Where is the Divine Wisdom in decreeing that Christ should be descended from three women of Ill-fame, Rahab, Thamar, and Bathsheba?

Firstly, there is no more difficulty why Christ should be descended from these more proximate sinners than that He should be descended from a sinful first parent. Secondly, the immediate source of Christ’s human nature was purified from all inherited sin, Christ receiving a true human nature from Mary without the co-operation of a human father. Thirdly, the women you mention were not lawful wives, and there is a deep significance in the coming of redemption by them. The Jews regarded themselves as the lawful children of God, and thought that redemption was to be confined to them. They thought that they could not lose their inheritance, behave as they might. Yet Christ, the actual Redeemer, rejected the apparently lawful nation, and established a Church for all nations. The Jews do not recognize the Christian Church as the lawful spouse of the Messiah. Yet, as the Redeemer came by ancestry from unexpected women, so redemption has been given to men by an unexpected Church, illegitimate in Jewish eyes.

Radio Replies Volume 1 by Rev. Dr. Leslie Rumble MSC and Rev. Charles Mortimer Carty