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1 And Jacob called his sons and said, "Gather together, that I may tell you what shall befall you in the last days: 2 Gather together and hear, you sons of Jacob, and listen to Israel your father. 3 Reuben, you are my firstborn, my might and the beginning of my strength, the excellency of dignity and the excellency of power. 4 Unstable as water, you shall not excel, 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; instruments of cruelty are in their dwelling place. 6 Let not my soul enter their council; let not my honor be united to their assembly; for in their anger they slew a man, and in their self-will they hamstrung an ox. 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." ~ Genesis 49:1-7
Today, we transition into Genesis 49 where the sons of Jacob are being given a history lesson of God's faithfulness. Following that Jacob pronounced blessing upon each of his sons. These blessings were actually prophetic utterances of what the sons should have expected in the remaining days of their lives. Jacob himself had been in some hard spots during his life but he discovered through it all that the God of the Bible was "the Stone of Israel." Today, we will consider Jacob's blessing upon just three of his twelve sons.
In v.1-2 of today's passage we read, "1 And Jacob called his sons and said, 'Gather together, that I may tell you what shall befall you in the last days: 2 Gather together and hear, you sons of Jacob, and listen to Israel your father.'"
In this chapter, the names Jacob and Israel are both used five times. The usage of these names illustrates the civil war that exists in every believer in the Lord Jesus. As Jacob, he was the man who fed his flesh or the evil desires within. As Israel, he fed the Spirit of God who worked in his life. As Jacob, he was defined by sin and as Israel he was defined by God. With this as the background, Jacob called his sons into his presence so that he could pronounce upon them divinely inspired blessings that would prove to be prophetic.
In v.1, Jacob used the phrase "in the last days." This is the first of 16 times that this phrase is used in the Bible. Despite the fact that portions of this prophecy extend well beyond our time here on earth, they will be fulfilled in Israel’s later history during the Tribulation and the Millennium.
In v.3-4 of today's passage we read, "3 Reuben, you are my firstborn, my might and the beginning of my strength, the excellency of dignity and the excellency of power. 4 Unstable as water, you shall not excel, because you went up to your father’s bed; then you defiled it — he went up to my couch."
The firstborn son of Jacob was Reuben. Since he was the firstborn, he should have been blessed with the rights of a first born which included the birthright, the priesthood, and the kingdom. But Reuben disqualified himself due to his sexual indiscretion. Jacob described him as "boiling over like water" which means Reuben was unstable in how he conducted himself. Jacob was saying that Reuben couldn’t control himself. As a result, nothing of superiority or excellence is noted concerning Reuben in the rest of the Bible. Not even one person of renown came from him. At the same time, two of the Bible’s most noted bad men, Dathan and Abiram, who came against Moses later, came from Reuben's lineage.
In these last words ever uttered to his oldest son, Jacob used the third person as if Reuben was not even in the room when he was saying these words. Jacob's disgust of Reuben's actions was clear. Later, Reuben and his tribe would be separated from the land of Canaan by the Jordan River. His inheritance forever remained on the eastside of the Jordan. It was as if he and his people were always on the outside looking in. Reuben, when he had his sexual fun was in search of intimacy. Sadly, that was what he lacked for the remainder of his days.
In v.5-7 of today's passage we read, "5 Simeon and Levi are brothers; instruments of cruelty are in their dwelling place. 6 Let not my soul enter their council; let not my honor be united to their assembly; for in their anger they slew a man, and in their self-will they hamstrung an ox. 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."
Here Jacob blessed his next two sons, Simeon and Levi. He blessed them together. Of all the sons to be blessed by Israel, only Simeon and Levi are united in a single blessing rather than individually. They were sons of the same mother, and they together killed all the men of Shechem in response to the rape of their sister Dinah by the man named Shechem. Because of their actions Jacob described them as "instruments of cruelty."
Since Simeon and Levi killed the entire city of men with the sword, Jacob removed them from their positions of honor that should have followed Reuben’s disqualification. Jacob was careful to curse their emotions and not the sons. Even in his condemnation of their actions, he still granted them the blessing of the covenant. They were family but they failed to make choices accordingly. Throughout the Bible we learn that there is a place for wrath. It is the obvious result of offense, but wrath is to be tempered and appropriate to the situation. In the case of these two brothers, they allowed their wrath to make a mockery of justice. This cost them a prominent blessing from their father. Instead, in their blessing, came a prophetic rebuke concerning the generations which followed them.
Jacob’s words to Reuben, Simeon, and Levi were more like anti-blessings. Reuben lost the rights of the firstborn because he had sex with his father’s wife. Simeon and Levi lost their positions as next in line because they murdered the men of the city of Shechem. The tribe of Simeon virtually disappeared from the biblical narrative after the conquest of the promised land under Joshua. And, the tribe of Levi had no inheritance in the promised land.
The prophetic blessings of Reuben, Simeon and Levi point to the future history of their people and they also point us to the work of God in the Lord Jesus Christ that was required to redeem us from our sinful ways. Time and time again, God allows us to pursue the definitions of this world so that we would hopefully be redirected to His Son. Through the destruction that sin brings, God desires to awaken us out of our sleep and to prompt us to be defined by Him. Without the Lord Jesus Christ in our lives, there is no lasting purpose and there is no ultimate point to our existence. But in the Lord Jesus there is eternal hope, abounding peace and enthusiastic joy due to His abiding presence in our yielded lives.
