The Scepter Shall Not Depart

At the end of his life Jacob three times turned from his sons to the One beyond them, each time with a different word. The first, the goel of Genesis 48:16, looks back on a rescue already done. The yeshuah יְשׁוּעָה yesh-oo'-aw of Genesis 49:18 is what he waited for his whole life. Between them stands a name that looks ahead to someone who has not yet come. It is spoken over Judah, and it brings with it a lion, a scepter and a ruler’s staff.

Jacob Speaks to Judah

Jacob did not bless his sons as a crowd. He called them together and spoke to each in turn.

Genesis 49:1 And Jacob called to his sons and said, "Gather yourselves together, and I will tell you what shall befall you in the end of days.

Reuben, Simeon and Levi heard hard words. Then Jacob came to his fourth son.

Genesis 49:8-10 Judah, you — your brothers shall praise you; your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies; your father's sons shall bow down to you. A lion's whelp is Judah; from the prey, my son, you have gone up. He stooped, he crouched like a lion, and like a lioness — who shall rouse him up? 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.

The first line plays on Judah’s own name. When Leah bore him, she said, “This time I will praise the LORD,” and called him Judah (Genesis 29:35). Now his father says, “your brothers shall praise you.” Every word that follows belongs to a ruler: a hand on the neck of enemies, brothers who bow down, a young lion that no one dares to rouse. Then comes the verse that carries the weight of the whole blessing.

Two Instruments of Rule

The first word that matters in verse 10 is shevet (שֵׁבֶט), the scepter. In the Hebrew it stands free, as the subject of the sentence: “The scepter shall not depart from Judah.” A scepter is the rod a king holds. It does not buy anything, and it does not pay anything. It rules.

The second is the word the YLV renders “the ruler’s staff.” In Hebrew it is mehoqeq, a participle from the root haqaq, “to engrave” or “to inscribe.” A participle points to a person doing an action, so the word means “one who engraves,” and in a setting like this it names the one who inscribes the decree. The staff of such a one is the staff of a lawgiver. Like the scepter, it is an instrument of rule, and it shall not depart “from between his feet.”

The lion of verse 9 belongs to the same picture. A lion’s whelp that has gone up from the prey, stooping and crouching, of which the verse asks “who shall rouse him up?”, is a picture of strength that no one dares to challenge. So the whole passage, from verse 8 to verse 10, speaks one language: praise, victory, bowing, the lion, the scepter, the staff. It is the language of kingship.

What is missing from this passage is just as plain. There is no word here for a kinsman, for buying back, for a price or for blood relation. Nothing in Judah’s blessing makes Judah a goel. What comes out of these verses is the right to rule, not the standing of a near kinsman.

Until

The rule is not left open without an end. The YLV keeps one small Hebrew word in its text: “ad(עד) Shiloh comes.” Ad means “until.” It sets a boundary in time. The scepter and the staff stay with Judah up to a point, and that point is the coming of the one called Shiloh.

That makes the promise far more than a vague hope. It is a statement with a limit written into it. Judah will keep the instruments of rule, and they will not pass to another, until someone arrives. The verb “comes” is the Hebrew yavo, an imperfect without a waw in front of it. A Hebrew verb of that kind looks at something not yet finished, and here, in a promise, it points to what lies ahead. Jacob is not describing an arrival he has seen. He is naming one still to come.

Then the verse says what will happen when he comes: “to him shall be the obedience of peoples.” The word is peoples, in the plural. Up to this point the blessing has spoken of Judah’s brothers bowing to him. Now it speaks of peoples giving obedience to the one who comes. The rule that Judah holds is held until it reaches him, and the obedience that belongs to him is not described as his brothers’ alone.

The Other Reading of Shiloh

The evidence on the other side should be stated fairly. The manuscript tradition divides at the word Shiloh. The Hebrew text that has come down to us, the Masoretic text, reads it as a name. But the old Greek translation of the Torah, the Septuagint, reads the word as shello, “that which is his,” the same letters without the yod, and renders the line in the sense of “until the things laid up for him come.” On that reading, Shiloh is not a name at all.

That is a real difference, and it should not be waved away. This book reads the verse in the Hebrew Masoretic text, which the YLV Old Testament translates, but its argument does not hang on this one word. It rests on the fact that the scepter and the ruler’s staff belong to Judah, and that they stay with him until a coming. That part of the verse reads the same on either side of the variant. Whether the one who comes is called by a name or described as the one to whom these things belong, the scepter is still a scepter, the staff is still a staff, and both still speak of rule.

Two Lines

Once that is seen, two lines in Scripture can be told apart. Revelation 5 will show both of them met in one Person, but the lines answer different questions, rest on different passages and use different words.

If the two lines are run together, the scepter of Genesis 49:10 and the price of redemption become one thing, but the Bible itself keeps them apart. A scepter is the authority to rule. A price is the means to buy back. Scripture writes them with different words.

The New Testament keeps the same distinction, and it does so in a single scene. In the fifth chapter of Revelation, an elder announces the lion of the tribe of Judah. One verse later John looks, and what he sees is not a lion.