part0078

The Myth: Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise: thy hand shall be in the neck of thine enemies; thy fathers children shall bow down before thee. 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? 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. (Gen. 49:8–10)

The Reality: This prophecy was made by a Shilohite priest opposed to King Solomon and put into the mouth of Jacob.

With Reuben, Simeon, and Levi disenfranchised by Jacob, Judah emerged to the fore. Although Joseph remained heir to the blessing, Jacob declared that the sceptre would not depart from Judah. If Joseph carried the blessing and the covenant, what did it mean that Judah inherited the sceptre?

The sceptre symbolized the kingship and, not surprisingly, David and Solomon came from the tribe of Judah. But Israel didn’t have a king for hundreds of years after the Exodus, and a significant faction of the Israelites objected to the institution of kingship.

While the prophecy says that the sceptre shall not depart from Judah, according to the Bible, the first king, Saul, came from the tribe of Benjamin. The sceptre had departed from Judah. When Saul died, his son, also a Benjaminite, succeeded him, while David only ruled in Judah. It was not until two years after Saul’s death that David become king over all of Israel.

If Jacob uttered this prophecy, his forecasting skills were seriously impaired. Anyone predicting that the sceptre would not leave Judah would have to have done so from the perspective of the sceptre already being in Judah, sometime after David ascended the throne (but not necessarily during David’s reign). But that is not the case. More importantly, Jacob’s prophecy is conditional. The sceptre would remain with Judah and law would issue from his family only “until Shiloh come.” When would that be? Is this some apocalyptic vision?

Shiloh was a key cult site in Israel before the monarchy. Prior to that time, the Ark of the Covenant was housed there. When Solomon was king, Ahijah, a Shilohite priest, designated Jeroboam of Ephraim to lead Israel out of Judah’s camp. When Solomon died, Jeroboam did lead a civil war and Israel seceded from Judah.

The prophesy, therefore, reflects a Shilohite point of view and suggests that it was uttered during the reign of Solomon or immediately thereafter. It recognizes Solomon as the lawful king but predicts that Judah’s authority will end when Shiloh, in Ephramite territory, moves back into prominence, which was what happened under Jeroboam.