Salma
Two figures are gathered under the single headword Salma. The first is a Calebite, the father of Bethlehem, named in the Chronicler's Judah-roll at 1Ch 2:51 and 1Ch 2:54. The second, also written Salmon, Salmah, and (in Greek dress) Sala, is the son of Nahshon and the father of Boaz, who carries the line from the Exodus-era tribal head down through Bethlehem to David and on into the genealogies of Christ. The two share a name and a Bethlehem connection, and the canon places both within the Judah-Hezron-Caleb material of 1 Chronicles 2; beyond that the two threads run separately and are treated separately below.
Salma the Calebite, Father of Bethlehem
The Calebite Salma sits inside the Chronicler's expansion of the sons of Caleb son of Hur. The frame is set at 1Ch 2:50: "These were the sons of Caleb, the son of Hur, the firstborn of Ephrathah: Shobal the father of Kiriath-jearim." The next verse names Salma at the head of a Bethlehem-Beth-gader pair: "Salma the father of Beth-lehem, Hareph the father of Beth-gader" (1Ch 2:51). His descendants are then itemised at 1Ch 2:54: "The sons of Salma: Beth-lehem, and the Netophathites, Atroth-beth-joab, and half of the Manahathites, the Zorites." The town-fathering pattern matches the wider Caleb branch of the same chapter, where Caleb the Hezronite is exhibited as the Judah-branch patriarch whose descendants are laid out as the town-fathering backbone of southern Judah in the Chronicler's expanded genealogy (1Ch 2:42). Salma, in this branch, is one of those Calebite town-fathers, and his town is Bethlehem itself. Adjacent verses round out the same Calebite roster — Kiriath-jearim's families in 1Ch 2:52-53 and the Kenite scribes who dwelt at Jabez in 1Ch 2:55 — but Salma's own line is closed at the Bethlehem-Netophah-Manahath cluster of verse 54.
Salma / Salmon / Sala in the Davidic Line
The second Salma is set in the line that runs Judah, Perez, Hezron, Ram, Amminadab, Nahshon, Salma, Boaz, Obed, Jesse, David. Three Old Testament passages and two New Testament genealogies place him at this link, each with a slightly different spelling.
In 1 Chronicles 2 the Chronicler's Ram-to-David sequence reads, "Nahshon begot Salma, and Salma begot Boaz" (1Ch 2:11). The same generation appears in the closing genealogy of Ruth, with the spelling shifting verse by verse: "Amminadab begot Nahshon, and Nahshon begot Salmah" (Ru 4:20), then "Salmon begot Boaz, and Boaz begot Obed" (Ru 4:21). The line is closed two verses later: "Obed begot Jesse, and Jesse begot David" (Ru 4:22). Ruth 4:22 stands as the end-point of the ten-generation Perez-line whose ancestry is secured through Boaz-Obed-Jesse in the Ruth-narrative aftermath.
Matthew's genealogy reproduces the same chain in descending form. The line steps down through "Ram begot Amminadab; and Amminadab begot Nahshon; and Nahshon begot Salmon" (Mt 1:4), and the next verse lifts Rahab into the record at Salmon's own generation: "and Salmon begot Boaz from Rahab; and Boaz begot Obed from Ruth; and Obed begot Jesse" (Mt 1:5). Mt 1:4 sets a compact three-step link from Ram to Amminadab to Nahshon to Salmon, carrying the line forward without any supplementary names or mothers; Mt 1:5 then names two women — Rahab and Ruth — in consecutive generations as the mothers of Boaz and Obed, the female inclusions stacking into the line immediately before David's father Jesse. Boaz himself stands at the point where two foreign-associated mothers sit on either side of his own generation.
Luke's ascending list reaches the same generation from below. The chain rises through Jesse, Obed, Boaz, Sala, and Nahshon at Lu 3:32, embedding the familiar Ruth-narrative figures (Obed and Boaz) in the ascent, with Sala and Nahshon carrying the chain toward the patriarchs. The next tier (Lu 3:33) reaches Perez and Judah through "Amminadab, Admin, Arni, Hezron, and Perez," placing Salma's link inside the broader Perez-to-Judah descent — the Messianic chain that runs through the tribal patriarch's son.
Boaz, Obed, Jesse: the Generations Salma Heads
The verses covering the three generations immediately below Salma keep the line tightly visible. Ru 4:13 records that "Boaz took Ruth, and she became his wife; and he entered her, and Yahweh gave her conception, and she bore a son" — the begetting that, in the chain Salma heads, produces Obed. Ru 4:17 marks the public naming: "they named him Obed: he is the father of Jesse, the father of David," and 1Ch 2:12 reads, "Boaz begot Obed, and Obed begot Jesse," exhibiting Obed as the Boaz-son and Jesse-father middle-link whose two-verb line carries the Judah-Perez-Ram chain into the Davidic house. 1Ch 2:13 follows with the seven-son roster — "Jesse begot his firstborn Eliab, and Abinadab the second, and Shimea the third" — exhibiting Jesse as the Boaz-Obed-line Bethlehemite father whose own house supplies the Davidic king out of the last of seven sons. Read backwards from Jesse, the three generations Salma fathers (Boaz, Obed, Jesse) are precisely the Bethlehem-rooted stretch that links the Salma-link to David.
Spellings of the Same Name across the Witnesses
The five UPDV passages naming Salma in the Davidic line carry four different forms of the name without any harmonisation: Salma at 1Ch 2:11, Salmah at Ru 4:20, Salmon at Ru 4:21 and Mt 1:4-5, and Sala at Lu 3:32. The Calebite of 1Ch 2:51, 54 is named Salma in both verses. All of these references are gathered under the single headword SALMA, with the Davidic figure called also SALMON; the variation in form is preserved in the verses themselves and is not collapsed.