The End from the Beginning

When people think of end times prophecy, the book of Revelation immediately comes to mind, but did you know end times prophecy is a consistent thread throughout the Bible, starting from the first book?  Let us praise the LORD, because He is a God who declares the end from the beginning.

Isaiah 46:9-10 (NKJV)
9 Remember the former things of old,
For I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is none like Me,
10 Declaring the end from the beginning,
And from ancient times things that are not yet done,
Saying, ‘My counsel shall stand,
And I will do all My pleasure.’

This week my church read the blessing Jacob gave to his twelve sons before he died (Ge 49). There is an easily missed end times prophecy in Israel’s blessing of Judah, so I thought I’d write a blog post about it.  Here is Judah’s full blessing:

Genesis 49:8-12 (NKJV)
8 “Judah, you are he whom your brothers shall praise;
Your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies;
Your father’s children shall bow down before you.
9 Judah is a lion’s whelp;
From the prey, my son, you have gone up.
He bows down, he lies down as a lion;
And as a lion, who shall rouse him?
10 The scepter shall not depart from Judah,
Nor a lawgiver from between his feet,
Until Shiloh comes;
And to Him shall be the obedience of the people.
11 Binding his donkey to the vine,
And his donkey’s colt to the choice vine,
He washed his garments in wine,
And his clothes in the blood of grapes.
12 His eyes are darker than wine,
And his teeth whiter than milk.

Judah was Leah’s fourth son. When her earlier sons were born, she named them after the struggle she was having, hoping Jacob would love her. But when Judah was born to Leah, she said, “This time I will praise the LORD” (Ge 29:35). Amen! His name means “praise”—which is fitting as he was the progenitor of the promised Messiah (Lk 3:33-34).

I wonder what the brothers thought when they listened to Judah’s blessing. Did they understand the promised Seed of the woman would come from Judah’s line? Verse 10 clearly identifies Judah as the kingly line, “until Shiloh comes, and to him shall be the obedience of the people.” Shiloh (Hebrew: שִׁילֹה) is very close to שֶׁלּוֹ “he whose it is, or that which belongs to him”¹, and some translations say, “until it comes to whom it belongs.” The scepter of Israel ultimately belongs to Christ, in His humanity a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah and David. Psalms 2 says it wonderfully. The LORD’s plan is declared prophetically (verse 6 in past tense!) to emphasize how the King is the Son of God (Lk 1:35), begotten from the LORD (Jn 3:16). Praise the LORD!

Psalm 2:6-9 (NKJV)
6 “Yet I have set My King
On My holy hill of Zion.”

7 “I will declare the decree:
The LORD has said to Me,
‘You are My Son,
Today I have begotten You.
8 Ask of Me, and I will give You
The nations for Your inheritance,
And the ends of the earth for Your possession.
9 You shall break them with a rod of iron;
You shall dash them to pieces like a potter’s vessel.’ ”

So, in the middle of the 10^th verse of Genesis 49, the blessing of Israel narrows to one particular descendant of Judah—the One we worship, the Lord Jesus.  Now that we know Who the subject is, let’s look closer the end of the blessing:

Genesis 49:11-12 (NKJV)
11 Binding his donkey to the vine,
And his donkey’s colt to the choice vine,
He washed his garments in wine,
And his clothes in the blood of grapes.
12 His eyes are darker than wine,
And his teeth whiter than milk.

Verse 11 excites me because here there are the two advents of Christ in a single verse!

First Coming

Donkey

First, we notice the donkey, and the donkey’s colt.  Jesus fulfilled this prophecy when He presented Himself before Jerusalem days before they put Him to death.  The detail about the donkey being a colt is found in all four gospels (Mt 21:1-11, Mk 11:1-10, Lk 19:28-38, Jn 12:12-16).

Zechariah 9:9 (NKJV)
9 “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Behold, your King is coming to you;
He is just and having salvation,
Lowly and riding on a donkey,
A colt, the foal of a donkey.

Vine

Next, we see the vine, or the choice vine.  In John 15, Christ told us He is the Vine. “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser… I am the vine, and you are the branches.” When the Vine sat on the donkey’s colt, these first phrases were fulfilled.

Second Coming

“He washed His garments in wine, and His clothes in the blood of grapes.”  The original hearers probably had no idea what this meant, but with the Scripture finished, we can get a lot more clarity. Isaiah 63 expounds on why His clothes are red.  If you can, I recommend to read it out loud:

Isaiah 63:1-6 (NKJV)
63 Who is this who comes from Edom,
With dyed garments from Bozrah,
This One who is glorious in His apparel,
Traveling in the greatness of His strength?—

“I who speak in righteousness, mighty to save.”

