_THE SONG AND BLESSING OF MOSES_
(A). THE SONG OF MOSES
DEUT. xxxii.
Critics have debated the date, authorship, and history of this song.
For the present purpose it is sufficient, perhaps, to refer to the
statement on these points in the note below.[130]
[130] The song is described, in the narrative framework, as
delivered through Moses to the children of Israel. On the other
hand, internal evidence points to a date after the establishment
of the monarchy--when the days of Moses and the events of the
wilderness were old, when the fruits of the land were gifts of
God in present use, and when ingratitude and rebellion had become
conspicuous, so that judgment was impending. Either, then, Moses
took his stand, in the spirit, at a point of time long subsequent
to his own death, adapted the song to its circumstances, and spoke
not to his own generation but to one much later; or a later prophet
must be the writer. The objection to the former view is supported
by arguments drawn from various features in the language and the
allusions of the song, which are asserted to be indicative of the
later origin. On the detail of these we cannot dwell. But the
most interesting part of the argument is the position that the
transference of the prophetic consciousness to a remote future
period, in order to give hope and guidance to a generation not the
prophet's own, is too improbable to be admitted.
Such a process is now generally regarded as not impossible indeed,
but unheard of in the history of prophecy. The examination of the
prophets of the Old Testament has convinced students that the
prophet's vision starts from his own time, and is primarily for
the comfort and warning of his contemporaries. His words may have
a more remote reference, but must have the nearer one. Hence Isa.
xl.-lxvi. is now ascribed to a prophet or prophets of the Exile. The
principle is really the same as that which determines the authorship
of Deut. xxxiv. 5-12. No one now holds the view of some Jews, that
Moses by the spirit of prophecy wrote this himself. Yet if Moses
could in a poem address his people as sinning and suffering through
rebellions induced by their prosperity in Canaan, which they had
not entered when he died, one might as well believe him to describe
his own decease. In both cases we have to suppose the mind of Moses
transported to a period when he had been removed by death, that he
might look back upon and speak of events which when he wrote were
still future. Now in both cases a reason is lacking. Every one
accepts the view that since Joshua or Eleazar was there to write the
account of Moses' death, it is unlikely the lawgiver should have
been inspired to write it himself. Just so, since Yahweh inspired
new prophets at every crisis of His people's history, it seems
unlikely that the spirit of Moses should be transferred to, and made
at home in, the circumstances of a distant generation, in order
to deliver to it a message which could have been made known by a
prophet to whom the time was present. Neither Kamphausen nor Oettli
nor Dillmann nor the English expositors who accept the non-Mosaic
authorship of the song have any doubt as to the supernatural
character of prophecy. They found upon observations as to the manner
of Old Testament prophecy, which ought to regulate interpretation.
According to critical views the ascription to Moses of the reception
and delivery of this song was taken by the Deuteronomist from JE.
Kautzsch supposes that an editor to whom the song was known as
passing under the name of Moses may have inserted it. Dillmann
suggests grounds for believing that several prayers and poems
ascribed to Moses (including Psalm xc.) were in circulation in
prophetic circles in the Northern Kingdom, and that this one of
them was inserted here as its appropriate place. The case would be
parallel to the ascription of various later Psalms to David. Compare
also the discussions as to the song of Hannah, 1 Sam. ii.
The view that a mistake as to the Mosaic authorship, for which the
writers of JE were not responsible, was handed on in perfect good
faith, is compatible with the doctrine of inspiration as held by
representatives of the orthodox Evangelical school in Germany, and
by the newer Evangelicals in England. Cf. Oettli, _Deuteronomy_, p.
22, and Sanday's _Bampton Lecture_.
But in discussing the meaning and contents of the song the
differences referred to cause no difficulties. On any supposition
the time and circumstances, whether assumed as present, or actually
and really present to the prophet's mind, can clearly be identified
as not earlier than those of the Syrian wars. Accepted as dealing
with that time, this poem takes its place among the Psalms of that
period. Its subject is a very common one in Scripture: the goodness
of Yahweh to His people, and their unfaithfulness to Him; His grief
at their rebellion; His punishment of them by heathen oppressors;
and His turning in love to them, along with His destruction of
the nations who had prematurely triumphed over the people of God.
