8 ¶Judah,
thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise: thy hand shall be in the neck of
thine enemies; thy father’s children shall bow down before thee.
9 Judah
is a lion’s whelp: from the prey, my son, thou art gone up: he stooped down, he
couched as a lion, and as an old lion; who shall rouse him up?
10 The
sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet,
until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.
11 Binding
his foal unto the vine, and his ass’s colt unto the choice vine; he washed his
garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes:
12 His
eyes shall be red with wine, and his teeth white with milk. (Genesis 49:8-12)
At the end of Jacob’s life,
he gave blessings to his children, and the blessing to Judah can be seen as one
enormous prophecy of the Messiah to come through Judah’s line. It is as if Jacob addresses Christ
rather than Judah. Some of the
imagery seems very strange, but with a full testimony of Jesus Christ, it can
be understood.
thou art he
whom thy brethren shall praise:
thy hand shall
be in the neck of thine enemies;
thy father’s
children shall bow down before thee.
The praises due to Christ
are unquestionable. Jesus
conquered Satan during His life by resisting every temptation thrown at Him and
by suffering the sins and temptations of all mankind as well. Someday He will subdue all enemies
under His feet and the earth will be His, and we will have a chance to bow to
Him and acknowledge Him King of the earth, since we have greatly benefitted
from His victory. He knows how to
help us conquer our enemies as well.
Judah is a
lion’s whelp:
from the prey,
my son, thou art gone up:
he stooped
down,
he couched as
a lion, and as an old lion; who shall rouse him up?
As the lion is considered
the fiercest and strongest of beasts, the king of animals, we can see the
“lion’s whelp” as Christ, who was the son of Heavenly Father, the King of the
universe.
For a lion to get up and
leave the prey just caught would be very unusual. Likewise, it is surprising to us that Jehovah left His
premortal glory to come to earth.
“he stooped down” – This
speaks of Jehovah’s condescension to be born into mortality like the rest of
us.
“he couched as a lion, and as
an old lion; who shall rouse him up?” – To me this image of a couching (lying
down) old lion speaks of Christ submitting to death as if He were old (although
His death was much more painful and early). I see Him lying in His tomb. “Who will rouse him up?” reminds us that Christ resurrected
Himself. None could do it but
Him. In another sense, that
question asks who is going to dare to challenge His supremacy. You don’t want to make the lion mad.
The sceptre
shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh
come;
and unto him
shall the gathering of the people be.
Shiloh is another name for
the Messiah and means “he to whom the right belongs.” Kings of Judah had the throne through much of Israel’s
history, and now that Christ has come His first time, He reigns. The part about gathering the people
should be familiar to us.
Binding his
foal unto the vine, and his ass’s colt unto the choice vine;
he washed his
garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes:
If we remember Christ’s discourse “I am
the true vine,” we see that the lines about binding his foal to the vine speak
of how Christ’s servants (represented as asses and beasts of burden) and their
children (the colt and foal) will be tied (sealed?) to the source of
nourishment. The tying process
makes me think of covenants and how they tie us to the Lord. We also get a sense of Christ acting in
two different ways. He’s the good
shepherd, leading his people, and He leads them to Himself, the source of nourishment
as the vine. (Kind of a mixed
metaphor, but hey, it works.)
“he washed his garments in wine, and
his clothes in the blood of grapes” – We run into this image also in Isaiah,
who asks, when He sees the Lord coming in glory, “Wherefore art thou red in
thine apparel, and thy garments like him that treadeth in the winefat?” (Isaiah
63:2) I think the image of Christ washing his garments in wine could
convey how His sacrifice for sins sanctified Him. It may also prophesy of the purple robe He was clothed in as
the soldiers mocked Him at His trial.
His eyes shall
be red with wine, and his teeth white with milk.
This is unfamiliar, so it is puzzling,
but I think we can get it if we consider the symbolism of the body parts
involved and how it relates to Christ’s mission.
Eyes are about vision and seeing what’s
ahead. The red and wine continues
the association with blood and suffering.
Christ constantly had His sacrifice in mind during His ministry and he
was always reminding the disciples about it. We might even say He was drunk with it.
Teeth chew and are needed for starting
to digest food. Milk symbolizes
the very basic doctrine of the gospel.
Christ was way into this doctrinal milk (the atonement) and perhaps a
modern equivalent might be “he has a milk mustache of doctrinal milk.”
As we can see, Jacob had a thorough
testimony of Christ, of His premortal glory, His sacrifice, His ministry, His
death, His resurrection, and His final triumphant rule, and he crammed it all
in a blessing to Judah using imagery that is so dense with meaning that Isaiah
almost seems like a kindergarten reader by comparison.
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