“The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet (from amongst his descendants) until Shiloh come.” This was remarkably fulfilled: the tribe always retained its cohesion and autonomy, even when in captivity, until “there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed,” rather enrolled for taxation. It was when the Jews were thus going to lose their nationality, and become merged as units into the Roman Empire—when Joseph and Mary had gone to their native town of Bethlehem for the very purpose of being registered as Roman subjects, that Messiah was born. Shiloh came. “And unto Him shall the gathering of the peoples (plural) be,” but that gathering is still future.
Observe this remarkable peculiarity in prophecy; there is no perspective in it. There was to be an interval of at least nearly two thousand years between Shiloh's coming and the gathering of the peoples to Him yet the prophet connects the one event immediately with the other, the vast interval in no way diminishing the importance and prominence of the more distant one. Thus, instead of prophecy's being like a picture with prominent foreground, diminishing “perspective” and “vanishing point,” it is like a chart, in which the object retains the same magnitude whether it be near or distant; and the reason is plain. In a picture we look along from the ground, from the point of human sight; but in a chart we are looking down, from above, and everything is comprehended at once in the view. The mind of the Most High, therefore, sees and comprehends everything in one vast and infinite plan; past, present, and future—the whole events of eternity—being within the stupendous range of that omniscient intelligence. The abrupt connection of events separated by long ages is one of the proofs that a prophecy is divine. Men do not write so, for men do not think in such a manner. They look at events from the ground line, and see but a limited range with a perspective—what is future constantly diminishing in value and prominence in proportion to its distance.
I should define prophecy as an infinite reasoning—the conclusions formed by perfect wisdom on the basis of perfect knowledge. Men can tell by their imperfect wisdom and limited knowledge that certain results will follow such and such causes. But even the wisest men are often entirely at fault. Metternich, who was one of the most astute diplomatists, said to Lord Elardinge in 1848 at Vienna, that he thought there would be “disturbances, but nothing much;” yet four days afterward he was flying for his life, and his house was sacked. If one knew everything and reasoned correctly, he could tell the whole chain of results to all eternity: of course God alone can do this, and therefore, as Newton said, “If the scripture prophecies are accomplished, the scripture must be the word of God;” and this kind of evidence to the inspiration of scripture is a continuous one, as years progress and the prophecies are fulfilled—and a cumulative one. Miracles attest a revelation at the time of its announcement; prophecies, which are miracles of knowledge, attest it for subsequent times; so that we are never without supernatural evidence of God's words. Regarding prophecy in this light, we can get some slight idea of that august and stupendous Mind which, comprehending and remembering all phenomena, reasons to their consequences through millions of ages.
Judah was to stoop and couch (the first of these original words implies a compulsory abasement, the second a voluntary humiliation). But he was to couch as a lion, ultimately to rise up in royal dignity and judgment. It is, in principle, the “sufferings of Christ and the glories that follow.". In the end of the Book, when the apostle John is called to behold the Lion of Judah who had prevailed to open and accomplish God's governmental decrees, he turned and beheld, not a lion but, a “Lamb as it had been slain “: that was how the lion had prevailed—by humiliation, suffering, and death, which He had descended into to rise again into regal dominion and power.
Not so Issachar. He was an ass couching down supinely between two burdens. (The word translated “strong” appears derisive—lit. “bony.” The usually correct Gadsby seems at fault for once in thinking that this is meant to be eulogistic of Issachar: it is certainly the reverse.) He saw that rest was good and bowed between two burdens; like those who, living by sight, seek to make this world their place of rest, but really find themselves doubly burdened—with spiritual and temporal responsibilities. The world takes it out of him too; he becomes “a servant unto tribute.” There is a difference between Buridan's ass and Issachar: the former could not make up his mind which of the two bundles of hay to eat, and so stood starving—Reuben like. The latter would have both and they were too much for him; he could not digest them. He couched in a voluntary humiliation: to him the earth becomes a Grotto del Cane; the air near the ground soporific and poisonous.
But Judah couched to rise again, his purpose indomitable whether in defeat or victory. For some reason most of those who have risen highest in human history have had lives of previous probation in extreme humiliation. David, Joseph, and Moses, minding a few sheep, censured and slandered; Julius Caesar in captivity with the pirates; the Russian Peter laboring in the Saardam and Deptford dockyards; the Prussian Frederick degraded in his childhood and youth; Luther singing for bread in the streets; King Alfred slapped in the face for burning the cake; Washington, like “Cincinnatus awful from the plow,” rising to rule armies and states; Grant from the tannery; Lincoln and Garfield from the canal boats. The gold is found down in the dirt of the earth before it is formed into a crown to encircle the king's brow; the pearl must be made by the oyster's saliva in the ooze of the sea, ere it rest on the queen's breast. There are those who ascend, but it is like going up the Tarpeian rock to come down in crushing disaster; and there are those who are trodden under foot, but like the fruitful seed to rise again, some thirty, some sixty, and some an hundred fold. If we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him.
The condemnation of Simeon and Levi shows us the witness of the Holy Ghost against religious intolerance and persecution. They are confederate and deceitful, as religions bigotry always is, but every truly religions man will echo Jacob's repudiation, “O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly, mine honor, be not thou. united; for in their anger they slew a man they houghed oxen (lit.).” The innocent suffer with the guilty in these accursed crusades—the innocent ox with the guilty Shechem—not that Shechem was half as bad as they. The worst of this crime is, they do it in the name of God, religious order and separation; and so bring religion into the abhorrence of unthinking minds. They thus contrive to wrong the world and the church at the same time.
“Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce; and their wrath for it was cruel. I will divide them and scatter them.” They were thus scattered but in different ways. It is frequently said that the tribe of Simeon were scattered as schoolmasters, but I know of no sufficient evidence for the statement, and think that there was nothing in the disposition which could qualify them for the office—except perhaps in one of its branches, the castigatory. Levi was also scattered, but the subsequent faithfulness and zeal of the tribe caused this curse to be turned into a privilege: they bore the sacred offices of the service and the priesthood.
Bigotry is not banished: it is around us—within us perhaps. The Protestant communities have indeed the comforting fiction that the Romanists have absorbed it all. It is convenient for instance to remember the burning of protestants by Mary, and to forget the hangings and embowelings of papists by Elizabeth—who made a law that, if a papist converted a protestant, both were to be put to death. No, Babylon has no monopoly of this quality, nor her “daughters” either.