Ruth 4:22
And lObed begat Jesse, and Jesse begat David.
And Obed begat Jesse, and Jesse begat David.
l:
1 Samuel 16:1 And the LORD said unto Samuel, How long wilt thou mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel? fill thine horn with oil, and go, I will send thee to Jesse the Beth-lehemite: for I have provided me a king among his sons.
Psalms 75:5 Lift not up your horn on high: speak not with a stiff neck.
Psalms 113:7 He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth the needy out of the dunghill;
How can this be a true genealogy, seeing by this means four persons take up three hundred and eighty years, which were between Salmon and David, and consequently every one of them must beget a son when he was very old?
1. It is not certain that each of these was the immediate parent of him whom he is said to beget; for sometimes grandfathers are said in Scripture to beget their grandchildren, to wit, by the intervention of their immediate sons; whereof instances have been given. And sometimes in genealogies whole generations are omitted, as may appear by Ezr 7:2, compared with 1Ch 6:3 and by Mat 1:8, which might be done here for divers reasons now unknown.
2. There are many examples even in profane writers, both ancient and modern, of persons that have not only lived one hundred and twenty and one hundred and thirty years and upwards, but have been vigorous and have begotten children at above one hundred years old; and of women that have conceived and born children at the age of fifty, sixty, yea, seventy years. And therefore if it were so in these more ancient times, when men were longer lived, and under the law, when long life was expressly promised to the obedient, and in persons of strong constitutions and sober conversations, such as some of these are known to have been, and the others may justly be presumed to be such, it is not strange, nor in the least incredible.