As Jacob's life comes to a close, he offers his final words of blessing and warning to his sons.

Transcript:

Today's reading is from Genesis 49, 8 through 12. Judah, your brothers will praise you. Your hand will be on the neck of your enemies. Your father's sons will bow down to you. You are a lion's cub, Judah. You, you return from the prey, my son. Like a lion crouches and lies down, like a lioness -- who dares to rouse him?

The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until he to whom it belongs shall come and the obedience of the nations shall be his. He will tether his donkey to a vine, his colt to the choicest branch. He will wash his garments in wine, his robes in the blood of grapes.

His eyes will be darker than wine, his teeth whiter than milk.

Advent is a season of anticipation. We look towards Christmas, anticipating the birth of our Savior. Even when everything Christian gets stripped away from this holiday season, the Christmas season can't help but have this sensation of anticipation as children look forward to unwrapping presents under the tree.

A birthday party is coming. And in Christ's birth, the possibility of our new birth, of being born again, arrives with Him. This is God's gift to us. Jesus Christ, His Son. He is our blessing. He is the blessing long anticipated. We are looking back even as we look forward in our immediate calendar, a promise kept now celebrated.

But for thousands of years, God's people could only look forward, anticipating a blessing that awaited in the haze of the future. They fiercely gripped the glimpses of that glimmering hope revealed to them by God. As we near the end of Genesis, we catch one of these glimpses, disclosed in Jacob's parting words to his twelve sons; words of blessings and foreboding. So turning to that chapter, Genesis 49, starting in verse 1. It says, then Jacob called for his sons and said, gather around so I can tell you what will happen to you in days to come. Assemble and listen, sons of Jacob; listen to your father Israel. Reuben, you are my firstborn.

My might, the first sign of my strength, excelling in honor, excelling in power. Turbulent as the waters, you will no longer excel, for you went up onto your father's bed. As we turn to this chapter, we're met with a mix of both blessing and prophesying and also just describing kind of the characters of Jacob's son.

Some of these details that Jacob speaks regarding his sons are details that are that are apparent in the immediate, some of them in some years to come, and some very far in the future, as we will see in the case of Judah. And some of these details are easy to pin down, while others of them are obscure.

In the case of Reuben here, his first born son, naturally the first one that he would address he's really just speaking to the character of his son and of how much promise his son had as his firstborn and how greatly Reuben let his father down when he betrayed his trust by taking to bed his wife Bilhah.

And so we don't really have a word of blessing here for Reuben. It's interesting, it's interesting to kind of call this chapter, you know, chapter of blessing because a good many of these sons here it's not a blessing as you would expect it to be. Jacob is just really stating things as they are, and in some cases as they will be.

In the case of Reuben, he doesn't really have much of a future compared to some of the sons will have. Continuing on in verse 5, it says, Simeon and Levi are brothers. Their swords are weapons of violence. Let me not enter their council, let me not join their assembly, for they have killed men in their anger and hamstrung oxen as they pleased.

Cursed be their anger, so fierce, and their fury, so cruel. I will scatter them in Jacob and disperse them in Israel. So, Jacob addresses his sons, Simeon and Levi. And as you go through these sons, you'll notice that it's following birth order. It's also following the various wives, these four wives that that Jacob had.

So he's keeping them in their sibling groupings. Simeon and Levi are brothers, full brothers of Reuben. And if you'll remember from several chapters ago, we learned about how they violently responded to the assault against their sister, Dinah. And how they, when making a deal with the men of Shechem that they should be circumcised in order for Dinah's hand to be given in marriage, used that as an opportunity to slaughter all the men, in fact the city, to ravage it, while they were incapacitated.

Clearly, based on what Jacob is saying here, there was nothing positive about what they did. He says, let me not enter their council, let me not join their assembly, for they have killed men in their anger and hamstrung oxen as they pleased. Now, it's interesting that it says hamstrung oxen, because in ancient times, they would not have typically hamstrung oxen, because oxen are just agricultural animals.

The animals that you would typically hamstrung would have been horses. And if you don't know what that means, it's just basically slicing their legs so they're not able to be used. So in the case of horses, you'd do that because you didn't want the enemy to use them to assault you any further. But oxen, those are assets.

You'd want to keep the oxen so you could use them for yourself and no one could really cause harm against you with them. And so some, some commentators suggest that, it's suggesting just how gross their violence was, that they assaulted, either, either that they literally assaulted these oxen, or these oxen are representative of their assault against innocent people, among those that they attacked.

And so, Jacob curses their anger. Curses their fury and he says they'll be scattered in Jacob and dispersed in Israel, and that, in fact, turns out to be the case. Simeon, the tribe of Simeon does not have a territory of its own. They have land holdings within the territory of Judah, and in the case of the Levites, you know, a very blessed tribe in the end, because they're serving in the priestly caste, but they themselves also do not have a territory of their own, they have cities.

And so, in this case, we can very clearly identify what Jacob is anticipating here. Now we turn to verse 8, verses 8 through 12, which were read. I'm just going to read it again, because this is a very, if you, if you want to mark out in your Bible significant passages in anticipation, that are anticipating the Messiah, this is one to put a star next to.

Jacob says, Judah, your brothers will praise you. Your hand will be on the neck of your enemies. Your father's sons will bow down to you. You are a lion's cub, Judah. You return from the prey, my son. Like a lion, he crouches and lies down, like a lioness -- who dares to rouse him? The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until he to whom it belongs shall come, and the obedience of the nation shall be his.

He will tether his donkey to a vine, his colt to the choicest branch. He will wash his garments in wine, his robes in the blood of grapes. His eyes will be darker than wine, his teeth whiter than milk.

From the start, in this verse, we have a little bit of a play on Judah's name. When Leah named her son Judah, in chapter 29, verse 35, she said, This time I will praise the Lord. And the reason why he's called Judah is because it seems to have some suggestion of the Hebrew word praise. And so to start, Jacob says, Judah, your brothers will praise you.

And there's a lot of poetic elements in these blessings that are lost to us as English readers. And even I myself, I'm studied in Greek, I'm not studied in Hebrew, so I'm not able to pick those things out. But, Biblical scholars say that these passages are replete with all kinds of poetic elements to it.

And so you see that very clearly though in the case here of Judah. And what Jacob foretells for Judah is that his brothers are going to bow to him, bow to his descendants. And this is something that seems very akin to what we heard in the case of Joseph. Remember he had that dream in which all his brothers are bowing down to him, even his father and his mother are bowing down to him.

The point that's being tried to made, be made here is that Judah is going to come into great authority and strength. His hand is going to be on the necks of his enemies. He's going to be like a lion. And this is where we get that, appellation, the lion of Judah.

The authority that he possesses is not going to depart. It will not leave from, the ruler's staff will not leave from between his feet until, it says in verse 10, until he to whom it belongs shall come, and the obedience of the nations will be his. It's, it's a very interesting kind of phrasing here. It's suggesting a sort of transition that's to come in the rule of Judah, but a transition that does not lead to downfall, but to something that is greater, that even surpasses that which has come before. It's anticipating a time in which a son of Judah would gain the obedience of all the nations. Now, when we look to Ezekiel 21, we're going hundreds of years later. When Judah has falle...