The lineage of Jesus Christ, affirming His descent from David, is meticulously chronicled in the Scriptures, particularly in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, each presenting a genealogy that traces Jesus’s ancestry back to David.

Matthew starts his Gospel by establishing Jesus’s legal right to David’s throne through Joseph, His legal father. Matthew 1:1 introduces the genealogy with, “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” He then traces Jesus’s lineage from Abraham down to “Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus who is called Christ” (Matthew 1:16). This genealogy underscores Jesus’s royal descent and His rightful claim to the throne of David as prophesied in the Old Testament.

Luke, on the other hand, traces Jesus’s lineage through His mother, Mary, emphasizing His biological descent from David. Luke 3:23-38 presents Jesus’s ancestry all the way back to Adam, but notably includes David through his son Nathan, diverging from the royal line that passed through Solomon, which Matthew follows. In Luke 3:31, Jesus is shown to be a descendant of “David, the son of Jesse.”

These genealogies, while differing in their path through David’s descendants, together affirm Jesus’s rightful place in David’s lineage, both legally, through Joseph, and biologically, through Mary. This dual lineage fulfills the prophecies of the Old Testament, such as Jeremiah 23:5, “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.”

Thus, through the Gospel accounts of Matthew and Luke, we understand Jesus’s descent from David, fulfilling God’s promise of a Savior from David’s line.