The Christ-Exalting, Man-Abasing Inheritance

We begin a look into Genesis 49 with a reminder of the prophetic voice with which Jacob speaks. It is not only the blessing, but a communication of the divine decree for His people—‘Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you what shall happen to you in days to come’ (v. 1); the “poetic parallelism”1 puts an emphasis on the beginning of these people as a nation: ‘Assemble and listen, O sons of Jacob, listen to Israel your father’ (v. 2)—observe the same parallelism in verses 7 and 24. Such features throughout prompt commentators, such as Belcher, to point out: “The genre is Hebrew poetry instead of Hebrew narrative.”2 Notice also that, here, the twelve are blessed together, so that Joseph and Benjamin come eleventh and twelfth in their natural birth order.

• God’s blessings suit us for Christ through Humbling

• God’s blessings direct us to Christ in Exaltation

Doctrine. God will lead all His chosen to Christ through diverse paths that are always fitting.     

God’s blessings suit us for Christ through humbling.

The crucial verse for interpreting the twelve blessings in a comparison with each other is a verse that guards against two opposite ditches. What each receives is suitable and what each receives is indeed blessing. Here is how it is said:

‘This is what their father said to them as he blessed them, blessing each with the blessing suitable to him’ (v. 28).

Notice the triple emphasis on the word “blessing” (בָרַךְ) in three different forms. So, at one extreme, one might think that if all are blessed, all must be treated equally—and yet each was given what was ‘suitable to him’—while at the other extreme, one might think that if each is fit diversely, then the blessing is just a formality.

The “fitting” or “suitable” aspect is easy to see as one moves through the passage. So let’s talk about this bad news first.

Reuben … Unstable as water, you shall not have preeminence, because you went up to your father’s bed; then you defiled it—he went up to my couch! (v. 4).

That makes sense. An UNSTABLE people cannot have preeminence. “A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls” (Prov. 25:28).

Simeon and Levi are brothers; weapons of violence are their swords. Let my soul come not into their council; O my glory, be not joined to their company. For in their anger they killed men, and in their willfulness they hamstrung oxen. Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce, and their wrath, for it is cruel! I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel (vv. 5-7).

As we saw last week from Psalm 11, Jacob sees that in these two sons especially: VIOLENCE as an end in itself.

What is especially significant about the first son is that he is built up first—‘my might, and the firstfruits of my strength, preeminent in dignity and preeminent in power’ (v. 3). Kidner remarks that this “reflects the exalted hopes that were shattered at Reuben’s fall … It would be hard to find a more withering contrast between a man and his calling.”3

Along with the bad news bunch, there’s also a mixture of some “neutral news,” you might say. There is more bad news here, but it isn’t the result of any evident curse for wrongdoing. However, it is still fitting in the natural way you may be thinking. Belcher comments that, “Jacob reflects on the character of his sons and uses that as a basis for declaring what will happen to the sons and their descendants in the future.”4

Zebulun shall dwell at the shore of the sea; he shall become a haven for ships, and his border shall be at Sidon (v. 13).

Issachar is a strong donkey, crouching between the sheepfolds. He saw that a resting place was good, and that the land was pleasant, so he bowed his shoulder to bear, and became a servant at forced labor (vv. 14-15).

Dan shall judge his people as one of the tribes of Israel. Dan shall be a serpent in the way, a viper by the path, that bites the horse’s heels so that his rider falls backward. I wait for your salvation, O LORD (vv. 16-18).

Raiders shall raid Gad, but he shall raid at their heels (v. 19).

Asher’s food shall be rich, and he shall yield royal delicacies (v. 20).

Naphtali is a doe let loose that bears beautiful fawns (v. 21).

Benjamin is a ravenous wolf, in the morning devouring the prey and at evening dividing the spoil (v. 27).

The fact that such a big group of brothers can all be shackled with some consequences for a sin that they just went along with teaches us that the curse of passivity for men is the curse that keeps on cursing.

This was Israel’s humiliation. In other words, God’s people would receive the ultimate blessing in the end through the ashes and rubble of what appeared to be the impossibility of the blessing. One important place that teaches this in the Prophets is where Isaiah responds to his exalted throne room vision:

‘Then I said, “How long, O Lord?” And he said: “Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is a desolate waste, and the LORD removes people far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. And though a tenth remain in it, it will be burned again, like a terebinth or an oak, whose stump remains when it is felled.” The holy seed is its stump (Isa. 6:11-13).

What is all that wasteland? It’s what was left of these tribes in the end; and so it really did look like the end. So God’s blessings suit us for Christ through Humbling.

