The Fulfillment of Prophecy

49So they finished distributing the land for inheritance by its borders. The children of Israel gave an inheritance to Joshua the son of Nun among them. 50According to Yahweh’s commandment, they gave him the city which he asked, even Timnathserah in the hill country of Ephraim; and he built the city, and lived there. 51These are the inheritances, which Eleazar the priest, Joshua the son of Nun, and the heads of the fathers’ houses of the tribes of the children of Israel, distributed for inheritance by lot in Shiloh before Yahweh, at the door of the Tent of Meeting. So they finished dividing the land.

Jacob grew up watching the faith of his grandfather Abraham and his father Isaac, and not once did he doubt that God is alive. He and his brother Esau were both taught by their father about God’s grace and blessing, and knowing how wonderful the grace of God is, Jacob wanted the blessing of the firstborn for himself. Unlike his brother, who loved hunting and roamed the open country, Jacob stayed at home helping his mother, and day after day he would have heard what a great grace the word of God is, and the blessing that flows from it. So he cared deeply about the blessing God gives the firstborn. Esau, on the other hand, paid it little attention, since as the firstborn he took it for granted that the firstborn’s blessing would be his.

One day Jacob gave his hungry brother a bowl of lentil stew and bought the birthright he had wanted so badly. Esau, for his part, agreed so readily when Jacob proposed the trade that he seems to have taken it as a joke. Yet the blessing of the firstborn that God promised is never given to someone simply for being born first, and we must never take it for granted.

Before he died, Isaac meant to bless his firstborn, and Rebekah overheard him telling Esau that if he prepared savory food for him, he would bless him. Rebekah had always loved Jacob. While Esau was out hunting, she covered Jacob’s hands and neck with the skins of young goats to make him look like his hairy brother. Jacob carried the savory food and bread in to his father Isaac, whose eyes were so poor he could hardly tell one person from another. He deceived his father and received the blessing in his brother’s place.

When his mother Rebekah proposed disguising him as his brother, Jacob could easily have refused. But if only he could have the firstborn’s blessing, he wanted it even at the cost of deceiving his father. People say Jacob was the man who deceived his father and stole his brother’s blessing. Yet God blessed Jacob, who strove to be clothed in his grace, and from this we learn that God’s grace goes to those who long for it with all their heart. Rather than rebuke Jacob for scheming to deceive God and his father, we should ask whether we long for God’s grace as earnestly as he did. Then we would understand how much Jacob loved God.

Born the firstborn, Esau stood to receive his father’s wealth, and the authority of the firstborn besides, as a free gift, and he treasured none of it and gave no thanks for any of it. Why should he? It was all his without the least effort. Jacob, though a twin, could not receive the grace God and his father would give, for no other reason than that he was born a little later. How hard Jacob must have labored to receive God’s grace, how he must have treasured the word and prayed — we can tell from the fact that God gave Jacob the blessing of heaven in Esau’s place. Nothing in God’s grace is ours by right. We must remember that if we do not guard what we have received with a thankful heart, even all of it can be taken from us.

Bitter at losing the blessing, Esau set out to kill Jacob, and Jacob, as his mother Rebekah earnestly begged him, fled to the house of his uncle Laban. There he kept sheep for twenty years and gained four wives and eleven sons, but he could not go home, because he was afraid of his brother.

On the way to Haran, Jacob took a stone and fell asleep, and in a dream an angel of God spoke to him: he was Yahweh, the God of his grandfather Abraham and the God of Isaac, and he would give the land Jacob was lying on to him and to his descendants. He promised, too, that he would be with Jacob and keep him wherever he went, that he would bring him back to this land, and that he would not leave him until he had done all he had promised. Remarkably, God was making to Jacob the very promise he had once made to Abraham.

When Jacob woke, he was afraid. He set up the stone he had used as a pillow as a pillar and prayed that if God would keep him and bring him back in peace to his father’s house, Yahweh would be his God forever. He also vowed that of all God gave him, he would surely give a tenth back to God. Even then he did not know how long a road he would have to travel to receive the blessing of the firstborn.

Jacob told Pharaoh king of Egypt that the years of his pilgrimage were one hundred thirty, and that tells us how long he had lived through years of hardship. Perhaps Jacob imagined that once the birthright was his, he would enjoy wealth and hold power all his life. But the birthright Jacob received demanded a heart large enough to hold God’s plan, and a faith equal to the task.

Look at the life of Esau, lived with no thought of God, and you see why God gave Jacob the birthright, and why he trained him so particularly in Laban’s house. The reason is that God chose to make his firstborn not worldly Esau but Jacob, who at least was trying to live his life in God.

In his twenty years in Laban’s house Jacob took four wives, and through those women he gained the sons who would become the fathers of Israel. It all looks like people’s own planning and achievement, yet Jacob’s life shows us a God who was at work through those very years.

Jacob came to the end of his long and troubled life in the refuge his son Joseph had prepared for him in Egypt. Before he died, he called his twelve sons together and, with the wisdom God had given him, blessed each according to his measure. As he laid his hands on his sons with death before him, many memories must have come back to him: how he had deceived his brother and had to flee in order to receive the blessing of God and of his father, the wrongs he suffered in his uncle Laban’s house, and how sorry he felt when his brother Esau forgave him.

