Genesis 48:1-50:14: Jacob’s Blessings

Genesis 48:1-50:14: Jacob’s Blessings

We’ve been working our way passage by passage through the book of Genesis, and today the next passage we come to is Genesis chapter 48 verse 1 through chapter 50 verse 14, so I’ll be reading a selection of verses from that passage. It says,

1 Then Jacob called his sons and said, “Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you what shall happen to you in days to come. 2 “Assemble and listen, O sons of Jacob, listen to Israel your father. 3 “Reuben, you are my firstborn, my might, and the firstfruits of my strength, preeminent in dignity and preeminent in power. 4 Unstable as water, you shall not have preeminence, because you went up to your father’s bed; then you defiled it—he went up to my couch! 5 “Simeon and Levi are brothers; weapons of violence are their swords. 6 Let my soul come not into their council; O my glory, be not joined to their company. For in their anger they killed men, and in their willfulness they hamstrung oxen. 7 Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce, and their wrath, for it is cruel! I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel. 8 “Judah, your brothers shall praise you; your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies; your father’s sons shall bow down before you. 9 Judah is a lion’s cub; from the prey, my son, you have gone up. He stooped down; he crouched as a lion and as a lioness; who dares rouse him? 10 The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples. 11 Binding his foal to the vine and his donkey’s colt to the choice vine, he has washed his garments in wine and his vesture in the blood of grapes. 12 His eyes are darker than wine, and his teeth whiter than milk. 13 “Zebulun shall dwell at the shore of the sea; he shall become a haven for ships, and his border shall be at Sidon. 14 “Issachar is a strong donkey, crouching between the sheepfolds. 15 He saw that a resting place was good, and that the land was pleasant, so he bowed his shoulder to bear, and became a servant at forced labor. 16 “Dan shall judge his people as one of the tribes of Israel. 17 Dan shall be a serpent in the way, a viper by the path, that bites the horse’s heels so that his rider falls backward. 18 I wait for your salvation, O Lord. 19 “Raiders shall raid Gad, but he shall raid at their heels. 20 “Asher’s food shall be rich, and he shall yield royal delicacies. 21 “Naphtali is a doe let loose that bears beautiful fawns. 22 “Joseph is a fruitful bough, a fruitful bough by a spring; his branches run over the wall. 23 The archers bitterly attacked him, shot at him, and harassed him severely, 24 yet his bow remained unmoved; his arms were made agile by the hands of the Mighty One of Jacob (from there is the Shepherd, the Stone of Israel), 25 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 crouches beneath, blessings of the breasts and of the womb. 26 The blessings of your father are mighty beyond the blessings of my parents, up to the bounties of the everlasting hills. May they be on the head of Joseph, and on the brow of him who was set apart from his brothers. 27 “Benjamin is a ravenous wolf, in the morning devouring the prey and at evening dividing the spoil.” 28 All these are the twelve tribes of Israel. This is what their father said to them as he blessed them, blessing each with the blessing suitable to him.

May God bless the reading of his Word.

Let’s pray: Father, we know it’s your will that we be conformed to the image of your Son, Jesus. And we also know that the way that happens is by your Spirit and through your Word. So, please, Holy Spirit, take this passage and use it to accomplish your purposes within each one of us. Lead us to Christ and conform us to his image. And it’s in his name that we pray, amen.

A number of years ago, at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Matt Emmons was competing in a shooting event and had a commanding lead over all the other competitors. In fact, right before he took his final shot, he was so far ahead of everyone else that the only thing he needed to do was to hit the inner ring of the target. And, for an Olympic shooter, that’s not a difficult thing to do at all. As long as he just hit that inner ring, he’d win the gold medal. It seemed virtually guaranteed. So, Emmons lined up his shot, pulled the trigger, and, sure enough, the bullet passed right through the bullseye. However, when Emmons looked up at the scoreboard, he didn’t see a score for the shot he had just taken. And it wasn’t long before he realized why. He’d hit the bullseye alright. The only problem is that he’d been aiming at the wrong target. Emmons hit the bullseye of the target in the next lane over rather than the bullseye of his own target. As a result, his score was zero, and he dropped from first place to eighth place.

Similarly, it’s possible for us to be very successful in our lives but to be successful in the wrong things. It’s possible for us to accomplish our goals but be no better off because we have the wrong goals. And that’s a danger for everyone. Even those of us who are Christians can sometimes get so caught up in the pursuit of worldly success and prestige and various other worldly ambitions that we neglect the things God says are most important. Like Matt Emmons, we hit the bullseye of the wrong target.

