Commentari biblici

Verse 20. - And he (i.e. Jacob) blessed them that day, saying, In thee (i.e. in Joseph, who is still identified with his sons) shall Israel (the nation) bless, saying, God (Elohim, the supreme source of all blessing) make thee as Ephraim and as Manasseh: and he set Ephraim Before Manasseh - "in the position of his hands, and the terms of the blessing" (Keil).

Verse 21. - And Israel (Jacob) said unto Joseph, Behold, I die: but God (Elohim) shall be with you, and bring you again unto the land of your fathers. "For Joseph and his children a great promise and dispensation" (Lange).

Verse 22. - Moreover (literally, and) I have given - or, I give (Keil), I will give (Kalisch), the preterit being used prophetically as a future, or even as a present, the event being regarded, from its certainty, as already accomplished. It is thus not absolutely clear that Jacob here alludes to any past transaction in his own personal history - to thee one portion - literally, one shoulder, or ridge, or elevated tract of land, שְׁכֶם; unam pattern (Vulgate), with which agree several of the ancient versions (Onkelos, Syriac) - above thy brethren, which I took - or take (Keil), or shall take (Kalisch) - out of the hand of the Amorite - a general name for the inhabitants of Canaan (vide Genesis 15:16) - with my sword and with my bow. As Scripture has preserved no account of any military exploit in the history of Jacob such as is here described, the patriarch's language has been understood as referring to the plot of ground at Shechem which Jacob purchased of Hamor the father of Shechem (Genesis 33:19), and as signifying either that he had captured it by sword and bow, in the sense that his sons at the head of his armed retainers had put the inhabitants of the town to the sword, and so taken possession of the entire district (Calvin, Rosenmüller, Murphy); or that, though he had peacefully paid for it, he yet required at a subsequent period to recover it by force of arms from the Canaanites (Lawson, Bush, Wordsworth); or that after the terrible tragedy at Shechem, when God put a fear upon the surrounding cities, Jacob and his sons stood in the gate of Shechem in the armed expectation of a hostile attack, and so may be said to have taken it by sword and bow (Rabbi Solomon, Lyra, Willet). It seems, however, better to regard the words as a prophetic utterance pointing forward to the conquest of Canaan, which Jacob here represents himself, in the persons of his descendants, as taking from the Amorites by means of sword and bow, and as intimating that the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh would receive a double portion of the inheritance, the word שְׁכֶם being probably designed to convey a hint that the tract to be in future assigned to Joseph's descendants would be the region round about the ancient city Shechem (Ainsworth, Keil, Kalisch, Lunge, &c.).

Verse 1. - And Jacob (having closed his interview with Joseph and his two sons) called (by means of messengers) unto his sons (i.e. the others who were then absent), and said, Gather yourselves together, - the prophet's last utterance must be a public one - that I may tell you - literally, and I will tell you - that which shall befall you - קָרָא, in the sense of happening or occurring to any one, is here equivalent to קָרָה (cf. Genesis 42:4, 38) - in the last days - literally, in the end of the days, not simply in future time (Gesenius, Rosenmüller, Kalisch), or in the times intervening between the speaker and the end of the human race (Murphy), but in the last age, the closing period of time, the era of fulfillment (Kurtz, Hengstenberg), which era, however, must be judged from the standpoint of the speaker (Baumgarten). Hence the period must not be restricted to exclusively Messianic times (Rabbi Nachmanides), ἐπ ἐσχάτῶν τῶν ἡμερῶν (LXX.), in diebus novissimis (Vulgate), but must commence with what to Jacob was the era of consummation, the days of the conquest (Baumgarten, Hengstenberg); while, on the other hand, it can as little be limited to these, but must be held as extending over totum tempus ab exitu AEgypti ad Christi regnum (Calvin), and even as reaching, though unconsciously to Jacob, to the very terminus of human history (Keil, Lange).

Verse 2. - Gather yourselves together, - the repetition indicates at once the elevation of the speaker's soul, and the importance, in his mind, of the impending revelation - and hear, ye sons of Jacob; and hearken unto Israel your father. The two clauses form a synthetic or synonymous parallel, numerous illustrations of which are to be found in the succeeding verses.