One hundred thirty years is by no means a short time. Jacob deceived his brother because he wanted the blessing God gives, and when he fled to his uncle’s house, he had to bear the grief of not being with his mother when she died. His years in a foreign land were one long round of pain, hardship, and loneliness. Yet he longed for God’s grace, and that longing brought him at last to a moment of joy: his sons seated together before him, and he blessing them in the name of God.

Genesis 49 records in detail the scene of Jacob blessing his sons. Drawing on the lives they had lived until then, Jacob told them plainly what kind of lives lay ahead of them and what grace God would give them. Every one of those prophecies was fulfilled by the twelve tribes that entered Canaan.

Genesis 49:5-7

5“Simeon and Levi are brothers. Their swords are weapons of violence. 6My soul, don’t come into their council. My glory, don’t be united to their assembly; for in their anger they killed men. In their self-will they hamstrung cattle. 7Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce; and their wrath, for it was cruel. I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel.

In Genesis 49:5-7 Jacob prophesied in this way about Simeon and Levi. They were sons of Leah, Jacob’s first wife. Jacob rebuked them so severely, in words close to a curse, because they had deceived and killed not only Shechem, the prince who had violated their sister Dinah, but every man who lived in Shechem. Simeon and Levi were avenging their sister, but in God’s sight they had committed murder in a rage they would not restrain, and their descendants reaped the fruit of the wrath they sowed that day.

Just as Jacob prophesied that they would be scattered in Israel, the tribe of Simeon received its share within the inheritance given to Judah, but could not hold that land. In the end it was absorbed into Judah and disappeared. Levi, too, was divided in Jacob, as the prophecy said: receiving no land of its own, it came to live scattered among forty-eight cities given up by each of the tribes. Although Simeon and Levi lived scattered because of their own sin, God seems to have loved them to the end. We can say so because Simeon came to live alongside Judah, the tribe from which the Messiah would come, and the tribe of Levi received the office of priest for the sins of every tribe. Both show that God gave them a chance, so that in the end he could forgive their sin.

Nor, it seems, was this Simeon’s only sin. When his brothers came down to Egypt to buy grain, Joseph took Simeon from among them as a hostage, on condition that they bring their youngest brother Benjamin. Thinking Joseph was an Egyptian who could not understand their language, the brothers began to argue about what had happened when they sold him. Reuben, the eldest, who had tried to keep them from harming Joseph, rebuked his younger brothers: he had told them not to kill Joseph, but they would not listen, and now his blood was being required of all of them. In spite of their eldest brother’s protest, the younger ones had meant to kill Joseph.

When I see that Joseph singled out Simeon of all his brothers as the hostage, I wonder whether Simeon had done Joseph some great wrong, since the one with enough power to defy the eldest brother was most likely the second son, Simeon. I suspect, too, that it was Simeon who stripped Joseph of his tunic of many colors and cruelly threw him into the empty pit. Genesis 37:27-28 says that when Judah asked his brothers what profit there would be in killing their brother and proposed selling Joseph to the Ishmaelites instead, the others listened to him. The decision was not in their hands. While Judah was still urging them not to kill him, they saw Midianite merchants passing by and sold Joseph for twenty pieces of silver. Scripture then records that Reuben came back afterward and grieved, believing Joseph was dead.

Judah, the fourth son, had proposed selling Joseph as a slave to keep him from being killed, so the ones who sold Joseph for twenty pieces of silver must have been the second son, Simeon, and the third, Levi. These were all sons of Leah, the first wife. That is why Jacob gave Simeon and Levi rebuke rather than blessing: they had stood in the way of God’s great purpose.

God’s plan, of course, was for Joseph to go ahead of the rest of the family to Egypt and establish himself there so that he could bring them down. But Simeon and Levi, his own brothers, did evil with no regard for God’s will, and for that neither they nor their descendants received the blessing. As Jacob had prophesied, Simeon and Levi ended up scattered, with no land of their own.

Simeon was the name Leah gave her son in her joy that God had heard her desperate prayer, for she bore him at a time of bitter injustice and pain. Simeon, then, ought to have lived a life of compassion for those who mourn, setting right the wrongs done to them. Yet this was the man who sold his brother Joseph, and who committed that wicked deed against the men of Shechem: he lied that if they were circumcised he would give them his sister Dinah in marriage, and when they believed him and were circumcised, he killed every one of them. For God’s people, whose God is the Lord of life, to take a life without a moment’s hesitation for the sake of personal revenge is something that can never be forgiven. Spiritual wisdom, for those who belong to God, means discerning what God wants now rather than following their own feelings.

If we look at the whole picture of God’s plan, he intended to send Joseph to Egypt so that he could call Jacob’s family to Goshen. But there was no need for Simeon to take part in fulfilling that plan by committing a wicked sin. Because God brings his own plans to pass, the wicked, like Judas Iscariot or Simeon, receive no blessing even when they are used in God’s work.

