Named only once in scripture, as the link between Zerubavel and Elyakim: 'Zerubavel begat Aviud; and Aviud begat Elyakim' (Matthew 1:13) — no action, location, or era beyond this single genealogical statement is recorded for him
“The first of eight names scripture gives us and nothing else — 'Zerubavel begat Aviud; and Aviud begat Elyakim' (Matthew 1:13)”
Traditional note: This is the first of eight consecutive entries (aviud through mattan, Matthew 1:13–15) about which scripture records literally nothing beyond a name in a 'begat' chain — the 'silent generation' discussed in 'zerubavel'. A general methodological note, applying to all eight: Matthew's Gospel survives in Greek, so every name in this span is known to us only through its Greek transliteration; the Hebrew forms given in this dataset (e.g., 'Aviud' for the Greek 'Abioud') are reconstructions based on conventional Greek-to-Hebrew correspondences and on identically-formed Hebrew names attested elsewhere in scripture for other individuals (for 'Aviud'/'Avihud,' compare the structurally identical 'Eliud'/'Elihud' later in this same list). These reconstructions are reasonable but not certain, and are flagged here as a standing caveat for the whole span rather than repeated in each entry. Spanning roughly five centuries (the Persian, Hellenistic, and early Hasmonean periods) in only eight generations, this 'silent generation' is also chronologically compressed compared to the Davidic-kings portion of the genealogy, where scripture supplies a name for nearly every decade — a further sign that Matthew's genealogy, like many ancient genealogies, may compress or schematize rather than list every generation.
