Numbers 24:17 –
“I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near: a star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel; it shall crush the forehead of Moab and break down all the sons of Sheth.”
This verse has been a great reminder of the extent of the Lord’s sovereign rule. In a time of tumult across the globe, when it can be so easy to worry over works of evil done by man, when the deceiver’s influence on a broken world is more evident than ever, and when our culture grapples with a problem with authority, to recognize the true reward of the wicked is sobering. As Psalm 94:24 puts it, “He will bring back on them their iniquity and wipe them out for their wickedness; the Lord our God will wipe them out.”
Here in Numbers 24, Balak king of Moab seeks the destruction of the Israelites as they have clearly been blessed beyond his means to control. He seeks help from the prophet Baalam, by all accounts a wicked and despicable practitioner of demonic sorcery, in the form of a curse against Israel. But the Lord our God can even use the most wicked of men to bring glory to Him. He fills Baalam’s mouth with words of praise of Him, and blessings for the people of Israel instead, including Numbers 24:17, a clear foreshadowing of the Messiah’s coming to the people of Israel to overcome death and deliver hope.
We tend to think of a scepter as a form of an ornate, ceremonial staff that would be carried by royalty, or some so of leader, as a symbol of power and authority. But the interesting thing is the Hebrew ‘shebhet,’ which can translate as the rod a king would wield to signify power, can also mean more along the line of a simple staff, as, say, a shepherd would use. We consider Jesus a “shepherd of men,” giving this verse the interesting insight into how He who would lovingly seek & save the lost (Luke 19:10) would also be the symbol of God’s might, who would “crush the forehead of Moab” – or destroy those who would look to oppose God’s will and seek to do evil to His people. Or how the “lamb of God” (John 1:29) would “break down all sons of Sheth” – translated a little more in our day & age as “the sons of tumult” – those who would engage & delight in misdeeds and wrongdoing.
Ultimately, this scepter rising out of Israel – this light of Jacob’s lineage (as Jacob foresees in Genesis 49:10 – “he scepter shall not depart from Judah nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.”) – would be Jesus Christ. And similarly to how a king would wield a scepter to show his authority, God shows His unquestionable authority over every force, including all the wages of sin beyond death itself, through Jesus’s death and resurrection. This verse shows a glimpse into His grand plan for our salvation when thousands of years later, Jesus would come to earth to definitely display God’s authority to man.
Hebrews 1:8 says “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom.” Jesus, in His blameless life, selfless death, and limitless power over death in resurrection, shows us the glory & majesty of God’s kingdom for all men, those who do good or evil, to see. In His life, Christ demonstrated that “with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits” (Luke 4:36), and will cast all evil aside on the day He returns. Thank the Lord today for sharing His son with us, that we may know of His triumph over evil, know to cling to what is righteous and good, and know that He is Lord over absolutely all.