When you have the key

There are hints in Genesis 49 that Jacob knew there was more to the story about Jesus than being a Lion conquering his enemies and all nations one day obeying him (verses 8-10). 

And we know there’s more because of Zechariah 9:9-10 – “Look, your king is coming to you. He is righteous and victorious, yet he is humble, riding on a donkey’s colt.” So, yes, on the one hand Jesus is a triumphant king, pictured perfectly by Jacob’s description of him as a Lion, and very much in the pattern of his ancestors David and Solomon, who also rode donkeys as kings (1 Kings 1:33). Jesus then fulfilled Zechariah’s prophecy exactly, riding on the colt of a donkey into Jerusalem to a crowd cheering “Hosanna to the Son of David” in Matthew 21:5, an acknowledgement that Jesus had David’s royal blood in him.

But why was Jesus so specific in telling his two disciples in Matthew 21:2 – “Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you’ll find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me”?

And it had to be the mother donkey and her foal, or colt, that Jesus wanted brought to him. Being a colt it had likely not been ridden before, which explains why it was tied up beside its mother and had to be untied. But all this could seem rather unnecessary in its detail, until reading Genesis 49:11, when out of the blue Jacob mentions that “He (the one whom all nations obey in verse 10) will tether his donkey to a vine, his colt to the choicest branch.”

There it is again, and so specific again too, a donkey and its colt – and both “tethered” or tied too, just like the donkey and its colt were tied or tethered in Matthew 21. Which can seem like a rather cryptic clue about Jesus in Genesis 49:11, but not “When you have the key,” the key Jesus himself gave in John 5:39, that “all the Scriptures (the Bible up to that point) are testifying about me.” 

Which is exactly what Jacob has been doing; he’s been giving all sorts of hints about Jesus in Genesis 49:8-10. And he’s still got the rest of verse 11 and verse 12 to go yet in speaking to Judah, so is Jacob “testifying about Jesus” in those verses too?

Well the clues given in those two verses beg the question: “Did Jacob know Jesus would die?”….(next blog)