The second son of Bilhah, Rachel’s maid, was named “my wrestling” by Rachel to signify the rivalry between herself and Leah for the place of honor in Jacob’s house (Gen. 30:7-8). In Genesis 49, Jacob, who frequently associates his sons’ names with their blessing, employs for Naphtali a figure entirely at variance with the idea of a wrestler. “Naphtali is a hind let loose,” he says, conjuring before us the beauty, timidity, and fleetness of foot associated with the female deer.
The first characteristic was to be freedom, “a hind let loose.” May we not apply this to the release of the believer and the inception of freedom hitherto inexperienced, through Christ? “Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free.”
In Judges 4:6 we read of a man of Naphtali dwelling in Kedesh Naphtali, a city of refuge. Barak, whose name means lightning, though at first slow to move, when roused to activity by Deborah, proved himself swift as lightning in gathering his tribesmen and venturing against the enemies of God’s people. There the men of Naphtali, swift not to flee but to attack, “jeoparded their lives” in the battle (5:18), displaying the prowess of wrestlers as well as the fleetness of hinds. Would there were more of the King’s ambassadors eager in Christ’s service, “swift as the roe upon the mountains,” like the men of Naphtali and Gad who came to David–ready to put their lives in jeopardy for the sake of the Lord.
The hind is often associated with high places (2 Sam. 22:34; Ps. 18:33; Hab. 3:19). “He will make my feet like hinds’ feet and He will make me to walk upon mine high places.” Here is an indication of the dwelling place of every true man of Naphtali: set free and swift to serve the Lord, He has made us “sit together in heavenly places in Christ.”
Of ten verses in the Bible in which the hind is mentioned, three associate its feet with high places, and three (Job 39:1; Ps. 29:9; Jer. 14:5) refer to the hinds calving, suggesting fruitfulness. The figure of the hind is thus very appropriately applied to the tribe of Naphtali, for from the four sons of Naphtali who went down into Egypt there sprang in the course of 215 years 53,400 men capable of taking their place in the ranks of battle (Num. 1:43).
It was also fitting that such a productive tribe should obtain a prolific inheritance (the Hula valley, breadbasket of Israel, was in their territory; as was the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee with its abundant fish). So also, in spiritual experience, fleetness for God and fruitfulness in His service are concomitant. As on the hem of the high priest’s robe the golden bells with their joyful sound and the pomegranates with their abundant seed were always found together, so in the truly emancipated and consecrated servant of God will zeal in service have fruitfulness.
The song of Deborah and Barak (Jud. 5) has been considered at least a partial fulfillment of the prophecy, “He giveth goodly words.” Certainly it ranks with the great songs of the Bible. The song commences with a paean of praise to Jehovah for His deliverances, and goes on to tell of victory through Him all along the line. So the goodly words of the redeemed will be full of praise and worship to God (Col. 3:16). To the unregenerate they can be “beautiful words, wonderful words, wonderful words of life.”
Those engaged in the ministry of Christ always have this character of freshness, giving goodly words. Naphtali’s blessing in Deuteronomy 33 as in Genesis 49, is pressed within the compass of a single verse: “O Naphtali, satisfied with favor and full of the blessing of the Lord; possess thou the west and the south.” Divine favor and divine fullness were to become the portion of Naphtali. No doubt this refers first to the fertility of the country that this tribe inherited. The land was so fruitful that the Naphtalites were generally the first to bring their firstfruits to the temple and receive the priestly blessing.
But there is a special sense in which the favor of Jehovah was to shine on Naphtali, and it was left to Isaiah to throw further light on Moses’ prediction in his prophecy in chapter 9:1-2, 6-7, and to our Lord Jesus Christ Himself to fulfill it in His advent and gracious ministry (Mt. 4:15, 16). “The land of Zebulon and the land of Nephtalim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles. The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.” The favor of God was to be the glorious effulgence of that true Light that came into the world, bringing rejoicing and deliverance to these on whom the healing rays shone. Galilee, the portion of Naphtali, was specially privileged in the days of our Lord who performed His beneficent miracles and proclaimed His message of salvation. His residence was at Capernaum in the land of Naphtali (Mt. 9:1; Mk. 2:1), and our Lord, for this reason spoke of it as a city highly privileged, “exalted unto heaven.” It was then that the inhabitants of that region truly became a people “satisfied with favor.”
