Clinger. Clutcher. Grabber.

The ESV footnote says that Jacob’s name means ‘to take by the heel’ or ‘he cheats.’ If we called him Grasper, he certainly lived up to the name. While Esau let go of his birthright for a bowl of soup, Jacob clutched it away from his brother’s hand.

Then came Isaac’s deathbed blessing. He summoned Esau, told him to hunt and prepare some game for him, and then the father would bless the son. But Rebekah overheard and convinced Jacob to steal his brother’s blessing. Though Isaac was suspicious, he ultimately blesses Jacob, who leaves right before Esau enters.

Upon hearing Esau, Isaac begins to tremble violently and says, “If you are Esau, then who did I bless? Who was it that hunted game and brought it to me, and I ate it all before you came. And I have blessed him. Yes, and he shall be blessed.”

The scene goes on. Esau weeps, asking his father for a blessing. But there is none left to give.

The whole event is quite foreign to us today. Clearly, the deathbed blessing of a father was special, almost sacred. It is more than saying “bless you” after a sneeze. This was no  mere wish or aspiration. There was something effectual to the blessing. And it was effectual to Jacob, even when Isaac thought that he was blessing Esau. Isaac evidently knew that his blessing was authoritative: “Yes, and he shall be blessed.”

Our text this morning is also a blessing. It is the blessing that Yahweh places upon the Israelites through the priests. Very likely, they were the closing words spoken over a worshiper as he or she prepared to leave the tabernacle after offering sacrifices. And although this was not magic (it did not override the divine curse upon unrepentant wickedness), it is not merely a wish or a formality either. Coming from God’s consecrated mediators, the Aaronic Blessing, as it is called, was authoritative. Through worshiping individuals, it blessed the congregation of Israel with the name and presence of Yahweh upon them.

WHY HERE?

The text itself comes at the conclusion of Numbers 6, and the question that immediately comes to my mind is: why? Specifically, why here and why now?

As we have been noting, the opening chapters of Numbers describe how Yahweh is preparing Israel to leave Sinai and enter the Promised Land. Of course, the Canaanites inhabited that land, so they would enter as the earthly host of the LORD, the living instruments of His judgment upon their wickedness. Toward this task, God has counted, centered, guarded, assigned, cleansed, and now consecrated His people. These first six chapters have prepared Israel for how to be His treasured possession and holy nation, His kingdom of priests. And now that the last two chapters have described how to put away sin and how to express deep devotion to Yahweh through the Nazarite vow, God now ensures that they are blessed by Him.

Importantly, the blessing itself is spoken with the singular you. Yes, it is certainly a corporate blessing for every Israelite, but the priests pronounce it upon individuals. Notice that this fits with the progression from chapters 1-2 addressing the whole congregation, 3-4 pertaining to the Levites, and 5-6 focusing upon individual cases. Now with the priestly blessing, individual worshipers are blessed by Yahweh, which then carries His blessing to the whole congregation. Indeed, as we will see, through the blessing, God’s presence is not only in the midst of the congregation as a whole, but it is placed upon each Israelite individually as they come to worship before God’s face.

The blessing is also fittingly placed as a climax to each of the commands that have come before, since seeing the light of God’s face is the great goal of all of our obedience generally.

I WILL BLESS THEM

Let us now discuss the actual content of the blessing.

Notice first that the blessing has three lines that build upon one another. In Hebrew, the first line has three words, the second line has five, and the third line used seven. Jay Sklar calls this “a river of blessing whose flow widens and deepens until it finally empties into an ocean of peace–the blessings final word” (122).

The blessing itself is surrounded by verses 23 and 27, which form a chiasm. In verse 23, God tells Aaron and his sons that they will bless the people by saying the blessing to them. Verse 27 is the parallel, declaring the that spoken blessing is also the placing of Yahweh’s name upon them and that He will bless them.

These two verses give us the source and agent of the blessing. Yahweh is the source. It is His name that is repeated three times in verses 24-26, and it is His name that is being placed upon the Israelites. Indeed, the final words are emphatic in Hebrew: “I will bless them.” The priests are the agents of the blessing, the ones pronouncing the blessing within the tabernacle according to the LORD’s command.

The first line of the blessing is the LORD bless you and keep you. It is worth noting that the word for blessing and bless here is not the same word as blessed, which we see in places like Psalm 1:1 and 119:1. As with the Beatitudes, blessedness is a state of joy and peace. A blessing and the act of blessing is a word of goodness spoken over someone. God blessed both humans and animals during creation by calling them good and commanding them to be fruitful and to multiply. In fact, the word used in Latin is where we get benediction.

