Genesis 49:19-33

All right, friends, welcome back on a Tuesday as we continue through the book of Genesis
today, probably trying to get through the rest of chapter 49.
We’ve been looking in this chapter at Jacob who,
at the end of his life,
is offering…
it’s essentially in the context of Genesis a blessing of sorts,
but in many ways,
as we talked yesterday,
it’s predictions of what will happen for each of his sons.
And these are very much tied to what will become the tribal history and the national
history of Israel.
We went over a lot of that yesterday,
more of the same today,
and we’ll go through there.
So we picked this up
in verse 19, right after we’ve had this kind of break,
“I wait for your salvation,
O Lord.”
And then he returns to the list of his sons.
“Gad shall be raided by raiders,
but he shall raid at their heels.
Asher’s food shall be rich,
and he shall provide royal delicacies.
Naphtali is a doe let loose that bears lovely fawns.”
And we can stop there for a moment.
So three very quick mentions of three of the sons.
“Gad, known for kind of military success, as is Naphtali,
a doe…”
A female deer doesn’t sound like a very powerful image,
but that is a celebration, perhaps, of quickness,
of strength.
Again, bears lovely fawns, produce.
And then Asher, who settles, the tribe of Asher settles in a very rich part of the land,
very fertile.
“The food shall be rich and provide royal delicacies.”
The tribe of Asher ends up being very successful farming a very profitable region
of the Kingdom of Israel.
And so we have here sort of three just almost drive-by mentions,
not enough to really dig into,
but they do give us a sense of the positive in these three cases.
And as Israelite’s history will bear out,
that’s largely true of these three tribes.
So I don’t have much to add to that.
Maybe just a little behind-the-scenes kind of thing
that you might find interesting.
I’m looking here specifically at verse 19.
And if you wanted
to get here yourself,
any good Bible commentary,
a Bible that has commentary in line,
will get you here.
But I want to point out here,
“Gad shall be raided by raiders,
and he shall raid at their
heels.” Notice how “raid” is included three times there.
If you’re an English reader,
your translator’s gone to some extent to try to reuse that word.
That’s almost a clue.
It’s a hint to say,
“Hey, there’s something happening here in the original language that they’ve chosen these
same words in this repetitive motion.” Well,
sure enough, if you do a little bit of digging,
you’ll see that essentially all of these words are word plays against each other.
I had a professor,
Clint,
who spent much of his academic career studying Hebrew poetry.
And there’s actually quite a bit of scholarly debate about what is Hebrew poetry,
what defines it,
what are the sort of things that can become determinative of whether it is poetry or not.
That’s a very kind of complicated conversation.
But an example like this here in verse 19 shows
us that this is more than just a descriptive sort of text.
When you have the kind of word play of
“raid,” “raider,” “raided,” and “gad” has this lexical meaning that gives this sense of “raid.”
All of this is intended to be also artistic, also poetic.
We,
I think as those who are reading this
text thousands of years later,
may find that artistry a little less compelling.
Since it’s not in our own language,
we certainly might find it not as obvious.
But this kind of thing is
embedded in the Old Testament.
And so yes,
that’s, I mean, I literally just spent probably three
minutes there on one sentence.
But the point is,
even in a section where,
you know,
one sentence, very simple descriptions, sort of prophecy of what will be,
there’s also an opportunity for
the biblical authors and those who have handed the text down to embed some real art and beauty and
word play in it that if you’re attentive to,
you’ll see.
And, you know, that’s a fun thing to get to
see in the text.
For most of us,
Michael, I’m trying to think,
unless we really dig into the
history of some of America’s conflicts,
if we grew up in the States and we studied history in school,
the names that probably come as most familiar would be names like
Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone and
those kind of figures.
Well,
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that these are those kind of folklore heroes,
the founders of tribes,
the people who stood up to the enemies,
the people who raided the enemies,
the people who successfully tamed the land and produced
grain and crops that not only fueled Israel but allowed them to succeed on the global market,
or at least the market they knew is global.
I think,
you know, there is a sense in which
these are their folk heroes.
And so when we read these things,
we don’t get that,
but we think, “Wow, they didn’t say much about Dad.
Dad, raid, raid, raid,
raid.” But if we were telling that
story from an American perspective, it’d be,
you know,
Jim Bowie and his knife kept them out,
you know, or was a leader.
And we just don’t bring the same kind of background to these stories.
So this really is a celebration,
not only of these men specifically,
but of the history they represent.
And it’s a lot to cram into,
you know, three short verses, but
that’s intentional.
Now, that brings us to the most expanded,
which is Joseph.
And not surprising, if you’ve been with us,
if you’ve been following the narrative,
especially over the last few
months, or maybe a couple,
maybe, yeah, probably a couple months,
close to three or four weeks at
least, that we’ve been in the Joseph story specifically,
this isn’t surprising to you.
