Jacob’s blessing of his sons marks the close of the patriarchal
dispensation. Henceforth the channel of God’s blessing to man does not
consist of one person only, but of a people or nation. It is still one
seed, as Paul reminds us, a unit that God will bless, but this unit is
now no longer a single person—as Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob—but one
people, composed of several parts, and yet one whole; equally
representative of Christ, as the patriarchs were, and of equal effect
every way in receiving God’s blessing and handing it down until Christ
came. The Old Testament Church, quite as truly as the New, formed one
whole with Christ. Apart from Him it had no meaning, and would have had
no existence. It was the promised seed, always growing more and more to
its perfect development in Christ. As the promise was kept to Abraham
when Isaac was born, and as Isaac was truly the promised seed—in so far
as he was a part of the series that led on to Christ, and was given in
fulfilment of the promise that promised Christ to the world—so all
through the history of Israel we must bear in mind that in them God is
fulfilling this same promise, and that they are the promised seed in so
far as they are one with Christ.
And this interprets to us all those
passages of the prophets regarding which men have disputed whether they
are to be applied to Israel or to Christ: passages in which God
addresses Israel in such words as, “Behold My servant,” “Mine elect,”
and so forth, and in the interpretation of which it has been thought
sufficient proof that they do not apply to Christ, to prove that they do
apply to Israel; whereas, on the principle just laid down, it might much
more safely be argued that because they apply to Israel, therefore they
apply to Christ. And it is at this point—where Israel distributes among
his sons the blessing which heretofore had all lodged in himself—that
we see the first multiplication of Christ’s representatives; the
mediation going on no longer through individuals, but through a nation;
and where individuals are still chosen by God, as commonly they are, for
the conveyance of God’s communications to earth, these individuals,
whether priests or prophets, are themselves but the official
representatives of the nation.
As the patriarchal dispensation ceases, it secures to the tribes all the
blessing it has itself contained. Every father desires to leave to his
sons whatever he has himself found helpful, but as they gather round his
dying bed, or as he sits setting his house in order, and considering
what portion is appropriate for each, he recognises that to some of them
it is quite useless to bequeath the most valuable parts of his property,
while in others he discerns a capacity which promises the improvement of
all that is entrusted to it. And from the earliest times the various
characters of the tribes were destined to modify the blessing conveyed
to them by their father. The blessing of Israel is now distributed, and
each receives what each can take; and
while in some of the individual tribes there may seem to be very little of blessing at all, yet, taken
together, they form a picture of the common outstanding features of
human nature, and of that nature as acted upon by God’s blessing, and
forming together one body or Church. A peculiar interest attaches to the
history of some nations, and is not altogether absent from our own, from
the precision with which we can trace the character of families,
descending often with the same unmistakable lineaments from father to
son for many generations.[2]
One knows at once to what families to look
for restless and turbulent spirits, ready for conspiracy and revolution;
and one knows also where to seek steady and faithful loyalty,
public-spiritedness, or native ability. And in Israel’s national
character there was room for the great distinguishing features of the
tribes, and to show the richness and variety with which the promise of
God could fulfil itself wherever it was received. The distinguishing
features which Jacob depicts in the blessings of his sons are
necessarily veiled under the poetic figures of prophecy, and spoken of
as they would reveal themselves in worldly matters; but these features
were found in all the generations of the tribes, and displayed
themselves in things spiritual also. For a man has not two characters,
but one; and what he is in the world, that he is in his religion. In our
own country, it is seen how the forms of worship, and even the doctrines
believed, and certainly the modes of religious thought and feeling,
depend on the natural character, and the natural character on the local
situation of the respective sections of the community. No doubt in a
country like ours, where men so constantly
migrate from place to place, and where one common literature tends to mould us all to the same way of
thinking, you do get men of all kinds in every place; yet even among
ourselves the character of a place is generally still visible, and
predominates over all that mingles with it. Much more must this
character have been retained in a country where each man could trace his
ancestry up to the father of the tribe, and cultivated with pride the
family characteristics, and had but little intercourse, either literary
or personal, with other minds and other manners. As we know by dialect
and by the manners of the people when we pass into a new country, so
must the Israelite have known by the eye and ear when he had crossed the
county frontier, when he was conversing with a Benjamite, and when with
a descendant of Judah. We are not therefore to suppose that any of these
utterances of Jacob are mere geographical predictions, or that they
depict characteristics which might appear in civil life, but not in
religion and the Church, or that they would die out with the first
generation.
In these blessings, therefore, we have the history of the Church in its
most interesting form. In these sons gathered round him, the patriarch
sees his own nature reflected piece by piece, and he sees also the
general outline of all that must be produced by such natures as these
men have. The whole destiny of Israel is here in germ, and the spirit of
prophecy in Jacob sees and declares it. It has often been
remarked[3]
that as a man draws near to death, he seems to see many things in a much
clearer light, and especially gets glimpses into the future, which are hidden from others.
“The soul’s dark cottage, battered and decayed,
Lets in new light through chinks that time hath made.”
