Our answer to these two questions must be based on a single observation: apparently they posed no serious problem to Matthew and, by extension, to his first readers. The details of the genealogy were obviously of secondary importance to the Evangelists, as Matthew shows by his intentional deletion of three generations of Judean kings. What was important to him was that Jesus was truly David’s son. He was this not by the natural process of male procreation but by the direct will of God. How God’s