So let me read this one to you by contrast.
“Joseph is a fruitful bough,
a fruitful bough by a spring.
His branches run over the wall.
The archers fiercely attacked him.
They shot at him
and pressed him hard.
But his bow remained taut,
and his arms were made agile by the hands of the
mighty one of Jacob,
by the name of the shepherd,
the rock of Israel,
by the God of your Father,
who will help you,
by the Almighty, who will bless you with blessings of heaven above,
blessings of the deep that lie beneath,
blessings of the breasts in the womb,
the blessings of your Father are stronger than the blessings of the eternal mountains,
the bounties of the everlasting hills.
May they be on the head of Joseph,
on the brow of him who
was set apart from his brothers.” So very different than “Ashra shall be rich and provide delicacies,”
much more in depth,
much more celebratory.
Remember that Joseph does not become himself a tribe.
Having been in Egypt,
that falls to his sons Ephraim and Manasseh,
who become the dominant tribes
of the northern kingdom.
And they are the most successful economically,
they’re the most successful militarily,
they are the backbone of that northern kingdom of Israel.
And here we have
a celebration of that,
you know, and notice that this is the only one, I believe,
that we’ve seen invoke God’s specific name,
God’s blessing.
The rest of these have had a sort of prediction to them,
but here it’s, “By the hands of the mighty one of Jacob,
by the name of the
shepherd, the rock of Israel,
by the God of your Father.” This is quite different,
Michael, than I think we’ve seen.
We did see, again,
Judah,
the primary tribe of the southern kingdom,
we saw a more expanded section for him as well.
But I think, far and away,
this is the most flowery
of the language we see in this chapter.
Yeah,
flowery.
It is also far more poetic or descriptive, I mean.
We have some beautiful metaphors in here.
I continue to point out how interesting it is at this point in the text
that we see so much emphasis given upon the ability to both attack and take land,
the sort of strength narrative that we see in the blessings given to the sons.
Now, to be clear,
not every son, right, because just yesterday we had the tribe that was said,
was that Astra, who was going to be the slaves?
So not every son has this put over them,
but realistically,
note here, Joseph,
we’ve not had any description of him having military strength or being a strong person.
We never had a description,
kind of like Esau,
who he’s built and he’s out there and he’s strong.
But yet here, this idea that the archers fiercely attacked him,
yet his bow remains taut,
his arms remain agile, right?
So it’s amazing in this description that he’s strong,
that the blessing that passes to him will make him even stronger,
that he is able to both defend and take what is
his own and his own interest.
You know,
this is interesting, I think, because it does not
necessarily reflect the tenor tone of Genesis that we saw as Joseph was described,
but instead, in many ways, it communicates the hope of the people who will follow Joseph,
those who will look back and see that Joseph is one who is among those storied people,
the pillars of the family.
They’re going to look to him at a time in which many of them do find themselves in captivity,
in which they do find themselves subjugated under the powers of others.
So Genesis is, once again,
simultaneously telling us the Genesis story.
This is the patriarchs,
this is how the
tribes came to be.
But simultaneously,
it’s also in some ways communicating that to a time and for
a people for whom this is going to have a special meaning.
And so the favored one who is strong is
not just describing who Joseph was,
but who the people of Israel are going to rely upon themselves
to be at God’s promise to them,
because they’re going to need the very strength that Jacob is
promising over Joseph in this text.
And not, again, not to overemphasize this,
but if you’ve been with
through the Joseph narratives,
this is not new ground.
Joseph is the favored one.
It is
Joseph who has preserved life in Israel,
and it is now Joseph’s sons who carry on the bulk of the
strength and the kind of identity of the people of Israel,
at least as the story will unfold from
here.
And so not real surprise.
That leaves us one brother yet,
Benjamin.
So verse 27, we get that.
“Benjamin is a ravenous wolf in the morning devouring the prey and that evening
dividing the spoil.” The people of Benjamin are going to come to be known as fierce warriors.
They have a role,
particularly in the early history of Israel,
of being the tribe that attacks,
of standing against enemies,
of being aggressive,
of being successful militarily.
And so
that is foreshadowed here in this as well.
Ravenous wolf,
it is intended to be more of
a compliment than it sounds in our ears.
I guess I’ll just say it that way.
Yeah, right.
100%.
And notice the other character who we had described in the same kind of terms, Judah,
my commentary points out,
notice that the outcome as it relates to Benjamin is far more
succinct, the idea he will conquer,
he will take the spoil.
So there’s a sense in which there’s
even a little bit of sort of small
emphasis upon Benjamin at the end of the text here.
So though it’s short,
he is clearly mighty,
and the idea that those who follow will be mighty as well.
