WOULD JESUS INHERIT THE DAVID'S THRONE? (LUKE 1:32; JEREMIAH 26:30)

Several places on the internet can can read “101 Objections to the Bible.” Here is Objection #35:
“Would Jesus inherit David's throne? (a) Yes. So said the angel (Luke 1:32). (b) No, since he is a descendant of Jehoiakim (see Matthew 1:11, 1 Chronicles 3:16). And Jehoiakim was cursed by God so that none of his descendants can sit upon David's throne (Jeremiah 36:30).”

There are several ways to resolve this difficulty, and I will start with the one I believe is the best explanation, and it is certainly the easiest to understand.

A. The angel was speaking of an entirely different kind of reign than that mentioned in Jeremiah.

As Jesus said in John 18:36, “My kingdom is not of this world.” And the angelic announcement in Luke 1:32 speaks of a kingdom of which “there will be no end.”

By contrast, “In popular conception the Davidic Messiah was thought to have only a temporary reign.” (Ellis) Marshall elaborates on this fact: “In the OT the thought is sometimes of a continuing line of kings (1 Ki. 8:25; Ps. 132:12), but here the Messiah himself is to reign forever...The Jewish hope was of a kingdom in this world, but by NT times this was taking on transcendental features, described in terms of everlastingness and the return of paradise upon earth. The early church clearly associated the reign of Jesus with his resurrection and exaltation and likened this with the Davidic promises (Acts 2:30-36). This will have been Luke's understanding of the matter, but he is also conscious that the kingdom of God could be said to have arrived in the ministry of Jesus, so that the exaltation was the open recognition of One who had already acted in his earthly life with kingdom power as the representative of God.”

And Geldenhuys states regarding Luke 1:32-33, “His sovereignty will, however, not be a passing, earthly sovereignty, but a spiritual and everlasting one, not over an earthly people but over the spiritual Israel. Christ will reign unto all eternity...”

Jesus was not in fact in the line of Jehoiakim.

One such explanation is rather obvious – Both Matthew's and Luke's genealogies describe the ancestors of Joseph, and he was not Jesus' biological father. And so there is no contradiction with Jeremiah's curse.

Or we could cite the fact that Jehoiakim's son Jehoichin (also called Coniah or Jeconiah) did sit on his father's throne for three months, so that Jeremiah's prophecy in 36:30 was really only partially fulfilled, as pointed out by Thompson. This could open the door to a looser interpretation of “David's throne” than appears on the surface.

Since Jehoichin spent all of his subsequent life in exile, the question arises as to his descendants. This means that we also need to confront another one of Jeremiah's prophecies, this time against Jehoichin instead of his father. Jeremiah 21:30 reads: “Record this man as childless, a man who shall not succeed in his days; for none of his offspring shall succeed in sitting on the throne of David, and ruling again in Judah” (NRSV)

Cawley and Millard interpret this curse as saying, “The historian will not find place for Jehoichin's descendants in the list of kings.” In a similar manner, D.R. Jones says, “Perhaps Jehoichin is to be counted as childless because none of his children will succeed to the throne.” And Bright agrees: “The meaning is not that Jehoiachin would have no sons...Jehoiachin is to be entered as childless since, as far as throne succession was concerned, he was as good as that.”

But, again, if we take a woodenly literal view of this curse, we run into a contradiction since I Chronicles 3:17 records that Jehoichin had seven sons, one of whom was Shealtiel, an ancestor of Joseph according to both Luke's and Matthew's genealogies.

One way of resolving the controversy is to note that while Matthew lists Shealtiel as the son of Jechoniah (i.e. Jehoichin), Luke says that he was the son of an unknown person called Neri. Thus, Geldenhuys says, “This may possibly be explained from the fact that Jeconiah had no child of his own (Jer. xxii.30), and so Shealtiel, the son of Neri, was regarded as his legitimate heir.”

If so, we now have another solution to our problem in that Jehoichin did not have any biological heir to inherit the throne, only a legal heir considered so by a kind of adoption. Thus, there is no problem with Jesus inheriting the throne since he is not biologically related to either the cursed Jehoikim or Jehoichin, even if Joseph is considered to be Jesus' father.

A third “genealogical solution” has been proposed by Machen, who feels that “Matthew gives the legal descendants of David – the men who would have been legally the heir to the Davidic throne if that throne had continued – while Luke gives the descendants of David in that particular line to which, finally, Joseph, the husband of Mary, belonged. There is nothing at all inherently improbable in such a solution. When a kingly line becomes extinct, the living member of a collateral line inherits the throne. So it may well have been in the present case.”

In the final analysis, we would have to agree with Ellis, who concludes, “There is insufficient evidence to reach a firm conclusion.”