2 Why is Your apparel red,
And Your garments like one who treads in the winepress?

3 “I have trodden the winepress alone,
And from the peoples no one was with Me.
For I have trodden them in My anger,
And trampled them in My fury;
Their blood is sprinkled upon My garments,
And I have stained all My robes.
4 For the day of vengeance is in My heart,
And the year of My redeemed has come.
5 I looked, but there was no one to help,
And I wondered
That there was no one to uphold;
Therefore My own arm brought salvation for Me;
And My own fury, it sustained Me.
6 I have trodden down the peoples in My anger,
Made them drunk in My fury,
And brought down their strength to the earth.”

The wine, the blood of grapes is a reference to blood of men which will flow when Christ returns and pours out His wrath on those who hate Him.  Verse 5 is almost exactly like Isaiah 59:15-17:

Isaiah 59:15b-18 (NKJV)
Then the LORD saw it, and it displeased Him
That there was no justice.
16 He saw that there was no man,
And wondered that there was no intercessor;
Therefore His own arm brought salvation for Him;
And His own righteousness, it sustained Him.
17 For He put on righteousness as a breastplate,
And a helmet of salvation on His head;
He put on the garments of vengeance for clothing,
And was clad with zeal as a cloak.
18 According to their deeds, accordingly He will repay,
Fury to His adversaries,
Recompense to His enemies;
The coastlands He will fully repay.

Revelation 19:11-16 (NKJV)
11 Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war. 12 His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except Himself. 13 He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. 14 And the armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses. 15 Now out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. 16 And He has on His robe and on His thigh a name written:

KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS

The winepress as a representation of judgment, specifically mentioned in Isaiah 63:2-3 and implied elsewhere in the references to the blood of grapes, is a persistent theme throughout Scripture.

Revelation 14:17-20 (NKJV)
17 Then another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven, he also having a sharp sickle.
18 And another angel came out from the altar, who had power over fire, and he cried with a loud cry to him who had the sharp sickle, saying, “Thrust in your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, for her grapes are fully ripe.” 19 So the angel thrust his sickle into the earth and gathered the vine of the earth, and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. 20 And the winepress was trampled outside the city, and blood came out of the winepress, up to the horses’ bridles, for one thousand six hundred furlongs.

Let me tell you how the modern bladder wine press works.  My family used to own a winery and we had one of these presses.  If you are making a red wine, you destem, crush and ferment the grapes prior to pressing. This takes about 12 days. Then the fermented grapes are pumped into the winepress. Initially no pressure is applied. Since the grapes were crushed prior to fermentation, part of the wine is already juice. The liquid will fall out by gravity through tiny slats in the press into a pan underneath, where it can be pumped into a container of the winemaker’s choice. After the liquid is gone and all that’s left is grapes, it’s time to actually press. Inside there is a rubber bladder that presses the grapes against the sides of the press in order to gently extract their juice. The length of the pressing cycle is programmable and winemakers vary it according to the grapes they are dealing with, to maximize quality and make sure they extract all the juice possible. This is a nice video if you want to see it. The idea of being slowly pressed the way a winepress works sounds terribly painful. I understand the bowls of God’s wrath are like that, which culminate in His return, when the slain of the Lord will be many (Is 66:16).

Joel 3:12-13 (NKJV)
12 “Let the nations be wakened, and come up to the Valley of Jehoshaphat;
For there I will sit to judge all the surrounding nations.
13 Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe.
Come, go down;
For the winepress is full,
The vats overflow—
For their wickedness is great.”

The fullness of the winepress or ripeness of the harvest means people have reached a fullness of wickedness. The LORD is patient with us, not wanting any to perish, giving ample opportunity for repentance (2 Pe 3:9; Eze 18:23, 32). This principle is demonstrated in the prophecy He gave Abram concerning his descendants. He told him they would go to Egypt for 400 years and multiply and be oppressed as slaves, and then He would bring them out to inherit the land of Canaan—the land at that time inhabited by many peoples: “the Kenites, the Kenezzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites” (Ge 15:19-21). When Israel took possession of the land, they were to kill the peoples who lived there—it was God’s due judgment on their wickedness. “But in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete” (Ge 15:16). So, part of the reason for the Israelites’ time in Egypt was to delay judgment for the Amorites, until they reached an apex of wickedness. God also was patient with Nineveh, delaying His wrath since the people of that generation repented at the preaching of Jonah. And Jonah was angry at God’s mercy towards them, but the LORD said, “And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left—and much livestock?” (Jon 4:11).

Praise be to our God, who is longsuffering and just. “Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are your judgments” (Rv 16:7). May we take sin seriously, and entreat people to repent and be reconciled to God.

1. Brown, F., Driver, S. R., & Briggs, C. A. (1977). Enhanced Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon (p. 1010). Oxford: Clarendon Press.