Theme: God's disruptive agenda

Exegetical note
Matthew's purpose in this well-known passage is theological rather than genealogical, not to prove Jesus' divinity, however, but only his fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14. To what extent the tradition about this miraculous conception was influenced, or even generated by the Greek Septuagint's rendering of the Hebrew almah as parthenos is unclear. But the real focus of this account is Joseph and his willingness to set aside his deeply-ingrained moral standards and best-laid plans in order to cooperate …