Blessings and Curses on Jacobs Sons (Genesis 49)

The Importance of the Genealogy
of the Book of Genesis

Why do I include a Chapter on the Genealogy of the Book of Genesis? Often times people will say to me on the field that Genesis is just a story book that the Jews wrote for their children as a way of explaining where man came from and their heritage. If Genesis were just a story book, why then does it have a complete detailed genealogy of the human race up to Moses? Genesis is not just a story book. It is a detailed historical account not only of creation and the creation of man; but man’s fall and the result of that fall up to Moses. It is also an explanation of the fossil records through out the earth. Evolution claims that the fossil records give evidence of Evolution. They in fact do not. They give evidence of world wide catastrophe of which all ancient civilizations of the world give record of (see Chapter 5). The fossil records do not show a gradual evolution, they show a jumbled world wide instant catastrophe.

Somebody else might say that anyone can make up a Genealogy. For years I would read in books from different Christian authors that it had been either 40,000 or 6,000 years since man’s creation. Unfortunately they never provided any documentation, therefore I never knew how they came up with these figures. It was not until several years ago when I decided out of curiosity to write in detail the Genealogy of Genesis. A side benefit to this was the fact that along with the genealogy of man, Moses also listed exactly how many years it had been from one generation to the next. As you add this up and take other known facts of history since, one can easily come to the reality that according to the book of Genesis man has only been on this earth for 6,000 years. Therefore the book of Genesis is more than just a listing of a genealogy, but also the exact number of years that have passed since that time. Along with the genealogy of Genesis is also given significant historical events: the fall of man and the consequences of that fall, the first murder, the flood, the breaking up of the continents (plate tectonics, see Chapter 1), when blacksmithing first came into practice, the invention of musical instruments, the creation of nations and finally the creation of the nation of Israel.

Genesis is also a book of Prophecy on God’s provision for the Salvation of man as a result of the fall through Jesus Christ the Messiah. This starts in Genesis 3:16 where Yehovah Elohim tells Eve that through her seed will come man’s salvation. The only problem with this statement is that the seed always comes from man which fertilizes the female human egg. Here God is giving us the first indication that the Messiah will come into being through Holy Spirit conception of the Virgin Mary, not as a result of sexual relations with a man. Adam and Eve also understood that this Messiah would be Yehovah Elohim himself becoming flesh to redeem man from his sins. We do not know fully all that was communicated to Adam and Eve about the coming Messiah, but they understood that this seed would be Yehovah Himself becoming man to redeem man from their sins for Moses records in Genesis 4:1, "And the man knew Eve his wife. And she conceived and bore Cain, and said, I have gotten a man: Yehovah." We see here the clear indication that the Messiah would be fully man and fully God. Unfortunately, not long after we read how Cain being anything but God became man’s first murderer of man. The fulfillment of this prophecy would be fulfilled many years later in the person of Jesus Christ.

Throw away the book of Genesis and we have no answer for man’s fallen corrupt condition. If man presently is what he has always been, then he has no need of redemption. The book of Genesis however tells us a different story. Genesis tells us that man was created in God’s image and according to His likeness. This referred to the moral righteousness of God ruling over man through man’s spirit. It also meant God created man with a free will. This meant that if man so chose he could reject God’s rule over him. This is the story of Adam and Even. To start with they had pure unhindered relationship with God. Later, however, something happened: Adam and Eve chose to disobey God and when they did their spirit died, their relationship with God died, and man came into bondage to his soul: his intellect and feelings, and to his flesh: his appetites and desires. Man is not what he always was. He did not always have a good and evil side to his constitution. What he presently is, is not normal. The only way we came to have this understanding was through the record of the Book of Genesis written and handed down to us by Moses through the inspiration and revelation of God.

Because man is not what he always was, God the Son becoming flesh to die for our sins has complete meaning: Jesus’ death and shed blood for our sins was God bringing man back into relationship with Himself. It was also God doing the work of bringing man back to his normal self. What is man’s normal self? Man being ruled by God through his spirit rather than through his soul and flesh.

How important is Genealogy in the Bible? The title of the first book in the Bible is Genesis. the word means "generation".^220/50 If you were a Levitical Priest and you could not trace your ancestry to Levi, you were removed from your office (Neh 7:64). Each Israelite’s genealogical record constituted his title to his farm or home.^220/48 These national records were carefully kept until the destruction of Jerusalem, the Temple, and the Jewish nation in A.D. 70. Therefore, during the life of Jesus, no one could dispute that He was of the house and lineage of David as He claimed to be, because there were the public records to prove it. As a result of the destruction of Israel’s Genealogical records, except those in the Bible, after A.D. 70 no pretending Messiah could prove he was the prophesied son of David.

The reason for the genealogy of Genesis was because from the beginning God gave us prophecies about through what genealogical line the Messiah would come. First, He would come through the line of Shem. In Genesis 9:26-27 Noah states, "Blessed be Yehovah the Elohim of Shem." It is through the line of Shem, Noah’s first born, that both the Hebrew nation was born and the Messiah was born.