Practically this is the burden of all the prophecies, as indeed
it may be said to be the burden of the whole Book of Deuteronomy
itself. Here it is stated and elaborated with great poetic skill;
but in the main, the essential thought, there is little that has not
already been elucidated.
As regards form the poem is among the finest specimens of Hebrew
literary art which the Old Testament contains. Every verse contains
at least two parallel clauses of three words or word-complexes each,
and the parallelism in the great majority of instances is of the
"Synonymous" kind; that is to say, "the second line enforces the
thought of the first by repeating, and as it were _echoing_ it in a
varied form."[131] But into this as a foundation there is wrought a
great deal of pleasing variation. The two-clause verses are varied
by single instances or couplets or triplets of four-clause verses;
while in two cases, at the emphatic end of sections, in vv. 14 and
39, the rare five-clause verse is found. Further, the synonymous
parallelism is relieved by occasional appearances of the "synthetic"
parallelism, in which "the second line contains neither a repetition
nor a contrast to the thought of the first, but in different ways
supplements and completes it,"[132] _e.g._ vv. 8, 19, and 27.
[131] Cf. Driver's _Introduction_, 5th edition, p. 340.
[132] Cf. Driver, _cit. loc._
The contents of the song are in every way worthy of the origin
assigned to it, and higher praise than that it is impossible to
conceive. Beginning with a fine exordium calling upon heaven and
earth to give ear, the inspired poet expresses the hope that his
teaching may fall with refreshing and fertilising power upon the
hearts of men, for he is about to proclaim the name of Yahweh, to
whom all greatness is to be ascribed. In vv. 4 ff. the character and
dealings of Yahweh are set over against those of the people:--
"The Rock! His deeds are perfect,
For all His ways are judgment;
A God of faithfulness and without falsity,
Just and upright is He."
They, on the contrary, were perverse and crooked; and, acting
corruptly, they requited all Yahweh's benefits with rebellion. To
win them from that perverseness, he calls upon his people to look
back upon the whole course of God's dealings with them. Even before
Israel had appeared among the nations, Yahweh had taken thought for
His people. When He assigned their lands to the various nations
of the world He had always before Him the provision that must be
made for the children of Israel, and had left a space for them from
which none but Yahweh could ever drive them out. For He had the same
need of and delight in His people as the nations had in the lands
assigned to them, the lot of their inheritance. And not only had He
thus prepared a place for Israel from the beginning, but He had led
him through the wilderness, through "the waste, the howling desert."
"He compassed him about, He cared for him,
He kept him as the apple of His eye."
To depict the Divine care worthily, he ventures upon a simile of a
specially tender kind, rare in the Old Testament, but to which our
Lord's comparison of His own brooding affection for Jerusalem to
that of a "hen gathering her chickens under her wing" is parallel.
"As an eagle stirs up her nest,
Flutters above her young;
He, Yahweh, spread abroad His wings, He took him,
He bore him upon His pinions."
All the hardship and the toil were of God's appointment to drive
His beloved people upwards and onwards. Whatever they might think
or believe now, it was Yahweh alone, without companion or ally, who
had done this for them, borne them up through it, and had bestowed
upon them all the luxury of the goodly land once promised to their
fathers. Even from the rocks He had given them honey, and the rocky
soil had produced the olive tree. They had, too, all the luxuries of
a pastoral people in abundance, and the wheat and foaming wine which
were the finest products of agriculture.
In every way their God had blessed them. They had all the prosperity
which a complete fulfilment of the will of God could have brought,
but the result of it all was unfaithfulness and rejection of Him.
Jeshurun, the upright people, as the sacred singer in bitter irony
calls Israel, waxed fat and wanton. Instead of being drawn to God
by His benefits, they had been puffed up with conceit concerning
their own power and discernment. Full of these, they had mingled
idolatrous rites with their worship of Yahweh. He had suffered them
to reap the results of their own unfaithfulness in defeat at the
hands of their foes.
Instead of seeking the cause of their ill-success in themselves,
they had found it in the weakness of their God. All the victories
Yahweh had given them over foes whose strength they had feared were
forgotten, and they "despised the Rock of their salvation." They had
adopted new and upstart deities whom their fathers had never heard
of, who as they had come up in a day might disappear in a day, and
neglected the Rock who begat them.