Verses 3, 4. - Reuben, thou art my firstborn, my might, and the beginning of my strength, the excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power: - Jacob's patriarchal benediction takes the form of an elevated poem, or sublime religious hymn, exhibiting the well-known classes of parallelism, the synthetic the antithetic, and the synonymous, not alone in its separate clauses, but sometimes also in its stanzas or verses. As was perhaps to be expected, it begins with Reuben, who is characterized by a threefold designation, viz.,

(1) by his position in the family, as Jacob's firstborn;

(2) by his relation to Jacob, as the patriarch's "might," כּחַ, or robur virile, and "the beginning" of his "strength," not "of his sorrow" (Vulgate, Aquila, Symmachus), though און might be so translated (cf. Genesis 35:18), and the sense would sufficiently accord with the allusion of ver. 4, but, as required by the parallelism, "of his vigor," און being here equivalent to כּחַ (Rosenmuller, Kalisch, Keil, 'Speaker's Commentary,' et alii); and

(3) by the natural prominence which as Jacob's eldest son belonged to him, "the excellency of dignity" or "elevation," i.e. the dignity of the chieftainship, and "the excellency of power," or authority, which the first born claimed and received as his prerogative. Yet the natural advantages enjoyed by Reuben as Jacob's firstborn were to be taken from him, as the patriarch proceeded to announce - Unstable as water, - literally, boiling over like water, the import of which is not effusus es sicut aqua (Vulgate), but either ἐξύβρισας ὡς ὑδωρ (LXX.), or lasciviousness (sc. was to thee) as the boiling of water (Gesenius, Rosenmüller, Keil, Kalisch, &c.), the same root in Arabic conveying the notion of pride, and in Syriac that of wantonness - thou shalt not excel; - literally, thou shalt not have the ישׂנךללךשׂצך רו יֶרֶת (ver. 3), i.e. the pre-eminence belonging to the firstborn, a sense which the versions have more or less successfully expressed: μὴ περισσεύσης (Aquila), οὐκ ἔση περισσότερος (Symmachus), μὴ ἐκζέσης (LXX.), non crescas (Vulgate) - because thou wentest up to thy father's bed (vide Genesis 35:22; 1 Chronicles 5:1); then defiledst thou it: - the verb is used absolutely, as meaning that Reuben had desecrated what ought to have been regarded by him as sacred (cf. Deuteronomy 27:20) - he went up to my couch - literally, my couch he ascends; the order of the words and the change from the second to the third person helping to give expression to the horror and indignation with which, even at that distance of time, the venerable patriarch contemplated the shameful deed.

Verses 5-7. - Simeon and Levi are brethren (not in parentage alone, but also in their deeds; e.g. their massacre of the Shechemites (Genesis 34:25), to which undoubtedly the next words allude); instruments of cruelty are in their habitations - literally, instruments of violence their מְכֵדֹת, a ἅπαξ λεγόμ. which has been variously rendered

(1) their dwellings, or habitations (Kimchi, A. V., Calvin, Ainsworth), in the land of their sojourning (Onkelos), for which, however, there does not seem to be much authority;

(2) their machinations or wicked counsels, deriving from מָכַר, to string together, to take in a net, to ensnare (Nahum 3:4), the cognate Arabic root signifying to deceive or practice stratagems (De Dieu, Schultens, Castelli, Tayler Lewis, and others);

(3) their betrothals, or compacts of marriage, connecting with the same root as the preceding in the sense of "binding together" (Dathius, Clericus, Michaelis, Knobel, Furst, et alii);

(4) their rage, as suggested by the unused root כִּיד, to boil or seethe (Kalisch);