Being nearer to eternity, he instinctively measures things by its
standard, and thus comes nearer a just valuation of all things before
his mind, and can better distinguish reality from appearance. Jacob has
studied these sons of his for fifty years, and has had his acute
perception of character painfully enough called to exercise itself on
them. He has all his life long had a liking for analysing men’s inner
life, knowing that, when he understands that, he can better use them for
his own ends; and these sons of his own have cost him thought enough
over and above that sometimes penetrating interest which a father will
take in the growth of a son’s character; and now he knows them
thoroughly, understands their temptations, their weaknesses, their
capabilities, and, as a wise head of a house, can, with delicate and
unnoticed skill, balance the one against the other, ward off awkward
collisions, and prevent the evil from destroying the good. This
knowledge of Jacob prepares him for being the intelligent agent by whom
God predicts in outline the future of His Church.
One cannot but admire, too, the faith which enables Jacob to apportion
to his sons the blessings of a land which had not been much of a
resting-place to himself, and regarding the occupation of which his sons
might have put to him some very difficult questions. And we admire this
dignified faith the more on reflecting that it has often been very
grievously lacking in our own case—that we have felt almost ashamed of
having so little of a present tangible kind to offer, and of being
obliged to speak only of invisible and future blessings; to set a
spiritual consolation over against a worldly grief; to
point a man whose fortunes are ruined to an eternal inheritance; or to speak to one
who knows himself quite in the power of sin of a remedy which has often
seemed illusory to ourselves. Some of us have got so little comfort or
strength from religion ourselves, that we have no heart to offer it to
others; and most of us have a feeling that we should seem to trifle were
we to offer invisible aid against very visible calamity. At least we
feel that we are doing a daring thing in making such an offer, and can
scarce get over the desire that we had something to speak of which sight
could appreciate, and which did not require the exercise of faith. Again
and again the wish rises within us that to the sick man we could bring
health as well as the promise of forgiveness, and that to the poor we
could grant an earthly, while we make known a heavenly, inheritance. One
who has experienced these scruples, and known how hard it is to get rid
of them, will know also how to honour the faith of Jacob, by which he
assumes the right to bless Pharaoh—though he is himself a mere
sojourner by sufferance in Pharaoh’s land, and living on his bounty—and
by which he gathers his children round him and portions out to them a
land which seemed to have been most barren to himself, and which now
seemed quite beyond his reach. The enjoyments of it, which he himself
had not very deeply tasted, he yet knew were real; and if there were a
look of scepticism, or of scorn, on the face of any one of his sons; if
the unbelief of any received the prophetic utterances as the ravings of
delirium, or the fancies of an imbecile and worn-out mind going back to
the scenes of its youth, in Jacob himself there was so simple and
unsuspecting a faith in God’s promise, that he dealt with the land as if it
were the only portion worth bequeathing to his sons, as if every
Canaanite were already cast out of it, and as if he knew his sons could
never be tempted by the wealth of Egypt to turn with contempt from the
land of promise. And if we would attain to this boldness of his, and be
able to speak of spiritual and future blessings as very substantial and
valuable, we must ourselves learn to make much of God’s promise, and
leave no taint of unbelief in our reception of it.
And often we are rebuked by finding that when we do offer things
spiritual, even those who are wrapped in earthly comforts appreciate and
accept the better gifts. So it was in Joseph’s case. No doubt the
highest posts in Egypt were open to his sons; they might have been
naturalised, as he himself had been, and, throwing in their lot with the
land of their adoption, might have turned to their advantage the rank
their father held, and the reputation he had earned. But Joseph turns
from this attractive prospect, brings them to his father, and hands them
over to the despised shepherd-life of Israel. One need scarcely point
out how great a sacrifice this was on Joseph’s part. So universally
acknowledged and legitimate a desire is it to pass to one’s children the
honour achieved by a life of exertion, that states have no higher
rewards to confer on their most useful servants than a title which their
descendants may wear. But Joseph would not suffer his children to risk
the loss of their share in God’s peculiar blessing, not for the most
promising openings in life, or the highest civil honours. If the
thoroughly open identification of them with the shepherds, and their
profession of a belief in a distant inheritance, which must have made
them appear madmen in the eyes of the Egyptians, if this was to cut
them off from worldly advancement, Joseph was not careful of this, for
resolved he was that, at any cost, they should be among God’s people.
And his faith received its reward; the two tribes that sprang from him
received about as large a portion of the promised land as fell to the
lot of all the other tribes put together.
You will observe that Ephraim and Manasseh were adopted as sons of
Jacob. Jacob tells Joseph, “They shall be mine,” not my grandsons, but
as Reuben and Simeon. No other sons whom Joseph might have were to be
received into this honour, but these two were to take their place on a
level with their uncles as heads of tribes, so that Joseph is
represented through the whole history by the two populous and powerful
tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh. No greater honour could have been put on
Joseph, nor any more distinct and lasting recognition made of the
indebtedness of his family to him, and of how he had been as a father
bringing new life to his brethren, than this, that his sons should be
raised to the rank of heads of tribes, on a level with the immediate
sons of Jacob. And no higher honour could have been put on the two lads
themselves than that they should thus be treated as if they were their
father Joseph—as if they had his worth and his rank. He is merged in
them, and all that he has earned is, throughout the history, to be
found, not in his own name, but in theirs. It all proceeds from him; but
his enjoyment is found in their enjoyment, his worth acknowledged in
their fruitfulness. Thus did God familiarise the Jewish mind through its
whole history with the idea, if they chose to think and have ideas, of
adoption, and of an adoption of a peculiar kind, of an adoption where already there was an heir
who, by this adoption, has his name and worth
merged in the persons now received into his place. Ephraim and Manasseh
were not received alongside of Joseph, but each received what Joseph
himself might have had, and Joseph’s name as a tribe was henceforth only
to be found in these two. This idea was fixed in such a way, that for
centuries it was steeping into the minds of men, so that they might not
be astonished if God should in some other case, say the case of His own
Son, adopt men into the rank He held, and let His estimate of the worth
of His Son, and the honour He puts upon Him, be seen in the adopted.
