JACOB SPEAKS OF
THE FUTURE
FOR HIS SONS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS
(GENESIS 49:1-28)
As he lay on his deathbed, Jacob
called his sons to hear what would happen to them and their descendants in the days
to come. Jacob’s prophecy would proceed son by son with predictions for each of
the tribes of Israel. One might expect that the eldest son would receive the
greatest blessing—the promise that the Messiah would come from his line. But as
often happens in Genesis, the first born son did not receive the greater promise.
Reuben, Jacob’s first son, was disqualified because he had committed adultery
with one of his father’s concubines (Gn 4(;3-4; see Gn 35:22).
The next two sons in line—Simeon and
Levi—were also excluded from the messianic line because of their sin. They had deceived
and then brutally killed all the men of Shechem because one of those men had
raped their sister Dinah (Gn 34). Their outrage and fierce anger led them to
excessive acts of violence against an entire city.
Next, Jacob spoke to his fourth son,
Judah, and his prominence: “Judah, your brothers shall praise you; you hand
shall be on the neck of your enemies; your father’s sons shall bow down before you”
(Gn 49:8). To emphasize the importance of this blessing, Jacob used a threefold
play on words: “Judah (yehuda) . . . praise you (yoduka) . . . (yadeka)
. . .” Whereas Judah and his brothers had been bowing before Joseph, (Gn
37:9-10; 42:6; 43:26) Jacob now predicted that in the future the most preeminent
tribe of Israel would be Judah.
Following this, Jacob introduced a new
metaphor to describe Judah: “Judah is a lion’s club; from the pray, my son, you
have gone up. He stooped down; he crouched as a loin and as a lioness; who
dares rouse him?” (Gn 49:9). Not only would Judah as a lion be regal but also
no one would dare to disturb him just as no one would intrude upon a lion with his
captured prey. As we will see, this figure of the loin of Judah will become an important
messianic metaphor in the rest of Scripture. It will be used again in the
prophecies of Balaam (Nu 23:24; 24:9), as well as by Isaiah and Amos, who
pictured Yahweh, Israel’s God, coming to defend Zion like a loin. (Is 31:4; Am
1:2; 3:8) Thus, Genesis 49 and Isaiah 31 offer a picture of the two natures of
the coming Savior: His human nature (a man from the line of Judah) and His
divine nature (the God of Israel who defends and rescues His people). These two
natures of the Messiah are presented again in the New Testament, where Jesus is
the Lion of the tribe of Judah and the one worthy to receive worship as God (Rv
5:5-14).
Following this, Jacob depicted Judah
as royalty: “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” (Gn 49:10). The signs of kingship are bestowed upon
Judah: a scepter and a leader’s staff. The staff is pictured as “between his
feet.” Since antiquity, this reference to feet has been interpreted as a
euphemism for the sexual organs. Thus, Judah is described as fathering royal
leadership throughout the coming generations (Gt 33:7; Mi 5:2). Indeed, the
great Old Testament king David was from the tribe of Judah, and the New Testament
acknowledges Jesus as the ultimate king from Judah through David’s line. He was
recognized as the greater king when people called Him “Son of David,” (Mt 1:1;
9:27; 12:23; 15:22; 20:30-31; 21:9, 15; Mk 10:47-48; Lk 18:38-39) a point that
the Jewish scribes could not dispute (Mk 12:35; Lk 20:41). Moreover, from Judah
will come a king not simply for Israel but also for all nations, since “the obedience
of the peoples” belong to Him. (Is 9:6-7; Lk 1:31-33; Rv 11:15; see especially
Gn 12:3; 18:18; 22:18; 26:4; 28:14)
The phrase translated above as “until
tribute comes to him” is one of the most difficult passages to understand in
the Old Testament. The Hebrew text could be simply translated as “until Shiloh
comes.” While the word Shiloh has been understood in various ways, it is
best to understand it as one of the many descriptive names given to the Messiah
in the Old Testament. (For other such names, see Is 7:14 [Mt 1:23]; 9:6; Jer
23:6; Zech 3:8) The name Shiloh most probably means “rest” or “prosperous”
(from the Hebrew root šlh). It pictures the Messiah as a man from the
tribe of Judah who will bring rest and prosperity to Israel and the nations (Mt
1:28; Rv 14:13). This view of Shiloh as a name for the Messiah is confirmed
from antiquity since several early Jewish interpretations of this passage
simply substitute Messiah for Shiloh when discussing this
passage. (For further reading, see 4Q Patriarchal Blessing; Targum Onkelos;
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan; Talmud baba Sanhedrin 98b)
The final portion of Jacob’s blessing
on Judah goes on to depict the lush benefits of the Messiah’s reign in highly
figurative terms:
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.
The donkey is associated in later
messianic passages with the coming of the Messiah. (Zec 9:9; Mt 21:5; Jn 12:15)
Here Judah ties his donkey to a vine, something one would not normally do since
the donkey likely would eat the valuable grapevine. However, the picture is one
of such great abundance brought by the Messiah that the vine is viewed inconsequential.
In addition, the Messiah will wash his clothes in wine. Once again, the
normally expensive wine will be as common as water, so that it can be used in
this most unusual way. Finally, the Messiah’s beauty is described in terms of
His “eyes . . . darker than wine” and His “teeth whiter than milk.” The message
is clear. The messianic age will be one of the great abundance (cf. Jn 10:10). (R.
Reed Lessing and Andrew E. Steinmann, The Messianic Message: Predictions,
Patterns, and the Presence of Jesus in the Old Testament [St. Louis, Miss.:
Concordia Publishing House, 2023], 47-50)
