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Gen_49:1 And Jacob called unto his sons, and said, Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you [that] which shall befall you in the last days.
Ver. 1. Gather yourselves together.] This is Jacob’s swan-like song, {a} his last bequeath, his farewell to the world; and it is a most heavenly one. The wine of God’s Spirit is usually strongest and best at last in the hearts of his people: his motions, quickest when natural motions are slowest; most sensible when the body begins to be senseless most lively when holy men are dying. Look how the sun shines most amiably toward the descent and rivers, the nearer they draw to the sea, the sooner they are met by the tide: so it is with the saints when nigh to death; when grace is changing into glory, they deliver themselves usually to the standers-by most sweetly. So, besides Jacob, did Moses, Joshua, Paul, and he in whose one example is a globe of precepts, our Lord Jesus Christ, in that last heavenly sermon and prayer of his, Joh_14:1-31; Joh_15:1-27; Joh_16:1-33; Joh_17:1-26 Whereunto let me add that faithful martyr, John Diazius, who was cruelly butchered by his own brother Alphonsus Diazius, and that merely for his religion. {See Trapp on "Gen_4:8"} I remember, saith Senarclaeus, his friend and bedfellow, who wrote the history of his death, when he and I were at Newburg, the very night before he was murdered, he prayed before he went to bed more ardently than ordinary, and for a longer time together. After which he spent a good part of the night in discoursing of the great works of God, and exhorting me to the practice of true piety. And truly I felt myself so inflamed and quickened by his words, that when I heard him discoursing, I thought I heard the Spirit of God speaking unto me. This, and much more, Senarclaeus writes to Bucer, {b} who at that time had employed Diazius to overlook the correct printing of a book of his that was then in the press.
That I may tell you that which shall befall you.] But how knew Moses this last speech of Jacob, being born so long after? Partly by revelation, and partly also by tradition. For the words of dying men are living oracles, and their last speeches are long remembered. And the accomplishment of all these prophecies in their due time, as the following scriptures show, adds much to the authority of Moses’s writings, and confirms them to be "faithful and true," as he saith, Joh_21:24.
{a} Sic ubi fata vocant, udis abiectus in herbis, Ad vada Maeandri concinit albus olor. - Ovid., Epist.
{b} Ego vero illius oratione sic incendebar, ut cum eum disserentem audirem, Spiritus sancti verba me audire existimarem. - Ibid.