Genesis 49:16-18 - Exposition

Dan shall judge his people as one of the tribes of Israel. With a play upon his name, the firstborn son of Rachel's handmaid, Bilhah, is described as one who should occupy an important place and exercise highly beneficial functions in the future commonwealth, enjoying independence and self-government as one of the tribes of Israel (Herder, and others), and performing the office of an administrator among the People not of his own tribe merely, but also of all Israel, a prediction pointing perhaps to the transient supremacy enjoyed by Dan over the other tribes in the days of Samson (Onkelos, et alii ). Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse heels, so that his rider shall fall backward. The שְׁפִיפוֹן , from the Syriac שֶׁפַף , to glide (Gesenins), from שׁוּף , to sting (Kalisch), שָׁפַף , to bite (Furst), was the horned serpent, cerastes , of the color of sand, and marked with white and black spots, which was exceedingly dangerous to passers-by, its bite being poisonous and fatal. The allusion has been almost unanimously explained as pointing to Samson ( 16:28 ), but the tribe in general appears not to have been entirely destitute of the treacherous and formidable characteristics here depicted ( 18:27 ). "It is certainly observable that the first introduction of idolatry in Israel is ascribed to the tribe of Dan ( 18:1-31 .), and that in the numbering of the tribes in Revelation 7:1-17 the name of Dan is omitted. From these or other causes many of the Fathers were led to believe that Antichrist should spring from the tribe of Dan" ('Speaker's Commentary'). I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord. To discover in this beautiful and tender ejaculation of the dying patriarch an apprehensive sigh lest his strength should be exhausted before his benediction was completed (Tuch), or a prayer that God might speedily effect his painless dissolution (Hengstenberg), or a device for dividing his benedictions, and separating the group of Judah from that of Joseph (Lange), is surely to fail in seizing its hidden spirit. It is doubtful if even the usual interpretation, that Jacob here expresses his hope and expectation that God would help and succor his descendants (Calvin, Rosenmüller, Keil, Kalisch, Murphy, and others), exhausts its rich significance. That, speaking in their name, he does anticipate the deliverance of Jehovah" In thy help do I hope, O Jehovah!—is apparent; but nothing surely can be more natural than to suppose that the dying patriarch, at the moment when he was formally transmitting to his children the theocratic blessing, had his thoughts lifted up towards that great salvation, of which all these material and temporal benedictions pronounced upon his sons were but the shadows and the types, and of which perhaps he had been incidentally reminded by the mention of the biting serpent, to which he had just likened Dan ('Speaker's Commentary'). It is noticeable that this is the first occurrence of the term salvation ( יְשׁוּעָח ( noit, from the root יָשַׁע , unused in Kal, to be roomy or spacious, hence in the Hiphil to set free or deliver).