A wrong model will always be follow

Genesis 49:16-18

I have a hard time seeing this story played out in my family or my friend’s family, but it seems to be a practice passed on from Sarai to Rachel.  Rachel, like her mother-in-law Sarai, was having a hard time conceiving and she brings in a substitute, her servant Bilhah, to be Jacob’s wife, so that he would have children by her.  We do not know how long it took for her to conceive, but she did and her first son was named Dan.

He is now standing before his father receiving the blessing and this is what Jacob/Israel has to say; “Dan shall judge his people as one of the tribes of Israel.” (Genesis 49:16)

Dan is referred to in Exodus 1:4 in the names of the sons of Israel, who came to Egypt with Jacob, each with his household.  It is important to remember that all that came with Jacob to Egypt, including Joseph and his two sons, number only seventy people.

It is now 400 years later and Moses is leading tribes of Jacob/Israel out of Egypt and God gives this instruction to Moses; “Take a census of all the congregation of the people of Israel, by clans, by fathers’ houses, according to the number of names, every male, head by head.  From twenty years old and upward, all in Israel who are able to go to war, you and Aaron shall list them, company by company.” (Numbers 1:2-3)  And this is what happened to the tribe of Dan over those 400 years, many of the years were in slavery and hard labor, and yet God was faithful and increased the tribe of Dan to 62,700 people.  That was the number that was counted in the wilderness of Sinai, in the first day of the second month, in the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt.

Jacob/Israel also had this to say in regards to Dan; “Dan shall be a serpent in the way, a viper by the path, that bites the horse’s heels so that the rider falls backward.”  (Genesis 49:17)  This could mean many things, but it could be referring to the fact that the Danites introduced idolatry into the land of Israel.  God told Moses to make a covenant with the people in Deuteronomy 29:16-18, and that is only a small part of that covenant.  God knows what they will see as they leave Egypt and travel through the many nations; detestable things, idols of wood and stone, of silver and gold, and it is most important to remember that God calls these things detestable.  God knows our hearts and he keeps warning us to not let our heart be turned away from him, but the tribe of Dan did, and it is recorded in Judges 19:30.  We are exposed to so much today and yet God is faithful and He knows our flesh, He knows our hearts are easily turned from him, but God has not changed, and things that were detestable then, are still detestable to God.  A wise person would want to study to make sure their hearts are centered on the things of God.

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice