03. The Promise of the Seed to Judah

The sceptre shall not depart from Judah,
Nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet,
Until Shiloh come:
And unto him shall the obedience of the peoples be.
(Gen 49:10 ASV)

Time flies… and sometimes crawls.

Time passes unevenly in the Bible narrative. Sometimes a couple of verses will encompass decades and sometimes a whole chapter will only record the happenings of a single day. Much has happened in the story by the time we get to the end of the First Book of Moses, Genesis. Our last pause in the unfolding story had Abraham and Isaac as its main theme, but by the time we reach today’s portion many years have passed. Abraham and Isaac are long dead and Isaac’s son Jacob is now an old man. Probably 200 years or more have passed. Jacob (renamed Israel by God) has gathered his sons together around his deathbed. In this last will and testament he delivers a remarkable speech.

First he disinherits his natural first-born, Reuben. Reuben ought to have had the blessing and the double portion of the first-born but Jacob gives headship to his fourth son, Judah, and gives the first-born’s double portion to Joseph! Seven centuries later the descendants of these two sons will become rival kingdoms: Israel (Joseph’s descendants) and Judah.

The ‘blessing’ of Judah illustrates an important Biblical truth. Western culture has generally told the story of history in a linear pattern: a straight line progression of one event followed by another. It gives history a backbone and helps us to keep things in chronological order. But God’s perspective is quite different.

‘But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.’ (2 Pet 3:8 NKJV)

At one and the same time God sees events in time-lapse and slow-motion. We see time from the inside; God sees time both from the inside and the outside… at the same time. When prophets proclaim the word of God, this feature often leaks through and events are not necessarily declared in our strict linear order.

A promise of a Messiah

Both Jewish and Christian commentators have been united in seeing in this verse the glint of a Messianic promise. It leaks through the linear time-based blessing and rises to a higher level. If we examine the single verse we see it is expressed in terms of authority and rule.

The sceptre shall not depart from Judah,
Nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet…

The sceptre is a symbol of authority and rule. It is the ‘ruler’s staff.’ It would be more than 600 years before this prophecy found its fulfilment in the coronation of David, a descendant of Judah. Before the time of the monarchy there was no ‘sceptre’ in Israel and no hereditary dynasty. The dynasty began with David and it continued, in the nation of Judah, for 400 hundred years until it was dissolved by the exile of the nation of Judah into Babylon. 400 years of blessing and disasters, of good and bad descendants of Judah and David, but nevertheless it survived until there was no way back.

‘…But they mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and scoffed at his prophets, until the wrath of Jehovah arose against his people, till there was no remedy.’ (2 Chr 36:16 ASV)

Or as the Hebrew has it; until there was no healing.

Until Shiloh comes

And then another 600 years without a descendant of Judah, without a son of David upon the throne. But God’s will is not to be thwarted by human failure and our verse continues…

‘…Until Shiloh come:
And unto him shall the obedience of the peoples be.’

The place of ‘Shiloh’ became the home of the Tabernacle during the time of the Judges but that is not what is in mind here. The word ‘Shiloh’ has been translated as ‘Peace-Maker.’ It comes from same roots as Shalom (peace), and our translators are pretty well unanimous in following the statement with the personal pronoun ‘him’; Shiloh here is not a place nor an event, it is a person.

‘And unto him shall the obedience of the peoples be.’

What promise is this?

A Peace-Maker to whom the peoples (plural) would be obedient? This is not a narrow promise for the descendants of Jacob, or as we generally call them, the children of Israel. This is a promise that encompasses all ‘peoples.’ Before the world had been divided into ‘the people’ and the ‘nations/Gentiles’ we have a promise here that has no such distinction in its view.

Joy… to the world

The scope of this promise is astounding but only the Peace-Maker can accomplish this. The United Nations, for all its good intentions, can never fulfil its hopes. Only Shiloh – the Peace-Maker – can accomplish this. And he will accomplish it, not by crushing one nation under the superior might of another, but as the peoples submit to the Peace-Maker.

‘Unto him shall the obedience of the peoples be.’

I am covenant-sensitive. I know that the promise of a people who, by instinct and choice, are obedient to God is something that the Old (Sinai) Covenant could never deliver. Not because God was unable but because the people were unwilling. As the epistle to the Hebrews tellingly expresses it…

‘Because finding fault with them, He says: “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah”’— (Heb 8:8 NKJV)

The prepositions are very significant. He does not find fault with ‘it’ but with ‘them.’ There was no fault in God, nor in the Sinai Covenant; the fault was with the people who were not obedient unto him. Here then we have a subtle promise of the New Covenant that is even older than the inception of the Old (Sinai) Covenant. A time is in view when a Peace-Maker would appear and the people being obedient to him they would find reconciliation between the Sinai Covenant people and the Gentiles.

‘…Having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity.’ (Eph 2:15–16 NKJV)

As a favourite chorus expresses it.

‘He is our peace
Who has broken down every wall…’

Unfinished conversations
I have a little phrase that I sometimes use to illustrate God’s faithful pursuit. In common with many preachers I find that people will share all kinds of things with me. Sometimes there are gaps of years between these conversations. The person with the need will recommence a conversation that literally ‘paused’ years ago. The preacher, especially as he gets older, is sometimes hard pressed to remember the earlier conversations. But I have noticed in God’s pursuit of lives that he frequently returns to a conversation that we thought had ended years ago. He takes up the conversation at the exact point it was ‘paused’ and continues, sometimes, as though it were uninterrupted.

It is so with the progressive revelation of the scriptures. A shining revelation seems to lie forgotten for hundreds of years in God’s dealings with his people and then, without warning, appears again. We see life’s tapestry from the front only and a coloured thread disappears from our view, but God has not broken the thread and, could we see it from his perspective, we would see that he is ever mindful of his promises.