D33-15: How Judas’s Betrayal Of Yeshua Is Prophesied In The Blessing Of Moses

Alrighty folks, prepare to have your minds blown into smithereens today.

So up until this point Moses has blessed each tribe individually but did you notice there is one tribe he overlooked?

That’s right.

Moses actually skipped one tribe and that tribe is Simeon.

The $64,000 question is why though?

Was it just a mistake or was there some divine reason behind why he left Simeon out of the blessings?

Let’s discuss this a bit.

First, recall what Jacob prophesied about Levi and Simeon when he was on his deathbed way back in the book of Genesis.

“Simeon and Levi are brothers,
related by weapons of violence.
Let me not enter their council,
let my honor not be connected with their people;
for in their anger they killed men,
and at their whim they maimed cattle.
Cursed be their anger, for it has been fierce;
their fury, for it has been cruel.
I will divide them in Jacob
and scatter them in Israel.”
-Genesis 49:5-7

Instead of getting blessings like the other brothers did, what Simeon and Levi received was essentially curses.

Remember this happened because of their merciless attack of revenge on the helpless male residents of Shechem after tricking them into being circumcised.

Yet, because of the great merit Levi demonstrated at the Golden Calf incident, they ended up being chosen by God to become Hashem’s set-apart priests in spite of Jacob’s curse upon them.

However, what happened to Simeon?

Well, history tells us that Simeon was eventually swallowed up by the Tribe of Judah.

As a result, their identity as a separate and self-governing tribe pretty much disappeared.

But having said that, it was common for tribal societies to still keep the memory of the family name alive by continuing to identify themselves as being from a certain tribe even if that tribe was no longer around.

Now here’s where things get mighty interesting.

In Deuteronomy 33, Moses is pronouncing blessings upon the tribes of Israel but instead of pronouncing blessings over 12 tribes, he only pronounces blessing over 11 because as I just said Simeon was left out due to his tribe being cursed.

One pattern most folks notice is…

…just as there were 12 original tribes of Israel, there were also 12 original disciples of Yeshua.

And out of these 12 disciples, there was one disciple who would go down in history as the man who betrayed Yeshua.

His name was Judas Iscariot.

I’m sure you’ve heard of him before.

Let’s talk about the background of this bad boy for a bit.

First, what exactly does the word “Iscariot” mean?

There seem to be two theories out there.

Some folks say it is referring to a geographical area called K’RIOT.

Others say Iscariot originates from the word SICARRI…

…which bring us to the question of what does “Sicarri” mean?

Sicarri was actually one faction of the Zealot party.

And the Zealot Party was comprised of super dangerous extremists who wanted desperately to overthrow the Roman government and enforce their hardcore brand of patriotic Judaism onto the masses…

…and they weren’t afraid to use violence including assassinating key government leaders to achieve their end goals.

You could compare these folks to those right-wing zionists who believe that only Jews should be allowed to live in Israel.

So this brings us to the next $64,000 question: Was Judas a zealot?

The answer is hell to the yeah he was.

He was a radical militant and once he realized that Yeshua was NOT going to be the military leader he had hoped for and one who would lead an insurrection against the Romans, Judas decided to feed Yeshua to the wolves.

Given all of this background I would say it is not a stretch at all to consider that Judas was one of the members of that ruthless and radical Zealot party called the SICARRI (it kind of has an Italian ring to it, don’t you think?) and hence his name in Scripture is Judas Iscariot.

But let’s dig a little deeper because I want to find out what tribe Judas originally hailed from.

In other words, what was his family background and in what region did he grow up in?

We know all know the other disciples hailed from Galilee but what about Judas?

Okay, I’m about to share one verse from the Book of John that reveals one single piece of absolutely mind-blowing piece of information.

Brace yourself because you may never be the same after being exposed to this.

Here’s the verse from the Complete Jewish Bible:

“Yeshua answered, “It’s the one to whom I give this piece of matzah after I dip it in the dish.” So he dipped the piece of matzah and gave it to Y’hudah Ben-Shim‘on from K’riot.”-John 13:26

Here’s the verse from the King James Bible:

“Jesus answered, He it is, to whom I shall give a sop, when I have dipped it. And when he had dipped the sop, he gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon.“-John 13:26

And here’s verse from the NIV version:

Holy cow!

We discover that Judas is a son of Simon and it doesn’t matter which Bible translation you use.

Understand that whether the word is “Simeon”, “Shim’on” or “Simon”, they’re all referring to the exact same name in the Hebrew.

Got it homies?

And remember how I just told you that it was perfectly normal in Bible times for a person to be identified by which tribe he hailed from.

Hence, if a person had the family name of Simon attached to his first name, it obviously meant his heritage originated from the Tribe of Simon.

For example, there is no way a person would be named Levi if he hailed from the tribe of Manasseh.

So make no bones about it folks, Judas originally hailed from Simeon, the tribe that was swallowed up by the Tribe of Judah.

However, as a remembrance of his family heritage, Judas kept the family name Simeon in use.

Now that I’ve established that, let’s go back to the Blessing of Moses as we uncover a mighty interesting pattern that was carried forward 13 centuries later (man, the Word of God is just freakin’ awesome!).

So here in Deuteronomy 33, Moses is pronouncing his final prophetic words to the Tribes of Israel just before his death.

However, for some mysterious reason, he leaves out Simeon who had been cursed by Jacob.

Hence, Moses ends up blessing only 11 tribes instead of 12.

Now let’s travel forward in time to where Yeshua was giving his final blessings to his disciples during the famous Last Supper.

While Yeshua was giving out his last words before his death one of his disciples was conspicuously missing.

Of course, we all know that missing person was Judas.

He wasn’t there because he was off to fetch the Temple Guard who would arrest Yeshua and have him turned over to the Romans to be tried and then put to death by crucifixion.

Because of what Judas (a son of Simon) did, he was cursed and ended up committing suicide.

And as a result, there were only 11 disciples left.

Some of you folks may think all of this to be coincidental but knowing what I know about God-patterns, I beg to disagree.

I can see too many patterns here to just swipe this one under the rug.

FIRST, Moses and Yeshua were both blessing what was originally supposed to be a number of 12 but that number turned out to be 11.

SECOND, both Moses and Yeshua were giving blessings right before their deaths.

THIRD, the 12th party that was removed was connected to the Simeon tribe or the tribe that had been cursed.

Do you really think all of this was a coincidence?

CONNECTING THIS TEACHING TO THE NEW TESTAMENT

“If you believed Moses,
you would believe me,
for he wrote about me.”
-John 5:46