As Sailhamer points out, reshith is the antonym of aharith. Or in English, beginning is the antonym of last. Thus the Torah begins, “In the beginning” (bereshith) (Gen 1:1) and then the poetic climaxes are explained as telling what will happen “in the last days” (beaharith hayyamim) (Gen 49:1, Num 24:14, Deut 31:29). The only other place in the Torah where this phrase is found is Deut 4:30. These reflections are inspired by his article, “A Wisdom Composition of the Pentateuch?” in The Way of Wisdom: Essays in Honor of Bruce Waltke published by Zondervan.
This observation encourages us to see that the protology (words about first things) of Gen 1:1 is written to correspond to eschatology (words about last [or ultimate] things) of the poems following Gen 49:1, Num 24:14, and Deut 31:29. One point stressed at WTS was that the prologue of Genesis (Gen 1:1-2:3) as well as the first book of Genesis (Gen 2-4) is eschatological. But we do not need to look beyond the opening word (“in the beginning”) to be pointed to the last days. We are living in the last days now, but the phrase in the Torah pointed first to the days of King David before ultimately to the days of his son and Lord Jesus Christ.
To see how the poems pointed to the King we should observe the intertexuality of the poems (that is, how they are in conversation or even quoting one another). Here I am expanding from discussing the three major poems to include the other prominent poems in the Torah. Sailhamer calls it cross-referencing. He notes, for example that Num 24:9a quotes Gen 49:9b. Speaking of the King from the tribe of Judah, these two poems both say, “He crouched as a lion and as a lioness; who dares rouse him?”
Comparing the major poem in Genesis 49 and the major poem starting in Num 24:15 we can see the king’s scepter mentioned with Judah in Gen 49:10 is mentioned in Num 24:17. The advance of Numbers is to note the king will defeat certain people groups. As Sailhamer notes, Gen 10 helps you to identify where these people groups in the Numbers poem fit. In fact, it may be that one reason for the writing of Gen 10 was to explain the groups mentioned in Balaam’s poem. These peoples are not mentioned in the surrounding story of Numbers, you have to look at Gen 10 to learn about them. The major poem of Deut 32 mentions the events of Gen 10: “When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the people according to the number of the sons of God” (Deut 32:8). This last poem in Deut 32:10 also uses the word tohu from Gen 1:2.
Therefore, Sailhamer argues that Num 24:24 is showing how the Noahic poetry of Gen 9:27 about Japheth dwelling in the tents of Shem extends to the last days. The Kittim were from Japheth (Gen 10:4). Asshur is one of the sons of Shem (Gen 10:22) and Eber is considered his son too (Gen 10:21).
Sailhamer also says, “In addition, the literary parallels between Deut 33 and Gen 49 are well known. Whole phrases from one poem have been inserted into the other” (p.22). I have noted this previously because Deut 33 is the work of a later hand, but one that borrows from the earlier hand of the Torah. At some point I would like to examine this claim further.
But the point shown here is that “in the beginning” (especially for the purposes of this post, Gen 1-11, the unit that comes before the patriarchal narratives) points us to “in the last days” (Gen 49:1, Num 24:14, Deut 31:29).
Recent Comments