The meaning of this prophecy is this: the tribe of Judah will not cease to have its own rulers until that which is predestined for it comes, and the One in Whom this predestination is fulfilled is the object of the hope of the nations. In other words, the tribe of Judah is predestined to give from among themselves Him Who is the object of the hope of the nations. When should this predestination be fulfilled? When the tribe of Judah ceases to have its rulers. — Not only according to the interpretation of the Fathers and teachers of the Christian Church, but also according to the ancient Jewish tradition (See the testimony to this in the Dogmatic Theology of Philaret, Archbishop of Chernig, part II, pp. 18, 19.), the prophecy in question refers to the Messiah and to the time of His coming. For only the Messiah could be called the Hope of the nations; only the Messiah is destined, in accordance with the expectation of the nations, to become a source of blessing for all the families of the earth, as it was foretold about the Messiah in the promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Gen 22:18; 26:4; 28:14). The Messiah is called the expectation of the tongues partly because all the Gentiles had need of a Saviour, just as a thirsty earth needs rain (Deuteronomy 11:14); although they were not always clearly aware of this need; partly because many pagans (among the Greeks and Romans, Chinese, Persians, Indians, and Egyptians), as the monuments of ancient history testify, not only clearly recognized man's powerlessness for spiritual renewal and the need for higher help for this, but desired this help and really awaited the appearance of the Messenger of God into the world, Who would return the Golden Age to earth and teach people the truth (For an indication of this, see ibid., pp. 56-58). This Expectation of the Gentiles, according to the prophecy of Jacob, was to come, however, not from among the Gentiles, but from among the tribe chosen by God, and precisely from the descendants of Judah: to him this was laid down, predestined. Is it necessary to say how the prophecy of the appearance into the world of the Expectation of tongues, which had to come from the tribe of Judah, was fulfilled in our Lord Jesus Christ, Who in the flesh came, as is evident from His genealogy, from the tribe of Judah, but took upon Himself alone the sins of the whole world, Who called all tongues into His Church? Likewise, in Christ Jesus, the prophecy of James about the time of the coming of the Messiah was fulfilled. Jesus Christ came into the world precisely at a time of impoverishment of its princes and leaders among the Jewish people. As early as 35 years B.C. X. the Romans appointed a foreigner Herod, an Edomite by birth, as king over Judea. After Herod, his son Archelaus reigned in Judea. But after 10 years (in the year 12 or 13 A.D.) Archelaus was imprisoned in Gaul, Judea became a Roman province, the Roman procurators began to govern it and ruled throughout the life of Jesus Christ and afterwards until the very destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. The prince and leader from Judas, obviously, became impoverished. Consequently, the time had come for the Expectation of the Gentiles foretold by Jacob to appear in the world, a time when the Jewish people, having lost their civil independence, having lost their own rulers, had to give from among themselves the King of the world-wide, spiritual kingdom. And at that time our Lord Jesus Christ, the true Messiah, appeared in Judea. But is it true that the leaders and princes of the Jewish people have not become impoverished to this day, and has their government not ceased? Here is the answer of history: the tribe of Judah, like the other tribes, began to have its own private princes soon after the exodus from Egypt (Numbers 1:4-11). It had such people even after the conquest of the Promised Land (Joshua 22:12-14). That was before David. In the person of David, the tribe of Judah prevailed over all the others, and then, when under the son of Solomon Rehoboam there was a division of the Jewish kingdom into two parts, the kingdom of Judah, consisting of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, and the kingdom of Israel, consisting of 10 tribes, only in the kingdom of Judah until the captivity of Babylon do we see an uninterrupted series of kings from the house of David, while the kingdom of Israel was governed by succession by kings from different tribes and dynasties, until it was finally completely destroyed by the Assyrian conquerors 100 years before the fall of the kingdom of Judah from the Babylonians. But even in the very captivity of Babylon, the tribe of Judah did not cease to have its elders and was governed by its own laws (Dan., ch. 13, Est. 3:8; 8:11). Upon their return from captivity, the Jews, although outwardly dependent first on the kings of Persia, then on Alexander the Great and his successors, the kings of Egypt and Syria, continued to govern themselves in internal affairs by their princes and elders and to live according to the laws of their homeland (1 Ezra 7:25-26; 9:1. Nehemiah 5:7), being under the main leadership first of the leaders, such as Zerubbabel, Ezra, and Nehemiah, and then of the chief priests. Finally, the Jews overthrew the Syrian kings and had independent Maccabean princes for a hundred years (1 Maccabees 8:20; 12:6). True, Ezra and Nehemiah, who ruled Judah, and then the chief priests and Maccabees, did not come from the loins of Judah, but were from the tribe of Levi; yet the ruling tribe, by whose name the whole chosen people was called, was not the tribe of Levi, but the tribe of Judah, and the rulers of the Jews of the tribe of Levi were not representatives of their own tribe, but of the Jewish people to which they belonged. Even having fallen under the power of the Romans, the Jews still had their kings in the person of Herod and his son Archelaus, until, finally, Judea after Archelaus was declared a Roman province, ruled by Roman governors, which was the case during the earthly life of Jesus Christ.