(5) their swords, from כּוּר = כָּרָה to dig or pierce through, cf. μάχαιρα (Vulgate, Luther, Gesenius, Rosenmüller, Keil, Murphy, and others). The preponderance of authority appears to be in favor of this last. O my soul, come not thou into their secret; literally, into their council or assembly (סוד, from יָסַד, to set or sit) come not, my soul, or my soul shall not come (cf. Proverbs 1:15, 16) - unto their assembly, mine honor, be not thou united: - literally, with or in their assembly or congregation (קָהֵל from קָהַל, to call together: cf. Genesis 28:3; Genesis 35:11; Genesis 48:4), mine honor or glory (i.e. the soul as being the noblest part of man: Psalm 16:9; Psalm 57:9; Psalm 108:2 - the term כְּבֹדִי is parallel with the preceding נַפְשִׁי), do not join (Keil), or shall not join (Kalisch) - for in their anger they slew a man, - literally, man, a collective, singular for "men," the plural form of XXX occurring rarely; only in Psalm 141:4; Proverbs 8:4; and Isaiah 53:3 - and in their self will they digged down a wall - literally, they houghed ox (LXX., Gesenius, Furst, Rosenmüller, Keil, Kalisch, Lange, Gerlach, T. Lewis, Murphy, &c., &e.), the singular שׁור, the plural of which is only found once, in Hosea 12:12, being retained here to correspond with אִישׁ. The received rendering, which is not without sanction (Onkelos, Targnm of Jonathan, Syriac, Arabic, Aquila, Symmachus, Vulgate, Dathius, Calvin), reads שׁוּר instead of שׁור, and takes עָקַרin the primary sense of destruere, evertexe. Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce; and their wrath, for it was cruel: - the second synonym "wrath," literally, outpourings, indicates the fullness and intensity of the tide of fury which by Simeon and Levi was let loose upon the unsuspecting Shechemites - I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel. While for the sin (the deed, not the doers) Jacob has a curse, for the sinners themselves he has a well-merited chastisement. They had been confederate in their wickedness, they should in future, when returning to occupy their God. assigned inheritance, be disjoined. That this prediction was exactly fulfilled Scripture testifies. At the second census in the wilderness, shortly before the conquest, the tribe of Simeon had become so reduced in its numbers (reckoning only 22,000 as against 76,500 in Judah) as to be the smallest of the twelve (Numbers 26:14); to be passed over entirely in the last blessing of Moses (Deuteronomy 33.); to be accorded no independent allotment of territory in Canaan on the completion of the conquest, having only a few cities granted to it within the borders of Judah (Joshua 19:1-9); and to be ultimately absorbed in the more powerful and distinguished tribe under whose protection and tutelage, so to speak, it had been placed (1 Chronicles 4:27). The tribe of Levi also was deprived of a separate inheritance, receiving only a number of cities scattered here and there among the possessions of their brethren (Joshua 21:1, 40); and, though by its election to the priesthood the curse may be said to have been turned into a blessing, yet of this signal honor which was waiting Levi Jacob was completely silent, showing both that no prophecy was of any private interpretation (the seer seeing no further than the Holy Spirit helped him), and that Jacob spoke before the days of Moses. It is almost incredible that a late writer would have omitted to forecast the latter-day glory of the tribe of Levi; and this opinion is confirmed by observing the very different strain in which, after Levi s calling had been revealed, the benediction of Moses himself proceeds (Deuteronomy 33:8-11).

