“This isn’t exactly a ‘Bible’ question, but why does the silver star in Bethlehem have 14 points?” – Just Curious
That’s a great question with an interesting answer! Why did they would choose a fourteen-pointed star? Why not the six-pointed star of David or even a five-pointed star of Solomon? At the conclusion of the genealogy of Jesus, Matthew writes:
“So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations,” (Matthew 1:17).
Thus the silver star has fourteen points, but even that raises more questions. Matthew was wrong! For the fourteen generations from Abraham to David, Matthew had to count both Abraham and David. The make the next group of fourteen generations, Matthew had to skip three kings and conflate Jehoiakim and Jechoniah. The last group had to include Jechoniah and Jesus to get fourteen but since it covers a period of 500 years, Matthew may have omitted a few people.
To our western way of thinking, the genealogy is wrong but Matthew wasn’t one of us. He wasn’t trying to give us an accurate genealogy at all. He was trying to emphasize Jesus is the “Son of David.” Ancient people used their alphabets to count with. (Do you remember Roman numerals from school?) So, the Hebrew name for King David, dwd, has a numeric value: (d = 4) + (w = 6) + (d = 4) then the number for David is 14!