Matthew 1:18

We start with:

Του δε Ιησού Χριστού η γένεσις ούτως ην.

Of the and/_ Jesus Messiah the birth thus was.

With the English word order mimicking the Greek, the meaning is a bit obscure. We move the 'δε' to the beginning of the phrase, as usual:

And of the Jesus Messiah the birth thus was.

Also note that 'του' ('the'), 'Ιησού', and 'Χριστού' all belong together; they are all genitive, singular, masculine, and refer to Jesus: of the Jesus Messiah. If we are reading this phrase word by word, without looking for the sense of the whole, this is confusing; why genitive? why 'of'? But that becomes clear shortly. In the meantime, English does not generally use 'the' before proper names, so we can translate these three words as:

of Jesus Christ, or (putting the 'the' back in, in a different place):
of Jesus the Messiah

Remember that the word 'of' must be included here. There is no separate word meaning 'of' in the Greek, but the possessive meaning is inherent in the ending of the pronoun and noun.

ο Ιησούς . . . . . (the) Jesus (nominative form)
του Ιησού . . . . . of (the) Jesus (genitive)
τῳ Ιησού . . . . . . to/for (the) Jesus (dative)
τον Ιησούν . . . . (the) Jesus (accusative)

In this case the 'ς' of the nominative case is dropped in the genitive and dative case, and changes to a 'ν' in the accusative.

The next two words form the subject of the phrase: 'η γένεσις'. In Matthew 1:1, this word is often translated 'genealogy'; here, it can be translated 'birth'.

So, the subject of the phrase is 'the birth' (of Jesus the Messiah).

The word 'ούτως' means 'thus', 'so', 'in this manner'.

And finally, the verb: 'ην'. This form is the imperfect indicative, third person singular of the Greek verb 'ειμί' ('I am'). It means, in other words, 'was'. So we have:

And the birth of Jesus the Messiah was thus-- (implying an explanation to follow).

The explanation begins in the next part of the verse, which we will look in a few days.

Χαίρετε!