GENESIS 49 - Famous Last Words

Introduction

Last July, Pastor John MacArthur of Grace Community Church passed into the presence of His Savior. According to his family members, he spent his last moments in this world meditating on a verse from the passage that we read earlier in our worship: 1 Corinthians 15:55:

1 Corinthians 15:55 LSB

“O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”

His last words, between gasps for air, were “I feel no sting. I feel no fear.” To his oldest son Matt he said: “Son, be faithful”.

We treasure the last words of people who are important to us—I will always remember the last conversation I had with Dad. I asked him how to figure out what was the most important thing to focus my limited energy on, and he said, “Take good care of your mother. And take good care of me.” Those words will stick with me until the day I die.

Here in Genesis 49 we have the last words of Jacob—the last of the patriarchs of Abraham’s family. Last words are powerful, and of all of the patriarchs, only Jacob’s last words are preserved for us in Holy Scripture.

Not only that, but Jacob’s last words are even more remarkable because they are the first instance in Scripture where we see a man uttering prophecy about the future. To this point there have been only two other places where a prophecy about the future has been proclaimed, and both of them are spoken by God Himself—the prophecy of the seed of the woman bruising the head of the serpent in Genesis 3:15, and the prophecy of Israel’s 400 year captivity that He spoke to Abraham in Genesis 15:13-14. But this is the first time that a mortal man, Jacob, utters prophecies about what is going to happen to his sons and their descendants in the future.

But the most remarkable thing about Jacob’s last words—what draws us to these verses and fills us with hope this morning—is that Jacob’s last words give us the clearest picture yet in Genesis of the Promised Seed of Abraham’s family, the One Who was coming to bring blessing to all the families of the earth.

What I want to show you on this Resurrection Sunday is that here in Jacob’s last words to his family

God has the LAST WORD in declaring your REDEMPTION from DEATH

In Verses 1-2 the stage is set: Jacob is calling his sons to his death-bed. He knows his time is drawing to an end, and he is ready. The former schemer is ready to speak truth; his former unbelief and anxiety have been replaced by peace and assurance. Jacob the supplanter has become Israel the one who has wrestled with God and been overcome. He is at peace, he is ready to be gathered to his fathers, and so now Israel gathers his sons together to speak to them about the coming fulfillment of YHWH’s promises to bless His people:

Genesis 49:1–2 LSB

Then Jacob summoned his sons and said, “Gather together that I may tell you what will befall you in the last days. “Assemble together and hear, O sons of Jacob; And listen to Israel your father.

And as Israel speaks his last words to each of his sons in turn, he speaks with the authority of the patriarch. These are the words that his sons will carry with them through the rest of their lives—last words that will define those men and the generations that follow them.

And in the next five verses Israel the patriarch speaks hard words to his oldest sons about

I. The CONSEQUENCES of REBELLING against God (Genesis 49:1-7)

In Verse 3, Jacob turns to address his firstborn son, Reuben:

Genesis 49:3 LSB

“Reuben, you are my firstborn; My might and the beginning of my vigor, Preeminent in dignity and preeminent in strength.

The firstborn son is the one to receive the double portion; the one to inherit the greater part of the authority over the family; the one who is to lead with the dignity and strength of his father. But in the next verse Jacob speaks words showing us that

RECKLESSNESS wastes great POTENTIAL (vv. 3-4)

Reuben was to be preeminent in the family; he grew up with all of his fathers might, strength, dignity and power—but he threw it all away:

Genesis 49:4 LSB

“Uncontrolled 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.

Reuben had it all, and he threw it all away on one night of pleasure with Bilhah, Jacob’s concubine. Tradition tells us he was anywhere from sixteen to twenty one years old at the time—one impulsive act of sexual sin ruined his life forever. The last words that his father ever said to him were “You are as reckless and uncontrolled as flood waters, and you will never distinguish yourself or have any recognition in this family.”

Follow Reuben’s descendants through the rest of the Old Testament, and you will find it to be true— no judge, no prophet, no military commander, no king, no leader ever emerged from the tribe of Reuben. The best known members of the Reubenites were Dathan and Abiram, who recklessly rebelled against Moses’ authority in Numbers 16 (and under whose feet the ground gave way, plunging them directly into Sheol).

