Deuteronomy 33:24-25

Let Asher be blessed.

Asher

“Asher” signifies “happiness,” or “prosperity,” and was given by Leah to the son of her handmaid Zilpah, in token of the joy which this new gift of God had brought to her wounded heart (Genesis 30:13). In this blessing of Moses there is manifestly a play upon the name thus given. It is treated as a good and true omen concerning Asher’s temporal lot. The next line, “Let him dip his feet in oil,” is a prediction of the exceeding richness and fertility of Asher’s territory in the promised land. Jacob had already foretold the same thing in his dying prophecy (Genesis 49:20). Fatness is to an Oriental the quality which chiefly recommends any viand. Olive oil, “butter of kine,” and the animal fat which is lodged in the curiously overgrown tail of a Syrian sheep, are to this day the peculiar dainties of Eastern cookery, and all of these were produced in abundance on the land which fell by lot to this favoured tribe (Deuteronomy 8:7). The figure by which Asher is here said to “dip his foot in oil” is a familiar Eastern idiom to describe the overflowing abundance of all these natural productions of the soil. Job uses it in precisely the same way (Job 29:6). The fourth line of the blessing is certainly meant to be parallel with the third line in its reference to some natural feature of the territory reserved for Asher in Canaan; but the exact force of the reference is still a matter of dispute amongst the learned. Some would read the line as it stands in the margin: “Under thy shoes shall be iron and brass (i.e. copper)

”; and this would be a perfectly the description of the mineral wealth of a part of the mountain range which Asher ought to have occupied, but which he abandoned to the Zidonians, who very diligently dug out the metals above named from their subterranean veins. Moses had noted this feature of the soil of Canaan (Deuteronomy 8:9). But in all likelihood the notion of “shoes” is quite foreign to the true interpretation of this part of the blessing; and the Hebrew word which suggested it alike to the Septuagint and English translators should properly be rendered “thy bars,” or, “thy bolts.” Here, again, we find a very graphic poetical description of Asher’s lot in the promised land. His boundary is traced on its landward side by strongly-marked mountain ridges; and on the west these barriers run out into the sea in successive capes, that resemble the traverses of some titanic fortification, and which are as rugged and ironbound in aspect as the inland region which they protect is smiling and soft. If this allusion be recognised in Moses’ blessing, the intention will plainly be to suggest the security of Asher in the portion which God was about to bestow upon him. There he should be fenced in, as it were, by bolts of iron and bars of brass, which no envious foe should be able to break through with hostile or thievish intent. This interpretation of the fourth line in the blessing would almost lead us to prefer the following amongst the many renderings that have been given of the fifth line: “According to thy life shall be thy rest”; that is, Asher’s repose from warlike labours and alarms should continue as long as his tribal existence. But the associations which long attached to the rendering as given in the English Bible will probably make most readers reluctant to give up the thought which many a sermon and hymn will have endeared and familiarised: “As thy days shall be thy strength”--that is, the strength of him whom God favours shall always be in proportion to his need (1 Corinthians 10:13; 2 Corinthians 12:9). One could wish that the actual history of Asher furnished a happy comment upon, and illustration of, his blessing as thus interpreted; but in truth the comparison of prophetic poetry and prosaic fact in this particular instance is full of suggestive disappointment. Asher did dwell securely for a certain period within his mountain barriers, and his sons seem to have enjoyed a long season of material prosperity; but this was not through their trust in Divine protection, but through their own subtle worldly policy, which involved, alas, the faithless surrender of their highest duty to God. The men of Asher deemed it too hard a task to drive out the Phoenicians and Canaanites whom they found in possession of the strong cities and fat valleys of their portion. God would indeed have helped them utterly to exterminate their heathen rivals; but they preferred to make a cowardly truce and compromise, by virtue of which they dwelt peaceably “among the Canaanites, the inhabitants of the land” (Judges 1:31). Nor did Asher from that time forward ever redeem the shame of his dishonourable compact with foes whom he ought to have destroyed. The very name of the tribe almost vanishes from the page of Hebrew history, and it had better have been absent altogether than conspicuous as it is in the bitterly scornful allusion of Deborah (Judges 5:17). Yet the name of Asher is not, like that of Dan, blotted with hopeless ignominy from the list of God’s redeemed. A woman of this tribe, Anna, the centenarian prophetess of Jerusalem, was among the first to hail the infant Saviour, and to give thanks for His salvation unto the Lord (Luke 2:36). Though the majority of the tribe perished through worldly conformity and ease-loving apostasy from the covenant of God, yet the blessing of Moses upon Asher was not wholly forfeited nor unfulfilled. Let the lesson of this story be for our instruction in the dangers of temporal prosperity, even for the Lord’s elect, and no less in the meaning of those reverses of earthly fortune by which the backslidings of the chosen people are continually chastised. When Asher forgets the covenant of his Redeemer, “the Lord, the Lord of hosts, will send among his fat ones leanness, and under his glory He will kindle a burning like the burning of a fire”; but even in those experiences of well-deserved, correction and adversity, the soul that God has favoured and pronounced “blessed” shall not be abandoned to utter ruin. As his days, so his strength shall be (Isaiah 10:16). (T. G. Rooke, B. A.)