Jacob did not know the glories of Him Who was hidden under the symbols of Joseph and his dreams. He did not know that they pointed to One Who will not only be the First-born and Chief Ruler with regard to Israel, but also of all creation, One to whom every knee must bow, and every tongue confess. Whatever of authority there be on earth—sun, moon, stars, symbols of rule here below—must pay homage to the Supreme, the Chief Ruler, when He appears. Yea, as if earthly sphere were too limited for the extent of His dominion and the display of His glory, God saith, “Let all the angels of God worship Him”. All things in heaven, on the earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, dominions, principalities or powers, must pay homage to God's great First-born.
Yet is there a birthright even higher than this, this which gives title to reign over all things above and below, the works of His hands. As First-born of creation He is necessarily “Chief Ruler”, and such the Lord Jesus was as soon as born in this world; but He was much more. Of that Child the prophet Isaiah (ix. 6) gives the glorious names, “His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.” Though to human eyes He only appeared as a helpless babe which would have fallen if His mother had not held Him, yet at that very time, apparently an unconscious babe, He was in communion with God. “Thou didst make Me hope when I was upon my mother's breasts” (Psa. 22). And why wonder, why deny the divine Person of the Lord, whether presented to us in holy writ as the Babe in the manger, or as the wearied Man sitting on a well? Let us remember, as our heads are bowed before Him, that He is the Word that was God, and did not cease to be God when He became flesh. Were we humble in His presence, and bowed to the word which says, No man knoweth the Son but the Father, there would not be such unholy, not to say blasphemous questionings and assertions about Eternal Life. He was that all through, from His birth to His death, and could not be otherwise; for He was the Word, the eternal Word; in Him was life, i. e. the source of life, and that He might give eternal life to whomsoever came to Him, became flesh, died, and rose again. And John, who gives this wondrous fact at the beginning of his Gospel, closes his Epistle with the words, pointing (not to a “sphere,” but) to the Son, Jesus Christ, “This is the true God and Eternal Life”. He was and is the Eternal Son, and therefore personally the Eternal Life.
To return to the genealogy, He is presented as the Chief Ruler of the tribes of Israel. This was but a light thing in comparison with all the glories enwrapped in the title “Chief Ruler”. Though the title was His as born in this world, yet there was but one pathway to enter into the glory. “Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory” (Luke 24:2626Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory? (Luke 24:26)). He humbled Himself even to the death of the cross. “Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him and given Him a name which is above every name, that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of beings in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:99Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: (Philippians 2:9)). Death was the path to these glories, but only the pathway, for He could not be holden of it.
And now as the risen Man He takes His place as the Chief Ruler over all things. But another name He has won, which crowns many other names and glories, He is the First-born from the dead. His name as the First-born of creation is merged—not lost—in that of being the First-born from the dead. And as such, the risen exalted Man, God gave Him to be Head to the church, a place more precious to Him than the throne of Israel, or of the world. Not as incarnate is He given to the church, but as the risen glorified Man, seated on the throne of God. How exalted is the church in her Head! Without death and resurrection there could be no church. Even for the stability of earthly blessing there was no other way. But the glories are distinct.
As Chief Ruler His human ancestry is given, and as the Son of David on the throne of Israel praise is waiting for Him in Zion (Psa. 65). It is the praise of millennial saints, who will worship Him in the full blaze of His official glory, when He reigns as King of kings and Lord of lords.
Herein is one distinction between millennial worship and that which the church now offers to God. They see His manifested glory, and praise. We believe His glory, and in faith worship Him before He takes the kingdom, while He is still hidden from the world, and on the throne of God. When He takes His own earthly throne, there will be worship suited to His manifested glory: not the inner court of the temple thrown open, and every believer as now entering through the rent veil. A sample (so to speak) is given of millennial worship, and a special tribe is chosen for it: the same tribe that was appointed by Moses—Levi; who in the future will stand in the same relation to the other tribes as in the time past. Only how faint the shadow, with all its splendor in Solomon's day, to that which shall be displayed when the great King is present, He Who is greater than Solomon.
In giving this genealogy, the throne and the temple are prominent before the mind of God. For both must be set up on the earth. Jesus the Lord, the Son of David, fills both. The throne is His proclaimed all through scripture. The temple is his declared as emphatically, if not so widely, in the word of God. The Psalms and the Prophets abundantly speak of the temple of the Lord, and in the Gospels the Lord Jesus Himself said, “My Father's house”. We have had the throne, and Judah in connection with it. Next in promise —if not equally—is the temple, and Levi in connection with it. Not that the throne is separate from the temple, or the temple without the throne. For David—the throne—superintends the service of the temple, and arranges the order of it.
But before the tribe of Levi is given, there is a brief mention of those who were content to remain outside the promised land. They were attracted by the fertility of the land east of the Jordan, and regarded not the promise. It was not falling in the wilderness, but it was failing of the grace of God. The land of their choice might to their eyes possess every advantage, fertile and suitable for “much cattle”, but it was not the promised land. So far from laboring to enter into that rest, they pleaded to be left outside, outside that good land which Moses so longed for. As a whole Israel failed to enter; as a whole the nation came short of the glory of God, and then most of all.