Yahweh on His part saw all this, and scorned His people and their
doings. In a vivid imaginative picture the poet represents Him as
resolving to hide His face from them, to see what their end would
be. Without the shining of God's countenance there could be but
one issue for a people who were so faithless and perverse. He will
recompense them for their doings.
"They made Me jealous with a no-God,
They vexed Me with their vain idols,
And I will make them jealous with a no-people,
With a foolish nation will I vex them."
For the fire of Divine wrath is kindled against them. It burns in
Yahweh with an all-consuming power, and fills the universe even to
the lowest depths of Sheol. Upon this sinful people it is about to
burst forth; Yahweh will exhaust all His arrows upon them. By famine
and drought; by disease and the rage of wild beasts, and of "the
crawlers of the dust"; by giving them up to their enemies, and by
overwhelming them with terror. He will destroy this people, "the
young man and the virgin, the suckling and the man of grey hairs"
alike. Nothing could save them, save Yahweh's respect for His own
name.
"I had said, I shall blow them away,
I shall make their memory to cease from among men:
Were it not that I feared vexation from the enemy,
Lest their adversaries should misdeem,
Lest they should say, _Our_ hand is exalted,
And Yahweh hath not done all this."
Nothing but that stood between them and utter destruction, for
as a nation they had no capacity for receiving and profiting by
instruction. If they had been wise they would have known that there
was but a step between them and death; they would have seen that
their deeds had separated them from Yahweh, and could have but one
issue. Their frequent and shameful defeats should have taught them
that, for
"How could one chase a thousand,
And two put to flight ten thousand,
Were it not that their Rock had sold them,
And that Yahweh had delivered them up?"
There was no possible explanation of Israel's defeats but this;
for neither in the gods of the heathen nor in the heathen nations
themselves was there anything to account for them. Their gods were
not comparable to the Rock of Israel; even Israel's enemies knew
as much as that. Israel might forget and doubt Yahweh's power, but
those who had been smitten before Him in Israel's happier days knew
that He was above all their gods. Nor was the explanation to be
sought in the heathen nations themselves. For they were not vines of
Yahweh's planting, but shoots from the vine of Sodom, tainted by the
soil of Gomorrah. They were, perhaps, in race, of the old Canaanite
stock; in any case they were morally and spiritually related to
them, and their acts were such as brought death and destruction
with them. In themselves, consequently, they could not have been
strong enough to discomfit the people of God as they were doing,
nor could they have been helped to that by any favour of His. Only
the determination of Yahweh to chastise His people could explain
Israel's unhappy fate in war.
But Yahweh's purpose was only to chastise. He was in no way finally
forgetful of His chosen, nor of the ineradicable evil of their
enemies' nature. The inner character of men and things is always
present to Him, and their deeds are laid up with Him as that which
must be dealt with, for it is one of the glories of Deity to sweep
evil away and to restore anything that has good at its heart.
Recompense is God's great function in the world, and evil, however
strong it may be, and however long it may triumph, must one day be
dealt with by Him. It is laid up and sealed
"Against the day of vengeance and of recompense,
Against the time when their foot shall slip;
For the day of their calamity is at hand,
And hastening are the things prepared for them."
Without that, justice could never be done to the people of God; and
justice should be done to them when they had been brought to the
verge of extinction, when, according to the antique Hebrew phrase,
there "was none fettered or set free," none left under or over age.
Then when all but the worst had come, Yahweh would demand, "Where
are their gods, with whom they took refuge, and who have eaten
the fat of their sacrifices, and drunk the wine of their drink
offerings?" He will challenge them to arise and help in this last
disastrous state of their votaries.
But there will be no response, and it will be made clear beyond all
doubting that Yahweh alone is God. He will declare Himself, saying:--
"See now that I, I, am He,
And there is no god with Me:
_I_ kill, and _I_ make alive;
I wound, and I heal:
And there is none that delivereth out of My hand."
In that great day of Yahweh's manifested glory He will stand forth
in the fulness of avenging power. Before the universe He will pledge
Himself by the most solemn oath to bring down the pride of His
enemies. In a death-dealing judgment, such as is seen only when the
evil elements in the world have brought about a mere carnival of
wickedness, and only universal death can cleanse, He will recompense
upon evil-doers the evil they have wrought, and to a renovated world
bring peace. There are few finer or more impressive imaginative
passages in Scripture than this:--
"For I lift up My hand to heaven,
And say, (As) I live for ever,
If I whet My gleaming sword,
And My hand take hold on judgment,
I will take vengeance upon Mine enemies,
And I will recompense them that hate Me.