This being so, we need not be alarmed if men tell us that imputation is
a mere legal fiction, or human invention; a legal fiction it may be, but
in the case before us it was the never-disputed foundation of very
substantial blessings to Ephraim and Manasseh; and we plead for nothing
more than that God would act with us as here He did act with these two,
that He would make us His direct heirs, make us His own sons, and give
us what He who presents us to Him to receive His blessing did earn, and
merits at the Father’s hand.
We meet with these crossed hands of blessing frequently in Scripture;
the younger son blessed above the elder—as was needful, lest grace
should become confounded with nature, and the belief gradually grow up
in men’s minds that natural effects could never be overcome by grace,
and that in every respect grace waited upon nature. And these crossed
hands we meet still; for how often does God quite reverse our order,
and bless most that about which we had less concern, and seem to put a
slight on that which has engrossed our best affection. It is so, often
in precisely the way in which Joseph found it so; the son whose
youth is most anxiously cared for, to whom the interests of the younger
members of the family are sacrificed, and who is commended to God
continually to receive His right-hand blessing, this son seems neither
to receive nor to dispense much blessing; but the younger, less thought
of, left to work his own way, is favoured by God, and becomes the
comfort and support of his parents when the elder has failed of his
duty. And in the case of much that we hold dear, the same rule is seen;
a pursuit we wish to be successful in we can make little of, and are
thrown back from continually, while something else into which we have
thrown ourselves almost accidentally prospers in our hand and blesses
us. Again and again, for years together, we put forward some cherished
desire to God’s right hand, and are displeased, like Joseph, that still
the hand of greater blessing should pass to some other thing. Does God
not know what is oldest with us, what has been longest at our hearts,
and is dearest to us? Certainly He does: “I know it, My son, I know it,”
He answers to all our expostulations. It is not because He does not
understand or regard your predilections, your natural and excusable
preferences, that He sometimes refuses to gratify your whole desire, and
pours upon you blessings of a kind somewhat different from these you
most earnestly covet. He will give you the whole that Christ hath
merited; but for the application and distribution of that grace and
blessing you must be content to trust Him. You may be at a loss to know
why He does no more to deliver you from some sin, or why He does not
make you more successful in your efforts to aid others, or why, while He
so liberally prospers you in one part of your condition, you get so much less in another that is far
nearer your heart; but God does what He
will with His own, and if you do not find in one point the whole
blessing and prosperity you think should flow from such a Mediator as
you have, you may only conclude that what is lacking there will
elsewhere be found more wisely bestowed. And is it not a perpetual
encouragement to us that God does not merely crown what nature has
successfully begun, that it is not the likely and the naturally good
that are most blessed, but that God hath chosen the foolish things of
the world to confound the wise, and the weak things of the world to
confound the things that are mighty; and base things of the world and
things which are despised hath God chosen, yea, and things which are
not, to bring to nought things that are?
In Reuben, the first-born, conscience must have been sadly at war with
hope as he looked at the blind, but expressive, face of his father. He
may have hoped that his sin had not been severely thought of by his
father, or that the father’s pride in his first-born would prompt him to
hide, though it could not make him forget it. Probably the gross offence
had not been made known to the family. At least, the words “he went up”
may be understood as addressed in explanation to the brethren. It may
indeed have been that the blind old man, forcibly recalling the
long-past transgression, is here uttering a mournful, regretful
soliloquy, rather than addressing any one. It may be that these words
were uttered to himself as he went back upon the one deed that had
disclosed to him his son’s real character, and rudely hurled to the
ground all the hopes he had built up for his first-born. Yet there is no
reason to suppose, on the other hand, that the sin had been previously known or alluded to in the
family. Reuben’s hasty, passionate nature
could not understand that if Jacob had felt that sin of his deeply, he
should not have shown his resentment; he had stunned his father with the
heavy blow, and because he did not cry out and strike him in return, he
thought him little hurt. So do shallow natures tremble for a night after
their sin, and when they find that the sun rises and men greet them as
cordially as before, and that no hand lays hold on them from the past,
they think little more of their sin—do not understand that fatal calm
that precedes the storm. Had the memory of Reuben’s sin survived in
Jacob’s mind all the sad events that had since happened, and all the
stirring incidents of the emigration and the new life in Egypt? Could
his father at the last hour, and after so many thronged years, and
before his brethren, recall the old sin? He is relieved and confirmed in
his confidence by the first words of Jacob, words ascribing to him his
natural position, a certain conspicuous dignity too, and power such as
one may often see produced in men by occupying positions of authority,
though in their own character there be weakness. But all the excellence
that Jacob ascribes to Reuben serves only to embitter the doom
pronounced upon him. Men seem often to expect that a future can be
given to them irrespective of what they themselves are, that a series
of blessings and events might be prepared for them, and made over to
them; whereas every man’s future must be made by himself, and is already
in great part formed by the past. It was a vain expectation of Reuben to
expect that he, the impetuous, unstable, superficial son, could have the
future of a deep, and earnest, and dutiful nature, or that his children
should derive no taint from their parent, but be as the children of Joseph. No man’s
future need be altogether a doom to him, for God may
bless to him the evil fruit his life has borne; but certainly no man
need look for a future which has no relation to his own character. His
future will always be made up of his deeds, his feelings, and the
circumstances which his desires have brought him into.
