form of the name, or it may echo the name of Asaph the psalmist. Either way, the harder reading is retained here as the one the evangelist most likely wrote.

The verb γεννάω in the active voice means "to beget, to father"; it is used of the male parent, while the passive is used of being born. Matthew keeps the aorist tense throughout, presenting each generation as a single completed act, which gives the genealogy its steady drumbeat. The names themselves are Greek transliterations of Hebrew forms: Ῥοβοάμ from Rehav'am ("the people is enlarged"), Ἀβιά from Aviyah ("my father is the LORD"), and Ἀσά(φ) from Asa ("healer" or "he has healed").

With Solomon's son Rehoboam the united kingdom split, and the line traced here continues through the southern kingdom of Judah in Jerusalem. Abijah reigned briefly and was remembered for continued warfare with the north; Asa was remembered as a reformer who removed idols from the land. Royal genealogies were carefully preserved in Judah, and Matthew's second section deliberately follows the succession of Davidic kings, drawing on the lists found in the books of Kings and Chronicles.

This stretch of the list makes no moral distinctions: faithful kings and unfaithful kings stand side by side as equal links in the chain. The promise to David is carried forward not by the merit of his descendants but by God's covenant faithfulness, and the genealogy quietly insists that the Messiah comes through a royal house marked as much by failure as by glory. That Jesus is heir to this throne is Matthew's central claim in the opening chapter.