Immanuel means God with us. And what a group of “us” is represented here. Jacob was not exactly a paragon of virtue. Judah’s line is traced through Perez who was the child of an incestuous encounter with his daughter-in-law Tamar. Of course Judah didn’t know she was Tamar. He simply thought she was a shrine prostitute. David’s line is traced through Solomon who was the child of Bathsheba. By the time he came along it wasn’t really an adulterous situation any more because Uriah was dead and buried having been essentially murdered by David.
It’s not all bad. Abraham had his moments of greatness to go with his moments of not greatness. David was a great and merciful king except for his lowest episode involving Bathsheba. In fact, all of these likely had good days and bad days; kind of like us. There are good kings such as Hezekiah and Josiah. There were awful kings such as Ahaz and Manasseh. There was the rich and powerful Solomon and the not so rich and powerful carpenter from Nazareth.
And there are women included. Even in this patriarchal epoch there are four women specifically mentioned. Tamar; a righteous woman who posed as a shrine prostitute to get justice. Rahab; a likely prostitute who was also from the condemned city of Jericho. Barthsheba; who was... a victim? A willing accomplice? A woman of power and influence to be sure. And then Mary, the virgin.
He is indeed God with us; with all of us.
About three sets of fourteen? Perhaps the genealogies have been tinkered with. We don’t know. But if they haven’t, and even more if they have, the point seems to be a combination of the number of the Trinity (three) combined with double perfection. (Seven and seven becoming fourteen.) He is the fullness of God who came in the perfection of time.
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