When it came time to enter the Promised Land, Reuben’s tribe once again demonstrated their reckless unfaithfulness, turning down the promised land beyond the Jordan and deciding to remain outside Canaan in Joshua 22. When Deborah the prophetess called for military action against Sisera in the Book of Judges, they made great promises to come and fight, but instead wound up “[sitting] among the sheepfolds to hear the whistling for the flocks” (Judges 5:16). Unstable as water, the tribe of Reuben never had preeminence among the tribes of Jacob’s sons.

In verses 5-7, Jacob turns to his next two sons, Simeon and Levi, to speak his last words to them. His last words to Reuben were to tell him how his recklessness had destroyed his great potential. His last words to Simeon and Levi are even harder—the last thing they ever hear their father say to them is that

VIOLENCE causes bitter ISOLATION (vv. 5-7)

Genesis 49:5–6 LSB

“Simeon and Levi are brothers; Their swords are implements of violence. “Let my soul not enter into their council; Let not my glory be united with their assembly; Because in their anger they killed men, And in their self-will they hamstrung oxen.

Just as Reuben had lost his place in Jacob’s affections because of his sexual sin, so Simeon and Levi lost their place in their father’s eyes through their shocking acts of violence against their Canaanite neighbors. We read the account in Genesis 34—the prince of the Canaanite tribe of the Hivites seduced their sister Dinah, and in revenge Simeon and Levi crafted an elaborate scheme to convince the Hivites that Dinah could lawfully marry the prince if his people joined the Covenant of Abraham through circumcision. So the Hivites went along with it, and when the men were laid up in pain from the procedure Simeon and Levi went in and slaughtered the entire city (Genesis 34:20).

To put this into perspective for us as Christians, this would be like plotting to kill someone you hated by preaching the Gospel to them so that when they became a believer you could get them into the baptismal to drown them. This is what Simeon and Levi did—used the sign of the Old Covenant as a murder weapon. Their blasphemy toward YHWH and their hatred of their Canaanite neighbors and the wanton destruction of their city (cutting the tendons of their oxen so that they could never plow, plant or harvest again) was so shocking that Jacob’s last words to them were to tell them he wanted nothing to do with them:

Genesis 49:6 LSB

“Let my soul not enter into their council; Let not my glory be united with their assembly; Because in their anger they killed men, And in their self-will they hamstrung oxen.

And just as they destroyed the Hivite city of Shechem and murdered their men and scattered the rest, so the curse of their violent anger would haunt them and their descendants for generations:

Genesis 49:7 LSB

“Cursed be their anger, for it is strong; And their wrath, for it is cruel. I will divide them amongst Jacob, And scatter them in Israel.

Once again we can trace the history of these tribes and see how Jacob’s last words were borne out in their descendants’ lives. When the children of Israel returned to Canaan in the Book of Joshua, Simeon’s tribe received no land of their own; they were given cities scattered throughout the territory of Judah’s tribe, but never held a land they could call their own (Joshua 19:1, 9). In the same way, Levi’s tribe received no land inheritance; all they received were forty-eight cities to live in, scattered throughout all the land (Joshua 20).

Simeon and Levi’s violent anger created a rift between them and their father—between them and their family—a separation and isolation that would endure for generations. The last words that Simeon and Levi heard from their father was “You are violent, angry and bloodthirsty men, and I want nothing to do with you—and neither do your brothers.”

Jacob’s last words to his sons carried weighty consequences—the consequences of rebelling against God. Reuben and Simeon and Levi would carry those last words from their father through the rest of their lives, and the consequences of their sin would echo down through the generations of their descendants.

In Verses 8-12, Jacob turns to speak his last words to his fourth son, Judah—a man who was guilty of his own immorality as well. Reuben committed incest with Bilhah; Judah committed incest with Tamar (Genesis 38). Simeon and Levi committed violence against the Shechemites, Judah was ready to murder his own brother Joseph in Genesis 37. But when Israel the patriarch speaks his last words to Judah, he speaks

II. The BLESSINGS of the MERCIES of God (Genesis 49:8-12)

We have already seen the transformation that has taken place in Judah over the course of this series; in Genesis 44 we see how God regenerated Judah’s heart—a heart of repentance for his sin, a heart of honesty about his character, a heart of sacrifice for his brothers. In Genesis 44 Judah was utterly changed from the inside out by the grace of God working in his life, and Jacob’s last words to his son establish his place of preeminence that his brother Reuben had lost:

Genesis 49:8 LSB

“Judah, as for you, your brothers shall praise you; Your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies; Your father’s sons shall bow down to you.