And that’s one reason why I’m so thankful for the main passage before us today—Genesis chapter 48 verse 1 through chapter 50 verse 14. It’s a lengthier passage, but we’ll be focusing especially on chapter 49. This passage is a great reminder for us to examine our lives and make sure we’re focusing on the right things. As we see Jacob’s children in many ways reaping what they’ve sown, that challenges us to approach our own lives in a more thoughtful manner and be very deliberate about the way we live, the goals we pursue, and, most importantly, the character we cultivate.

Now, chapter 48 records Jacob blessing Joseph’s two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh. The interesting thing about that chapter is Jacob’s prediction that the younger son, Ephraim, will actually become greater than the older son, Manasseh. The focus then shifts in chapter 49 to Jacob pronouncing blessings on all of his own twelve sons. Verse 28 tells us that he blesses each son with a blessing “suitable” to that son. And that’s a great way to express the main idea of what we find here. Jacob pronounces a suitable blessing over each of his sons. Again, Jacob pronounces a suitable blessing over each of his sons.

He begins by calling his sons to him and saying in verse 1, “Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you what shall happen to you in days to come.” And that’s why these blessings are so significant. Understand that, by pronouncing these blessings, Jacob’s not just expressing warm sentiments toward his children. These blessings are actually being viewed as prophetic pronouncements that’ll determine the respective futures of Jacob’s twelve children. These are prophetic predictions about future events. In effect, God was guiding Jacob as he spoke the words of these blessings so that Jacob would predict the things God intended to do. So, just know that these blessings aren’t some sort of ancient equivalent of the fortune cookie message that you or I might get at the Chinese restaurant down the street, alright? They actually have real significance and real power to shape the future. They’re pivotal in establishing the destinies of Jacob’s twelve children, who will eventually, of course, become the twelve tribes of Israel.

Jacob starts with Leah’s six children—from oldest to youngest—Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Zebulun, and Issachar. He then moves on to the children of Rachel’s maidservant Bilhah—Dan and Naphtali. Then the children of Leah’s maidservant Zilpah—Gad and Asher. And finally, Rachel’s children: Joseph and Benjamin. And you don’t have to read very far into the list to figure out that many of these blessings are largely related to the character of that particular son. So, for the sons whose character was lacking, the “blessings” Jacob pronounces actually aren’t blessings at all.

I. Actions Have Consequences

And that shows us right off the bat that actions have consequences. By the way, there are three practical takeaways I’d like to draw out of these blessings Jacob pronounces—and that’s the first one. Actions have consequences.

Look at Genesis 49:3-4, which records Jacob’s “blessing”—if you want to call it that—on Reuben. He says, 3 “Reuben, you are my firstborn, my might, and the firstfruits of my strength, preeminent in dignity and preeminent in power. 4 Unstable as water, you shall not have preeminence, because you went up to your father’s bed; then you defiled it—he went up to my couch!”

Now, I imagine that toward the beginning of Jacob’s blessing on Reuben here, Reuben was feeling pretty good about how this was going. Maybe he was thinking, “Hey, I really thought sleeping with my father’s concubine would get me into big trouble, but I guess it didn’t. Maybe my dad’s so old and senile that he’s actually forgotten what I did all those years ago. He called me his ‘firstborn,’ his ‘might,’ ‘the firstfruits of [his] strength,’ and ‘preeminent in dignity and…power.’” I’m sure that, when he heard those things, Reuben was thinking that all of this was going really well.

Unfortunately for Reuben, though, the other shoe drops in verse 4: “Unstable as water, you shall not have preeminence, because you went up to your father’s bed; then you defiled it—he went up to my couch!” Notice how, in that last phrase, Jacob shifts from using the second person pronoun “you” to the third person pronoun “he.” It’s like he’s turning away from Reuben there and not even talking to him anymore but is just talking about him to everyone else. Like, “Can you believe this guy? He went up to my couch!”—just in case the rest of the family had forgotten. So, everything that seemed so good for Reuben in verse 3 comes crashing down around him in verse 4. One commentator calls this “one of the fiercest denunciations in Genesis.”

And what Jacob says here eventually comes true. Another commentator writes, “When Reuben’s descendants settled in the Transjordan, they soon disappeared from history, and no prophet or judge or king would ever come from the tribe of Reuben. Reuben’s descendants were characterized by a lack of leadership and resolve.” So, that’s it for Reuben. We read all about him sleeping with his father’s concubine back in Genesis 35, and he pays for it now.

Jacob then moves on to Simeon and Levi in verses 5-7: 5 “Simeon and Levi are brothers; weapons of violence are their swords. 6 Let my soul come not into their council; O my glory, be not joined to their company. For in their anger they killed men, and in their willfulness they hamstrung oxen. 7 Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce, and their wrath, for it is cruel! I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel.”

