NOTES for Gen 49:2; Gen 49:8-10
The blessing of the tribes of Israel is testimony to God's superhuman faithfulness to His promises. Judah was promised that the Messiah would descend from him, and that is exactly what happened. Yet if we carefully read Jesus' genealogy in the Gospel according to Matthew, such faithfulness to His promises becomes anything but self-evident. These were ordinary people, like everyone else, who over the course of generations amassed every sin available to humankind. Like us, they were not restrained by the fact that they would become relatives of the Savior. And yet He still came to earth; He consented to become a blood relative of all these people, and then of all of us.