Judah was as guilty and violent and lustful and deceptive as the rest of his brothers—but even as vile as he was, God had mercy on him ad his descendants! Simeon and Levi’s descendents will be scattered, but

Judah’s seed will be PRAISED (v. 8)

When he was born, his mother Leah said “This time I will praise YHWH” (Genesis 29:35)—the name “Judah” means “praised”, and Jacob uses that name to foretell that Judah will receive the praise of all his brothers—including the older brothers who forfeited their rights to be praised. Judah will step into his father’s authority to be the tribe that rules over the nation. His oldest brother Reuben’s seed will sink into obscurity, but

Judah’s seed will be POWERFUL (vv. 9-10)

The image that Jacob describes in the next two verses will forever be associated with Judah from this moment on:

Genesis 49:9–10 LSB

“Judah is a lion’s whelp; From the prey, my son, you have gone up. He crouches, he lies down as a lion, And as a lioness, who dares rouse him up? “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, Nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, Until Shiloh comes, And to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.

The image of a lion, powerful and terrifying, rising up from the prey it has just taken, is the image that Jacob uses to describe his son Judah. And in Verse 10 Jacob prophesies that the tribe of Judah will produce all of the kings of the nation—the scepter of royal power will not depart from Judah’s sons—David, Solomon, Rehoboam and all the line of the faithful kings throughout the rest of the Old Testament kingdom will come from this man. In fact, after the rest of Israel turned away from YHWH in the great civil war after Solomon’s death, the faithful tribes that remained in Jerusalem were called “The kingdom of Judah”.

Jacob says that royal right to rule—that scepter—will not leave Judah’s descendants “until Shiloh comes”—other translations say “until the one it belongs to arrives”, and then to Him shall be the obedience of the peoples. Judah’s descendants will keep the throne and the royal line alive until the King, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, comes to claim it.

In Verses 11-12 Jacob tells Judah that his descendents will bear the marks of royal wealth and abundance throughout their days—his older brothers’ tribes will be never be established in their own lands, but

Judah’s seed will be PROSPEROUS (vv. 11-12)

Genesis 49:11–12 LSB

“He ties his foal to the vine, And his donkey’s colt to the choice vine; He washes his garments in wine, And his robes in the blood of grapes. “His eyes are dark from wine, And his teeth white from milk.

There are three pictures of prosperity here in these verses—the image of tying a donkey to a grapevine is a metaphor for abundance: Judah will have so much land, and so many vineyards, that he can easily afford to use a vine trellis as a hitching post for his donkey. The donkey can eat the leaves and trample the vine and smash the grapes all he wants; there are plenty more where that one came from!

The same point is being made when Jacob says that Judah will use wine to wash his laundry—wine was a measure of a person’s wealth, and Judah’s descendants will be so prosperous that wine will be as common as water for them. And their prosperity will result in great health—sparkling eyes and white teeth. Jacob’s last words to Judah were promises of God’s great merciful blessings that would follow down the generations of his tribe until his greatest Son arrives to claim his throne.

So here we have Jacob’s last words to his sons—the rest of his sons receive their blessings and prophecies on down through the rest of the chapter. But we have to consider here the stark contrast between the last words to Reuben and Simeon and Levi and the last words spoken to Judah—Judah was no less a violent, lustful, dishonest man than they were. Is Jacob (not to mention God Himself) simply being capricious here? Is He just looking the other way at Judah’s sin while holding his brothers accountable for their sin?

Why does Judah seem to suffer no consequences for his wicked behavior, while his brothers have to bear every bit of the consequences for theirs? The answer to that question is the answer that the entire sweep of Holy Scripture—from Genesis through Revelation—was written to answer. How does a sinful, wicked, lustful, violent rebel become a blessed, precious son of God? Are we doomed for our sinful past to have the last word in our lives?

This is the Good News that we have from God’s Word, that your wretched past does not have to have the last word in your destiny—God does!

Jacob spoke his last words to Reuben and Simeon and Levi about the consequences of their rebellion; he spoke to Judah about the blessings of God’s mercy—God has the last word in all of it because of

III. The VICTORY won by the LION of Judah

At the other end of the Scriptures, in the Book of Revelation, we read of “The Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Root of David, Who has overcome” (Rev. 5:5). The Lion that Jacob saw so dimly at the end of his days in Genesis is revealed to be the One Who has overcome where every other son of Jacob—every other son of Adam and daughter of Eve—has failed.