So, Jacob likewise issues a severe denunciation on Simeon and Levi—though not quite as severe as the one directed toward Reuben. The incident he’s talking about when he speaks of their “violence” and the fact that they “killed men” in their anger is the incident that took place in Shechem, recorded back in chapter 34, when the prince of Shechem raped their sister Dinah and they responded with a city-wide massacre. Simeon and Levi tricked all the men of the city into getting circumcised, and while the men were still recovering from that procedure, Simeon and Levi killed all of them. They killed every man in the entire city. So, Jacob predicts here in our main passage that they’ll be divided and scattered. And that is indeed what eventually happened.

As I said, the point I believe we’re supposed to take away from all of this is that actions have consequences. Even actions undertaken in the heat of the moment can have far-reaching consequences—as was the case for Simeon and Levi. You know, there’s a scientific law that states that for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. And that’s true not only in nature and this physical universe, it’s also true of our behaviors. In popular terminology, what goes around comes around. Or, even better, in biblical terminology from Galatians 6:7, a person reaps what they sow.

You know, isn’t it true that we sometimes imagine that we can tolerate a certain sinful habit in our lives and that there won’t be any significant consequences? Isn’t it true that we sometimes think we can indulge in sin without it ever catching up with us? It kind of reminds me of someone taking a credit card and recklessly purchasing this over here and that over there without any thought about what they can afford and imagining that the bill will never come due. Brothers and sisters, the bill always comes due. Our behaviors have consequences—both in this life and eternity.

II. God Offers Redemption from the Sins of Our Past

However, there is good news. We find it as we move forward in the passage and come to the second practical takeaway, which is that God offers redemption from the sins of our past. God offers redemption from the sins of our past. Look at verses 8-12. Turning his attention to Judah, Jacob says, 8 “Judah, your brothers shall praise you; your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies; your father’s sons shall bow down before you. 9 Judah is a lion’s cub; from the prey, my son, you have gone up. He stooped down; he crouched as a lion and as a lioness; who dares rouse him? 10 The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples. 11 Binding his foal to the vine and his donkey’s colt to the choice vine, he has washed his garments in wine and his vesture in the blood of grapes. 12 His eyes are darker than wine, and his teeth whiter than milk.

So, by any measure, this is a phenomenal blessing. And the more we dig into it, the more we understand just how phenomenal it is. Look at how it starts out in verse 8: “your brothers shall praise you; your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies; your father’s sons shall bow down before you.” So, Judah will enjoy victory over his enemies and preeminence among his brothers. That means he’ll even be greater than Joseph. Although Joseph was undoubtedly the greatest at the time Jacob spoke these words since he was, after all, Prime Minister of Egypt, Judah would one day become even greater. All of the other brothers would bow down to Judah. Jacob then compares Judah in verse 9 to a ferocious lion seizing its prey, hauling the prey back to its den, and crouching over it as if daring any other animal to try stealing its prey away.

Yet the most stunning portion of this blessing is in verse 10. It says that, “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.” So, Judah won’t just be great and first among his brothers. He’ll be royalty. “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet.” This would be fulfilled, of course, in the line of kings who would come from the tribe of Judah, including King David, King Solomon, and all the other kings after them. Judah was the tribe from whom the kings of God’s people would come.

Yet there’s something even greater than that in view here. Almost all commentators—including ancient Jewish commentators as well as Christian commentators—have interpreted this verse as a prediction of the Messiah’s rule. Because notice how the end of the verse predicts he’ll rule not just over one “people”—such as the people of Israel—but over many “peoples.” “To him shall be the obedience of the peoples,” it says. That means all the peoples of the earth will one day bow before this great King and render him obedience. We’re talking about a King who will rule over the entire world.

And according to the Bible, there’s only one person who fits that description—and conveniently he just happens to be from the tribe of Judah. That person, of course, is Jesus. In Revelation 19:16, Jesus is given the title “King of kings and Lord of lords.” In addition, we also read in Revelation 11:15 about Jesus returning to this earth and loud heavenly voices saying, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.” And there are literally dozens of other verses that speak of this as well—all predicting that Jesus will one day return to this earth and establish his kingdom and rule over everyone and everything for all eternity. And his earthly lineage puts him within the tribe of Judah. In Revelation 5:5, he’s actually referred to as “the Lion of the tribe of Judah.” So, there’s that comparison to a lion again—like we saw a few moments ago in Jacob’s blessing on Judah.