Verses 8-12. - Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise - literally, Judah thou, will praise thee thy brethren, the word יְהוּדָה being a palpable play on יודוך (cf. Genesis 29:35). Leah praised Jehovah for his birth, and his brethren should extol him for his nobility of character, which even in his acts of sin could not be entirely obscured (Genesis 37:26; Genesis 38:26), and certainly in his later days (Genesis 43:8; Genesis 44:18-34) shone out with undiminished luster. Thy hand shall be in the neck of thine enemies (i.e. putting his foes to flight, Judah should grasp them by the neck, a prediction remarkably accomplished in the victories of David and Solomon); thy father's children shall bow down before thee. Fulfilled in the elevation of the house of Judah to the throne, which owned as its subjects not simply Judah's mother's children, i.e. the tribes descended from Leah, but also his father's, i.e. all the tribes of Israel Judah is a lion's whelp: from the prey, my son, thou art gone up: he stooped down, he couched down as a lion, and as an old lion; who shall rouse him up? By a bold and striking figure Judah is compared to a young lion, ripening into its full strength and ferocity, roaming through the forests in search of prey, repairing to his mountain den (ἐκ βλάστοῦ ἀνέβης, LXX.) when his booty has been devoured, and there in quiet majesty, full of dignified repose, lying down or crouching in his lair, and calmly resisting all attempts to disturb his leonine serenity. The effect of the picture is also heightened by the alternative image of a lioness, which is particularly fierce in defending its cubs, and which no one would venture to assail when so employed. The use of such figures to describe a strong and invincible hero is by no means infrequent in Scripture (vide Psalm 7:3; Psalm 57:5; Isaiah 5:29; Ezekiel 19:2-9). The scepter shall not depart from Judah, - literally, a scepter (i.e. an emblem of regal command, hence dominion or sovereignty; ἅρχων, LXX., Theodotion; ἐξουσία, Symmachus) shall not depart from Judah - nor a lawgiver from between his feet - literally, and a legislator (sc. shall not depart)from between his feet; מְחֹקֵק, the poel part of חָקַק, to cut, to cut into, hence to decree, to ordain, having the sense of one who decrees; hence leader, as in Judges 5:44, dux (Vulgate), ἠγούμενος (LXX.), or lawgiver, as m Deuteronomy 33:21 and Isaiah 33:22 (Calvin, Dathius, Ainsworth, Rosenmüller, Murphy, Wordsworth, 'Speaker's Commentary'). In view, however, of what appears the requirement of the parallelism, מְחֹקֵק is regarded as not the person, but the thing, that determines or rules, and hence as equivalent to the ruler's staff, or marshal's baton (Gesenius, Furst, Keil, Lange, Bleek, Tuch, Kalisch, and others), in support of which is claimed the phrase "from between his feet," which is supposed to point to the Oriental custom, as depicted on the monuments, of monarchs, when sitting upon their thrones, resting their staves between their feet (cf. Agamemnon, 'Iliad,' 2:46, 101; Layard s 'Nineveh and Babylon,' p. 195). But the words may likewise signify "from among his descendants," "from among his children's children" (Onkelos), ἐκ τῶν μηρῶν αὐτοῦ (LXX.). Until Shiloh come. This difficult clause has been very variously rendered. 1. Taking Shiloh as the name of a place, viz., Shiloh in Ephraim (Joshua 18:1, 8, 9, 10; Joshua 19:51; Judges 18:31; 1 Samuel 1:3, 9, 24; 1 Samuel 2:14, &c.), the sense has been explained as meaning that the leadership of Judah over the other tribes of Israel should not cease until he came to Shiloh (Rabbi Lipmann, Teller, Eichhorn, Bleek, Furst, Tuch, Delitzsch). But though וַיָּבלֺא שִׁלה, and they came to Shiloh, a similar phrase, is found in 1 Samuel 4:12, yet against this interpretation maybe urged

(1) the improbability of so obscure a locality, whose existence at the time is also problematical, being mentioned by Jacob, Zidon, the only other name occurring in the prophecy, having been, even before the days of Jacob, a city of renown (Genesis 10:19); and

(2) the inaccuracy of the historical statement which would thus be made, since the supremacy of Judah was in no way affected, and certainly not diminished, by the setting up of the tabernacle in Shiloh; to obviate which objection Kalisch proposes to read סא עַד כִּי "even if," or "even when," and to understand the prediction as intimating that even though a new empire should be established at Shiloh, as was eventually done, Judah should not forfeit her royal name and prerogative - only this sense of עַד כִּי is not clearly recognized by the best grammarians (Gesenius, Furst), and is not successfully supported by the passages referred to (Genesis 28:15; Psalm 110:1; Psalm 112:8), in every one of which the received rendering "until" is distinctly preferable.

2. Regarding Shiloh as an abstract noun, from שָׁלָה to be safe, like גִּלה from גָּלָה, the import of the prophecy has been expressed as asserting that the scepter should not depart from Judah, either until he (Judah) should attain to rest (Hofmann, Kurtz), or until tranquility should come, i.e. until Judah s enemies should be subdued (Gesenius), an interpretation which Rosenmüller properly characterises as "languidum et paine frigidum." Hence -

