Notes 73B: Judah's oracle (49:8-12)

Judah

ח יְהוּדָ֗ה אַתָּה֙ יוֹד֣וּךָ אַחֶ֔יךָ יָֽדְךָ֖ בְּעֹ֣רֶף אֹֽיְבֶ֑יךָ יִשְׁתַּֽחֲו֥וּ לְךָ֖ בְּנֵ֥י אָבִֽיךָ׃ ט גּ֤וּר אַרְיֵה֙ יְהוּדָ֔ה מִטֶּ֖רֶף בְּנִ֣י עָלִ֑יתָ כָּרַ֨ע רָבַ֧ץ כְּאַרְיֵ֛ה וּכְלָבִ֖יא מִ֥י יְקִימֶֽנּוּ׃ י לֹֽא־יָס֥וּר שֵׁ֨בֶט֙ מִֽיהוּדָ֔ה וּמְחֹקֵ֖ק מִבֵּ֣ין רַגְלָ֑יו עַ֚ד כִּֽי־יָבֹ֣א שִׁילֹ֔ה וְל֖וֹ יִקְּהַ֥ת עַמִּֽים׃ יא אֹֽסְרִ֤י לַגֶּ֨פֶן֙ עִירֹ֔ה וְלַשֹּֽׂרֵקָ֖ה בְּנִ֣י אֲתֹנ֑וֹ כִּבֵּ֤ס בַּיַּ֨יִן֙ לְבֻשׁ֔וֹ וּבְדַם־עֲנָבִ֖ים סוּתֹֽה׃ יב חַכְלִילִ֥י עֵינַ֖יִם מִיָּ֑יִן וּלְבֶן־שִׁנַּ֖יִם מֵֽחָלָֽב׃

8 y'huda atta yodukha axekha yad'kha b'‛oref oy'vekha; yishtaxawwu l'kha b'ne avikha. 9 gur arye y'huda miTTeref b'ni ‛alita; kara‛ ravatz k'arye ukh'lavi mi y'qimennu. 10 lo yasur sheveT mihuda um'xoqeq mibben raglaw; ‛ad ki yavo shilo w'lo yiqq'hat ‛ammim. 11 os'ri laggefen ‛iro w'lassoreqa b'ni atono; kibbes bayyayin l'vusho uv'dam ‛anavim suto. 12 xakhlili ‛enayim miyyayin; ul'ven shinnayim mexalav.
⁸ You, O Judah, your brothers shall praise;
Your hand shall be on the nape of your foes;
Your father's sons shall bow low to you.
⁹ Judah is a lion's whelp;
On prey, my son, have you grown.
He crouches, lies down like a lion,
Like the king of beasts — who dare rouse him?
¹⁰ The scepter shall not depart from Judah,
Nor the ruler's staff from between his feet;
So that tribute shall come to him
And the homage of peoples be his.
¹¹ He tethers his ass to a vine,
His ass's foal to a choice vine;
He washes his garment in wine,
His robe in blood of grapes.
¹² His eyes are darker than wine;
His teeth are whiter than milk.

Judah gets five whole verses, but after all Judah is Judah; what audience doesn't cheer for the home team? Fourth in line for the top spot, Judah's triumph is justified by the default of the three early rivals, but also by its own excellence, naturally, and it is of the latter that these lines now sing. The only complimentary passage so far in the poem, this section is pretty much a song in its own right, the song of Judah.

atta yodúkha axékha
The popular etymology of Judah's name was that Leah praised God when she bore this her fourth son, although it is not clear whether she was thankful to Him for having now borne four children or whether she meant, that will do for the time being thank you very much; after all the verse (29:35) adds watta‛amod millédet 'so she stopped having babies.' The anecdote implies that the name she gave him, y'huda, comes from the hiphil verb root y-d-h 'to praise, to thank'. So when Judah's song begins with the words atta yodúkha axékha 'your brothers will praise you' (not 'thank you', I imagine), the allusion is obvious. And totally untranslatable. But even without the folk-etymological allusion, it might be possible to capture something of the word play here by focusing on the cynghanedd (sound play) of y'huda atta yodúkha (and perhaps also yad'kha which follows!).

yishtaxawwu l'kha b'ne avikha
'Your father's sons will bow to you.' This is parallel to the first phrase, atta yodúkha axékha.


kara‛ ravatz k'arye
The "naked" conjunction of two plain suffix-tense forms is odd. As for the verbs, the first generally means 'to kneel' but is translated as 'crouch' of lions according to CHALOT though I don't know whether that is an ad hoc hypothesis based on this very example; while the second is glossed as 'to lie down, couch' again of animals. This verb occurred in participial form in 4:7, in an obscure context, where rovetz is thought by some to be a name for a kind of demon; in any case the sense seems to be sinister there, whereas in another occurrence of the verb, in 29:2, it is used of sheep lying around and the context is quite idyllic. This is the first of three occurrences of r-b-tz in our passage: see also v. 14 (Issachar crouching among the sheepfolds) and v. 25.

lo yasur shéveT
'The staff will not turn away', or as the JPS puts it, 'The scepter shall not depart', using shéveT here in its original meaning of 'staff'. From this it acquired a secondary meaning of 'tribe' as in the twelve tribes of Israel, see vv. 16 and 28.

um'xoqeq
'Ruler's staff' (?). It isn't known just what this was supposed to mean; there is a word m'xoqeq but it is the poal participle of the root x-q-q (more familiar from the cognate noun xoq 'decree') and seems to mean 'leader', not something one would be likely to have between one's feet. But given the parallellism with lo yasur shéveT mihuda, it has been assumed that something analogous to sheveT is meant - though that is really only a guess.

‛ad ki yavo shilo
Meaning unclear, in particular what shilo is supposed to mean. Since this is obscure, it has invited all sorts of strange conjectures. Elsewhere in the Bible, shilo is the name of a place, Siloh, where there was a sanctuary, so that ‛ad ki yavo shilo looks like it means 'until he comes to (or enters) Siloh', but it is unclear how that fits into the sense of the verse. Any of the other suggestions that have been made involve unconfirmed speculations about other possible meanings of the mysterious shilo.

w'lo yiqq'hat ‛ammim
'And the homage of peoples be his.' This yiqq'hat is believed to be the construct of a noun meaning 'obedience' but it is too poorly attested to be certain of the real meaning of the whole sentence.

os'ri laggéfen ‛iro w'lassoreqa b'ni atono
'He tethers his ass to a vine, / His ass's foal to a choice vine': this is very obscure language and the translation is a conjecture. Each verse offers a different image: in v. 9 Judah is a lion, in v. 10 a stately ruler; now all of a sudden he is in a prosperous land surrounded by vineyards, awash with wine. There are so many vines around him that he even ties his donkey to one!

xakhlili ‛enayim miyyayin
'His eyes are darker than wine', but xakhlili is a hapax, and others suggest sparkling. The parallellism with the following phrase, ul'ven shinnayim mexalav, suggests in any case that the gist is that Judah is not only a powerful lion of a ruler but good-looking too, with handsome (wine-like?) eyes and teeth as white as milk.