[This was referred to in the previous post, Genesis/Bereshith 49 —
Genesis/Bereshith 49: Jacob/Israel’s Legacy and Last Farewell:
9 A lion’s whelp, Yehuda-
from torn-prey, my son, you have gone up!
He squats, he crouches,
like the lion, like the king-of-beasts,
who dares rouse him up?
lion’s whelp. According to the Midrash, the emblem of the tribe of judah was a lion. The metaphor suggests the vigour and nobility of Judah and his offspring; and the habitual swiftness and force of their military movements.
thou art gone up. The emblem of kingship.
from between his feet. The figure is that of an Oriental king sitting, with the ruler’s staff between his knees; as can be seen on Assyrian and Persian monuments.
as long as men come to Shiloh. Heb. ad ki yabo shiloh; ilit. ‘until Shiloh come”; or, ‘until that which is his shall come’; i.e. Judah’s rule shall continue till he comes to his own, and the obedience of all the tribes is his. This translation may also mean that when the tribe of Judah has come into its own, the sceptre shall be taken out of its hands.
The explanation of this verse, especially of the Hebrew words is very difficult. Some Jewish commentators have given it a Messianic meaning. For the interpretation that it has been given in the Church, please read the subsequent post titled:
Genesis/Bereshith 49:10 – ALLEGED CHRISTOLOGICAL REFERENCES IN SCRIPTURE.
the peoples. i.e. the tribes of Israel, as in Deut. XXXIII,3,19.
[EF] lion: Eventually the symbol of the (Judahite) monarchy.
[RA] from the prey, O my son, you mount. Amos Funkenstein has astutely suggested to me that there is an ingenious double meaning here. The Hebrew could also be construed as “from the prey of my son you mounted,” introducing a shadow reference to Judah’s leading part in the plan to pass off Joseph as dead. When the bloodied tunic was brought to Jacob, he cried out, “Joseph is torn to shreds” (tarof toraf), and the term for “prey” here is teref.
you mount. This is the same verb that is used above for Reuben’s act of sexual violation, but here it refers to the lion springing up from the prey it has slain. The proposal that the verb means “to grow” is forced, with little warrant elsewhere in the Bible.
the king of beasts. this English kenning is necessary in the poetic parallelism because there are no English synonyms for “lion.” whereas biblical Hebrew has four different terms for the same beast.
10 The scepter shall not depart from Yehuda,
nor the staff-of-command from between his legs,
until they bring him tribute,
-the obedience of peoples is his.
[EF] until they bring . . .: Hebrew difficult; others use “until Shiloh comes.” The phrase is an old and unsolved problem for interpreter and translator alike.
[RA] mace. The Hebrew meoqeq refers to a ruler’s long staff, a clear parallel to “scepter.” There is no reason to construe it, as some have done, as a euphemism for the phallus, though the image of the mace between the legs surely suggests virile power in political leadership.
that tribute to him may come. This is a notorious crux. The Masoretic Text seems to read “until he comes to Shiloh,” a dark phrase that has inspired much messianic interpretation. The present translation follows an exegetical tradition that goes back to the Middle Ages, which breaks up the word “Shiloh” and vocalizes it differently as shai lo.—Admin1.]
ALLEGED CHRISTOLOGICAL REFERENCES IN SCRIPTURE.
The first of these references is alleged to be in the words often translated by “Until Shiloh come’ in Gen. XLIX,10, Most of the ancient and modern explanations of this verse turn upon the Heb. word rendered by Shiloh.
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I. It is a strange circumstance that the older Jewish Versions and commentators (Septuagint, Targums, Saadyah and Rashi) read this word without a yod, as if it is the archaic form for ‘his’; or, as if it were a poetic form for ‘peace’.
(a) The translation, ‘until that which is his shall come,’ is derived from the Septuagint. Its meaning is, The sceptre shall not depart from Judah till all that is reserved for him shall have been fulfilled.
(b) ‘Till he come whose it (the kingdom) is’ (Onkelos and Jerusalem Targum, Saadyah, Rashi and other Jewish commentators).
(c) ‘Till peace cometh’ (M. Friedlander).
II. Most commentators, however, take the word as the name of a place or person.
(a) ‘As long as men come to Shiloh’ (to worship). Shiloh was the location of the sanctuary in the days of the Prophet Samuel, before Jerusalem became the centre of Jewish worship. As the outstanding superiority of the tribe of Judah only began after the Temple was built at Jerusalem, this interpretation is unsatisfactory.
(b) ‘Till he of Shiloh cometh, and the obedience of the peoples be turned to him.” Mendelssohn and Zunz see in the verse a prediction of the event described in 1 Kings XI,29 f. Ahijah, the Prophet of Shiloh, foretold to Jeroboam that a part of the Kingdom would be taken from Solomon and transferred to him; that ten tribes of Israel (here called ‘peoples’, see Gen. XLVIII,4) would break away from the House of David, and submit to his rule. This ingenious explanation fails to satisfy for various reasons. ‘He of Shiloh’ —the tribes were not turned to the Prophet of Shiloh but to Jeroboam; and the utterance would have been quite unintelligible to Judah.
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(c) ‘Till Shiloh come.’ This is the rendering of the Authorised Version, and assumes that Shiloh is a personal name or a Messianic title. Although this assumption finds support in Rabbinic literature, it is there only a homiletic comment without official and binding authority. Despite the fact that nowhere in Scripture is that term applied to the Messiah, Christian theologians assume that Shiloh is a name of the Founder of Christianity. In this sense, ‘Till Shiloh come’ is a favourite text of Christian missionaries in attempting to convert illiterate Jews or those ignorant of Scripture. It is noteworthy that this translation only dates from the year 1534, and is found for the first time in the German Bible of Sebastian Munster. Although it is retained in the text of the Revised Version, it is now rejected by all those who have a scholarly acquaintance with the subject. Even a loyal Bishop of the Church of England, the late Dean of Westminster, wrote, ‘The improbability of this later interpretation is so great that it may be dismissed from consideration’ (Ryle).
Such likewise is the judgment which must be passed on the translations of all the other alleged Christological passages which missionaries to the Jews are fond of quoting. Christian scholars of repute are gradually giving up such partisan interpretations. Thus Psalm II,12 is translated in the Authorised Version as ‘Kiss the Son,’ with the obvious Christian reference. In the Revised Version text, however, this is softened to “Kiss the son’; while the Margin gives, ‘Worship in purity.’ This latter is in agreement with Jewish authorities.
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Similarly, in connection with Isaiah VII,14, ‘A virgin shall conceive,’ Christian scholars today admit that ‘virgin’ is a mistranslation for the Heb. word almah, in that verse. A ‘maid’ or ‘unmarried woman is expressed in Hebrew by bethulah. The word almah in Isaiah VII,14 means no more than a young woman of age to be a mother, whether she be married or not.
The most famous passage of this class is the Fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. For eighteen hundred years Christian theologians have passionately maintained that it is a Prophetic anticipation of the life of the Founder of their Faith. An impartial examination of the chapter, however, shows that the Prophet is speaking of a past historical fact, and is describing one who had already been smitten to death. Consequently, a reference to an event which is said to have happened many centuries later is excluded.
These three instances may be taken as typical. Modern scholarship has shattered the arguments from the Scriptures which missionaries have tried, and are still trying, to impose upon Ignorant Jews.