| Jeremiah prophesied that King Jehoiakim would be killed by the enemy and no biological descendant of his would claim the throne. "Now this is what the LORD says about King Jehoiakim of Judah: He will have no heirs to sit on the throne of David. His dead body will be thrown out to lie unburied- exposed to the heat of the day and the frost of the night.". (Jeremiah 36:30.) Here is yet another problematic issue raised by the genealogies. However, the solution offered by many Christians [13] is this: Luke's genealogy, as seen by what may be considered linguistic evidence, is in fact Mary's, not Joseph's, and the record in Matthew is his. If this is the case, the point is continued, then God's curse is not undermined, seeing as how Jesus wasn't the biological son of Joseph. In addition, as there is confusion in the Bible as to whether or not Zerubbabel, the inheritor of Shealtiel's royal claim to the throne of David (through King Jehoiachin, also known as Jeconiah, his father and King Jehoiakim his grandfather), is the biological son of Shealtiel (see 1 Chronicles 3:17-19; this is in contrast to Ezra 3:2,8; 5:2, Nehemiah 12:1, and Haggai 1:1,12,14 all of which explicitly call Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel), an argument could be made that if Zerubbabel is not in fact the biological descendant of Jehoiakim (and thus is not affected by God's curse on Jehoiakim's direct descendants), then God's curse is not countermanded and Jesus' claim to the throne of David remains valid by inheritance through Zerubbabel, who inherited his claim legally, not biologically, through Shealtiel. |