For the people of God who have entered into freedom, whose feet have become fleet to run in His service, and whose lives are filled with fruit and freshness, here is a further blessing, the satisfying favor of the Lord. That favor will mean to us just what it meant to Naphtali, that is, the constant presence of Christ with us, continually revealing Himself in fresh and beautiful aspects to our responsive hearts.
Satisfaction with divine favor brings fullness of blessing and enlargement to the tribe. Its land gave birth to most of the apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ, was the earthly home of the Lord Himself, and became the cradle of the Christian faith. It thus received “of His fullness, and grace for grace.” From the land of Galilee the gospel spread worldwide, making its way in those early days into the lands of “the west and the south.” Western Asia, Europe and North Africa were the first lands to be evangelized, and there Christian churches sprang up and flourished in apostolic times and for centuries after. May we, too, progressing in spiritual blessings and activities, know also the favor of God and the fullness of Christ, that our lives may be redolent with “the blessings of the gospel of Christ.”
The blessings of Gad, the seventh of Jacob’s sons, are acknowledged by commentators to be more difficult to understand with reference to the tribal history than those of the other tribes. The Hebrew word, “Gad,” apart from the name itself which is of frequent occurrence, is used in the Old Testament only four times–twice of the manna where it is translated “coriander seed,” and twice in our Authorized Version translated “troop” (Gen. 30:11; Isa. 65:11). The RV and other translations render it “fortune” in these two verses, and certainly this rendering gives much better sense in the latter passage if we understand it of the Syrian god of Fortune, equivalent of the Roman god, Jupiter.
When Leah and Rachel left their father’s house in Syria to accompany their husband back to Canaan, they took with them their household gods and all the polytheistic superstition with which their childhood had been surrounded. When we consider the custom prevailing among such people of giving their children the names of their gods, it is to be wondered at, since the privilege of giving names to their offspring seemed to be the mother’s that only one of the twelve sons of Jacob bore the name of a heathen god. The truer significance of Gad’s name is therefore “fortunate,” and not a “troop,” as the AV seems to suggest.
For the people of God there exist no such considerations as fortune and fate, associated as they are with supposed astronomic influences and the smile of heathen deities. “The lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord.” Gad, like others considered fortunate, owed its prosperity to the blessing of the Lord who makes rich.
In Genesis 49:19, Jacob predicts a struggle in which Gad is to be harassed by the enemy, yet to obtain final victory, overcoming “at the last.” Fierce and warlike the Gadites proved to be, and, by reason of this very trait, drawn into numerous hostilities, they discomfited and dispossessed their enemies (1 Chron. 5:18-22). Victory was theirs, for “they cried to God in the battle, and He was entreated of them, because they put their trust in Him.”
Men of Gad, too, are found in the forefront of David’s warriors: “men of might, men of war fit for the battle, whose faces were like the faces of lions, and were as swift as the roes upon the mountains.” Happy tribesmen they, who could look forward to the final triumph of David’s cause and ally themselves with the persecuted victor (1 Chron. 12:8). For was not David’s history analogous to their own: “a troop shall overcome him, but he shall overcome at the last”? The enigma of the baffled people of God finally emerging victorious is repeated, too, in Christian experience. But the Christian, even when the troops that oppose press closest and cruelest, when “tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril and the sword” threaten his undoing, can exclaim with Paul, “Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.”