Yahweh blesses His people in order to keep them, to guard and protect them. Keep is the same word used in Proverbs 4:27: “Keep your heart…” It is a word of protection, security, and defense.

Thus, the first part of the blessing is a good word and a word security. These are tremendous goods in their own right, but they are not enough on their own. Following the golden calf, even after God resolved not to start over with Moses, He told Moses that He would send Israel into the Promised Land with an angel to defeat their enemies. He essentially promised to give them His blessing and His protection but not His presence. Moses knew that God’s presence is the true and supreme blessing.

And that is where the next two lines bring us. Both verses 25 and 26 refer to God’s face, which is also translated in other places as God’s presence. For example, when Yahweh finally told Moses, “My presence will go with you,” we could just as rightly translate it as, “My face will go with you.” Or, in the tabernacle, the bread of the Presence could also be called the bread of the Face.

The second line of the blessing prays for Yahweh to make His face to shine upon you. A shining face is a picture of a happy and favorable disposition. We see this in Proverbs 16:14-15:

A king’s wrath is a messenger of death,
and a wise man will appease it.
In the light of a king’s face there is life,
and his favor is like the clouds that bring the spring rain.

Clearly, the light of the king’s face in verse 15 is the opposite of his wrath in verse 14. A shining face is a joyful face. In fact, we still say something like this whenever we say that a pregnant woman is glowing. The prayer, then, is that God’s face shine upon us with joy and favor rather than with wrath and judgment.

This idea fills Scripture, especially the Psalms. Psalm 4:6-7, for example, ties the light of God’s face to the joy of His people:

There are many who say, “Who will show us some good?”
Lift up the light of your face upon us, O LORD.
You have put more joy in my heart
than they have when their grain and wine abound.

Psalm 67 begins with the same ideas as the blessing but longs for them to extend over all the earth:

May God be gracious to us and bless us
and make his face to shine upon us,
that your ways may be known on earth,
your saving power among all nations.

In many lamentations, suffering is depicted as having God’s face hidden from us, such as in Psalm 13:

How long, O LORD?
Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?

Because God’s face is the highest source of joy for His people, Psalm 27:8 rightly captures the great dialogue between Yahweh and His people:

You have said, “Seek my face.”
My heart says, “Your face, O LORD, do I seek.”

The second part of the line is then: and be gracious to us. Graciousness means showing favor, especially beyond what is deserved. The light of God’s face is grace upon us. It is, in many ways, the supreme grace. We see this in Exodus 34 when Moses asks to see God’s glory, but he is told that he cannot see God’s face and live. But even though Moses could not look directly upon the face of God, Yahweh hid Moses in the cleft of a rock and passed by while declaring His name to Moses: “Yahweh, Yahweh, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love…”

Finally, the third line of the blessing again refers to the face of God. His face is favorable and gracious, and now it is fixed firmly upon us. The Creator of heaven and earth, the source of all blessedness and joy, looks at us. Out of all the countless wonders that He has fashioned according to His wisdom, He sets His attention upon us.

And give you peace. The word is shalom in Hebrew, which means far more than tranquility and the absence of strife. As Michael Glodo writes, “Underlying shalom is the idea of wholeness. Its verbal root, for example, is used in biblical laws of restitution which require the responsible party to make whole the damaged party.

This is pictured in the peace offerings, which was the only offering where the worshiper ate a portion of the sacrifice. The peace offering signified a restored relationship with Yahweh through a covenant meal around God’s table within His house, the tabernacle. It was meal in the presence of God, before His shining face.

This is the height of the blessing precisely because we yearn for peace. After our fall into sin, our hearts are restless, as Augustine said, until they find their rest, their peace, in Him. The blessing moves from blessing and protection to grace and favor and ends with peace of knowing God face-to-face.

But the summary of the blessing comes in verse 27. Yahweh’s name is being placed upon His people. God’s holy name is the key feature to each line, especially since the threefold repetition is grammatically unnecessary. Through each pronouncement of the blessing (again, likely made as the Israelite was about to leave the tabernacle), God was marking each worshiper as His own, as belonging to Him.

YES, AND HE SHALL BE BLESSED

And while this blessing does not magically override unrepentant sin, because Yahweh Himself is blessing His people through the priests, it is more than a mere wish. It is an effectual blessing.

We see a display of this by returning the life of Jacob, Israel’s namesake. Jacob is indeed blessed, just as Isaac foretold. But that blessing came with much wrestling, both figurative and literal.