So, returning to our main passage, Judah receives the greatest blessing anyone could ever imagine. Not only will he rule over his brothers and be the tribe from whom King David and all the kings after him will come, he’ll also be the tribe from whom the Messiah himself will come. It just doesn’t get any better than that.

And this blessing is all the more amazing when you consider the sins of Judah’s past—particularly the infamous incident recorded back in Genesis 38 of Judah sleeping with his daughter-in-law Tamar. Thinking she was a prostitute, Judah slept with Tamar and got her pregnant. His shameful conduct was then revealed in a very public way. It was nothing short of a scandal. And Judah had been living in the shadow of that scandal ever since.

However, if you read carefully in Genesis, there’s evidence that this experience had a profound and very positive spiritual impact on Judah. For example, as soon as his sin is revealed, Judah confesses in Genesis 38:26 that Tamar is more righteous than him since he didn’t give her his son in marriage as he’d promised. So, instead of defiantly condemning Tamar or trying to minimize his sin or draw attention away from himself, Judah responds in a humble manner and, from what we can tell, with a repentant heart.

It's interesting to compare Judah’s response to the response of Simeon and Levi when their father confronts them about their massacre of the people of Shechem. Instead of repenting or even expressing remorse, Simeon and Levi casually dismiss Jacob’s rebuke. In Genesis 34:31, they say, “Should he [the prince of Shechem] treat our sister like a prostitute?” A good paraphrase of that might be, “What, were we supposed to just let him get away with what he did to our sister?”

Also, not only did Judah respond to his sin in a strikingly different manner than his brothers did to their sin, he also seems to have become a different person in the years after that incident with Tamar. In Genesis 44, we see him pleading with the Egyptian official—who was, at the time, unknown to him—for his brother Benjamin in a very heartfelt way and even offering himself as Benjamin’s substitute in Genesis 44:33.

So, from everything we can tell, the scandalous incident with Tamar produced within Judah a humble and repentant heart and led to a significant change in the overall trajectory of his life. As a result, in our main passage, Judah receives the blessing of all blessings from his father Jacob.

And that’s incredibly instructive for us as we think about the sins of our past. You know, one thing that every single person in this room has in common is that we’ve all done things that we regret—things that make us feel ashamed, things that, if the rest of the church knew about those things, we’d likely be so mortified that we’d have trouble even attending here anymore. And Satan would have us believe that there’s no coming back from those things—that we’re permanently stained because of the sins we’ve committed and irreparably broken. And nowadays, our society says the same thing, doesn’t it? I guess the most recent name for it is “cancel culture”—the idea that there’s no redemption from wrongdoing and that you’ll be marked by that wrongdoing for the rest of your life.

But this passage shows us just how far that is from the truth. The stunningly magnificent blessing Judah receives demonstrates that God offers us redemption from the sins of our past. And we know from the Bible that the way he does that is through the very same Messiah promised here in Genesis 49. You see, not only is this Messiah an eternal King, he’s also a merciful Savior who rescues us from our sins. There was a time when we were defined by the sins of our past and were actually enslaved by sin and fully deserving of eternal condemnation and utterly helpless to save ourselves.

But even when we were in that wretched and helpless condition, Jesus came this earth, lived a perfectly sinless life, and eventually died on the cross to pay for our sins. The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 5:21 that God “made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him [in Jesus] we might become the righteousness of God.” In other words, Jesus took our sins so that we could have his righteousness. That means, for example, if we’re tempted to feel ashamed of sexual immorality in the past, guess what? Jesus took that sin on himself. Or if we’re tempted to feel ashamed of a particular way we’ve mistreated someone else, guess what? Jesus took that sin on himself as well. The same goes for dishonesty, harsh words, greed, gossip, stealing, pornography, and outbursts of anger. Jesus took every sin for which we’ve ever felt ashamed on himself and died for it in our place so that we no longer have to carry that shame.

Of course, in order to benefit from what Jesus has done, we have to, first of all, repent of our sins. Judah doesn’t receive this phenomenal blessing apart from repentance. Not only that, we have to put our trust exclusively in Jesus for rescue on the basis of his death on the cross and subsequent resurrection. And when we do that, all of our sins are washed away. No matter how great our guilt or deep our shame, Jesus cleanses us from it all. There’s no such thing as a stain that’s too deep for Jesus to remove.

III. Godly Character Brings Lasting Reward

Then, a third and final practical takeaway from this passage is that godly character brings lasting reward. Godly character brings lasting reward. Look at the blessing Jacob pronounces on Joseph in verses 22-26: 22 “Joseph is a fruitful bough, a fruitful bough by a spring; his branches run over the wall. 23 The archers bitterly attacked him, shot at him, and harassed him severely, 24 yet his bow remained unmoved; his arms were made agile by the hands of the Mighty One of Jacob (from there is the Shepherd, the Stone of Israel), 25 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 crouches beneath, blessings of the breasts and of the womb. 26 The blessings of your father are mighty beyond the blessings of my parents, up to the bounties of the everlasting hills. May they be on the head of Joseph, and on the brow of him who was set apart from his brothers.”

