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Until Shiloh comes

“Judah, your brothers shall praise you;
    your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies;
    your father's sons shall bow down before you.
Judah is a lion's cub;
    from the prey, my son, you have gone up.
He stooped down; he crouched as a lion
    and as a lioness; who dares rouse him?
The scepter shall not depart from Judah,
    nor the ruler's staff from between his feet,
until tribute comes to him;
    and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples." (Genesis 49:8-10)

The past few years, God seems to be teaching me a lot from Genesis. Today I thought I'd document down another one of those all so familiar texts but have so much more than meets the eye.

The phrase in v10 - "until tribute comes to him", I have since learned can be translated as "Until shiloh comes" (not to be confused with the Old Testament location, Shiloh).

Walter Kaiser Jr argues in his book, "The Messiah in the Old Testament", that the language here mirrors Ezekiel 21:27:

"A ruin, ruin, ruin I will make it. This also shall not be, until he comes, the one to whom judgment belongs, and I will give it to him."

 If that indeed is true, v10 can read: "The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs."

This reading makes Gen 49:10 extremely Messianic.

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