Reuben and Gad (Num. 32) are the two tribes which seek an inheritance other than God had provided, and doubtless their influence drew half of Manasseh. So two and a half tribes choose independently of God. Moses rebuked them, thinking (as appears from his words) that they would not help their brethren in the war with the Canaanites. But when they assured him of their willingness to go fully armed to the war with the other tribes, Moses was pacified, and gave them the land they wished for. Nay, more, Moses said that if they went armed over Jordan, then afterward “ye shall return and be guiltless before the Lord”. Guiltless! So said Moses, but not the Lord. On the contrary, here in 1 Chron. 5:2525And they transgressed against the God of their fathers, and went a whoring after the gods of the people of the land, whom God destroyed before them. (1 Chronicles 5:25) the divine record is, “And they transgressed". The words of Moses convey no reproof for choosing possessions outside the promised land. But was not this their transgression? which the Holy Spirit emphatically marks. All Israel were transgressors; these are held up to view as having an evil prominence among transgressors. Even in the records of the returned captives who had themselves been carried away to Babylon on account of their own transgression, these two and a half tribes are called transgressors. “And they transgressed” points to their great sin in choosing for themselves when God had chosen for them. If these words refer only to the following: “went a whoring after the gods of the people of the land”, they were not worse in this than all the other tribes. But they are prominent here as despisers of God's gift, for evidently they thought they had chosen a better land than that which the Lord had chosen for them. Yet though they so transgressed, they are not omitted in this genealogy, for they are sons of Israel, a part of the chosen nation. But, because of this sin, only brief mention is made of them. God did not forget them while He noted their sin. He helped them in their wars because they trusted in Him. They cried to Him in their need, a sort of faith in God; but where was their obedience? where His honor?
God always hears those who put their trust in Him, and call upon Him in time of danger, even though they may be in a wrong position, and practically forget Him, when things around them seem prosperous. And is not this one of His gracious ways of rebuking our unfaithfulness?
These two and a half tribes did not cease to be Israelites; but as outside the promised land, the special privileges of the temple were lost to them, as also the consciousness, such as the other tribes might have had, that the manifested power of Jehovah in the battles with the Canaanite was for them. All their armed men went over the Jordan to help their brethren in the war, yet not to conquer an inheritance for themselves where God had chosen for them, but to return to their own choice where they made their home, not a temporary home, for there they built fenced cities for their children. As tribes, Reuben, Gad, and half Manasseh did not enter the land. They became mere onlookers of the triumphs of Israel. The salutary lessons in connection with Ai, with Gibeon, &c., were only, so to say, second-hand to them. Not for them the mighty power was displayed at Jericho, which might have remained standing, so far as their possessions were concerned; not for them the victories over Adonizedek and Jabin. Not for them, as for the other tribes, did the sun and moon stand still, or the Lord send great hail-stones upon the army of the allied five kings (Josh. 10). Indirectly they partook of the resulting prosperity, for all the nations feared Israel. But God's purpose was—and is—to establish all the people of Israel in that land. This will yet be done, but, humanly speaking, these tribes frustrated that purpose in the past. God in grace rising above responsible man's failure will fulfill His purpose, and prove that, where sin abounded, grace yet more abounds.
Their beginning seemed fair; there were men of valor among them. Though renowned, there was this fatal charge against them, “And they transgressed.” They were shut out from the peculiar blessing of the land. How great their loss! Yet their loss is not the most solemn part of their disobedience, but their preference of their own liking to the goodness of God. The consequences are two-fold, moral and judicial. They went after the gods of the people of the land—they became idolaters. This was the moral consequence of their position. And the judicial is that the “God of Israel” brought upon them the king of Assyria, who carried them into captivity, far away from the land that they valued above God's land.
Perhaps it was the same time that the Assyrian overthrew the kingdom of Israel under Hoshea. Be that as it may, their tribal history is summed up in three prominent facts: they refused God's land; they went after other gods; they were carried away by Assyria. The first inevitably led to the second, and then came judgment. If their captivity be at the same time and by the same power that executed the Lord's judgment upon Israel in Hoshea's reign, why is their end so early brought before us, their beginning and their end contained in a few verses'? Of the other tribes we have the beginning, not the end—so distinctly told. The answer is found in the words, “And they transgressed”. They are dismissed seemingly before Levi is given, which had special charge of the temple, and to lead in the worship of God; as if being outside the promised land they had cut themselves off from the privileges of the temple and the protection of the presence of Jehovah in the midst of them. Sovereign grace will bring them back at the end, and Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh will stand in their lot with the other tribes, and in equal numbers (Rev. 7), at least.
From the moment of their choosing a possession, they were morally on different ground before God. To despise the promised land is a greater sin than failure in the land. This was the case of the remaining tribes, and brought down heavy judgments upon them; but the sin of despising God's land is over and above the sin of failure in the land. And God marks it, “they transgressed”.
When Joshua encouraged Israel to go and possess the land which the Lord gave them (Josh. 1), he has a different word for these transgressors; he speaks of their land as that which Moses gave them; and these go through the Jordan, that is, their warriors, for their wives and children remain behind, to fulfill their promise to Moses: the nine and half go to the war on the ground of God's promise to Israel. God's promise on the one hand, man's promise on the other. What a difference!