Now, it’s true that this blessing isn’t as great as the blessing on Judah—it’s kind of hard to beat that one because of the predictions it makes about the Messiah. But this blessing Jacob pronounces on Joseph is still pretty extraordinary. In verse 22, he compares Joseph to a tree that’s incredibly fruitful and with branches that are so vibrant that they expand past the space allotted for them and “run over the wall.” One commentator says that this tree “pictures Joseph’s depth of character and width of influence.”

Jacob then describes in verses 23-24 how Joseph was “bitterly attacked” and severely “harassed,” yet he “remained unmoved” in his pursuit of what God had called him to. As a result, Jacob says in verses 25-26, God will bless Joseph with all kinds of elaborate and extravagant blessings, which Jacob describes in these verses. So, the point is that Joseph had incredibly godly character and was therefore blessed in an exceedingly extravagant way.

And the practical takeaway for us is that godly character brings lasting reward. Now, of course, that’s not to say we can earn heaven or merit eternal life through our own efforts. The Bible’s very clear that we’re saved from our sins by grace alone and through faith alone. However, the Bible also speaks of God’s people enjoying various levels of rewards in heaven, and there is a link between the way we live in this life and the rewards we enjoy in the next. You can find more information about that in 2 Corinthians 5:10 and the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:14-30.

Perhaps a good earthly comparison is the way children enjoy various privileges in the family that are linked to their behavior and to how responsible they show themselves to be. It’s not that children earn their place in the family through good behavior. They’re included in the family because they’re born into it or adopted into it. Their inclusion in the family has nothing to do with their behavior. However, the privileges they enjoy are often linked to the way they behave and the character they exhibit. Similarly, we don’t earn heaven, but we do earn heavenly rewards by living in a way that pleases God. And in the midst of our current society that can’t see beyond the pleasures of today, that’s something we’d do well to consider very carefully and remind ourselves of very often.

In addition, this blessing Jacob pronounces on Joseph is one that’s focused not so much on what’s going to happen during Joseph’s lifetime—it’s hard to imagine Joseph rising any higher than he had already risen as Prime Minister of Egypt. Rather, the blessing’s focus is on Joseph’s descendants and on how prosperous and prominent the tribes coming from Joseph would be. In a word, it’s focused on Joseph’s legacy.

So, what we see is that our present conduct determines our future legacy. The seeds we sow today will determine the harvest we see not only in our own lifetime but in the generations that come after us. So, ask yourself, what kind of seeds are you sowing? What kind of legacy are you leaving? Understand that the greatest blessing you can pass on to your children and grandchildren isn’t money or material possessions but a legacy of godliness.

Conclusion

And as we consider this entire passage and the various blessings Jacob pronounces on his twelve sons, it’s good for us to remember that, as great as these blessings are—and some of them really are quite spectacular—they pale in comparison to the blessings we’ve received in Christ. In Ephesians 1:3, Paul describes how God has blessed us with “every spiritual blessing” in Christ. Think about that—“every spiritual blessing.” That means there’s not a single spiritual blessing that God could have blessed us with that he hasn’t blessed us with. He hasn’t held anything back. As Paul goes on to say in verse 4, God chose us even before this world was created to be “holy and blameless” in his sight. We then see in verse 5 that God even adopted us as his own children, and then in verse 7 that he redeemed us from our bondage to sin through the blood of Christ and according to the riches of his glorious grace.

Furthermore, as verse 11 points out, all of this foreshadows the heavenly “inheritance” that’s so sure to come in the future that Paul says it’s as if we’ve already “obtained” it in the present. And finally, we see in verses 13-14 that God’s even given us a foretaste of that inheritance by sending the Holy Spirit to dwell within us. Paul actually uses a financial term and says that the Holy Spirit is a “guarantee” or a down payment of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it. I mean, just think: God himself, in the Person of the Holy Spirit, actually dwells within our hearts. I don’t see how he could be any closer to us than he already is.

So, the blessings Jacob pronounces in our main passage are indeed magnificent and spectacular. And we know that each of his twelve sons would eventually become an entire tribe in the nation of Israel. Joseph would even become two tribes. But as great as these blessings are, they don’t even begin to compare to the blessings that are ours in Jesus and that we enjoy because of what Jesus has accomplished on the cross.