In Hebrews 11:21 “Jacob, as death approached, blessed each of Joseph’s sons, humbly bowing his head to God while leaning on his staff (in his old age).”
It was no doubt “humbly” that Jacob did the blessing, because who was he to pass on any sort of blessing after the kind of life he’d led? But, like Isaac his father, it concerned Jacob as he neared death that a blessing on the next in line in the family be given, since in their own lifetimes the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abram in Genesis 12:3 hadn’t happened. The next generation, therefore, needed to know the promise was still active and certain.
But what made Jacob so certain? There’s a clue in his blessing on his own son Joseph in Genesis 48:15-16 – “May the God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my Shepherd all my life to this day….may he bless these boys (Joseph’s sons) and increase them greatly upon the earth.”
Jacob spoke as an old man looking back over his life from that special moment in Genesis 28:12 when God had told him in a dream that “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring” (14), along with God’s personal promise to Jacob to “watch over you wherever you go,” and “never will I leave you until I’ve done what I promised you” (15). What an amazing promise – but how undeserving Jacob had been for such a promise, having just conspired with his mother to steal Isaac’s blessing meant for Esau (27:5-17). How deceitful and unaware of God the young Jacob had been.
But in Jacob God was also revealing his plan of salvation, in the assurance we can have of that salvation – no matter the mess of our lives we may have made – because in Jacob’s life we see – as he saw – that God has the heart of a shepherd. Lost, clueless, undeserving, messed up sheep like Jacob are the perfect example of that, and Jacob being a shepherd himself was the perfect one to understand it. So was the future king David, who’d also been a shepherd, and recognizing from that experience – and his life experience since then – that “The Lord is my Shepherd,” whose heart, like that of Jesus, is totally intent on assuring his sheep that we’re safe in his hands (John 10:27-29).
So what part in God’s salvation process did Jacob’s son Joseph then play? It was the hope and assurance that “God gets our bones home”….(next blog)