3. Believing Shiloh to be the name of a person, the majority of commentators, both Jewish and Christian, and ancient as well as modern, agree that the Messiah is the person referred to, and understand Jacob as fore-announcing that the time of his appearance would not be till the staff of regal power had dropped from the hands of Judah; only, the widest possible diversity exists among those who discover a Messianic reference in the prediction as to the exact significance of the term Shiloh. Some render it his son, or progeny, or (great) descendant, from an imaginary root, שִׁל, which, after Chaldee and Arabic analogies, is supposed to mean "offspring" (Targum of Jonathan, Kimchi, Calvin, Ainsworth, and others); others, deriving it from שָׁלַח, to send, compare it with Siloam (John 9:7) and Shiloah (Isaiah 8:6), and interpret it as qui mittendus eat (Vulgate, Pererius, A Lapide, Grotius); a third class of expositors, connecting it with שָׁלָה, to be safe or at rest, view it us a nomen appellatum, signifying the Pacificator, the Rest-giver, the Tranquillizer, the Peace (Luther, Venema, Rosenmüller, Hengstenberg, Keil, Gerlach, Murphy, &c.); while a fourth resolve it into אֲשֶׁר לו, and conjecture it to signify, he to whom it (sc. the scepter or the kingdom) belongs, or he whose right it is, as in Ezekiel 21:27 (LXX., ἕως ἐὰν ἔλθῃ τα ἀποκείμενα αὐτῷ; Aquila and Symmachus, ῷ ἀπόκειται; Onkelos, Syriac, Saadias, Targum of Jerusalem, et alii). It seems indisputable that the preponderance of authority is in favor of the last two interpretations, and if שִׁילֹה be the correct reading, instead of שִׁלֹה ( = שֶׁלֹּה = אֲשֶׁר לו), as the majority of MSS. attest, it will be difficult to withhold from the former, "the Tranquillizer," the palm of superiority. The translations of Dathius (quamdiu prolem habebit, ei genres obedient), who professes to follow Guleher, who understands the words as a prophecy of the perpetuity of Judah's kingdom, fulfilled in David (2 Samuel 7.), and of Lange ("until he himself comes home as the Shiloh or Rest-bringer"), who also discerns in Judah a typical foreshadowing of the Messiah, may be mentioned as examples of ingenious, but scarcely convincing, exposition. And unto him shall the gathering of the people be. Not "καὶ αὐτὸς προσδοκία ἐθνῶν (LXX.), ipse erit expectatio gentium (Vulgate), with which also agrees the Syriac, or "to him nations will flock" (Samaritan), σύστημα λαῶν (Aquila), but to him, i.e. Shiloh, will be not aggregatio populorum (Calvin), but the submission or willing obedience (a word occurring elsewhere only in Proverbs 30:17) of nations or peoples (Onkelos, Targum of Jonathan, Kimchi, Aben Ezra, Dathius, Rosenmuller, Keil, Kalisch, Gerlach, Murphy, Tayler Lewis, 'Speaker's Commentary'). Binding his foal unto the vine, i.e. not Shiloh, but Judah. The verb אֹסְרִי has the archaic י appended, as in Genesis 31:39; Deuteronomy 33:16; Zechariah 11:17 - and his ass's colt unto the choice vine. The שׂרֵקַה (fem. of שׂרֵק) was a nobler kind of vine which grew in Syria, with small berries, roundish and of a dark color, with soft and hardly perceptible stones (Gesenius, p. 796). בְּנִי is an archaic form of the construct stats which occurs only here. He washed his garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes. The word סוּת is a ἅπαξ λεγόμενον, and is either put by aphaeresis for כּסוּת which occurs in the Samaritan Version, or is derived from סָוָה, an uncertain root, signifying to cover (Gesenius, Kalisch). His eyes shall be red with wine, and his teeth white with milk. Otherwise rendered "redder than wine," and "whiter than milk" (LXX., Vulgate, Targum of Jerusalem, et alii), as a description of Judah's person, which scarcely seems so appropriate as the received translation (Calvin, Rosenmuller, Keil, Kalisch, Murphy, Lange, and others), which, completes the preceding picture of Judah s prosperity. Not only would Judah s soil be so fertile that its vines should be employed for trying asses and colts to their branches, but the grapes of those vines should be so plentiful and luscious as to make wine run like the water in which he washed his clothes, while the wine and milk should be so exhilarating and invigorating as to imp-art a sparkling brilliance to the eyes and a charming whiteness to the teeth. The aged prophet, it has been appropriately remarked, has here no thought of debauchery, but only paints before the mind's eye a picture of the richest and most ornate enjoyment (Lange). Minime consentaneum esse videtur profusam intemperiem et projectionem in benedictione censeri (Calvin).