THE SHEPHERD, THE STONE OF ISRAEL

'... The mighty God of Jacob. From thence is the Shepherd,

the stone of Israel.'--GENESIS xlix. 24.

A slight alteration in the rendering will probably bring out the

meaning of these words more correctly. The last two clauses should

perhaps not be read as a separate sentence. Striking out the supplement

'is,' and letting the previous sentence run on to the end of the verse,

we get a series of names of God, in apposition with each other, as the

sources of the strength promised to the arms of the hands of the

warlike sons of Joseph. From the hands of the mighty God of Jacob--from

thence, from the Shepherd, the stone of Israel--the power will come for

conflict and for conquest. This exuberant heaping together of names of

God is the mark of the flash of rapturous confidence which lit up the

dying man's thoughts when they turned to God. When he begins to think

of Him he cannot stay his tongue. So many aspects of His character, so

many remembrances of His deeds, come crowding into his mind; so

familiar and so dear are they, that he must linger over the words, and

strive by this triple repetition to express the manifold preciousness

of Him whom no name, nor crowd of names, can rightly praise. So earthly

love ever does with its earthly objects, inventing and reiterating

epithets which are caresses. Such repetitions are not tautologies, for

each utters some new aspect of the one subject, and comes from a new

gush of heart's love towards it. And something of the same rapture and

unwearied recurrence to the Name that is above every name should mark

the communion of devout souls with their heavenly Love. What a

wonderful burst of such praise flowed out from David's thankful heart,

in his day of deliverance, like some strong current, with its sevenfold

wave, each crested with the Name--'The Lord is my rock, and my

fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust;

my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.'

Those three names which we find here are striking and beautiful in

themselves; in their juxtaposition; in their use on Jacob's lips. They

seem to have been all coined by him, for, if we accept this song as a

true prophecy uttered by him, we have here the earliest instance of

their occurrence. They all have a history, and appear again expanded

and deepened in the subsequent revelation. Let us look at them as they

stand.

1. _The Mighty God of Jacob_.--The meaning of such a name is clear

enough. It is He who has shown Himself mighty and mine by His deeds for

me all through my life. The dying man's thoughts are busy with all that

past from the day when he went forth from the tent of Isaac, and took

of the stones of the field for his pillow when the sun went down. A

perplexed history it had been, with many a bitter sorrow, and many a

yet bitterer sin. Passionate grief and despairing murmurs he had felt

and flung out, while it slowly unfolded itself. When the Pharaoh had

asked, 'How old art thou?' he had answered in words which owe their

sombreness partly to obsequious assumption of insignificance in such a

presence, but have a strong tinge of genuine sadness in them too: 'Few

and evil have the days of the years of my life been.' But lying dying

there, with it all well behind him, he has become wiser; and now it all

looks to him as one long showing forth of the might of his God, who had

been with him all his life long, and had redeemed him from all evil. He

has got far enough away to see the lie of the land, as he could not do

while he was toiling along the road. The barren rocks and white snow

glow with purple as the setting sun touches them. The struggles with

Laban; the fear of Esau; the weary work of toilsome years; the sad day

when Rachel died, and left to him the 'son of her sorrow'; the heart

sickness of the long years of Joseph's loss--all have faded away, or

been changed into thankful wonder at God's guidance. The one thought

which the dying man carries out of life with him is: God has shown

Himself mighty, and He has shown Himself mine.

For each of us, our own experience should be a revelation of God. The

things about Him which we read in the Bible are never living and real

to us till we have verified them in the facts of our own history. Many

a word lies on the page, or in our memories, fully believed and utterly

shadowy, until in some soul's conflict we have had to grasp it, and

found it true. Only so much of our creed as we have proved in life is

really ours. If we will only open our eyes and reflect upon our history

as it passes before us, we shall find every corner of it filled with

the manifestations to our hearts and to our minds of a present God. But

our folly, our stupidity, our impatience, our absorption with the mere

outsides of things, our self-will, blind us to the Angel with the drawn

sword who resists us, as well as to the Angel with the lily who would

lead us. So we waste our days; are deaf to His voice speaking through

all the clatter of tongues, and blind to His bright presence shining

through all the dimness of earth; and, for far too many of us, we never

can see God in the present, but only discern Him when He has passed by,

like Moses from his cleft. Like this same Jacob, we have to say:

'Surely God was in this place, and I knew it not.' Hence we miss the

educational worth of our lives, are tortured with needless cares, are

beaten by the poorest adversaries, and grope amidst what seems to us a

chaos of pathless perplexities, when we might be marching on assured

and strong, with God for our guide, and the hands of the Mighty One of

Jacob for our defence.

