The Dying Israel

by JAMES BROWN, Christchurch | Category: General | Jul 1943

"And the time drew near that Israel must die "(Genesis 47.29). The closing days of the man Jacob, whom God loved, had come. His chequered career, so mixed with faith in God and his own plans and schemes, is about to end. He will soon be gathered to his people, and his body laid in the tomb.

For 17 years he has dwelt in the land of Goshen, loved and cared for by Joseph. But that love and care, which Egypt's lord lavished upon him could not arrest the decay of the "outer man." His body, now weak and frail by reason of his 147 years, has served its purpose.

The house, the tabernacle in which he had lived so long, will soon be empty. Jacob is about to leave it and "pass over" to his own people. His life, such of it as God has been pleased to lay bare to us in Holy Writ, still speaks to us. We are to imitate his faith, and avoid his mistakes.

"And the time drew near when Israel must die."

The words are arresting. When looked at by those to whom the threescore years and ten have passed and gone, they become intensely so. But the "must die," so true in Jacob's case, if not removed for us, is at least tempered and softened by the promise of the Lord's return. That ever-present hope of His return for the dead and living in Christ is for ever telling us who are alive that we may not die.

Looking at Jacob in the closing. years and days of his sojourn on earth his failings seem now to be hidden from us: they are overshadowed and lost to sight in the spiritual greatness seen in him in the sunset of his life. In the peace and quietness of Goshen, under the loving care of Joseph, he has pondered on the wonders of God's ways with him. His clinging dependence upon God, in those closing days, gives to him a dignity and greatness worthy of a prince of God.

We no longer take note of the distinctive' character of his two names, as we see Jacob spoken of as Israel, and Israel as Jacob. He is quietly waiting for God to summon him over "to his people," while he holds fast his faith in the promises of God to him.

Israel, feeling that his earthly life was near an end, sends for Joseph and makes his last request to him.

"Bury me not, I pray thee, in Egypt: but when I sleep with my fathers, thou shalt carry me out of Egypt, and bury me in their burying place." Joseph, placed under oath, promises that he would do so.

Canaan, not. Egypt, was to' be the land and home for the sons of Israel. Jacob, full of faith in the promises of God, looks beyond death to a time when his posterity would return to Canaan and possess it; aye, and to a day, we suggest, when he himself in life would enter it. When that day comes, he shall then in a resurrected body sit down in the kingdom of God in the promised land of Canaan.

It is in Jacob's dying days that God takes those wonderful samples of his faith, that faith which gives him rank in God's Roll of Honour (Hebrews 11. 9, 18, 21).

Here, long years after, in what one has so beautifully described as "God's Picture Gallery," the name of Jacob is written in words of eternal truth as one who lived and died in faith. The God before whom his fathers had habitually walked, had been with him. The God who had fed him all his life long, had shown His tender shepherd care to him. The Angel had redeemed him from all evil. Jacob's heart is full as he thinks of God's kindness to him.

Israel was dying! We enter softly into where he lies. As we do so, we are made to feel that this is no ordinary death-bed scene on which we gaze. Here are assembled his sons, strong, resolute men with their different characteristics and emotions; they arrest our attention. They are not altogether strangers to us. We have seen them before in the field of Dothan.

Jacob had called them (Genesis 49.1). Their response to his call finds them here together around him to hear his parting words before he yields up his spirit. We look at the aged Jacob, so soon to leave this earth. We remember his bent form, his dimmed eyes and failing strength, as he leaned on his staff and worshipped in the presence of Joseph; his heart then seemed too full for words.

He looks so frail that we wonder, as we look, if he will be able to speak loudly enough for his sons to hear and understand. The scene is both solemn and sublime, and becomes inspiring as the hushed silence is broken. Jacob speaks! Can it be that he is not so near death as was at first thought, for surely his is not the voice of a dying man?

The voice is as the voice of God, for the dying Jacob, to, whom He gives strength, is His mouthpiece. From the lips of a man, inspired of God, come words given to him by Divine inspiration, the very words of God.

Fearlessly, faithfully, yet lovingly, he speaks to each of them, and tells what shall befall them "in the latter days," days which refer to future times in general, but reach forward to the times of the Messiah in particular. "And when Jacob made an end of charging his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed; and yielded up the spirit, and was gathered unto his people" (Genesis 49.88).

Death, the last enemy which God shall destroy, is cruel and harsh. But when we think of our fathers "passing over," being " gathered to their people," it somehow loses its cruelty and harshness.

The shores of the visible and the invisible worlds are brought so closely together that to faith it is only a passing over on their part, while God gathers them to Himself into that unseen world. And there, He still is to them as He was on earth, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, God "is not the God of the dead, but of the' living" (Matthew 22.32).

Israel is dead, and we leave the house of mourning. It was better to be there than in the house of festival, and God expects that we shall lay it to heart (Ecclesiastes 7.2).

Has there been failure in the life of this man, on whom God in grace laid hold, and never let go His grip until He made him into a prince of God, and when death came lie was there to gather him in His loving shepherd arms to his own place and people, into the unseen world? Do not let us dwell on his mistakes to the' forgetting of our own. Jacob's are for ever past. Ours are still apt to show themselves, and this is no time to point out the faults of others, while our own keep staring at us. Nor is there room for it in the closing chapters of God's story of a man whose tent life made manifest that he was a stranger and pilgrim on earth, one who was seeking a country of his own, a heavenly country.

Jacob is dead I Over him God has written an inscription which tells us what He thought of him in' life, and what He still thinks of him in death.

That inscription is that He is not ashamed to be called his God, the God of Jacob (Hebrews 11.16; Exodus 3.15). Can He say this of you and me?

JAMES BROWN, Christchurch | Jul 1943
General