The future of Reuben was of a negative, blank kind—“Thou shalt not
excel;” his unstable character must empty it of all great success. And
to many a heart since have these words struck a chill, for to many they
are as a mirror suddenly held up before them. They see themselves when
they look on the tossing sea, rising and pointing to the heavens with
much noise, but only to sink back again to the same everlasting level.
Men of brilliant parts and great capacity are continually seen to be
lost to society by instability of purpose. Would they only pursue one
direction, and concentrate their energies on one subject, they might
become true heirs of promise, blessed and blessing; but they seem to
lose relish for every pursuit on the first taste of success—all their
energy seems to have boiled over and evaporated in the first glow, and
sinks as the water that has just been noisily boiling when the fire is
withdrawn from under it. No impression made upon them is permanent: like
water, they are plastic, easily impressible, but utterly incapable of
retaining an impression; and therefore, like water, they have a downward
tendency, or at the best are but retained in their place by pressure
from without, and have no eternal power of growth. And the misery of
this character is often increased by the desire to excel which
commonly accompanies instability. It is generally this very desire which
prompts a man to hurry from one aim to another, to give up one path to excellence
when he sees that other men are making way upon another:
having no internal convictions of his own, he is guided mostly by the
successes of other men, the most dangerous of all guides. So that such a
man has all the bitterness of an eager desire doomed never to be
satisfied. Conscious to himself of capacity for something, feeling in
him the excellency of power, and having that “excellency of dignity,” or
graceful and princely refinement, which the knowledge of many things,
and intercourse with many kinds of people, have imparted to him, he
feels all the more that pervading weakness, that greedy, lustful craving
for all kinds of priority, and for enjoying all the various advantages
which other men severally enjoy, which will not let him finally choose
and adhere to his own line of things, but distracts him by a thousand purposes which ever defeat one
another.[4]
The sin of the next oldest sons was also remembered against them, and
remembered apparently for the same reason—because the character was
expressed in it. The massacre of the Shechemites was not an accidental
outrage that any other of the sons of Jacob might equally have
perpetrated, but the most glaring of a number of expressions of a fierce
and cruel disposition in these two men. In Jacob’s prediction of their
future, he seems to shrink with horror from his own progeny—like her
who dreamt she would give birth to a firebrand. He sees the possibility
of the direst results flowing from such a temper, and, under God,
provides against these by scattering the tribes, and thus weakening
their power for evil. They had been
banded together so as the more easily and securely to accomplish their murderous purposes. “Simeon and
Levi are brethren”—showing a close affinity, and seeking one another’s
society and aid, but it is for bad purposes; and therefore they must be
divided in Jacob and scattered in Israel. This was accomplished by the
tribe of Levi being distributed over all the other tribes as the
ministers of religion. The fiery zeal, the bold independence, and the
pride of being a distinct people, which had been displayed in the
slaughter of the Shechemites, might be toned down and turned to good
account when the sword was taken out of their hand. Qualities such as
these, which produce the most disastrous results when fit instruments
can be found, and when men of like disposition are suffered to band
themselves together, may, when found in the individual and kept in check
by circumstances and dissimilar dispositions, be highly beneficial.
In the sin, Levi seems to have been the moving spirit, Simeon the
abetting tool, and in the punishment, it is the more dangerous tribe
that is scattered, so that the other is left companionless. In the
blessings of Moses, the tribe of Simeon is passed over in silence; and
that the tribe of Levi should have been so used for God’s immediate
service stands as evidence that punishments, however severe and
desolating, even threatening something bordering on extinction, may yet
become blessings to God’s people. The sword of murder was displaced in
Levi’s hand by the knife of sacrifice; their fierce revenge against
sinners was converted into hostility against sin; their apparent zeal
for the forms of their religion was consecrated to the service of the
tabernacle and temple; their fanatical pride, which prompted them to treat all other
people as the offscouring of the earth, was informed by
a better spirit, and used for the upbuilding and instruction of the
people of Israel. In order to understand why this tribe, of all others,
should have been chosen for the service of the sanctuary and for the
instruction of the people, we must not only recognise how their being
scattered in punishment of their sin over all the land fitted them to be
the educators of the nation and the representatives of all the tribes,
but also we must consider that the sin itself which Levi had committed
broke the one command which men had up till this time received from the
mouth of God; no law had as yet been published but that which had been
given to Noah and his sons regarding bloodshed, and which was given in
circumstances so appalling, and with sanctions so emphatic, that it
might ever have rung in men’s ears, and stayed the hand of the murderer.