I will make Mine arrows drunk with blood,
And My sword shall devour flesh,
With the blood of the slain and the captives,
From the chief of the leaders of the enemy."
With this great vision of judgment the poet leaves his people. For
them the first necessity evidently was that they should be assured
that Yahweh reigned, that evil could not ultimately prosper. With
their whole horizon dominated and illumined by this tremendous
figure of the ever living and avenging God, their faith in the moral
government of the world and in the ultimate deliverance of their
nation would be restored.
The poem closes with a stanza in which the seer and singer calls
upon the nations to rejoice because of Yahweh's people. The
deliverance worked for them will be so great and so memorable that
even the heathen who see it must rejoice. They will see His justice
and His faithfulness, and will gain new confidence in the stability
and the moral character of the forces which rule the world.
(B) THE BLESSING OF MOSES
DEUT. xxxiii.
Besides the farewell speeches and the farewell song, we have in this
chapter yet another closing utterance attributed to Moses. Here, as
in the case of the song, we relegate critical matters to the note
below.[133]
[133] The blessing of Moses was certainly not written by the author
of Deuteronomy: the vocabulary and the style are different from his.
Nor probably was the poem inserted here by him, but rather by the
final editor of the Pentateuch who is believed to have brought these
closing chapters into their present shape (cf. Chap. XXIV.). The
authority on which he relied may have been E.
As to the authorship of the blessing, Volck and Keil ascribe it
to Moses. The great majority of recent students regard it, at all
events in its present form, as post-Mosaic, on grounds drawn from
features in the poem, and from the principles of prophetic exegesis
referred to in the note (p. 452). Opinions differ much as to the
date to be assigned, varying from the time of David to that of
Jeroboam II. The general assumption is that the blessing is the
work of a Northern Israelite; and the feeling for the tribes of
Levi and Judah which it embodies is the chief indication on which
a conjecture can be hazarded. That would agree with a date later
than Solomon and not later than Jehoshaphat--a period when many in
the Northern Kingdom still looked with reverence to the sanctuary
at Jerusalem, and when the Northern Levites still resented the
intrusion by Jeroboam of a mixed multitude into the priesthood.
As to form, and partly as to contents, the blessing of Moses is
modelled on the blessing of Jacob (Gen. xlix). One conspicuous
difference is the introduction into that before us of a prose
heading before most of the sections, analogous to the headings
which appear in Arabic poetry (as the _Hamasa_) before each
quatrain or longer poem. There is no ground for treating these as
later insertions, nor for separating other portions, as some have
proposed, as later than the main composition.
We must notice in the first place the remarkable difference in tone
and outlook between the blessing and the song of Moses. In the
latter evil-doing and approaching judgment are the burden; here the
outward and inward condition of Israel leaves little to be desired.
Satisfaction is breathed in every line, for both temporally and
spiritually the state of the people is almost ideally happy. Nowhere
is there a shadow; even on the horizon there is scarcely a cloud.
Now even an optimist would need a background of actual prosperity to
draw such a picture of idyllic happiness for any nation, and we may
therefore conclude that the poem has in view one of the few halcyon
periods of Israel, before social wrongs had ruined the yeomen
farmers, or war and conquest had corrupted the powerful. The nation
is as yet faithful to Yahweh, and possesses in peace the land which
He had given them to inherit.
The central part of the poem is of course the ten blessings promised
to the various tribes, but these are preceded by an introduction
(vv. 2-5), in which the formation of the people is traced to
Yahweh's revelation of Himself and His coming forth as their King.
They are followed also by a concluding section (vv. 26-29), in
which the God of Jeshurun is declared to be incomparable, and His
people are depicted as supremely happy under His protecting care.
The language is in parts obscure, and though the general scope is
always plain, yet there are verses the meaning of which can only be
conjectured. This is especially the case in the introduction. Of the
five lines of ver. 2, the fourth and fifth as they stand are hardly
intelligible; the fifth indeed is not intelligible at all. In ver.
