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The many successive "blessings" of Israel were a necessary consequence of his Divine election. In that seed all families of the earth were to be blessed. Therefore it was fitting that formal and repeated blessings should be pronounced upon the bearer of such high destinies, that none of the issues of his history might seem to be by chance, and that he and all men might know what was "the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance among the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of God's power towards us who believe." The notion of a distinct continuity in calling and in privilege between Israel and the Christian Church is no fancy of an antiquated theology. It springs out of the very root idea of the Bible, the principle which rightly leads us to speak of so many Scriptures, written at sundry times and in divers manners, as one book and one revelation. The first utterance of blessing upon the chosen people proceeded from the lips of God Himself, and was renewed in nearly the same form of language to each of the three great patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It can hardly be by an accident that the record in Genesis of this initial benediction is sevenfold. Seven times exactly did God declare His purpose to bless the seed of Abraham in the line of Isaac and of Jacob; and having thus established His covenant as by an oath, He spake no more by a like direct communication, but He used the lips of inspired men to enlarge the scope of His blessing, and to give definiteness to its first and necessarily somewhat vague generalities. The blessing of Moses was evidently founded upon the earlier utterance of the dying Jacob concerning the future of his twelve sons. But the differences between the two blessings are far more suggestive than their resemblances. There are parts of Jacob's discourse to which the notion of "blessing" is altogether foreign. Simeon and Levi are stricken in it with an absolute curse; the prediction concerning Issachar is at least equivocal in its reference to willing servitude; and for Reuben there is nothing but a mournful foreclosure of his natural birthright (Genesis 49:3-7, 14, 15). But the prophecy of Moses is really a benediction upon every tribe that is named therein. It is couched throughout in the language of unfeigned affection, intercession, and giving of thanks for what is or for what may be unequivocally good. Careful readers will observe that the tribes of Israel are arranged in different order in the two blessings by Jacob and by Moses. The natural order of age and of maternal parentage is followed by Jacob; but Moses at first sight seems to adopt an altogether arbitrary arrangement, three times putting a younger before an elder son, separating children of the same mother, and omitting one name altogether. This fact, however, is itself one of our clues to the right understanding of the blessing as a whole, for its only possible explanation depends upon the typical character of Israel's national history. The place which Divine Providence assigned to each tribe in the temporal commonwealth of Israel at different stages of its development was meant to illustrate some permanent principle of God's spiritual kingdom which Moses foresaw in its continuance to our own day. The thirty-third chapter of Deuteronomy has a prologue and an epilogue, which may not be passed over in silence. The blessings of the children of Israel are embraced between them intentionally, for the inspired author wished to set forth the unalterable conditions of blessing in God's kingdom, and the inseparable connection which subsists between obedience, happiness, and faith towards God. No grander description of the Divine covenant with Israel was ever given than is contained in the opening verses of this chapter, nor has the law from Sinai been anywhere else depicted so awfully and yet so attractively in its character of "the inheritance" of Jehovah's "congregation." That law, in its outward form, has no doubt passed away for Christians, but the obligation of its spirit is perpetual, and the blessing of each citizen of God's new covenant kingdom depends upon a loving acceptance of that obligation. Not Moses, but Christ, has "commanded us a law." He is our "king," and we are "not without law to God, but under the law to Christ."

(T. G. Rooke, B. A.)

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KJV: And this is the blessing, wherewith Moses the man of God blessed the children of Israel before his death.

WEB: This is the blessing, with which Moses the man of God blessed the children of Israel before his death.