What Jacob Waited For

Jacob’s line about himself, Genesis 49:18, which we read in its setting in the last chapter, is three words in Hebrew, and the YLV keeps them in the order the Hebrew has them.

The verse raises a question that is easy to pass over. When Jacob said this, there was no Torah yet, no tabernacle, and none of the offerings that Leviticus would later set in order. On what basis could a man in his position say that he had waited for salvation? This chapter answers from the text itself, not from guesses about Jacob’s feelings or from later theology.

Three Words

Read from right to left, the Hebrew line is li-shuatkha qivviti, then the name of God (לִישׁוּעָתְךָ קִוִּיתִי יְהוָה), word for word as the YLV has it: “For your salvation (yeshuah יְשׁוּעָה yesh-oo'-aw) I wait, O LORD.”

The first word, li-shuatkha, is built from three parts: li-, “for” or “toward”; yeshuah, salvation (H3444); and -kha, “your.” It is not salvation in general. It is your salvation, the salvation that belongs to the LORD.

The second word, qivviti, comes from the root qavah (H6960), “to wait, to long for,” with the ending -ti, “I.” Two things about its form are worth knowing.

First, it is a perfect. The Hebrew perfect looks at an action as a whole, already carried out. Jacob is not saying, “From now on I will wait.” He is saying, “I have been waiting.” A dying man sums up his whole life in a single verb. The YLV’s “I wait” keeps the waiting present on his lips, and the Hebrew form tells you that it reaches back over all his years.

Second, it is in the Piel. When this verb means to wait, Hebrew writes it in the Piel almost every time: OSHB has 40 Piel forms, and the plain stem appears only six times, all as participles. So the stem shows the verb’s ordinary sense, an earnest and expectant waiting, not a vague hope in the background. What reaches back over Jacob’s whole life is the perfect.

The third word is the name itself, O LORD, spoken as a direct address. Jacob ends the line by calling God by name.

Two Words That Begin Here

Two of these three words appear here for the first time in the whole Bible. A survey of every verse of the Hebrew Old Testament, in canonical order, shows it.

(The same Hebrew letters q-v-h are also used once earlier, in Genesis 1:9, for the waters being “gathered”; that is a different word of the same spelling. The word that means “wait” first appears here.)

So the place where the word salvation and the word wait first appear in Scripture is one and the same verse, and that verse stands in Jacob’s last words to his sons. From the start the two words come as a pair.

The next uses of yeshuah show how much weight this first one carries.

Exodus 14:13 And Moses said to the people, "Do not fear; stand firm, and see the salvation (yeshuah) of the LORD, which he will work for you today; for as you have seen the Egyptians today, you shall not see them again any more, forever.

After it comes Exodus 15:2, the song by the sea that we read in Chapter 11: “he has become my salvation (yeshuah).”

The word salvation does not begin with the Exodus. It first comes from the mouth of an old man in Egypt, generations earlier. And its first use is not a report of something seen but a confession of waiting: Jacob first speaks the word salvation not as a man who had seen it, but as one who had waited for it.

What Jacob Learned

Then how could Jacob wait for salvation, with no Torah and no tabernacle? The text leaves the answer within his own life, in three steps.

First, he inherited the promise. The promise of Genesis 3:15 was given in the garden, and Jacob received it through Abraham and Isaac. His own words about Judah, a few verses earlier, show that he looked toward one who was to come.

Genesis 49:10 The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, ad עַד ad(עד) Shiloh comes; and to him shall be the obedience of peoples.

Second, he had his name changed. At the ford of the Jabbok, after wrestling through the night, he was told this.

Genesis 32:29 And he said, "Your name shall no more be called Jacob, but Israel; for you have striven with God and with men (ish אִישׁ eesh), and have prevailed."

In the YLV this is Genesis 32:29, in the Masoretic verse order. The man who had grasped a heel became the one who strove and prevailed, and Jacob received the new name rather than earning it by his own strength.

Third, he knew the One who redeems. In the chapter just before, Jacob blessed Joseph and Joseph’s two sons, and he named God in this way.

Genesis 48:15-16 And he blessed Joseph and said, "The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has shepherded me all my life long unto this day, the messenger who has redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads; and let my name be called in them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth."

Jacob calls Him “the messenger who has redeemed me from all evil.” The verb is gaal גָּאַל gaw-al', “to redeem,” and the form here is ha-goel הַגֹּאֵל gaw-al', “the one who redeems.” A goel is the near kinsman who pays the price and buys back what was lost. This is the first place in Scripture where the word appears; the second is Exodus 6:6, where the LORD says to Israel in Egypt, “I will redeem you with an outstretched arm.”

The words redeemer and salvation both appear for the first time in Jacob’s last two chapters. He did not invent them. He needed names for what he had lived through, and he handed that language on to his sons.

Waiting for a Person

The last question is whether Jacob was waiting for an event or for a person. The grammar has something to say.

Li-shuatkha means “your salvation.” Jacob does not wait for salvation in the abstract, but for the salvation that belongs to the LORD, and he ends the sentence by calling on the LORD by name. The salvation and the One to whom it belongs stand in a single breath. And as we saw in Chapters 9 and 11, the Hebrew Bible three times sets yeshuah beside God Himself and says that He has become salvation.

Read in that light, Jacob was not waiting for better circumstances for his descendants. He had been speaking to his sons about land and prosperity, and in the middle of it he made clear that these were not what he had waited for all his life. What he held on to was the One promised in Genesis 3:15, whose heel the serpent would bruise and who would crush the serpent’s head. In that verse, as Chapter 14 showed, the word that takes up the promised seed is hu, “He.” He is the One who became flesh as Yeshua, the Word who was with God in the beginning.

Jacob was not the only one of his family to look forward in this way. Yeshua Himself said so of Jacob’s grandfather.

John 8:56 Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad."

Abraham saw that day and was glad. His grandson Jacob, at the end of a long life, confessed that he had waited for it.

Jacob waited for a Person, and that Person came and filled the days the sign of Jonah measures. With His name in hand, we can sit down at the table. The traditional order calls the Last Supper the Passover meal. Part Three tests that claim by asking a question the Torah answers precisely: from what day, and from what hour, did God command His people to eat unleavened bread?