This is a thing that we might not catch,
but it appears this is a very positive description here.
And it’s a hard connection to make.
One could possibly do it through the Hebrew,
but more likely you just have to know it through the story.
Benjamin is the tribe that will produce the first king.
Saul is going to be rooted in the tribe of Benjamin.
And so there is a little bit of
foreshadowing in the original language,
though it’s very subtle.
And I don’t know how much we
should make of it,
but it’s a good thing to know.
So that brings us then to the sort of close of
that as we read verse 28 here,
all these are the 12 tribes of Israel.
And this is what their father
said to them when he blessed them,
blessing each one of them with a suitable blessing.
And with that we bring to close really
this last kind of scene of Jacob and his sons
of this family history.
We largely wrap that up.
There’s just a little bit of that left and it
really maybe two scenes, one involving
Jacob’s death and burial,
and then some aftermath conversation with Joseph.
Let me finish this chapter for you and a couple of verses into
chapter 50 and we’ll just make our conclusions today.
Then he charged them,
saying to them, “I’m about to be gathered to my people.
Bury me with my ancestors in the cave of the field of
Macphala,
near Mamre in the land of Canaan,
in the field that Abraham bought for me from the
Hittite as a burial site.
There Abraham and his wife Sarah were buried,
there Isaac and his wife Rebecca were buried,
and there I buried Leah.
The field and the cave that is in it were purchased from the Hittites.
When Jacob ended his charge to his son,
he drew his feet into his bed, breathed his last,
and was gathered to his people.” The book of Genesis often gives us,
in fact, to some extent the Old Testament.
Remember that we are telling history here,
and in history it makes for wonderful scenes that somehow Jacob found the strength to say
all of these last words.
He gives his final instructions and then with the kind of dignity
and strength he breathes his last.
If you’ve been with people as they pass away,
if you know the medical field,
you know, again, this isn’t intended to be medicine.
This is intended to be a spiritual story.
So we have this wonderful scene where having said what there is to be left said,
having left these final instructions,
having made it clear who his sons are and what he now expects of them,
he breathes his last,
and this wonderful phrase,
“He was gathered to his people.”
And it is the closing, then,
this character that we have known from the early part of the
book of Genesis whose story has been influential,
who now bears the name Israel, is no longer,
and now that story has officially passed all the way down to his sons.
Yeah, I think there’s a really interesting sort of thing to note here if you let me show you.
Verse 28 is where we have this line,
“When he blessed them,
blessing each of them with a suitable blessing.” No,
blessing even in English shows up three times there.
“Then from verse 29 to verse 33,
it all ends in four verses.” His life, this final word,
the hymn sort of taking
agency in charge, this all ends in these four verses.
And I think that that is absolutely
fitting and understandable when you recognize what’s happening,
that he has passed on the blessing.
Now let’s consider for a moment what blessing?
The blessing that stretches
all throughout this book.
It is the metanarrative.
It is the through line,
God’s faithfulness to and through
the blessing that was made originally to Abram, right?
So here we have in verse 28 the 12 tribes
named at the very beginning of that verse,
and then this litany when his father said to them,
when he blessed them,
blessing each of them with a suitable blessing.
We see the finality of that
blessing in the text.
That’s my point.
When he finishes the blessing to the tribes,
then the blessing has been passed on.
It is now moved on beyond Jacob and his life,
as you said, Clint Apley.
He’s been named Israel.
And this is the moment,
if there is a moment like in a wedding
where you say, “I now pronounce to you husband and wife,” this is the moment where the blessing has
passed on from father to sons,
plural,
and these are now the ones who will be the bearers of it
to the future.
This is where the text goes from one person to,
in many ways, a national identity.
And so the fact that four verses later,
he’s being buried, he’s been taken back to his people,
he’s breathed his last.
In many ways,
Jacob has done what he was called to do.
God has been faithful to him.
Now that he’s passed that blessing on,
the text is ready to move on and to set up for us what
is now the future of these people who will ultimately become a nation.
Yeah, I don’t want to be conscious of our time here,
but the connector in it,
I think, is land, because as we’ve had these blessings,
as we’ve had these predictions,
they have to do with what will
happen when the tribes of Israel return to their lands.
These brothers,
their names will live on,
but they will not be in that.
That will happen long after they’re gone.
And yet,
Jacob charges them with a blessing that predicts what will happen in that land and then charges them,
“Do not bury me in Egypt.” We’ve seen this before.
I have a place.
We have a sacred right to a
property, to a land that is ours.
And that’s where I want to be with my ancestors,
with my father and grandfather.
That’s the place of promise.
That’s the place of covenant.
So we’ll stop there today.
We’ll press on tomorrow.
Hope you can be with us again.
Thanks for your time today
and hope everybody’s doing well.