3 again, while the first and second clauses are fairly clear, the
third and fourth are as they stand untranslatable. But the general
signification of the introductory verses (2-5) is that the Divine
revelation of Himself which Yahweh bestowed upon His people as He
came with them from Sinai, Paran, and Seir through the wilderness,
and the establishment of the covenant which made Yahweh Israel's
King, together with the bestowal of an inheritance upon them, is
the foundation and beginning of that happiness which is to be
described. It is all traced back to the "dawning" of God upon them,
His "shining out" upon them from Sinai, and Seir, and Paran. These
are named simply as the most prominent points in that region whence
the people came out into Canaan, and where the great revelation
had been bestowed. God had risen like the sun and had shed forth
light upon them there, so that they walked no more in darkness. The
sight of God was, on this view, the great and fundamental fact in
the history of the chosen people. They, like all who have seen that
great sight, were henceforth separate from others, with different
duties and obligations, with hopes and desires and joys unknown to
all beside. And the ground of this condescension on the part of God
was His love for His people. He loved them, and the saints among
them were upheld by Him. By Moses He gave them a law, which was to
hold from generation to generation; and He had crowned His gifts to
them by becoming their King when the heads of the people entered
into covenant with Him.
Then follow the blessings, beginning with good wishes for Reuben
as the firstborn. But the tribe is not highly favoured. It is
however less severely dealt with than in Jacob's blessing. There
instability and obscurity are foretold of it. Here it would seem as
if the fortunes of the tribe were at the lowest ebb, and a wish is
expressed that it may not be suffered to die out. From the earliest
times the tribe of Reuben seems to have been tending to decay. At
the first census taken under Moses the number of Reubenites capable
of bearing arms was 46,500 men (Numb. i. 21), at the second 43,730
(Numb. xxvi. 7). Both passages are from P, and consequently this
decadence of the tribe must have been present to that author's
mind. In David's day they had still possession of part of their
heritage, but even then their best estate was past. They had allowed
many Moabites to remain in the territory they conquered. These
most certainly caused trouble and gained the upper hand in places,
until before the days of Mesa, king of Moab, as we learn from his
inscription,[134] a great part of the cities formerly Reubenite
were in Moabite or Gadite hands. In Isaiah xv. and xvi. again,
Heshbon and Elealeh, cities still Reubenite in Mesa's day, appear
as Moabite, so that the bulk of the territory assigned to the tribe
must have been lost.[135] This record confirms the view that the
blessing was written between Rehoboam and Jehoshaphat, and throws
light upon our verse:--
"May Reuben live, and not die,
So that his men be few."
[134] Dillmann, _Deuteronomy_, p. 420.
[135] Baethgen's Riehm, _Handwörterbuch_, p. 1321.
The blessing of Judah follows, but in contrast with the great
destiny foretold for this tribe in Jacob's blessing what is here
said is strangely short and unenthusiastic:--
"Hear, O Yahweh, Judah's voice,
And bring him to his people;
With his hands has he striven for it (his people);
And a help against his enemies be thou."
Some whose opinions we are bound to respect, as Oettli, think
this refers merely to Judah's being appointed to lead the van of
the invasion, as in Judges i. 1 and xx. 8. In that case we should
have to conceive that on some occasion Judah was absent leading
the conquest, and got into dangerous circumstances, which are here
referred to. But it would seem that any such temporary danger could
hardly have a place here. In all the other blessings permanent
conditions only are regarded; and the sole historical fact we
really know that would explain this reference is the division of
the kingdom. But, it may be said, all critics agree that the author
of the blessing is a Northern Israelite: now we cannot suppose a
Northern man to speak in this way of Judah, for it was the ten
tribes that revolted from the house of David, not Judah from them.
We must remember, however, that though that is how Scripture, which
in this matter represents the Southern view, regards the matter,
the Northern Israelites could look at the separation from another
standpoint. To those even who were favourable to the Davidic house,
and regretted the folly of Rehoboam, it might seem that Judah had
first broken away from the kingdom as united under Saul; and the
revolt under Jeroboam would appear to be only a resumption of the
older state of things, from which Judah had again separated itself.
What circumstance can be referred to in the request to hear Judah's
voice cannot now be ascertained; but it is not at all unlikely
that some indication of a wish for reunion, perhaps expressed in
some public prayer, may have been given in the first period of the
separation. The rest of the verse would fit this hypothesis as well
as it fits the other, and I think with the light we at present have
we must hold the reference to be as suggested.
