In Jacob’s rather surprising prediction for his ninth son and fifth son by his first wife Leah, Issachar is compared to “a rawboned donkey,” Genesis 49:14. “Rawboned” in Hebrew is describing bone structure, or skeletal strength. And a donkey has just that: it’s a sturdy animal that can carry a heavy load, pictured by it “lying down between two saddlebags” (14), still seen today in tiny donkeys carrying massive “saddlebags” with all sorts of items, and at the same time even carrying an adult rider too.
But a well fed, well cared for donkey that “sees how good is his resting place and how pleasant is his land” (15), happily “bends his shoulder to the burden and submits to a life of unpaid service and toil.” Which donkeys do. They plug away stoically without complaint – even when in pain – and what is often taken as stubbornness when it refuses to move, is its uncanny ability to sense something is not quite right. So donkeys are not stupid; they are cautious, highly intelligent and can problem solve on the scale of a dolphin, and they have great memories for faces and places. They are loyal, playful and affectionate – and fearless too when guarding against predators.
Donkeys in the time of Jacob were also a sign of wealth (Genesis 24:35) – and the choice of transport for kings and their families (Judges 5:10, 10:4, 12:14, 2 Samuel 16:2). Solomon rode a donkey on the day of his coronation (1 Kings 1:38-39), and ancient Egyptians buried donkeys among their kings. When Jacob talks of his son Issachar being a donkey, then, it’s a tribute to donkeys, and to his son.
But how did this prophecy play out in real life, and did Issachar’s descendants offer any clues as to what the prophecy meant too?
Fast forward to the book of Joshua when the tribe of Issachar is allotted its portion of land in Canaan (Joshua 19:17-23). Small though its portion was, It included the fertile eastern end of the Valley of Jezreel (18), which was and still is the richest farming region in Israel, so it’s not surprising that Jacob predicted that Issachar would “see how good is his resting place and how pleasant is the land” in Genesis 49:15. The land also lay between two mountains, Mount Tabor to the north and Mount Gilboa to the south, just like a donkey “lying down between two saddlebags” (14). But the parallels between donkeys and the future of Issachar don’t stop there: to “Issachar: donkey to the core”….(next blog)