Notice, too, how distinctly the thought comes out in this name--that

the very vital centre of a man's religion is his conviction that God is

his. Jacob will not be content with thinking of God as the God of his

fathers; he will not even be content with associating himself with them

in the common possession; but he must feel the full force of the

intensely personal bond that knits him to God, and God to him. Of

course such a feeling does not ignore the blessed fellowship and family

who also are held in this bond. The God of Jacob is to the patriarch

also the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob. But that comes

second, and this comes first. Each man for himself must put forth the

hand of his own faith, and grasp that great hand for his own guide.

'_My_ Lord and _my_ God' is the true form of the confession. 'He loved

_me_ and gave Himself for _me_,' is the shape in which the Gospel of

Christ melts the soul. God is mine because His love individualises me,

and I have a distinct place in His heart, His purposes, and His deeds.

God is mine, because by my own individual act--the most personal which

I can perform--I cast myself on Him, by my faith appropriate the common

salvation, and open my being to the inflow of His power. God is mine,

and I am His, in that wonderful mutual possession, with perpetual

interchange of giving and receiving not only gifts but selves, which

makes the very life of love, whether it be love on earth or love in

heaven.

Remember, too, the profound use which our Lord made of this name,

wherein Jacob claims to possess God. Because Moses at the bush called

God, the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, they cannot have

ceased to be. The personal relations, which subsist between God and the

soul that clasps Him for its own, demand an immortal life for their

adequate expression, and make it impossible that Death's skeleton

fingers should have power to untie such a bond. Anything is

conceivable, rather than that the soul which can say 'God is mine'

should perish. And that continued existence demands, too, a state of

being which shall correspond to itself, in which its powers shall all

be exercised, its desires fulfilled, its possibilities made facts.

Therefore there must be the resurrection. 'God is not ashamed to be

called their God, for He hath prepared for them a city.'

The dying patriarch left to his descendants the legacy of this great

name, and often, in later times, it was used to quicken faith by the

remembrance of the great deeds of God in the past. One instance may

serve as a sample of the whole. 'The Lord of Hosts is with us, the God

of Jacob is our refuge.' The first of these two names lays the

foundation of our confidence in the thought of the boundless power of

Him whom all the forces of the universe, personal and impersonal,

angels and stars, in their marshalled order, obey and serve. The second

bids later generations claim as theirs all that the old history reveals

as having belonged to the 'world's grey fathers.' They had no special

prerogative of nearness or of possession. The arm that guided them is

unwearied, and all the past is true still, and will for evermore be

true for all who love God. So the venerable name is full of promise and

of hope for us: 'The God of Jacob is our refuge.'

2. _The Shepherd_.--How that name sums up the lessons that Jacob had

learned from the work of himself and of his sons! 'Thy servants are

shepherds' they said to Pharaoh; 'both we, and also our sons.' For

fourteen long, weary years he had toiled at that task. 'In the day the

drought consumed me, and the frost by night; and my sleep departed from

mine eyes,' and his own sleepless vigilance and patient endurance seem

to him to be but shadows of the loving care, the watchful protection,

the strong defence, which 'the God, who has been my Shepherd all my

life long,' had extended to him and his. Long before the shepherd king,

who had been taken from the sheepcotes to rule over Israel, sang his

immortal psalm, the same occupation had suggested the same thought to

the shepherd patriarch. Happy they whose daily work may picture for

them some aspect of God's care--or rather, happy they whose eyes are

open to see the dim likeness of God's care which every man's earthly

relations, and some part of his work, most certainly present.

There can be no need to draw out at length the thoughts which that

sweet and familiar emblem has conveyed to so many generations. Loving

care, wise guidance, fitting food, are promised by it; and docile

submission, close following at the Shepherd's heels, patience,

innocence, meekness, trust, are required. But I may put emphasis for a

moment on the connection between the thought of 'the mighty God of

Jacob' and that of 'the Shepherd.' The occupation, as we see it, does

not call for a strong arm, or much courage, except now and then to wade

through snowdrifts, and dig out the buried and half-dead creatures. But

the shepherds whom Jacob knew, had to be hardy, bold fighters. There

were marauders lurking ready to sweep away a weakly guarded flock.