The Mosaic benediction (Deut. 33) contains for Gad a reference to the choice of inheritance on the east side of Jordan, and to the agreement into which the Gadites, with the Reubenites and half the men of Manasseh, entered to cross Jordan with the other tribes and “execute the justice of the Lord” on the nations that were to be dispossessed. Some see also in “the portion of the lawgiver” an allusion to the burial place of Moses in Moab, which was presumably captured by Gad when they enlarged their borders. “The justice of the Lord and His judgments with Israel” may also have in view the rise of Jephthah the Gileadite, of the tribe of Gad, who judged Israel after delivering them from the Ammonites.
“Blessed be he that enlargeth Gad.” Fortunate indeed was Gad in having the living God to enlarge him. It was impossible to confine such people as the men of Gad: they would not be shut in. “The place where we dwell…is too strait for us” was to be their repeated avowal. Warlike and energetic, they soon extended their inheritance beyond its original limits, and covered the whole of Gilead. Such acquisition was pleasing to the Lord.
Do we, in our day, realize that it is not God’s intention that we should be confined in our spiritual possessions? In Psalm 119:32, David says, “I will run the way of Thy commandments when Thou shalt enlarge my heart.” However dangerous may be the enlargement of heart physically, an enlarged heart spiritually is a thing to be desired. Let us go in for this and we shall cease to confine our interests, our affections and intercessions to the narrow sphere that encircles self, and throw our hearts open to all the people of God. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, said, ” O ye Corinthians, our mouth is open unto you, our heart is enlarged,” and exhorted them to be also enlarged (2 Cor. 6:11-13). In the instructions that follow (vv. 14-18), the apostle indicates that true separation from the unequal yoke, from unrighteousness and darkness, from infidelity and idolatry, is necessary before enlargement can be realized.
The three great heroes of Gad illustrate what God can accomplish even in days of repression through the man of the enlarged heart. When hated, persecuted, disinherited and exiled, Jephthah turned his eyes from his own troubles to see the distress of his people under the oppression of the enemy. His heart was enlarged to take up his people’s cause and enlarge their borders by dispossessing the enemy.
In the period of David’s rejection, another Gadite, Barzillai, had his heart enlarged to minister to his king. Already a man of fourscore years, he could not follow his liege lord to the battle, but “brought beds, and basins, and earthen vessels, and wheat, and… sheep, and cheese of kine, for David.”
A later day of declension under the wicked tyranny of Ahab and Jezebel witnessed the rise of another man of Gad with an enlarged heart and an enlarged mouth: for Elijah the Tishbite was also one of the tribe that looked to Jehovah, the living God, for enlargement. There is also the need of an enlarged mouth, opened wide to receive the good things God has to bestow. “Open thy mouth wide and I will fill it” (Ps. 81:10). The same Hebrew word, “rachab,” translated frequently “enlarge,” is here tendered “open wide.” It is cognate with the name, “Rehoboth” given by Isaac to his well when God “made room for him,” or “enlarged him.” Such enlargement could only be realized after Esek and Sitnah, “contention” and “hatred,” had been left behind.
David, in his song of deliverance twice recorded (2 Sam. 22; Ps. 18), enumerates among God’s many mercies to him the enlargement of his steps, “so that my feet did not slip,” a blessing that we too are often conscious that we need to keep us from stumbling.
God promised Israel, in anticipation of their possession of Canaan, that He would enlarge their borders (Ex. 34:24; Deut. 19:8); and for this kind of enlargement Jabez prayed (1 Chron. 4:10). Conflict and victory are the necessary preliminaries to territorial expansion, and if we, like Gad, would enlarge our heavenly possessions and enjoy our full spiritual privileges, we shall find persistent opposition by the forces that occupy that territory. But let us be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might, and He will enlarge us in due time.
