NOTES for Deu 33:1-29
1 And this is the blessing, wherewith Moses the man of God blessed the children of Israel before his death. |
2 And he said, The LORD came from Sinai, and rose up from Seir unto them; he shined forth from mount Paran, and he came with ten thousands of saints: from his right hand went a fiery law for them. |
3 Yea, he loved the people; all his saints are in thy hand: and they sat down at thy feet; every one shall receive of thy words. |
4 Moses commanded us a law, even the inheritance of the congregation of Jacob. |
5 And he was king in Jeshurun, when the heads of the people and the tribes of Israel were gathered together. |
6 Let Reuben live, and not die; and let not his men be few. |
7 And this is the blessing of Judah: and he said, Hear, LORD, the voice of Judah, and bring him unto his people: let his hands be sufficient for him; and be thou an help to him from his enemies. |
8 And of Levi he said, Let thy Thummim and thy Urim be with thy holy one, whom thou didst prove at Massah, and with whom thou didst strive at the waters of Meribah; |
9 Who said unto his father and to his mother, I have not seen him; neither did he acknowledge his brethren, nor knew his own children: for they have observed thy word, and kept thy covenant. |
10 They shall teach Jacob thy judgments, and Israel thy law: they shall put incense before thee, and whole burnt sacrifice upon thine altar. |
11 Bless, LORD, his substance, and accept the work of his hands: smite through the loins of them that rise against him, and of them that hate him, that they rise not again. |
12 And of Benjamin he said, The beloved of the LORD shall dwell in safety by him; and the LORD shall cover him all the day long, and he shall dwell between his shoulders. |
13 And of Joseph he said, Blessed of the LORD be his land, for the precious things of heaven, for the dew, and for the deep that coucheth beneath, |
14 And for the precious fruits brought forth by the sun, and for the precious things put forth by the moon, |
15 And for the chief things of the ancient mountains, and for the precious things of the lasting hills, |
16 And for the precious things of the earth and fulness thereof, and for the good will of him that dwelt in the bush: let the blessing come upon the head of Joseph, and upon the top of the head of him that was separated from his brethren. |
17 His glory is like the firstling of his bullock, and his horns are like the horns of unicorns: with them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth: and they are the ten thousands of Ephraim, and they are the thousands of Manasseh. |
18 And of Zebulun he said, Rejoice, Zebulun, in thy going out; and, Issachar, in thy tents. |
19 They shall call the people unto the mountain; there they shall offer sacrifices of righteousness: for they shall suck of the abundance of the seas, and of treasures hid in the sand. |
20 And of Gad he said, Blessed be he that enlargeth Gad: he dwelleth as a lion, and teareth the arm with the crown of the head. |
21 And he provided the first part for himself, because there, in a portion of the lawgiver, was he seated; and he came with the heads of the people, he executed the justice of the LORD, and his judgments with Israel. |
22 And of Dan he said, Dan is a lion's whelp: he shall leap from Bashan. |
23 And of Naphtali he said, O Naphtali, satisfied with favour, and full with the blessing of the LORD: possess thou the west and the south. |
24 And of Asher he said, Let Asher be blessed with children; let him be acceptable to his brethren, and let him dip his foot in oil. |
25 Thy shoes shall be iron and brass; and as thy days, so shall thy strength be. |
26 There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun, who rideth upon the heaven in thy help, and in his excellency on the sky. |
27 The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms: and he shall thrust out the enemy from before thee; and shall say, Destroy them. |
28 Israel then shall dwell in safety alone: the fountain of Jacob shall be upon a land of corn and wine; also his heavens shall drop down dew. |
29 Happy art thou, O Israel: who is like unto thee, O people saved by the LORD, the shield of thy help, and who is the sword of thy excellency! and thine enemies shall be found liars unto thee; and thou shalt tread upon their high places. |
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The Book of Deuteronomy ends with the blessing of Moses, followed by a concluding epilogue scene. This blessing recalls the blessing of the people by Joseph, which we find in the closing part of the Book of Genesis. Such parallels are not accidental. Originally the Book of Joshua, judging by the view that prevails today among biblical scholars, formed a single whole with the Pentateuch, serving as the sixth book of the Torah as it was created during the Babylonian captivity. The Torah ceased to be a Hexateuch and became a Pentateuch only after Ezra's reform in the middle of the fifth century B.C. The Book of Genesis was originally a kind of prologue to the Torah, and the Book of Joshua was its epilogue. It therefore turns out that the blessing of the people, or more precisely of the twelve tribes of which it consists, sounds at the very end of the Torah's prologue and just before its epilogue.
In the first case the people are blessed by Joseph, for it was he who made possible the people's move to Egypt and their rescue from death by famine. In the second, they are blessed by Moses, the spiritual leader, organizer, and inspiration of the Exodus, under whom the people left Egypt. Yet in both cases the blessing is always concrete; it is connected with the features of each tribe and its ancestor. There is nothing surprising here: blessing means nothing other than God's giving to a people or to an individual person that power which, first of all, should allow a person to become himself, the one whom and the thing which God intended him to be.
This means, of course, the true self, the authentic quality and authentic calling of a person, not what a person often imagines about himself, considering himself to be something he is not in reality and inventing a "calling" for himself in keeping with his own imagined picture of himself and his life. A person can become who he really is only with God's participation, for in reality a person is always what God intended him to be.
Blessing therefore presupposes God's revealing in a person his most characteristic trait, which in itself is almost always ambivalent and can be used just as readily for good as for evil. God wants each person, with His help, to discover his true self and use the best that has been given to him by God. This is how a person's life is built, and this is how the life of a people is built as well. For God a people is not a mass; it consists of individual persons, each of whom God sees and knows. This is the potential God gives to the people, and how it will be put to use depends on the people themselves and on concrete individuals.
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Readings for 10 February 2026
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