Genesis 49:9

Judah is the royal tribe whose ensign was a lion, and from him Messiah sprang. Lions stand for the majesty and dignity of Israel's throne. Think of that, and you get some sense of the true dignity of the nation as linked to the Son of David. Judah is a young lion. "From the prey, my son, you have gone up," says Jacob... We live in the light of accomplished redemption, with the power of Satan broken at the cross. So we can see how He has gone up, having stripped principalities and powers and triumphed over them... "But who shall rouse Him up?" That shall be the day of the vengeance of our God.

Judah was to stoop and lie down. The first of these original words implies a forced lowering; the second a voluntary humiliation (Psalm 102:10; Philippians 2:7). But he was to lie down as a lion, and in the end to rise up in royal dignity and judgment. It is, in principle, the "sufferings of Christ and the glories that follow." At the end of the Book, the apostle John is called to look at the Lion of Judah, who had prevailed to open and carry out God's decrees for the world. John turned and saw, not a lion, but a "Lamb, as though it had been slain." That was how the lion had prevailed: by humiliation, suffering and death. He went down into them so as to rise again into royal dominion and power.

The lion is a type of unstoppable strength. It may act lawlessly, or, as here, in the righteous carrying out of God's judgments, for "a king's wrath is like the growling of a lion." (Proverbs 19:12.)... These prophecies are still unfulfilled; for He who holds God's mighty power, symbolised by the lion, has not yet appeared in this character. He has been on earth as a lamb led to the slaughter, but not as "the Lion of the tribe of Judah." This is the character, however, which He now takes.

So it is Christ that Jacob has in spirit before him when he sees Judah taking on the lion-character. In David the lion-character did rise up for a short time, just as predicted. But the brief glory of his kingdom only foretold and announced the better glory of Christ's lasting one. So the Lion of the tribe of Judah is not only the "Branch of David," springing out of the cut-down tree. He is also, as here, the Root of David, and David himself gets all his real meaning from Him... David's throne is to be lifted up from the dust, and Judah's long-delayed hope is to open out into fulfilment. The thought of Judah's Lion cannot be separated from Judah taking the prey, and then lying down with a front of power that no one will dare to disturb.

In verse 9 Judah is compared to a lion, as a king among beasts. Here we see a hint of Christ acting in judgment. Genesis is the seed-plot of the Bible. We pass on to Revelation, where everything comes to fruition and finality, and in Revelation 5 we find "the Lion of the tribe of Judah" about to take the book of judgment and break its seals. And the universe is filled with His praises.

The prophecy about Judah is in great contrast to the one about Simeon and Levi, for it is all favourable. Though Judah had also been guilty of very serious wrong, his deeply felt repentance, seen in Genesis 44:18-34, was such that God was free to bless him greatly. His brothers would praise him (Judah means "praise"). He would subdue his enemies. His father's children would bow to his authority. He is likened to a lion, the king of beasts, feeding on the spoils of his conquest.