God’s blessings direct us to Christ in exaltation.

There was a redemptive arc for Judah; not that he earned his way back from worst son to favored son, but so that he would be fitting or suitable as a sign. The first part seems to revolve around him, the usual privileges for a firstborn: ‘Judah, your brothers shall praise you; your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies; your father’s sons shall bow down before you’ (v. 8). But this doesn’t seem fitting. Joseph had received the dreams that the brothers would bow to him—and so they would in Egypt. But why would some more ultimate “bowing” go to Judah? Israel continues to pile on the imagery of strength and majesty.

Judah is a lion’s cub; from the prey, my son, you have gone up. He stooped down; he crouched as a lion and as a lioness; who dares rouse him? (v. 9)

Sometimes we cannot tell why even a central piece of the puzzle fits without seeing the picture on the boxtop. Not that we see the whole picture here, but Jacob is about to add a central part of the picture of the One to come. When he does, we can look back with the eyes that John was given on Patmos, when “one of the elders said to me, “Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals” (Rev. 5:5).

It comes in the more famous messianic prophecy:

The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples (v. 10).

There is a debate over the text, specifically whether כִּֽי־יָבֹ֣א [שִׁילֹה כ] (שִׁילֹ֔ו ק) should be rendered “until he comes to whom it belongs,” or else “until Shiloh comes” or “until he comes to Shiloh.”5 Calvin said, “Because Jerome interprets it, ‘He who is to be sent,’ some think that the place has been fraudulently corrupted, by the letter ה (he) substituted for the letter ח (cheth;) which objection, though not firm, is plausible.”6 The word origin itself is unknown, though it is close to the word for “peace,” so, combined with the more certain part of the verse, speaking of a coming ‘ruler’,7 it could be a Prince of Peace. The place Shiloh—where the ark dwelt before it came to Jerusalem—will not work because it is not spelled the same way in Hebrew.8

Calvin’s comments are helpful for a deeper biblio-theological-political study, but far beyond what the present Evangelical mind would be able to handle in a sermon. He said,

Hence we gather, that when God would institute a perfect state of government among his people, the monarchical form was chosen by him. And whereas the appointment of a king under the law, was partly to be attributed to the will of man, and partly to the divine decree; this combination of human with divine agency must be referred to the commencement of the monarchy, which was inauspicious, because the people had tumultuously desired a king to be given them, before the proper time had arrived. Hence their unseemly haste was the cause why the kingdom was not immediately set up in the tribe of Judah, but was brought forth, as an abortive offspring, in the person of Saul. Yet at length, by the favor and in the legitimate order of God, the preeminence of the tribe of Judah was established in the person of David.9

As the dust clears on ancient Judah, the remnant of God’s people begin to be called by another name: Zion—the City of God—or spiritual Jerusalem. Calvin says about the importance of this being a single Head or Ruler from Judah,

Even the Jews will not deny, that while a lower blessing rested on the tribe of Judah, the hope of a better and more excellent condition was herein held forth. They also freely grant another point, that the Messiah is the sole Author of full and solid happiness and glory. We now add a third point, which we may also do, without any opposition from them; namely, that the kingdom which began from David, was a kind of prelude, and shadowy representation of that greater grace which was delayed, and held in suspense, until the advent of the Messiah.10

It is in this ultimate sense that the scepter never departs. And we can put a finer point on that from the Psalms.

The last two Psalms of Book III of the Psalms are a lament as the kingdom goes away in history, and then a praise for that same covenant promise for a king, continuing in celebration. It says, for example,

You have said, “I have made a covenant with my chosen one; I have sworn to David my servant: ‘I will establish your offspring forever, and build your throne for all generations’” (Ps. 89:3-4).

This makes perfect sense when we get to the New Testament. It makes no sense apart from Jesus. It makes no sense for the Jewish people who would survive either the Babylonian captivity (and historical end of Judah), and makes even less sense to Jews after A.D. 70, as their capital in Judea was leveled by the Romans. Jacob adds what seem like insignificant details to Judah’s seed.

Binding his foal to the vine and his donkey’s colt to the choice vine, he has washed his garments in wine and his vesture in the blood of grapes. His eyes are darker than wine, and his teeth whiter than milk (vv. 11-12).

Shades of the humiliation of Christ, with that donkey’s colt, and exaltation of Christ, in the language described about His appearance in Revelation 1. Judah wins out in the end because from him the true King and lasting kingdom would come.

