One other person, place or group in the registry answers to the name Jacob. Every Jacob in the Bible
- verses
- 2
- first named
- Matthew 1:15
- last named
- Matthew 1:16
- period
- Exile and Return
- tribe
- Judah
Description
Who was Jacob?
Jacob is mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus Christ recorded in Mat.1.15-16. He is identified as the father of Joseph, who was the husband of Mary, the mother of Jesus.
This genealogy traces the lineage of Jesus from Abraham through David, and then to Joseph. Jacob is listed as the son of Matthan and the grandson of Eleazar (Mat.1.15). His father and a few generations before him are anonymous placeholders unnamed missing individuals that are necessray to increase the number of generations in Jesus' genealogy as recorded in Matthew to become the same as the number of generations in Luke. Matthew is known to deliberately miss out some individuals (kings Ahaziah, Joash and Amaziah) so it is likely he also missed out others, in order to create three sets of 14 generations (Mat.1.17). The inclusion of Jacob in this genealogy serves to establish Joseph's descent from the royal line of David, which was essential for Jesus to be recognized as the Messiah.
While little is known about Jacob's life, his place in the genealogy highlights the importance of family lineage in Jewish tradition and the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies concerning the Messiah's descent from David (2Sa.7.12-16; Isa.9.6-7).
It is important to note that while Joseph was Jesus' legal father, he was not his biological father, as Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit (Mat.1.18-25). Nonetheless, Joseph's lineage through Jacob was significant in establishing Jesus' claim to the Messianic title "Son of David" (Mat.1.1).
Relations
Direct connections
Every entity the graph places in a stated relation with this one, grouped by the kind of link. Each relation is authored once and its inverse derived, so both ends always agree. Rows marked “registry” come from the identity spine rather than from a verse, and a row marked “which bearer is the source’s decision” is one where the name could have meant more than one person. The last group is not a relation at all — it counts the events two entities stand in together.
Child of
- Unnamed#9registry, no verse
- MatthanMatthew 1:15
Father of
- Alphaeusregistry, no versewhich bearer is the source’s decision
- JosephregistryMatthew 1:16
Stands in the same events as
- Joseph1 event
Places
Where this happens
A person is placed by the events they take part in, and an event has to clear three things to place them: it must say where it happened, that place must be one the gazetteer can put a coordinate on, and the verse must report it rather than foretell, command or ask it. Nothing anchored here clears all three. Where the text names a setting no gazetteer surveys — a vineyard, a palace, a plot of ground — it is left off rather than guessed at; where a place is named only in a prophecy, the map does not draw what was said to be coming as though it had happened; and a place reached only through a relation is not inherited, because standing beside somebody is not being somewhere.
No verse Atlas has read as a report puts this person anywhere.
Not read yet
The pattern
Where Jacob is named
Every book of the corpus in the order it is read, each as wide as the chapters it holds. A bar is the verses of that book which write the name, and the flat stretches are as much of the answer as the bars.
2 verses across 1 of 66 books; 65 write the name nowhere. Named in Matthew (2).
Read it
Where to read it
Every verse of the text carried here that names this entity — 2, across 1 book.
Onward
Where this page goes
Not the direct relations above — these are one hop further out, ranked so that a rare shared connection outweighs a common one. Descriptions by STEPBible TIPNR.
Sources