History of the Old Covenant. By J. H. Kurtz [pp. 451-486]

Kurtz on the Old Covenant.
representative, and champion of his brethren should enter with
them, relates to the time of the end. Subjectively to Jacob
the time of Joshua was the end; for then all the wants and
needs of the patriarchal period which had pressed themselves
on Jacob's consciousness, and all the requisites which Jacob
knew as conditions of the coming salvation were supplied. But
there were still other wants and needs, still other requisites and
conditions of the coming salvation of which Jacob yet knew
nothing, and which, in the time of Joshua, were not yet supplied. Objectively, therefore, this is not yet the end; and
Jacob's prophecy, as the product not of his inward state alone
but of the illuminating Spirit of God, points every future
observer to a higher form of Judah's sovereignty than the pre cedence of that tribe in the desert, and to a higher rest than
that which the possession of the promised land brought with
it."
The genuineness of this prediction of Jacob has been most
violently contested, but in a manner which plainly shows that
the secret of the opposition made to it lies in the palpable proof
of inspiration which it affords. The discord, which prevails in
the ranks of its opposers with respect to the real date of its
composition, affords no very favourable presumption in the outset as to the certainty of those criteria on which they rely.
Heinrichs confidently refers it to the time of David, Tuch to
that of Samuel, and Ewald with as much positiveness as either
to that of Samson. Fortunately we are able to furnish as
thorough and conclusive a demonstration of genuineness in this
instance, as we can in the case of any disputed passage of the
Bible whatQver. Kurtz sums up the argument under four
heads, which, for convenience, we arrange in a different order.
1. The blessing is as a whole too indefinite, deals too much
in general outlines and too little in individual forms to be a
vattcinium post eventum. It has no such merely external,
accidental congruence with the events of any period, as a
feigned prediction, put into the mouth of Jacob by one living
in that period, would necessarily have. Many of the blessings were suggested by the names of Jacob's sons, or by
some incident in their history, or some peculiarity in their
temper, which the patriarch had marked; and they are in
1851.]
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