There were wild beasts in the gorges of the hills. There was danger in

the sun by day on these burning plains, and in the night the wolves

prowled round the flock. We remember how David's earliest exploits were

against the lion and the bear, and how he felt that even his duel with

the Philistine bully was not more formidable than these had been. If we

will read into our English notions of a shepherd this element of danger

and of daring, we shall feel that these two clauses are not to be taken

as giving the contrasted ideas of strength and gentleness, but the

connected ones of strength, and therefore protection and security. We

have the same connection in later echoes of this name. 'Behold, the

Lord God shall come with _strong_ hand; He shall feed His flock like a

shepherd.' And our Lord's use of the figure brings into all but

exclusive prominence the good shepherd's conflict with the ravening

wolves--a conflict in which he must not hesitate even 'to lay down his

life for the sheep.' As long as the flock are here, amidst dangers and

foes, and wild weather, the arm that guides must be an arm that can

guard; and none less mighty than the Mighty One of Jacob can be the

Shepherd of men. But a higher fulfilment yet awaits this venerable

emblem, when in other pastures, where no lion nor any ravening beast

shall come, the 'Lamb, which is in the midst of the throne,' and is

Shepherd as well as Lamb, 'shall feed them, and lead them by living

fountains of waters.'

3. _The Stone of Israel_.--Here, again, we have a name, that after-ages

have caught up and cherished, used for the first time. I suppose the

Stone of Israel means much the same thing as the Rock. If so, that

symbol, too, which is full of such large meanings, was coined by Jacob.

It is, perhaps, not fanciful to suppose that it owes its origin to the

scenery of Palestine. The wild cliffs of the eastern region where

Peniel lay, or the savage fastnesses in the southern wilderness, a

day's march from Hebron, where he lived so long, came back to his

memory amid the flat, clay land of Egypt; and their towering height,

their immovable firmness, their cool shade, their safe shelter, spoke

to him of the unalterable might and impregnable defence which he had

found in God. So there is in this name the same devout, reflective

laying-hold upon experience which we have observed in the preceding.

There is also the same individualising grasp of God as his very own;

for 'Israel' here is, of course, to be taken not as the name of the

nation but as his own name, and the intention of the phrase is

evidently to express what God had been to him personally.

The general idea of this symbol is perhaps firmness, solidity. And that

general idea may be followed out in various details. God is a rock for

a foundation. Build your lives, your thoughts, your efforts, your hopes

there. The house founded on the rock will stand though wind and rain

from above smite it, and floods from beneath beat on it like battering

rams. God is a rock for a fortress. Flee to Him to hide, and your

defence shall be the 'munitions of rocks,' which shall laugh to scorn

all assault, and never be stormed by any foe. God is a rock for shade

and refreshment. Come close to Him from out of the scorching heat, and

you will find coolness and verdure and moisture in the clefts, when all

outside that grateful shadow is parched and dry.

The word of the dying Jacob was caught up by the great law-giver in his

dying song. 'Ascribe ye greatness to our God. He is the Rock.' It

reappears in the last words of the shepherd king, whose grand prophetic

picture of the true King is heralded by 'The Book of Israel spake to

me.' It is heard once more from the lips of the greatest of the

prophets in his glowing prophecy of the song of the final days: 'Trust

ye in the Lord for ever; for in the Lord Jehovah is the Rock of Ages,'

as well as in his solemn prophecy of the Stone which God would lay in

Zion. We hear it again from the lips that cannot lie: 'Did ye never

read in the Scriptures, The Stone which the builders rejected, the same

is become the headstone of the corner?' And for the last time the

venerable metaphor which has cheered so many ages appears in the words

of that Apostle who was 'surnamed Cephas, which is by interpretation a

stone': 'To whom coming as unto a living Stone, yea also as living

stones are built up.' As on some rocky site in Palestine, where a

hundred generations in succession have made their fortresses, one may

see stones with the bevel that tells of early Jewish masonry, and above

them Roman work, and higher still masonry of crusading times, and above

it the building of to-day; so we, each age in our turn, build on this

great rock foundation, dwell safe there for our little lives, and are

laid to peaceful rest in a sepulchre in the rock. On Christ we may

build. In Him we may dwell and rest secure. We may die in Jesus, and be

gathered to our own people, who, having died, live in Him. And though

so many generations have reared their dwellings on that great rock,

there is ample room for us too to build. We have not to content

ourselves with an uncertain foundation among the shifting rubbish of

perished dwellings, but can get down to the firm virgin rock for

ourselves. None that ever builded there have been confounded. We clasp

hands with all who have gone before us. At one end of the long chain

this dim figure of the dying Jacob, amid the strange vanished life of

Egypt, stretches out his withered hands to God the Stone of Israel; at

the other end, we lift up ours to Jesus, and cry:--

'Rock of Ages! cleft for me,

Let me hide myself in Thee.'

The faith is one. One will be the answer and the reward. May it be

yours and mine!