In saying, “At the hand of every man’s brother will I require the life
of man,” God had shown that human life was to be counted sacred. He
Himself had swept the race from the face of the earth, but adding this
command immediately after, He showed all the more forcibly that
punishment was His own prerogative, and that none but those appointed by
Him might shed blood—“Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord.” To take
private revenge, as Levi did, was to take the sword out of God’s hand,
and to say that God was not careful enough of justice, and but a poor
guardian of right and wrong in the world; and to destroy human life in
the wanton and cruel manner in which Levi had destroyed the Shechemites,
and to do it under colour and by the aid of religious zeal, was to God
the most hateful of sins. But none can know the hatefulness of a sin so distinctly as he who has
fallen into it, and is enduring the punishment
of it penitently and graciously, and therefore Levi was of all others
the best fitted to be entrusted with those sacrificial symbols which set
forth the value of all human life, and especially of the life of God’s
own Son. Very humbling must it have been for the Levite who remembered
the history of his tribe to be used by God as the hand of His justice on
the victims that were brought in substitution for that which was so
precious in the sight of God.
The blessing of Judah is at once the most important and the most
difficult to interpret in the series. There is enough in the history of
Judah himself, and there is enough in the subsequent history of the
tribe, to justify the ascription to him of all lion-like qualities—a
kingly fearlessness, confidence, power, and success; in action a
rapidity of movement and might that make him irresistible, and in repose
a majestic dignity of bearing. As the serpent is the cognisance of Dan,
the wolf of Benjamin, the hind of Naphtali, so is the lion of the tribe
of Judah. He scorns to gain his end by a serpentine craft, and is
himself easily taken in; he does not ravin like a wolf, merely
plundering for the sake of booty, but gives freely and generously, even
to the sacrifice of his own person: nor has he the mere graceful and
ineffective swiftness of the hind, but the rushing onset of the lion—a
character which, more than any other, men reverence and admire—“Judah,
thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise”—and a character which,
more than any other, fits a man to take the lead and rule. If there were
to be kings in Israel, there could be little doubt from which tribe they
could best be chosen; a wolf of the tribe of Benjamin, like Saul, not
only hung on the rear of retreating Philistines and
spoiled them, but made a prey of his own people, and it is in David we find the true king,
the man who more than any other satisfies men’s ideal of the prince to
whom they will pay homage;—falling indeed into grievous error and sin,
like his forefather, but, like him also, right at heart, so generous and
self-sacrificing that men served him with the most devoted loyalty, and
were willing rather to dwell in caves with him than in palaces with any
other.
The kingly supremacy of Judah was here spoken of in words which have
been the subject of as prolonged and violent contention as any others in
the Word of God. “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a
lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come.” These words are very
generally understood to mean that Judah’s supremacy would continue until
it culminated or flowered into the personal reign of Shiloh; in other
words, that Judah’s sovereignty was to be perpetuated in the person of
Jesus Christ. So that this prediction is but the first whisper of that
which was afterwards so distinctly declared, that David’s seed should
sit on the throne for ever and ever. It was not accomplished in the
letter, any more than the promise to David was; the tribe of Judah
cannot in any intelligible sense be said to have had rulers of her own
up to the coming of Christ, or for some centuries previous to that date.
For those who would quickly judge God and His promise by what they could
see in their own day, there was enough to provoke them to challenge God
for forgetting His promise. But in due time the King of men, He to
whom all nations have gathered, did spring from this tribe; and need it
be said that the very fact of His appearance proved that the supremacy
had not departed from Judah? This prediction, then,
partook of the character of very many of the Old Testament prophecies; there was
sufficient fulfilment in the letter to seal, as it were, the promise,
and give men a token that it was being accomplished, and yet so
mysterious a falling short, as to cause men to look beyond the literal
fulfilment, on which alone their hopes had at first rested, to some far
higher and more perfect spiritual fulfilment.
But not only has it been objected that the sceptre departed from Judah
long before Christ came, and that therefore the word Shiloh cannot refer
to Him, but also it has been truly said that wherever else the word
occurs it is the name of a town—that town, viz., where the ark for a
long time was stationed, and from which the allotment of territory was
made to the various tribes; and the prediction has been supposed to mean
that Judah should be the leading tribe till the land was entered. Many
objections to this naturally occur, and need not be stated. But it comes
to be an inquiry of some interest, How much information regarding a
personal Messiah did the brethren receive from this prophecy? A question
very difficult indeed to answer. The word Shiloh means “peace-making,”
and if they understood this as a proper name, they must have thought of
a person such as Isaiah designates as the Prince of Peace—a name it was
similar to that wherewith David called his son Solomon, in the
expectation that the results of his own lifetime of disorder and battle
would be reaped by his successor in a peaceful and prosperous reign. It
can scarcely be thought likely, indeed, that this single term “Shiloh,”
which might be applied to many things besides a person, should give to
the sons of Jacob any distinct idea of a personal Deliverer; but it might be sufficient to keep
before their eyes, and specially before the
tribe of Judah, that the aim and consummation of all lawgiving and
ruling was peace. And there was certainly contained in this blessing an
assurance that the purpose of Judah would not be accomplished, and
therefore that the existence of Judah as a tribe would not terminate,
until peace had been through its means brought into the world: thus was
the assurance given, that the productive power of Judah should not fail
until out of that tribe there had sprung that which should give peace.
But to us who have seen the prediction accomplished, it plainly enough
points to the Lion of the tribe of Judah, who in His own person
combined all kingly qualities. In Him we are taught by this prediction
to discover once more the single Person who stands out on the page of
this world’s history as satisfying men’s ideal of what their King should
be, and of how the race should be represented;—the One who without any
rival stands in the mind’s eye as that for which the best hopes of men
were waiting, still feeling that the race could do more than it had
done, and never satisfied but in Him.
