And Jacob called unto his sons, and said, Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the last days.
Jacob called unto his sons. It is not to the sayings of the dying saint, so much as of the inspired prophet, that attention is called in this chapter. Jacob is prepared, like Isaac in similar circumstances (Genesis 27:1-46), to pronounce, before the collected group of his numerous family, that solemn benediction which, in the case of the first patriarchs, carried with it the force of a testamentary deed in conveying the divine premises committed to them. These communications, however, though commonly called blessings (Genesis 49:28), contained in the present instance, words of severe censure upon some of his sons; while in their prospective import they were made to indicate the future fortunes of his posterity. They were founded on a long and close observation of the character, dispositions, and habits of each of his sons; because such a knowledge undoubtedly lay at the foundation of his judgments. But his words were more than the dictates of mere natural sagacity; and although he was now arrived at that extreme age:
`When sage experience does attain To something like prophetic strain,'
The utterances of Jacob concerned the destiny not so much of his sons individually, as of the tribes which should respectively descend from them, and they were so pregnant with a meaning which a remote future alone would fully evolve, that he must be considered as having spoken them under the immediate inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, so graphic are the descriptions, and so minutely exact the assignment of the several inheritances in the land of Canaan, that Dr. Davidson ('Introduction,' 1:, p. 198) has pronounced it to have been, while bearing the form of a prediction, a vaticinium post eventum. But this is a groundless assertion; for there is distinct evidence that important integral parts of this prophecy, as, for instance, the separation of Levi to the priesthood (Exodus 32:29; Numbers 1:49; Deuteronomy 10:8-9; Deuteronomy 18:1), and the appointment of Joseph's two oldest sons to be heads of tribes, were accomplished before the settlement in Canaan, and that there was no intermediate period between that and the close of Jacob's life, when the declaration could have been made, but the occasion specified in the beginning of this chapter. The patriarch, when he uttered this highly figurative and obscure prophecy, seems to have had his mind worked up to a high state of poetical fervour under the inspiring influence of the Spirit. His faith placed him as it were on a watchtower, from which, though in Egypt, he could discern, with telescopic clearness, the most prominent events in the future history of his descendants. There was no pronouncing of the patriarchal blessing after Jacob; because the process of distinguishing the heir of the promise had been completed, and that 'ancestor had appeared whose entire posterity was, without any separation from among them, to become the medium for preparing salvation' (Kurtz, 'History of Old Covenant,' 1:, p. 294).
In the last days, х bª'achªriyt (H319) hayaamiym (H3117), in future times. The Septuagint has, 'in the last days.'] This identical phrase is used by the apostle to the Hebrews (Hebrews 1:2, and in 1 Peter 1:20), in reference to the Gospel age. The phrase is employed, however, by the author of the Pentateuch in a sense indefinitely future (cf. Deuteronomy 4:30).