Dan will judge his people, As another of the tribes of Israel.
Near death, Jacob speaks a word over each of his sons, and Dan's word is a single line of promise before darker words follow. Dan's name means "judge" — yet how could a tribe with Dan's record ever hold that place?
The verse turns on Dan's name. One writer sets him beside Judah:
Judah stands for the truth, the basis of all government among the people of God. Dan stands for carrying that government out. Dan means judge, and that is what he stands for in Jacob's prophecy. Most significantly, Jacob also foretells the apostasy.
The closing words, "as one of the tribes of Israel," set a limit. Dan's name is missing from the sealed tribes of Revelation 7, so this old promise reads like an answer given in advance:
Has God let this tribe drop out of His chosen earthly family, so that it has no part in the final blessing? The voice from long ago answers the question decisively: "Dan shall judge his people as one of the tribes of Israel." No! the Lord's grace prevails over all failure: Dan does not lose his place. It cannot be that a tribe should perish out of the chosen people... The staff of authority to judge has not fully gone. But he keeps only what his place as a tribe requires — "as one of the tribes of Israel," nothing more.
Dan's later history is dark. Even so, the promise given here was never taken back:
No matter how low the people of God sink in failure, nothing sets His purposes aside. As the apostle Paul wrote to the believers in Rome, "the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable." So the words "Dan shall judge his people as one of the tribes of Israel" make his place in final blessing sure. Jacob is about to tell of Dan's terrible future as an instrument of Satan. Yet he can take comfort: blessing will come for Dan in the end.
Dan gets more than bare survival. When the list is about service, Dan drops out. When it is about mercy, he comes first:
Yet such is the grace of God that Dan comes first in Ezekiel's prophecy of the restoration of the tribes. There the question is not service but mercy. Dan, the worst sinner of all, is the first named and provided for — though very fittingly he is the least near to the sanctuary. Then at last Jacob's assurance comes true, the assurance even their wickedness could not cancel... And Dan, with all his faults, receives the honour of a deliverer called from his sons, when from that tribe strode out the heroic and powerful figure of Samson.
Timing is the next question, and one writer answers it while naming who may come out of Dan:
Prophetically this brings us to the time when Israel takes up self-government again. To some degree this has been true since 1948... Comparing this verse with Revelation 7, it seems likely the antichrist will come from the tribe of Dan, for there Dan is left out of the 144,000. Yet even though Dan is missing from that sealed company, he will have his place in the blessing of the millennium.
The promise also carries a lesson that reaches past Israel. To judge others, a man must first judge himself — and that is what Dan's story lacks:
His name means "judge," or "judging," and he stands for the spirit of rule. That spirit can only be reached through the lesson of self-rule, self-judgment and self-government, and this means the truth applied to the whole man. Dan's history shows little of this. It is the opposite of what his character should be... Self-judgment and self-government become possible in only one way: by submitting to another will and power, that of God revealed in Christ.
- Judge — Dan's name means "judge." The promise makes him stand for government carried out among God's people.
- Failure — his history runs the other way: apostasy at the start, and his name left out of the sealed tribes in Revelation 7.
- Grace — his wickedness could not cancel the word Jacob spoke over him. In Ezekiel's vision of restoration, where mercy is the subject, Dan comes first.
- Place — "as one of the tribes of Israel" gives him his tribal standing and no more. He keeps his staff, nothing beyond it.
- Self-rule — the tribe called to judge never learned the lesson. Judging others starts with judging yourself, and that comes only by submitting to God as revealed in Christ.
Dan will be a serpent on the way, A horned snake on the path, Which biteth the horse's heels, So that the rider falleth backwards.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
I wait for thy salvation, O Jehovah.
Jacob is dying, and he is telling his twelve sons what will happen to them in days to come. Right after the dark picture of Dan as a serpent in the path, he stops prophesying and prays one short sentence about himself — the first time the word "salvation" appears in the Bible.
The verse sits where the prophecy hits bottom, at the point of apostasy — a turning away from God. The writers below quote the verse in an older wording: "I have waited for Your salvation."
In Jacob's blessing, Dan comes in at the point of apostasy, but for that very reason also at the point of waiting for blessing. Dan is like an adder in the path biting the horse's heels, so that his rider falls backward. And then comes an interjection, "I have waited for Your salvation, O Lord"; faith says that God must now come in.
Another writer marks the same turn — from Satan's power to a heart that looks up.
It is the moment of total ruin among the Jews, but exactly the point of change for blessing. Then the cry comes out: "I have waited for Your salvation, O Jehovah." Here is the sudden change from the energy of Satan to a heart looking up and out to Jehovah Himself.
Waiting for this salvation is not passivity. It is the end of trying to save yourself.
Here "salvation" is used, we judge, in the sense of deliverance. It is very clear that Dan marks out the apostasy of Israel in a future day. In view of this, the resource of those who remain faithful — the remnant — is shown. They will be brought to know that Jehovah alone can deliver them. Oppressed by "the man of the earth" and held in his grip, they will find human effort to get themselves out completely useless. So they must look to Jehovah alone for help. Faith, then, recognising this, says, "I have waited for Your salvation, O Lord." ... It is a lesson we all need to learn when we are brought into hard places, confusion, or trials. The flesh is impatient and, like Saul at Gilgal, cannot wait, but must do something to make a way out of its difficulties, to rescue itself.
The word enters Scripture on the lips of a dying man who never saw the thing he names.
The thought of these things stirred the prophetic soul of the patriarch, and led him to express his own faith and hope. "I have waited for Your salvation, O Lord." This is the first occurrence of the word "salvation" in our English Bible. Jacob had to wait for it. Many centuries later old Simeon could say, "My eyes have seen Your salvation," and each of us can now say that in heart and life we have experienced it. But in the sense Jacob had in mind, the cry still goes out: "Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion!" (Ps. 14:7).
Jacob was waiting for what the Messiah would come and do.
"Salvation" was identified with the coming and work of the Messiah. Believers understood little, if anything, of how it would happen. But they had no doubt about the saving grace that would then appear... they looked on to the last day as the goal of their hopes, when Messiah would establish salvation fully and for ever. How clearly it is "grace," not of works that human nature might boast in.
Now and then in this chapter Jacob's own heart breaks into the prophecy, and here the sight of coming apostasy moves him.
As he speaks his prophetic words about his sons, now and then his own heart is allowed to speak. These outbursts are full of spiritual affection, showing a much improved condition of soul... In earlier days he had been careless about the apostate ways of his children, who married the daughters of Canaan. But now, in the same prophetic words, he looks at the apostasy of Dan. Sick at heart over such a sight, he breathes out a longing for the promise — "I have waited for Your salvation, O Lord."
Believers whose souls are already saved still have something to wait for.
Believers already receive the end of their faith in the salvation of their souls, and the Spirit is the seal and witness of it. Now they have to wait patiently for that salvation to be completed by the redemption of their bodies... There is a sense in which the saints still wait, as Jacob and the prophets did, for God's salvation (Gen. 49:18; Isa. 25:9; 1 Peter 1:5).
- Ruin first. The cry comes at the lowest point of the prophecy. Where the serpent bites and the rider falls, faith says God must come in.
- Wait, don't scramble. Waiting admits that self-rescue is useless. Impatient flesh, like Saul at Gilgal, must always do something instead.
- First word. This is where "salvation" first appears in the Bible — spoken by a dying man who had to wait for it.
- A Person, not a plan. What Jacob waited for was tied to the coming and work of the Messiah, and it was grace, never earned.
- Still waiting. Simeon's eyes saw it, our hearts have tasted it, yet saints still wait as Jacob did — for salvation completed.