Zebulun, the sixth and last of Leah’s sons, was so called because said
Leah, “Now will my husband dwell with me” (such being the meaning of
the name), “for I have borne him six sons.” All that is predicted
regarding this tribe is that his dwelling should be by the sea, and
near the Phœnician city Zidon. This is not to be taken as a strict
geographical definition of the tract of country occupied by Zebulun, as
we see when we compare it with the lot assigned to it and marked out in
the Book of Joshua; but though the border of the tribe did not reach to Zidon, and though it can only
have been a mere tongue of land belonging
to it that ran down to the Mediterranean shore, yet the situation
ascribed to it is true to its character as a tribe that had commercial
relations with the Phœnicians, and was of a decidedly mercantile
turn. We find this same feature indicated in the blessing of Moses:
“Rejoice, Zebulun, in thy going out, and Issachar in thy
tents”—Zebulun having the enterprise of a seafaring community, and
Issachar the quiet bucolic contentment of an agricultural or pastoral
population: Zebulun always restlessly eager for emigration or commerce,
for going out of one kind or other; Issachar satisfied to live and die
in his own tents. It is still, therefore, character rather than
geographical position that is here spoken of—though it is a trait of
character that is peculiarly dependent on geographical position: we, for
example, because islanders, having become the maritime power and the
merchants of the world; not being shut off from other nations by the
encompassing sea, but finding paths by it equally in all directions
ready provided for every kind of traffic.
Zebulun, then, was to represent the commerce of Israel, its outgoing
tendency; was to supply a means of communication and bond of connection
with the world outside, so that through it might be conveyed to the
nations what was saving in Israel, and that what Israel needed from
other lands might also find entrance. In the Church also, this is a
needful quality: for our well-being there must ever exist among us those
who are not afraid to launch on the wide and pathless sea of opinion;
those in whose ears its waves have from their childhood sounded with a
fascinating invitation, and who at last, as if possessed by some spirit
of unrest, loose from the firm earth, and go in quest of lands not yet discovered,
or are impelled to see for themselves what till now they
have believed on the testimony of others. It is not for all men to quit
the shore, and risk themselves in the miseries and disasters of so
comfortless and hazardous a life; but happy the people which possesses,
from one generation to another, men who must see with their own eyes,
and to whose restless nature the discomforts and dangers of an unsettled
life have a charm. It is not the instability of Reuben that we have in
these men, but the irrepressible longing of the born seaman, who must
lift the misty veil of the horizon and penetrate its mystery. And we are
not to condemn, even when we know we should not imitate, men who cannot
rest satisfied with the ground on which we stand, but venture into
regions of speculation, of religious thought which we have never
trodden, and may deem hazardous. The nourishment we receive is not all
native-grown; there are views of truth which may very profitably be
imported from strange and distant lands; and there is no land, no
province of thought, from which we may not derive what may
advantageously be mixed with our own ideas; no direction in which a
speculative mind can go in which it may not find something which may
give a fresh zest to what we already use, or be a real addition to our
knowledge. No doubt men who refuse to confine themselves to one way of
viewing truth—men who venture to go close to persons of very different
opinions from their own, who determine for themselves to prove all
things, who have no very special love for what they were native to and
originally taught, who show rather a taste for strange and new
opinions—these persons live a life of great hazard, and in the end are
generally, like men who have been much at sea, unsettled; they have not fixed opinions,
and are in themselves, as individual men,
unsatisfactory and unsatisfied; but still they have done good to the
community, by bringing to us ideas and knowledge which otherwise we
could not have obtained. Such men God gives us to widen our views; to
prevent us from thinking that we have the best of everything; to bring
us to acknowledge that others, who perhaps in the main are not so
favoured as ourselves, are yet possessed of some things we ourselves
would be the better of. And though these men must themselves necessarily
hang loosely, scarcely attached very firmly to any part of the Church,
like a seafaring population, and often even with a border running very
close to heathenism, yet let us own that the Church has need of
such—that without them the different sections of the Church would know
too little of one another, and too little of the facts of this world’s
life. And as the seafaring population of a country might be expected to
show less interest in the soil of their native land than others, and yet
we know that in point of fact we are dependent on no class of our
population so much for leal patriotism, and for the defence of our
country, so one has observed that the Church also must make similar use
of her Zebuluns—of men who, by their very habit of restlessly
considering all views of truth which are alien to our own ways of
thinking, have become familiar with, and better able to defend us
against, the error that mingles with these views.
Issachar receives from his father a character which few would be proud
of or would envy, but which many are very content to bear. As the strong
ass that has its stall and its provender provided can afford to let the
free beasts of the forest vaunt their liberty, so there is a very
numerous class of men who have no care to
assert their dignity as human beings, or to agitate regarding their rights as citizens, so long as
their obscurity and servitude provide them with physical comforts, and
leave them free of heavy responsibilities. They prefer a life of ease
and plenty to a life of hardship and glory. They are not lazy nor idle,
but are quite willing to use their strength so long as they are not
overdriven out of their sleekness. They have neither ambition nor
enterprise, and willingly bow their shoulders to bear, and become the
servants of those who will free them from the anxiety of planning and
managing, and give them a fair and regular remuneration for their
labour. This is not a noble nature, but in a world in which ambition so
frequently runs through a thorny and difficult path to a disappointing
and shameful end, this disposition has much to say in its own defence.