After more than fourteen years of being cheated and out cheating his uncle Laban, Jacob returned to Canaan and learned that his brother was coming to meet him. The night before, Jacob is alone and afraid. Suddenly, a man appeared and wrestled with Jacob all through the night. As morning began to break, Jacob refused to let the man go until he blessed Jacob.

“What is your name?” the man asked. “Jacob,” he answered. Clutcher. And there he was, clutching. Then the man spoke, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.”

After the man blessed him, Jacob called the place Penuel, the face of God, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.”

When God resolves to bless someone, they will be blessed. And that is wonderful news because we are all as broken as Jacob. Cheats and deceivers, all of us, with no other hope than to clutch onto God for a blessing.

Of course, the blessing that Jacob received could not come to him in his own right. God was merciful to let him even clutch to Him. And so it was with Jacob’s descendants as well. God blessed Jacob at Penuel by His grace, and the same is true of the Israelites through the priests.

We too, as Paul says, are blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ. Indeed, even as we are blessed through what Christ has done, the Old Testament saints were blessed through what Christ would do. The priests were able to give the blessing, and the people were able to receive it only through Christ, even though they did not yet know His name.

Jesus is the only one who perfectly bore the name of God. We see this in two divine benedictions that are spoken over Jesus. First, Jesus began His ministry by being baptized by John the Baptist. As He came up from the water, the Holy Spirit came down upon Him in the form of a dove, and the Father spoke from heaven, “You are my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

That divine blessing carried Christ through His earthly ministry. During that ministry, Jesus would be repeatedly mocked and tested, and it began with Satan himself tempting him. Indeed, notice the language of Satan’s temptations: “If you are truly the Son of God…” Jesus did not need to prove Himself because He has the confirmation of His Father.

Another similar benediction occurs at the transfiguration, which marked the beginning of the end of Christ’s earthly ministry. Before going to Jerusalem, Jesus took Peter, James, and John with Him on a mountain and again heard the Father the speak: “This is my beloved Son; listen to Him.”

That word would carry Him through the very depths of His suffering, as He cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He knew that He would not be left in the grave. He knew that His moment of being crushed by the Father would be our redemption.

Even though Jesus is the only one who fully deserved the Father’s shining face and name upon Him, He now extends that blessing to us. In Christ, in the first chapter of Ephesians, Paul says that we are blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ. Those blessings include being chosen, loved, forgiven, redeemed, adopted, and given an eternal inheritance. And it is all in Christ.

Let us consider one of those blessings: our adoption. God’s revelation of His name and glory to Moses was pure grace. But we have an even greater grace, grace upon grace. We do not merely know the meaning of God’s holy name; we know Him relationally. Throughout the Old Testament, especially in the Psalms, God’s people pray to God by His revealed name, Yahweh.

Christ, however, invites us further up and further in. He teaches us to pray to Yahweh as our Father. Of course, that would be an act of the highest presumption if it were not true. But in Christ, it is true. Jesus has not only paid the debt of our sins and justified us before God; He has also secured our adoption into the divine household. We are now sons and daughters of Yahweh and co-heirs with Christ.

We have a sign of this in baptism. Jesus’ baptism was not any sin that He committed (He was entirely without sin!); it was for our benefit, to fulfill all righteousness. Our baptism is linked to Jesus’ baptism. The waters of baptism do not save, but they are something like an adoption ceremony, celebrating that we belong to God’s family. At our baptism, we are baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The name, singular, of God is placed upon us as our new family name. In Christ, the Father now shows us the same favor that He spoke over Christ. Indeed, that is the highest degree of peace imaginable. The Father is pleased with us, not because of our goodness but because Christ has clothed us in His own righteousness.

Of course, we also have a sign of this blessing at the Lord’s Supper as well. Similar to the peace offering in the Old Testament, the Lord’s Supper is a family table. For all who have been adopted in Christ, it is a continual proclamation that you still belong the family of God. Baptism says that you have been adopted; communion says that you still belong at the table.

Through the bread and the cup, we are given tangible images of our peace with God and with one another.

Thus, as we come to the Table, expressing our unworthiness, confessing our sin, and clutching only to Christ, we find His face shing upon us here. Indeed, the assurance of pardon should be a received as a confirmation that God has forgiven our sins in Christ and lifts up His countenance upon us.

Let us trust that through Christ, as pictured in these elements, the Father blesses and keeps us. The Father shines His face upon us and is gracious to us. The Father’s countenance is lifted upon us and gives us peace.

Further Resources

You can find my primary resources for this study at the link here.