When Moses blessed Israel in Deuteronomy 33, Simeon was left out of the blessings his brothers received. Although Joseph’s going to Egypt was God’s good plan, Simeon sold him there out of real hatred, with an evil heart that wanted him dead, and because of that he did not receive the blessing God gives. Two men may hoe the same field and yet be divided into good and evil according to their faith. In the same way, Joseph’s going to Egypt was settled whether or not Simeon sold him, and Simeon had no need to become an instrument of evil. A hot temper, then, keeps us from receiving even the blessing God has prepared, the blessing that would have been ours as a matter of course. Simeon’s sin kept his descendants from blessing as well. This is how those who are not gentle fail to receive God’s blessing.

I hope you will have a more generous, forgiving heart, and the wisdom to repay grace with grace. The reason is simple: the saints God has blessed all had gentle, humble, and thankful spirits.

Genesis 49:20

20“Asher’s food will be rich. He will produce royal dainties.

Unlike Simeon, born of Jacob’s chief wife, Asher was the son of Zilpah, Jacob’s concubine. Though his position was far less favorable than Simeon’s, Jacob said that his food would be so rich that he would provide royal dainties. When Israel came out of Egypt, the descendants of Asher numbered 41,500, and by the time they entered Canaan they had grown to 53,400. The land Asher received was rich, fertile soil, and its harvests were so plentiful that King Solomon even supplied Hiram king of Tyre with grain grown by the tribe of Asher.

Scripture does not tell us much about Asher, but from the blessing Jacob gave him we can tell that he was meek and upright. Jacob blessed him by saying he would have charge of the food the king eats, and that reveals how honest and gentle Asher was, and how much Jacob trusted him. Jacob looked at the lives his twelve sons had lived until then, at their character and their faith, and gave each the blessing that was fitting. The blessings differed because each son had lived either by his own will and his own ideas or with God at the center.

Seven tribes had not yet received their land in Canaan, so Joshua told them to map out the land and bring the description back to him. When the land was divided by lot, the tribe of Judah found its portion more than enough and shared land with the tribe of Simeon. Simeon’s failure to receive a territory of its own fulfilled the prophecy that had left Simeon out when Moses blessed each tribe. Seeing prophecy fulfilled in this way, we know that if we are to receive God’s blessing, we must live according to his will today — no, right now. As we watch Simeon’s descendants miss the blessing, let us take to heart that we must live a life that is whole before God.

Genesis 49:8,10

8“Judah, your brothers will praise you. Your hand will be on the neck of your enemies. Your father’s sons will bow down before you. 10The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs. To him will the obedience of the peoples be.

Judah, whose name means “praise,” received a great blessing from Jacob, quite unlike the rebuke his older brothers received. When his brothers meant to kill Joseph, he did all he could to stop them. And when Joseph demanded that they bring Benjamin and Jacob was afraid Benjamin would die, Judah reassured his father by pledging his own life as surety. It was through the descendants of Judah, a man with a good heart who gave himself up for others and loved souls, that the Messiah came. Just as hard-hearted Simeon and Judah, who strove to save a soul, acted differently, so their descendants received blessing in very different measure. People judge and decide lightly, but the blessing and the woe that come from God, who sees it all, are as far apart as heaven and earth. So let us consider once more whether the judgments and decisions we are making now are grounded in the word.

Joshua 19:49

49So they finished distributing the land for inheritance by its borders. The children of Israel gave an inheritance to Joshua the son of Nun among them.

Israel had conquered Canaan and finished dividing the land. Jacob’s prophecy had come true, and at the same time Moses’ blessing had been fulfilled. Only after all the Israelites had received their portions did Joshua choose a city for himself to live in. Even the city Joshua received was not in good condition, so he rebuilt it before settling there. Joshua, who did his utmost to see that the people received their portions first, is a model for leaders, a man to whom God could entrust anything. Now that Israel had received all the land that was to be its inheritance, God’s promise had at last been fulfilled.

Because every promise of God, whatever it may be, will surely come to pass, you must prepare a faith large enough to receive it when you come before him, a faith born again of the Spirit and the truth. The promise we have received will surely come to pass as well. God’s promise to lead us into the New Jerusalem may seem out of sight for now, but the day will come when you see it with your own eyes. Only by living wisely, preparing for that day, will you be spared regret. Blessing is received in the measure we have prepared for it, and that is why the measure of blessing differs even among us.

We must always live faithfully, because God sees it all — whether his people have truly believed in him and depended on him, whether they have spent their days honestly and humbly, whether they have judged and decided by the word — and pours out his grace accordingly. The blessings of the world are like a fog that blocks our view, or a heavy snowfall that whitens everything: they make us think we have received a great deal, but when God sends his strong sunlight, the fog and the snow alike vanish. The blessing God gives, however, is like a waterfall pouring down from a high mountain. Its stream never fails, which is why we can live without ever going thirsty.

The birthright blessing Jacob wanted so badly meant hardship in this world, yet all his descendants entered Canaan, the land of promise. You have received God’s promise. I hope you will always live by the word and become saints who shine all the brighter the more God blesses you.

May you believe that the life of a saint clothed in God’s grace is always answered prayer, always blessing, always peace, and may you live that life to the full. I bless you in the name of Jesus Christ.