The term Shem means name, a term given to him to indicate that he should be noted. The prophecy that Yehovah would be specifically the God of Shem was fulfilled in God’s choice of Abraham and of Israel, Shem’s descendants. The Greek word for Shem is Sem from which we get the word Semite. Anti-Semitism means "Hatred of the Jews."^220/53 Herbert Lockyer writes concerning Shem:

"The generations of Shem (Gen 11:10-26) stretch from Shem to Abraham, covering ten generations — 437 years. Shem himself may have recorded this entire genealogy, for his life spanned the period covered by it. Shem lived from 98 years before the flood until 502 after the Flood, which means that he lived until 75 years after Abraham entered Canaan."^220/53

Shem is also called "the father of all the children of Eber." The term Hebrew is derived from the name Eber (Gen 10:21, Num 24:24) and means "to pass over."²¹⁷ The Messiah coming through the line of Shem was fulfilled in Luke 3:36 where Luke tells us that Jesus came through the line of Shem.

Another descendant of Shem was Abraham. Abraham means father of a great multitude.²¹⁸ Through Abraham came Isaac, then Jacob through whom the twelve tribes of Israel were born. Matthew records in the Gospel of Matthew 1:1 "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." God told Abraham in Genesis 12:3, "In you shall all families of the earth be blessed." The Apostle Paul explains to us in Galatians 3:16 that this promise was fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ: "Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say, ‘And to seeds,’ as referring to many, but rather to one, ‘And to your seed,’ that is, Christ."

Abraham was the head of the Hebrew race. He came from Ur of the Chaldees. He was originally a Gentile, but he became the first man to be called a Hebrew (Gen 14:13).

Not only was Abraham the father of the nation of Israel, but he was also the father of the Arab nations through his son Ishmael. When Abraham was fifty years old, Noah died. At seventy-five years of age God called Abraham to leave his home to begin the nation of Israel.

God’s plan for Salvation was not just for the Israelites, for the Jews, but for the Gentiles as well; for this reason God prophecies to Abraham that not only will his descendants be blessed, but through his Seed all the nations will be blessed. For this reason, God speaking to Isaac, Abraham’s son, prophecies, "By your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed’" (Gen 26:4). Regarding this prophecy, the Apostle Paul records in Galatians 3:8,

"And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘All the nations shall be blessed in you.’"

Asaph, in Psalm 78:67-68, tells us that God chose the tribe of Judah, descendants of Shem, through which the Messiah was to be born. Therefore, the other eleven tribes of Israel are eliminated from the Messianic line. Jacob, the father of Israel, on his death bed prophesied, "The scepter shall not depart from Judah. . . until Shiloh comes" (Gen 49:10). The writer of Hebrews tells us about Jesus: "For it is evident that our Lord sprang out of Judah" (Heb 7:14); and the Apostle John calls Jesus in Revelation 5:5, "The Lion of the tribe of Judah." Concerning the term Shiloh, Herbert Lockyer writes,

"Shiloh has ever been taken to be a name of the Messiah. It means ‘peace’ or ‘one sent.’ As the Messiah, or Sent One, Jesus came before Judah lost its tribal identity. Since He came, our Shiloh has had the obedience of countless myriads as the prophetic Word said He would (Gen 49:10)."^220/54

Though in Israel’s history they had lost their personal national identity and had for a time been dominated by Babylon, not until they came under Roman domination did they lose their right to rule their own people with the death penalty which the scepter symbolized (Ezra 1:5, 8). According to this prophecy the Messiah would not come until this scepter was removed. The removing of this scepter began to take place when Herod the Great, who had no Jewish blood, succeeded the Maccabean princes, who belonged to the tribe of Levi and who were the last Jewish kings to have their reign in Jerusalem.³⁰¹ It was solidified, though, under his son Archelaus in 11 A.D.^{239/Book 47/Ch. 13, 1-5} The procurators, who administered in the Augustus name, took the supreme power of the Sanhedrin away so they could exercise the jus gladii themselves; that is, the sovereign right over life and death sentences. All the nations under Roman dominance had this right removed. As Tacitus said, "... The Romans reserved to themselves the right of the sword, and neglected all else." Later it was written in the Talmud: "a little more than forty years before the destruction of the Temple, the power of pronouncing capital sentences was taken away from the Jews."³⁰² Rabbi Rachmon wrote,

"When the members of the Sanhedrin found themselves deprived of their right over life and death, a general consternation took possession of them; they covered their heads with ashes, and their bodies with sackcloth, exclaiming: ‘Woe unto us, for the scepter has departed from Judah, and the Messiah has not come!’"^303/28-30

But the Messiah had come and was alive walking in their midst.

Study Questions
Continued on Page 2
Bibliography & Notes
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