Concerning the tribe of Asher, the descendants of Jacob’s eighth son, sacred history is almost silent, and we are therefore chiefly dependent for what knowledge we possess of this tribe on the patriarchal and Mosaic blessings of Genesis 49 and Deuteronomy 33. Asher lacked that bellicose spirit which stimulated some of the other tribes to territorial conquest, and were unable to exterminate the Canaanites and obtain full possession of the portion assigned to them in the land. They were, with other tribes, censured by Deborah for their indifference and love of ease when Israel went forth in Jehovah’s cause against the oppressor. “Asher sat still at the haven of the sea and abode by his creeks” (Jud. 5:17, R.V.). Perhaps they were too engrossed in the benefits with which Jehovah had loaded them at home and thus lost sight of their responsibilities further afield, like some of God’s people today.
The keynote of Asher’s history is the significance of the name given to the progenitor of the tribe at his birth. Asher means “happy:” and the plural “ashere,” found 42 times in the Old Testament, is the word with which we are so familiar in the Psalms: “Blessed is the man,” and which might fittingly be rendered, “O the happiness of the man!” Asher was welcomed into the world with the rapturous ecstasy of Leah, who in her few words of rejoicing at his birth employed both the noun–“osher”–“with my happiness,” and the verb “ashar,” “call blessed” (Gen. 30:13). The happiness of Asher was to be a legacy to his posterity, for from him sprang a tribe blessed in its possessions, rejoicing in its privileges, and living in happy relationship with others.
The triumph of the life of faith is strength through joy. “The joy of the Lord is your strength.” With an entrance into the family of God celebrated by the rejoicing of the heavenly angels (Lk. 15:7). The consciousness of a standing before God banishes every fear, and the believer, possessed of that “joy unspeakable and full of glory,” cannot but carry with him through life all the blessedness that is assured to those who tread the path of faith and manifest the fruits of righteousness. This will be a happiness, not only independent of outward circumstances, but triumphant in adversity and perplexity. Like Habakkuk we shall be able to say, whatever may befall us, “I will rejoice in the Lord: I will joy in the God of my salvation.” It is easy to be happy in prosperity as Asher was. Yet, for the believer in Christ prosperity is assured to him even when circumstances seem most adverse. David’s psalms, so full of the blessedness of the man whose trust is in the living God, were born in sorrow, for “David’s psalms had ne’er been sung if David’s heart had ne’er been wrung.”
The less we are occupied with the happiness of material possessions, the more room is there for the joy of faith. Many thousands have found their portion in God and experienced this joyous prosperity amid earthly adversity, this happiness of spirit in spite of brokenness of soul.
Asher could say, with David, “The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage.” They were, as God’s people ever are, a pleasant people with a pleasant portion and a pleasant prospect (Ps. 16:3, 6, 11). The wealth of the land between the Phoenician coast and Carmel’s slopes which fell to Asher’s lot is described in Genesis 49:20 and Deuteronomy 33:24-25. There was rich soil producing fields of waving grain from which would come the bread that was to be “fat,” and even dainties fit for a king: there need never be a famine among the Asherites so long as hostile marauders could be kept at bay. Its olive trees were to produce so prolifically that there would never be a lack of oil. Not only was there to be sufficient for such ordinary purposes as lighting, cooking and anointing, but it was to be so plentiful that Asher would literally dip his foot in oil. This was an indication of unusual prosperity, as is proved by the words of Job who refers to his erstwhile prosperous days as the time when he washed his feet in butter, and the rock poured him out rivers of oil (Job 29:6).
The hills and rocks were also to yield their mineral wealth to the sons of Asher, providing iron and brass either for shoes or armor or fortifications. Several alternative readings are given for this verse, “Thy shoes shall be iron and brass.” The RV renders it, “Thy bolts shall be iron and brass” with “shoes” in the margin.) Rich ores were to be quarried from the ground on which they trod and transformed by the skill of the Phoenician artisans for the defense and use of the inhabitants of the land.
