NOTES for Gen 49:1-33

We are unlikely to understand the meaning of all these prophecies, for we know very little about the future of all the tribes—in the biblical narratives, the principal tribes, Judah, Ephraim, Manasseh, and Benjamin, will for the most part take center stage. Yet we can see that God, who sees the present and future of every person and every nation, reveals His plan: one because this world is one, and diverse because of the multitude of participants in that plan. Before His gaze lies the history of each one of us, just as the history of each of Jacob's sons, speeding like an arrow toward the future that has not yet come, toward the time of encounter with the Creator and chief Protagonist of this history—when the One in whom the nations place their hope comes...