Practical Use of the Doctrine

Use 1. Instruction. If anyone would advance as students and teachers of the Bible, they may want to know what exactly happened to the literal historical tribes, given these prophecies. Kidner says about the second and third who are mentioned together, that is, Reuben and Simeon:

Both tribes were scattered; but while Simeon disintegrated, to be sprinkled partly amongst Judah (cf. Josh. 19:2-9 with 15:26-32 and Neh. 11:25-28), partly amongst the northern tribes (2 Chr. 34:6), Levi was awarded an honorable dispersion as the priestly element in Israel (Ex. 32:26, 29; Num. 18:20, 23; 35:2-8).11

As to how exactly we can trace the “scepter” from Judah’s last king before the captivity to Christ.

“In that day I will raise up the booth of David that is fallen and repair its breaches, and raise up its ruins and rebuild it as in the days of old” (Amos 9:11).

Where is this fulfilled? Luke tells us in the Acts of the Apostles, “James replied, ‘Brothers, listen to me. Simeon has related how God first visited the Gentiles, to take from them a people for his name. And with this the words of the prophets agree, just as it is written” (Acts 15:13-15), and then he quotes Amos 9:11. The King who would come from Judah, when He rebuilds His house, Amos is saying (and James sees the fulfillment), He would rebuild on those ruins, starting in that physical city of Jerusalem, from among the Gentiles, the continuation of the spiritual Jerusalem, a kingdom that would start to stretch over the whole world.

Use 2. Admonition. To say that the Lion of the Tribe of Judah is coming was, roughly speaking, what C. S. Lewis had in mind by the character of Aslan in the Chronicles of Narnia. The saying that, “Aslan is on the move,” meant not only that he was coming again—a final return—but that his reign and rule was advancing in the present. Note that detail that, ‘to him shall be the obedience of the peoples’ (v. 10). Of course, this is final in the end; but it is a mandate until then, most famously in the Great Commission: “make disciples of all nations … teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Mat. 28:19, 20).

Use 3. Consolation. That the scepter never really does depart from Judah’s seed. It was the post-exilic community—after the last Judahite king in that uninterrupted succession—was removed from the throne by the Babylonians, who were told, through the prophet Isaiah,

“Go on up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news; lift it up, fear not; say to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God!”” (Isa. 40:9).

The imagery of the mountain of the Lord and Zion, throughout the Prophets, lifts us above the literal earth and to the heavenly throne, from which the seed of Judah reigns and is “ruler of kings on the earth” (Rev. 1:5).

This Christ-exalting, man-abasing inheritance is ours as much as it was theirs, and vice versa. Again, if you believe in Jesus but do not yet believe that this inheritance—this Christ, this Lion of the Tribe of Judah—is as much theirs as ours, and as much ours as theirs, then please do consider coming to our study in covenant theology.

________________________________

1. Kidner, Genesis, 227.

2. Belcher, Genesis, 267.

3. Kidner, Genesis, 227.

4. Belcher, Genesis, 267.

5. In an ordinary Hebrew sentence, the norm is verb first, and when nouns are pulled to front (a device called “fronting”) it is for emphasis. This is not a full sentence anyway, but a clause, so you might normally look for the preceding words to decide which missing English word fits in the translation. But what comes to Shiloh here—assuming that Shiloh is speaking of the literal place to begin with? Is it the scepter or the staff? Is it simply Judah, or the “Judah” to come? There is an additional difficulty. In the main Hebrew MSS, the word שִׁילֹה is repeated directly after the first use.

6. Calvin, Commentaries, I.2.453.

7. “Far more correctly and consistently,” Calvin says, “do other interpreters take this expression to mean ‘his son,’ for among the Hebrews a son is called שיל (shil.) They say also that ה (he) is put in the place of the relative ו (waw;) and the greater part assent to this signification. But again, the Jews dissent entirely from the meaning of the patriarch, by referring this to David. For (as I have just hinted) the origin of the kingdom in David is not here promised, but its absolute perfection in the Messiah” (Commentaries, I.2.453-54).

8. Joshua 18:1 is its first mention, and Judges 18:31 adds, “as long as the house of God was at Shiloh.” Later, “they said, ‘Behold, there is the yearly feast of the LORD at Shiloh’” (Judges 21:19). Although “the LORD revealed himself to Samuel at Shiloh” (1 Sam. 3:21), we are told, “He forsook his dwelling at Shiloh, the tent where he dwelt among mankind” (Ps. 78:60).

9. Calvin, Commentaries, I.2.450.

10. Calvin, Commentaries, I.2.453.

11. Kidner, Genesis, 228-29.