It will often accredit itself with unchallengeable common sense, and
will maintain that it alone enjoys life and gets the good of it. They
will tell you they are the only true utilitarians, that to be one’s own
master only brings cares, and that the degradation of servitude is only
an idea; that really servants are quite as well off as masters. Look
at them: the one is as a strong, powerful, well-cared-for animal, his
work but a pleasant exercise to him, and when it is over never following
him into his rest; he eats the good of the land, and has what all seem
to be in vain striving for, rest and contentment: the other, the master,
has indeed his position, but that only multiplies his duties; he has
wealth, but that proverbially only increases his cares and the mouths
that are to consume it; it is he who has the air of a bondsman, and
never, meet him when you may, seems wholly at ease and free from care.
Yet, after all that can be said in favour of the bargain
an Issachar makes, and however he may be satisfied to rest, and in a quiet, peaceful
way enjoy life, men feel that at the best there is something despicable
about such a character. He gives his labour and is fed, he pays his
tribute and is protected; but men feel that they ought to meet the
dangers, responsibilities, and difficulties of life in their own
persons, and at first hand, and not buy themselves off so from the
burden of individual self-control and responsibility. The animal
enjoyment of this life and its physical comforts may be a very good
ingredient in a national character: it might be well for Israel to have
this patient, docile mass of strength in its midst: it may be well for
our country that there are among us not only men eager for the highest
honours and posts, but a great multitude of men perhaps equally
serviceable and capable, but whose desires never rise beyond the
ordinary social comforts; the contentedness of such, even though
reprehensible, tempers or balances the ambition of the others, and when
it comes into personal contact rebukes its feverishness. They, as well
as the other parts of society, have amidst their error a truth—the
truth that the ideal world in which ambition, and hope, and imagination
live is not everything; that the material has also a reality, and that
though hope does bless mankind, yet attainment is also something, even
though it be a little. Yet this truth is not the whole truth, and is
only useful as an ingredient, as a part, not as the whole; and when we
fall from any high ideal of human life which we have formed, and begin
to find comfort and rest in the mere physical good things of this world,
we may well despise ourselves. There is a pleasantness still in the land
that appeals to us all; a luxury in observing the risks and struggles of
others while ourselves secure and at rest; a desire to make life
easy, and to shirk the responsibility and toil that public-spiritedness
entails. Yet of what tribe has the Church more cause to complain than of
those persons who seem to imagine that they have done enough when they
have joined the Church and received their own inheritance to enjoy; who
are alive to no emergency, nor awake to the need of others; who have no
idea at all of their being a part of the community, for which, as well
as for themselves, there are duties to discharge; who couch, like the
ass of Issachar, in their comfort without one generous impulse to make
common cause against the common evils and foes of the Church, and are
unvisited by a single compunction that while they lie there, submitting
to whatever fate sends, there are kindred tribes of their own being
oppressed and spoiled?
There seems to have been an improvement in this tribe, an infusion of
some new life into it. In the time of Deborah, indeed, it is with a note
of surprise that, while celebrating the victory of Israel, she names
even Issachar as having been roused to action, and as having helped in
the common cause—“the princes of Issachar were with Deborah, even
Issachar;” but we find them again in the days of David wiping out their
reproach, and standing by him manfully. And there an apparently new
character is given to them—“the children of Issachar, which were men
that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do.”
This quite accords, however, with the kind of practical philosophy which
we have seen to be imbedded in Issachar’s character. Men they were not
distracted by high thoughts and ambitions, but who judged things
according to their substantial value to themselves; and
who were, therefore, in a position to give much good advice on practical
matters—advice which would always have a tendency to trend too much
towards mere utilitarianism and worldliness, and to partake rather of
crafty politic diplomacy than of far-seeing statesmanship, yet
trustworthy for a certain class of subjects. And here, too, they
represent the same class in the Church, already alluded to; for one
often finds that men who will not interrupt their own comfort, and who
have a kind of stolid indifference as to what comes of the good of the
Church, have yet also much shrewd practical wisdom; and were these men,
instead of spending their sagacity in cynical denunciation of what the
Church does, to throw themselves into the cause of the Church, and
heartily advise her what she ought to do, and help in the doing of it,
their observation of human affairs, and political understanding of the
times, would be turned to good account, instead of being a reproach.
Next came the eldest son of Rachel’s handmaid, and the eldest son of
Leah’s handmaid, Dan and Gad. Dan’s name, meaning “judge,” is the
starting point of the prediction—“Dan shall judge his people.” This
word “judge” we are perhaps somewhat apt to misapprehend; it means
rather to defend than to sit in judgment on; it refers to a judgment
passed between one’s own people and their foes, and an execution of such
judgment in the deliverance of the people and the destruction of the
foe. We are familiar with this meaning of the word by the constant
reference in the Old Testament to God’s judging His people; this being
always a cause of joy as their sure deliverance from their enemies. So
also it is used of those men who, when Israel had no king, rose from time to time as the
champions of the people, to lead them against the
foe, and who are therefore familiarly called “The Judges.” From the
tribe of Dan the most conspicuous of these arose, Samson, namely, and it
is probably mainly with reference to this fact that Jacob so
emphatically predicts of this tribe, “Dan shall judge his people.” And
notice the appended clause (as reflecting shame on the sluggish
Issachar), “as one of the tribes of Israel,” recognising always that his
strength was not for himself alone, but for his country; that he was not
an isolated people who had to concern himself only with his own affairs,
but one of the tribes of Israel. The manner, too, in which Dan was to
do this was singularly descriptive of the facts subsequently evolved.