According to the translation from the current Hebrew text, the prophecy of Jacob in question reads as follows: "The scepter shall not be taken from Judah, nor the Lawgiver from his loins, until the Mediator comes, and to Him shall be the obedience of the nations." The thought in this translation is clearer than in the Church Slavonic translation, made from the Greek text of the Seventy; But the meaning in both is the same. For in both the time of the coming of the Messiah is indicated, and to Him is assimilated that which no one else can assimilate. Only of Him can it be said that He is the Expectation of the Gentiles, or that to Him is the obedience of the nations. Such obedience to Him was foreshadowed in other promises of the Old Testament. For example: "I will give Thee," says God the Father of the Messiah, "Thy tongues are Thy inheritance, and Thy possession the ends of the earth" (Psalm 2:8). Likewise, the designation of the Messiah as the Mediator corresponds to the fact that in the Old Testament the times of the Messiah are depicted as times of peace (Psalm 71; Isaiah 11:1-10), and that the Messiah himself is called the Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6).

11. 12. Bind your lot to the vine, and bind your donkey to the vine. He shall wash his garment with wine, and his garment with the blood of the grapes. His eyes are more joyful than wine, and his teeth are whiter than milk.

With these words, Judas, in the person of his descendants, is promised external prosperity in the promised land. It is the tribe of Judah, in the division of the land of Canaan, that will receive an inheritance so abundant in grapes that livestock will be tied to vines and branches (Vinnichia), not sparing that the animal tied to them may break and spoil them, and that during the gathering of the grapes the clothes of those who gather them, sprinkled with their red juice, will seem to be washed in blood. Indeed, in the inheritance of the tribe of Judah there were areas that produced the best grape wine in the entire land of Israel, for example, the wilderness of Engeddi, Hebron, Bethlehem and the valley of Eskol. Spies, sent by Moses to inspect the land of Canaan, cut a bunch of grapes in this valley, which, because of its weight, could be carried on a stretcher by two (Num. 13:25). "His eyes are more joyful than wine, and his teeth are whiter than milk. If the inhabitants of the inheritance of the tribe of Judah look merrily, more cheerfully than those who have tasted the wine that rejoices the heart of man, if from the lips opened with a smile of joy and joy one can see teeth, the whitest milk, this will serve as a sign of their health and beauty.

On the feast of Vai, it is proper to read the paremia under consideration, because its content is closely related to the event that constitutes the subject of this feast.

a) In the paremia, Judas is depicted accepting worship and praise from his brothers, powerful and terrible enemies, like a lion. Likewise, the Lord Jesus Christ, Who enters Jerusalem on a donkey, accompanied by His disciples and rejoicing people, is the one who accepts from His brothers in the flesh worship and exclamations of praise, as King and as the Conqueror of death and the enemies of His Church. This is truly the victorious lion from the tribe of Judah spoken of in the Apocalypse (5:5).

b) The Messiah, who comes from the tribe of Judah, is called the Expectation of the Gentiles in the prophecy of Jacob According to this prophecy, the Lord Jesus, in order to enter Jerusalem, sat on a young donkey, which did not yet wear the yoke, and thus formed the pagans, who did not know the yoke of the law, who walked according to the will of their hearts and waited a long time for the Savior. "The sitting on the donkey of King Christ prefigured, according to the teaching of the Church, the indomitable nature of the pagans, transformed from unbelief into faith" (see the stichera on the feast of Vai, I cried out to the Lord). Such a prophetic significance must be attributed to the binding of the donkey to the vine mentioned in the prophecy of Jacob. Is not the owner who binds the donkey to the vine an image of the Lord Jesus, who leads the Gentiles to His spiritual vineyard, that is, to the Church, and binds them to Himself as to a life-giving vine (Jn 15:1)?

Chapter: XXXV. Paremia at Vespers on the Friday of the sixth week of Great Lent (Gen 49:33; 50:1-26).

This paremia tells about the death and burial of Jacob and about the last days of Joseph.

Hl. 49. Art. 33. And Jacob bequeathed to his son: And Jacob laid his nose on his bed, and died, and was gathered to his people.

Jacob, bequeathing to his son His prophetic discourse about the fate of his sons, Jacob concluded by bequeathing them to bury him in the land of Canaan in the cave of Machpel, which Abraham had bought with an adjoining field for the burial of Sarah (Gen 23:4-20), and in which, in addition to her, Abraham himself, Isaac, Rebekah and Leah were buried (Gen 49:31). Jacob consoled himself with the fact that at least his bones would lie in the land which, according to God's promise, his descendants would possess. Having declared his last will, Jacob fell silent, and laid his nose on his bed, and died. James delivered his prophetic speech and testament while sitting on his bed, with his legs dangling; but now he raised them on his bed, lay down and died quietly, at peace with his conscience, with the consciousness of his duty fulfilled and his destiny. His swift and quiet death is all the more striking, the stronger was the enthusiasm with which, a moment before, he revealed to his children the suggestions of their fate of the Spirit of God and his last will. And thou didst gather thyself unto thy people, — thou didst unite thy soul with thy fathers and kinsmen who had departed (Gen 15:15, Paremia XXII).