Jacob Mistook Samson for the Messiah on His Deathbed

The old man's breath came shallow now, and his sons leaned in close around the bed. Jacob had called them by name, one after another, and to each one he gave words that were not blessings so much as windows. He looked at a son and saw forward, past the son, into the long file of his children's children. His eyes were clouded with age, but what he saw was not in the room.

He came to Dan, the son born of Bilhah, and stopped. Something opened in front of him. A face he had never seen pulled itself into focus out of the years to come, and Jacob's slack hand tightened on the blanket.

A Strong Man Rises Out of the Years to Come

He saw a man standing alone on a hillside, and around him the dead. No army behind him. No banner, no captains, no spears lifted in rank. One man, with shoulders like a doorframe and hands that closed and did not open again until the work was done. Jacob watched him wade into the enemies of Israel the way a man wades into tall grass, and they fell, and there was no one beside him doing any of it.

Jacob had seen strength before. He had wrestled until dawn with a stranger by the Jabbok and walked away limping (Genesis 32:25). This was different. This man fought as though something larger moved his arm, and won the way only one Power wins, without help, without asking, without an ally to thank when it was over. The strongman looked, in that vision, like unto the One who delivers His people with no manner of assistance at all.

Jacob Whispers the Name He Has Waited For

The old man's heart climbed into his throat. He had been waiting his whole life. So had his father, and his father before him, the three of them passing the waiting down like an inheritance, the promise that one would come and set Israel free and not have to do it again. And here, at the very end, with the breath thin in his chest, Jacob thought he saw the face of that one.

He said it, or nearly said it. This is the Mashiach, the anointed deliverer. This is the one we have been waiting for. His lips moved on the word. The deliverer had come out of Dan, out of this very son with his hand under Jacob's, and Jacob had lived just long enough to see him.

The Vision Will Not Stop at the Victory

But the vision did not close on the triumph. It ran on, the way a road runs past the place a traveler wanted to stop, and Jacob could not look away. The hillside emptied. The years turned. And the strong man he had taken for the redeemer began to slide toward an ending Jacob did not want to watch.

He saw a woman, and a secret given away in the dark. He saw the great head shorn while the man slept, the hair that had held everything falling away in a stranger's hands. He saw the strength go out of those shoulders all at once, like water out of a cracked jar. Then he saw them take the man's eyes.

The Strong Man Goes Down Blind and Chained

The deliverer Jacob had crowned in his heart stood blind in an enemy house, chained between two pillars, turning a millstone like a beast. The hands that had broken armies pushed a grinding stone in circles, around and around, grinding grain for the people who had blinded him. There was no army behind him now. There never had been one. There was only one man, and the man was finished.

Jacob saw him set those ruined hands against the pillars one last time and pull the roof down on his own head, killing more in his dying than in all his living, and dying with them. The vision had carried Jacob all the way to the rubble. The strongman was not the redeemer. He was a single life, brilliant and brief, that ended under a collapsed roof. Whatever help he had given Israel had ended when he did.

He Lets the Messiah Go and Keeps the Hope

The old man lay still. He had reached, with the last sight he had, for the end of the long waiting, and the waiting had not ended. The deliverer he thought he had found was only a man who would die hard and young. A lesser soul would have turned his face to the wall.

Jacob did not. He gathered what breath remained and said it out loud, into the room full of his sons who could not see what he had seen. I wait for Thy salvation, O Lord (Genesis 49:18). Samson's help lasted as long as one strong life. The help he still waited for would last to all eternity. He had been wrong about the face. He was right about the promise. He let the strong man go, kept the hope, and gave the rest of his blessings, and then he drew his feet up into the bed and was gathered to his people.