7 Famous Sinners in Christ’s Family Tree

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Unless a person is looking for something specific or trying to memorize Bible trivia, most people are only vaguely aware of who is part of Christ’s family tree. In some ways, this is unsurprising. The endless listings of generations in the various genealogies in the Bible are not terribly interesting to the average modern reader. In ancient times, when a person’s ancestry counted for a great deal more, the lineage of Christ would have been a source of fascination. Today, most people groan in disappointment when the genealogy in Matthew is read at Christmas instead of the more story-based version of Jesus’ birth found in Luke.

Jesus’ ancestry may only be of passing interest to the average Christian today, but there are some interesting figures in His family tree. One would expect Christ’s family to be filled with righteous men and women, the sort of people that would be as worthy as a human being can be of sharing blood with God. Instead, Christ’s family tree is riddled with people who turned their backs on God, committed terrible crimes and drenched themselves in darkness and sin. Here are seven famous sinners in Christ’s family tree.

David

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King David is one of the best known figures in the Bible and one of the most beloved. He is referenced repeatedly throughout the Bible and was chosen by God to be the king of Israel. David was, however, far from perfect. In fact, his worst sins are immortalized in one of the most famous Bible stories involving him.

David is arguably known best for two Bible stories: his defeat of Goliath in 1 Samuel 17 and for his affair with Bathsheba in 2 Samuel 11. The latter story is a tale of what could have been a fatal fall from grace for the king of Israel. After seeing Bathsheba, David used his influence and power as king to force her to submit to him raping her and then had her husband betrayed and murdered to cover up David’s crime. In one fell swoop, David went from wise king and honorable warrior to rapist, adulterer and murderer.

Judah

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Judah was one of Israel’s older sons in the story that spans Genesis 37 through Genesis 50. When he is angered and threatened by Israel’s blatant favoritism of Joseph, Judah and his brothers plan to kill Joseph. Reuben talks them out of murdering Joseph, and Judah comes up with a very different plan. “What will we gain if we kill our brother and cover up his blood,” Judah said. “Come, let’s sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him. After all, he is our brother, our flesh and blood.”

After becoming a slaver, Judah’s sins only continued to accumulate. He raised two sons who were “wicked in the Lord’s sight” and died for it. He then refused to do what the law demanded and either marry their widow, Tamar, to either his youngest son or marry her himself. He would go on to be the father of the bloodline that sat on the thrones of Israel and Judea as well as Christ Himself, but Judah as a man spent much of his life very far from being righteous. He himself even admitted it when confronted by Tamar. “She is righteous, and I am not.”

Rahab

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Although she is in many ways a righteous woman, Rahab was still a sinner. She appears in Joshua 2 when the Israelites are preparing to attack the city of Jericho. The two spies that Joshua sent to Jericho come to her instead of doing the job they were sent to do. The fact that they came to Rahab is a constant thread of innuendo throughout the chapter because Rahab is a prostitute.

Rahab is the opposite of a number of the famous sinner’s in Christ’s family tree in that she is initially depicted as a sinner but turns out to be righteous as well. Rahab is introduced as “a prostitute named Rahab” living in a doomed city. It is not until later that Rahab is shown to both know and fear God and His power. This is the opposite of those like Judah and David who are initially presented as righteous only to fall hard into sin.

Ahaz

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After the death of Kings David and Solomon, Judea did not have much luck when it came to righteous kings. Out of the 21 rulers of Judea listed in 2 Chronicles, only David, Solomon, Abijah, Jehoshaphat, Jotham, Hezekiah and Josiah are listed as being righteous kings. All of the rest were seen as wicked. Sadly, not even the so-called righteous kings escaped having some nasty skeletons in their closets.

Judea had some nasty kings, but King Ahaz might win the prize for “worst king of Judea.” According to the Bible, Ahaz essentially went through a checklist of all the things God said not to do and then went out and did them. He “offered sacrifices and burned incense at the high places” and “engag[ed] in the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites.” He removed and altered parts of the Temple, chose to offer sacrifices to the gods of Damascus, “set up altars at every street corner in Jerusalem,” “built high places to burn sacrifices to other gods” throughout Judea and encouraged his people to follow other Gods. The worst of Ahaz’s sins, however, would be an offering he made. During his reign, Ahaz had his own son burned alive as a human sacrifice. It is hard to believe that such a man was related to Christ.

Joash

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Before Ahaz came along and stole the title of “worst king of Judea,” Joash might well have held that dubious honor. Sadly, Joash actually started out as a decent king. He listened to the chief priest Jehoiada and restored the Temple. After Jehoiada’s death, however, Joash went tumbling off the deep end. He listened to Judean officials who were not righteous men and allowed Judea to turn its collective back on God. The people “abandoned the Temple of the Lord, the God of their ancestors, and worshiped Asherah poles and idols….Although the Lord sent prophets to the people to bring them back to Him…they would not listen.”

Abandoning God and paying the price for it is a pretty common occurrence in the Old Testament. Joash, however, was apparently not content with simply committing idolatry. He decided to add murder to his resume as well. Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada, became a prophet and spoke against the sins that the people were committing. In response, Joash had Zechariah, the son of a man who was good to him and a prophet of God, stoned to death. If the murder was not bad enough, Joash decided to have Jehoiada killed in arguably the worst place: the Temple courtyard.

Solomon

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When it comes to famous Israelite kings, Solomon is second only to David. He is still known for the wisdom he displayed during his reign and was responsible for building the first Temple of the Lord according to the instructions in the Bible. He was considered to be one of the few righteous kings of Israel and Judea, but even Solomon has some sinful skeletons hidden in his closet. According to 1 Kings 3, Solomon was in the habit of making offerings at the high places, something that was forbidden. At first, this sin did not seem to get him into much trouble, but his habit of worshipping in a way that was not permitted ended up ruining him. According to 1 Kings 11, Solomon had a variety of foreign wives despite God warning the Israelites against intermarrying with pagan peoples. Out of love for them, Solomon “did evil in the eyes of the Lord” by worshipping the gods of his wives and building altars and high places for the deities.

Adam and Eve

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The genealogy of Christ would not be complete without following it all the way back to the beginning of both humanity and of sin. As such, it would be remiss to forget about Adam and Eve when listing sinners in Christ’s family tree. After all, they started this mess.

Adam and Eve appear in arguably the most famous story in the Old Testament, the story of creation. In the tale, Adam and Eve become sinful after eating forbidden fruit and lying to God about doing so. They are subsequently cast out of Eden, and their sinful nature is visited on each and every one of their descendants. When dealing with sinners in Christ’s family tree, Adam and Eve cannot be left out. After all, it is their original sins that doomed humanity to darkness and death until Christ came. Without Adam and Eve’s sin, there would have been no need for Christ to save humanity in the first place.