Like Asher, the believer can rejoice in an abundance of “fat” bread, for in Christ, the heavenly manna, he has sufficient to sustain his soul till life’s journey is ended. The Holy Spirit’s fullness also avails, not only in ever-fresh supplies for dally anointing (Ps. 23:5; 92:10), but also for our steps so that, dipping his foot in oil, he may “walk in the Spirit.” All the wealth of the wonderful Word of the Lord is at our disposal also, so that, putting on the whole panoply of God, we may be fortified against the adversary’s onslaughts. Truly, “Happy is that people that is in such a case: yea, happy is that people whose God is the Lord.”
Asher was also happy in his posterity “blessed with (or through) children.” The RV margin renders this, “blessed above sons.” It has been pointed out that Asher was not one of the tribes whose numbers continued to multiply, for in the reign of David so insignificant had it become that Asher furnished no chief ruler, as did the other tribes (1 Chron. 27:16-22). This verse cannot therefore refer to numerical increase. It rather seems to indicate that Asher was to be blessed through his progeny, or perhaps above the other sons of Jacob. The second half of the verse is complementary, “Let him be acceptable to his brethren.” We do not read of the men of Asher quarreling with the other tribes or provoking them to jealousy or hatred. In spite of Asher’s special blessings the tribe was not envied by the others, because its sons possessed a spirit that made them acceptable to their fellows. We might well emulate that sincerity and humility of spirit that will disarm all jealousy on the part of our brethren and give us that acceptance which is often an evidence of true godliness.
The promise made to Asher in Deuteronomy 33:25 has been appropriated by many of God’s people in all ages. It is one of those universal truths which is an anchor sure and steadfast through life. “As thy days, so shall thy strength be.” The RV margin gives as alternatives for strength as “rest” and “security.” We may read all these into the promise and it remains equally true. Asher was happy in the promise of God that so fittingly closes the individual blessing of the tribes. Jehovah provides perennial strength, security and rest for His people.
While Asher seldom figured as a warlike tribe, but seemed to prefer the enjoyment of the prosperous land it inherited to the daring and dangers of the battlefield, there were occasions when the Asherites quitted themselves well in the conflict. Their leaders are described as “mighty men of valor” and the common rank and file of their fighting forces as soldiers “apt to war and to battle” (1 Chron. 7:40). Though their exploits are not recorded, they are commended as “expert in war,” keeping their rank (AV marg.) and able to go forth and set the battle in array. They were happy in their prowess, for they were endowed with qualities befitting faithful soldiers. The army of the Lord needs such today, expert in war and able to keep rank with other true-hearted soldiers of Christ.
The tribe of Asher gave to Israel no illustrious hero or delivering judge as far as we know, but its record is adorned with the name of a heroine of 84 years. Anna, of the tribe of Asher, was happy in her privileges, for she found delight in “speaking of Him to all that looked for redemption in Jerusalem.” Hers was the true blessedness of possession, for she hailed the advent of the promised Saviour. She knew, too, what it was to dip her foot in the oil, to be guided in her steps by the Holy Spirit, for she was led to the precincts of the temple when Mary the mother of Jesus brought the infant Messiah into the holy place. Proving by long experience that “as thy days, so shall thy strength be,” she had served God with fastings and prayers night and day and had reached in her ministry the advanced age of fourscore and four years (Lk. 2:36-38).
Feeding on the true Bread of God that came down from heaven, she was able to “yield royal dainties,” for she “spake of Him” to her fellow Jewish friends, those who “feared the Lord and spake often one to another” and who waited for the coming Saviour. Night and day she was to be found in the temple, praying for that redemption which the prophets had foretold, till the day the “salvation of Jehovah,” the little Lord Jesus, was brought into the temple. Doubtless she gazed on Him as He lay in the arms of the aged Simeon: and from that moment she commenced to serve Him who was greater than the temple, and hers was the joy of proclaiming abroad the advent of the Redeemer.
To all truly happy in the enjoyment of the divine blessings found in Christ Jesus there is given the great privilege of yielding royal dainties, of witnessing concerning Him who has completed redemption’s work and now lives, exalted at the right hand of the Majesty on high. May we esteem it our greatest joy to “speak of Him.”