Dan was a very small and insignificant tribe, whose lot originally lay
close to the Philistines on the southern border of the land. It might
seem to be no obstacle whatever to the invading Philistines as they
passed to the richer portion of Judah, but this little tribe, through
Samson, smote these terrors of the Israelites with so sore and alarming
a destruction as to cripple them for years and make them harmless. We
see, therefore, how aptly Jacob compares them to the venomous snake that
lurks in the road and bites the horses’ heels; the dust-coloured adder
that a man treads on before he is aware, and whose poisonous stroke is
more deadly than the foe he is looking for in front. And especially
significant did the imagery appear to the Jews, with whom this poisonous
adder was indigenous, but to whom the horse was the symbol of foreign
armament and invasion. The whole tribe of Dan, too, seems to have
partaken of that “grim humour” with which Samson saw his foes walk time
after time into the traps he set for them, and give
themselves an easy prey to him—a humour which comes out with singular piquancy in the
narrative given in the Book of Judges of one of the forays of this
tribe, in which they carried off Micah’s priest and even his gods.
But why, in the full flow of his eloquent description of the varied
virtues of his sons, does the patriarch suddenly check himself, lie back
on his pillows, and quietly say, “I have waited for Thy salvation, O
God”? Does he feel his strength leave him so that he cannot go on to
bless the rest of his sons, and has but time to yield his own spirit to
God? Are we here to interpolate one of those scenes we are all fated to
witness when some eagerly watched breath seems altogether to fail before
the last words have been uttered, when those who have been standing
apart, through sorrow and reverence, quickly gather round the bed to
catch the last look, and when the dying man again collects himself and
finishes his work? Probably Jacob, having, as it were, projected himself
forward into those stirring and warlike times he has been speaking of,
so realises the danger of his people, and the futility even of such help
as Dan’s when God does not help, that, as if from the midst of doubtful
war, he cries, as with a battle cry, “I have waited for Thy salvation, O
God.” His longing for victory and blessing to his sons far overshot the
deliverance from Philistines accomplished by Samson. That deliverance he
thankfully accepts and joyfully predicts, but in the spirit of an
Israelite indeed, and a genuine child of the promise, he remains
unsatisfied, and sees in all such deliverance only the pledge of God’s
coming nearer and nearer to His people, bringing with Him His eternal
salvation. In Dan, therefore, we have not the
catholic spirit of Zebulun, nor the practical, though sluggish, temper of Issachar; but we
are guided rather to the disposition which ought to be maintained
through all Christian life, and which, with special care, needs to be
cherished in Church-life—a disposition to accept with gratitude all
success and triumph, but still to aim through all at that highest
victory which God alone can accomplish for His people. It is to be the
battle-cry with which every Christian and every Church is to preserve
itself, not merely against external foes, but against the far more
disastrous influence of self-confidence, pride, and glorying in
man—“For Thy salvation, O God, do we wait.”
Gad also is a tribe whose history is to be warlike, his very name
signifying a marauding, guerilla troop; and his history was to
illustrate the victories which God’s people gain by tenacious, watchful,
ever-renewed warfare. The Church has often prospered by her Dan-like
insignificance; the world not troubling itself to make war upon her. But
oftener Gad is a better representative of the mode in which her
successes are gained. We find that the men of Gad were among the most
valuable of David’s warriors, when his necessity evoked all the various
skill and energy of Israel. “Of the Gadites,” we read, “there separated
themselves unto David into the hold of the wilderness men of might, and
men of war fit for the battle, that could handle shield and buckler,
whose faces were like the faces of lions, and were as swift as the roes
upon the mountains: one of the least of them was better than an hundred,
and the greatest mightier than a thousand.” And there is something
particularly inspiriting to the individual Christian in finding this
pronounced as part of the blessing of God’s people—“a troop shall overcome
him, but he shall overcome at the last.” It is this that
enables us to persevere—that we have God’s assurance that present
discomfiture does not doom us to final defeat. If you be among the
children of promise, among those that gather round God to catch His
blessing, you shall overcome at the last. You may now feel as if
assaulted by treacherous, murderous foes, irregular troops, that betake
themselves to every cruel deceit, and are ruthless in spoiling you; you
may be assailed by so many and strange temptations that you are
bewildered and cannot lift a hand to resist, scarce seeing where your
danger comes from; you may be buffeted by messengers of Satan,
distracted by a sudden and tumultuous incursion of a crowd of cares so
that you are moved away from the old habits of your life amid which you
seem to stand safely; your heart may seem to be the rendezvous of all
ungodly and wicked thoughts, you may feel trodden under foot and overrun
by sin, but, with the blessing of God, you shall overcome at the last.
Only cultivate that dogged pertinacity of Gad, which has no thought of
ultimate defeat, but rallies cheerfully and resolutely after every
discomfiture.