With the eighth verse the blessing of Levi (one of the two most
heartfelt and sympathetic) begins. In it Yahweh is addressed thus:--
"Thy Urim and thy Thummim be to the men (_i.e._ tribe) of thy
devoted one (_i.e._ Moses or Aaron),
Whom thou didst prove at Massah,
With whom thou didst strive at the waters of Meribah."
In the last lines the relative pronoun is ambiguous, as it may refer
either to "men," for which in Hebrew we have the collective singular
'_ish_, or to "thy devoted one." The last is the more probable; but
in either case there is a superficial discrepancy here between the
historical books and this statement. In Exod. xvii. 1-7, as well as
in Deuteronomy itself, it is the people who strove with Moses and
proved or tempted Yahweh. On this account some would have us believe
that a different account of the events at Massah and Meribah was
in this writer's mind. But that is the result of a mere itch for
discovering discrepancies. It lies in the very nature of the case
that there should be another side to it. The beginning was with
the people; but just as the wandering in the wilderness is said to
have been meant by God to prove Israel, so this insubordination of
the people was meant to prove Moses or Aaron, and their failure
to stand the proof made Yahweh strive with them. The verse, then,
founds Levi's claim to possess the chief oracle and to instruct
Israel first of all upon their connection with Moses or Aaron, or
both, since they had been exceptionally tried and had proved their
devotion. The next verse, then, goes on to found it also on the
faithfulness of the Levites, when they were called upon by Moses
(Exod. xxxii. 26-29) to punish the people for their worship of the
golden calf. In vv. 27 and 29 of that chapter we find the same
phrases,
9 "Who (_i.e._ the tribe) said unto his father and to his mother,
I have not seen him;
Who recognised not his brother, and would know nought of his son;
For they kept Thy commandment,
And kept guard over Thy covenant."
Being such--
10 "Let them teach Jacob Thy judgments,
And Israel Thy Torah;
Let them put incense in Thy nostrils,
And whole burnt-offerings upon Thine altars."
Here we have the whole priestly duties assigned to the Levites. They
are to perform judicial functions; to give Torah, or instruction,
by means of the Urim and Thummim and otherwise; to offer incense
in the Holy Place, and sacrifices in the court of the Temple. As
early as this, therefore (on any supposition we need regard, long
before Deuteronomy), we find the Levites fully established as
the priestly tribe. Before the earliest writing prophets this was
so--a fact of the greatest importance for the history of Israelite
religion. The remaining verse beseeches Yahweh to accept the work of
Levi's hands, and to smite down his enemies. Evidently when this was
written special enmity was being shown to this tribe; and, as has
been said already, the religious proceedings of Jeroboam I. would be
sufficient to call forth such a cry to Yahweh.
In ver. 12 the tribe of Benjamin is dealt with, and it is depicted
as specially blessed by the Divine favour and the Divine presence.
Yahweh covers him all the day long, and dwells between his
shoulders. There can hardly be a doubt that the reference is to the
situation of the Temple at Jerusalem, on the hill of Zion, towards
the loftier boundary of Benjamin's territory.
Verses 13-17 contain the blessing of Joseph, _i.e._ of the two
tribes Ephraim and Manasseh.
13 "Blessed of Yahweh be his land
By the precious things of heaven from above,
By the deep which crouches beneath;
14 "By the precious things of the sun,
And the precious things of the moons;
15 "And by the (precious things of the) tops of the ancient mountains
And by the precious things of the everlasting hills;
16 "And by the precious things of the earth and its fulness.
And may the good-will of Him that dwelt in the bush
Come upon Joseph's head,
And upon the top of the head of the crowned among his brethren.
17 "May the firstborn of his ox be glorious;
And the horns thereof like the horns of the wild-ox;
With them may he gore the peoples, even all the earth's ends
together.
These (_i.e._ thus blessed) are the myriads of Ephraim,
And these the thousands of Manasseh."