Consider how Jacob’s firstborn son Reuben lost everything because of his reckless, lustful sin—but look to the Lion of Judah and you will see

The OBEDIENCE of the FIRSTBORN son (cp. Jn. 6:38-39; Gal. 4:4-5)

Christ kept the law you could not keep—He was faithful where you were reckless. He said of Himself in John 6,

John 6:38–39 LSB

“For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. “Now this is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day.

Jesus Christ perfectly obeyed the full Law of God—ceremonial, civil and moral—so that you and I could be counted as God’s obedient sons!

Galatians 4:4–5 LSB

But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.

Your reckless disobedience, your and guilt and shame, do not have to have the last word in your life, because of the obedience of the firstborn son, the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

The victory won by the Lion of Judah came through His obedience as the firstborn Son—and that victory was won by Him as

The SUFFERING of the sinless VICTIM (cp. 1 Peter 3:18; 2 Cor. 5:21)

Jacob’s sons Simeon and Levi lost their relationship with their father because of the horrible, blasphemous violence they poured out on their victims—as a result they were scattered and isolated, estranged from their father.

But where they fell, the Lion of Judah was victorious:

1 Peter 3:18 LSB

For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, so that He might bring you to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit;

The shocking violence, the blasphemous hatred that Christ suffered while nailed to that Cross—he suffered that violence as an innocent victim. He suffered that violent hatred, helpless to defend Himself, like a lamb to the slaughter. And because He suffered as the Innocent Victim, with no sin of His own to suffer for, He suffered all of it on your behalf!

2 Corinthians 5:21 LSB

He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

This is the Gospel, beloved—this is the Good News that we have on this Resurrection Sunday: The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the grave means that the last word in the story of your life is not your sin, it is not your past, it is not your family history—the last word in your eternal destiny belongs to God alone!

The last words of Jacob spoke to his sons of the consequences of their sin, but the last words of Jesus Christ on the Cross— It is finished! means that He has paid your penalty; He has suffered for your sin, He has obeyed where you failed, and He will redeem your life from your sin and give you His righteousness!

The victory of the Lion of Judah means that He can redeem anything in your past and turn it to His glory and your joy. Consider for a moment the consequences that Jacob’s son Levi suffered for his violence in destroying the city of Shechem. His descendants never received any land in Canaan; instead they were scattered in 48 cities across the nation.

Jacob prophesied that Levi would be divided amongst Jacob and scattered in Israel—but God redeemed them in the midst of that scattering! Because instead of receiving land or possessions, YHWH said that HE HIMSELF would be their inheritance!

Joshua 13:33 LSB

But to the tribe of Levi, Moses did not give an inheritance; Yahweh, the God of Israel, is their inheritance, as He had promised to them.

They did not inherit land; they inherited the dwelling place of God on the earth, the tabernacle! And the cities they lived in were called the “Cities of Refuge”—places where someone with blood on his hands could go and be safe from the vengeance of the one he had killed.

Think about this—this is what God loves to do: Take a man who lost his relationship with his father and forfeited his right to land in Canaan because of his violent murder of a city full of helpless victims, and make his descendants the possessor of cities where manslayers could find refuge!

The last word in your life doesn’t have to be who you used to be or what has been done to you; you do not have to be defined by what your father was or what your family did. The last word in your life does not have to be the failures or the lusts or the violence or the isolation or the shame of your past: The last word of who you are and what you are rests with the victorious Lion of Judah Who died and rose again on this day for you!

Let Him have the last word in your life today—bring Him your sin, bring Him your reckless lusts, bring him your violent acts, bring Him the wounds of the violence you have suffered, bring Him your failure and doubt and unbelief and hypocrisy—lay it at His feet and plead with Him to wash all of it away by His blood. The Lion of the Tribe of Judah is

Zephaniah 3:17 LSB

“... A mighty one who will save. He will be joyful over you with gladness; He will be quiet in His love; He will rejoice over you with joyful singing.

Don’t turn away from Him today—let Him have the last word in your life. Come—and welcome!—to Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION

Ephesians 3:20–21 LSB

Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or understand, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.

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