Supreme fertility is to be his, and the favour of Yahweh is to
rest upon him as the kingly tribe in Israel. The curious phrase
at the beginning of the seventeenth verse has been supposed to be
a reference to some individual, Joshua, Jeroboam II., or to the
Ephraimite kings as a whole. But the subject of the blessing is
the Josephite tribes, and there seems to be no good reason why the
reference should be changed here. It cannot, therefore, refer to
less than a whole tribe, and as according to Gen. xlviii. 14 Ephraim
received the blessing of the firstborn, it must be Ephraim which is
Joseph's firstborn ox. This view is confirmed by the last clause of
the verse, in which the myriads of Ephraim are spoken of, and only
the thousands of Manasseh. Obviously this must refer to times like
those of Omri, when the Israelite kingship was in its first youthful
energy, and was extending conquest on every hand.
The benedictions which remain are addressed to Zebulun, Issachar,
Gad, Dan, Naphtali, and Asher. They need little comment beyond close
translation.
18 "And of Zebulun he said,
Rejoice, Zebulun, in thy going out;
And, Issachar, in thy tents.
19 "They shall call the peoples unto the mountain;
They shall offer sacrifices of righteousness:
For they shall suck the abundance of the seas,
And the hidden treasures of the sand."
The territory of Zebulun stretched from the Sea of Galilee to the
Mediterranean, probably quite down to the sea near Akko, in any case
near enough to give it an active share in the sea traffic. Issachar,
whose tribal land was the plain of Esdraelon, also shares in it; but
the contrast between "thy going out" and "thy tents" implies that
Zebulun took the more active part in the traffic. The reference in
verse 19, clauses _a_ and _b_, is obscure. As the Septuagint reads
"they shall destroy" instead of "unto the mountain," the text may be
corrupt. It may perhaps be an allusion to the sacrificial feasts at
inaugurated fairs to which surrounding peoples were called, as Stade
suggests.
20 "And of Gad he said,
Blessed be the enlarger of Gad:
He dwelleth as a lioness,
And teareth the arm, yea, the crown of the head.
21 "And he looked out the first part for himself,
Because there a (tribal) ruler's portion lay ready;
And he came with the heads of the people,
He executed the justice of Yahweh,
And His judgments in company with Israel."
At this time Gad was in possession of a wide territory, and was
famed for courage and success in war. His foresight in choosing the
first of the conquered land as a worthy tribal portion is praised,
and his faithfulness in carrying out his bargain to accompany the
nation in its attack on the west Jordan land.
22 "And of Dan he said,
Dan is a lion's whelp,
Leaping forth from Bashan."
This does not mean that Dan's territory was Bashan, but only that
his attack was as fierce and unexpected as that of a lion leaping
forth from the crevices and caves of the rocks in Bashan.
23 "And of Naphtali he said,
O Naphtali, sated with favour,
And full of the blessing of Yahweh:
Possess thou the sea and the south."
The soil in the territory of Naphtali was specially fruitful, in the
region of Huleh and on the shore of the Sea of Gennesaret. These are
the sea and the hot south part which the tribe is called upon to
take as a possession, and because of which the favour of Yahweh and
His blessing specially rested upon it.
24 "And of Asher he said,
Blessed above children be Asher;
May he be the favoured of his brethren,
And dip his feet in oil.
25 "Iron and brass (be) thy bars;
And as thy days (so may) thy strength (be)."
The last line is extremely doubtful. The word translated "thy
strength" is really not known, and that meaning probably implies
another reading; "thy bars" in the previous line is also doubtful.
The reference to oil probably implies that the olive tree was
specially fruitful, in the country inhabited by Asher, but why he
should be specially favoured of his brethren can now hardly be
conjectured.
In the concluding verses we have an exaltation of Israel's God and
of His people. Speaking out of the time when Israel had driven
out its enemies and was in full and undisturbed possession of its
heritage (ver. 28), the poet declares to Jeshurun how incomparable
God is. He rides upon the heaven to bring help to them, and He comes
in the clouds with majesty. The God of old time is Israel's refuge
or dwelling, covering him from above, and beneath, _i.e._ on the
earth. His everlasting arms bear His people up in their weariness,
and shelter them there against all foes. He has proved this by
thrusting out before them, and by commanding them to destroy, their
enemies.
28 "And so Israel came to dwell in safety,
The fountain of Jacob alone,
In a land of corn and wine;
Yea, His heavens drop down dew.
29 "Happy art thou, O Israel:
Who is like unto thee?
A people saved by Yahweh,
The shield of thy help
And the sword of thy majesty!
Thine enemies shall feign friendship to thee;
And thou shalt tread upon their high places."