Who Is the Lion of Judah? Meaning of the Lion of the Tribe of Judah

Few titles in all of Scripture carry the weight and the wonder of this one, and few are so often worn upon the chest, engraved upon the ring, and lifted upon the banner: the Lion of Judah. The question many ask — who is the Lion of Judah? — has a richer answer than most suppose, for the phrase reaches from the deathbed of a patriarch in the book of Genesis to the throne room of heaven in the book of Revelation, and it gathers into a single image the whole story of a tribe, a king, a city, and a Messiah. To understand the Lion of the tribe of Judah is to follow a golden thread that runs through the entire Bible, binding the first book to the last, the blessing of Jacob to the vision of John, the nation of Israel to the hope of the nations. This is no small symbol, and it deserves more than a passing glance.

We will trace the meaning of the Lion of Judah from its first appearance to its final fulfillment. We will see how the lion became the emblem of one of the twelve tribes of Israel, how it passed to the royal House of David, how it came to stand for Jerusalem and the Jewish people, and how, in the reading of the New Testament, it is fulfilled in the Messiah who is called the Root of David. And we will see something that ought to arrest every reader: that the Lion who prevailed did so by becoming a Lamb. For the friend of Israel, this study is a feast, for the Lion of Judah belongs first to Israel, and only through Israel to the world; and the believer who grasps this will love the covenant people the more, not the less, for understanding it.

The First Appearance: Jacob’s Blessing in Genesis 49

The phrase “Lion of Judah” is not, in those exact words, found in the opening pages of the Bible; what is found there is the seed from which the whole image grows. In the forty-ninth chapter of Genesis, the aged patriarch Jacob — renamed Israel, the father of the twelve tribes — gathers his sons about his deathbed to tell them what shall befall them in the last days. When he comes to his fourth son, Judah, he speaks words that would echo for all the centuries that followed: Judah is a lion’s whelp: from the prey, my son, thou art gone up: he stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as an old lion; who shall rouse him up? Here, at the very fountainhead, the tribe of Judah is joined forever to the figure of the lion. It is a young lion grown to its full strength, a creature crouched in the confidence of its power, which none dares disturb. The image is one of royalty, courage, and unconquerable dominion.

But Jacob does not stop with the lion. He goes on to utter one of the great Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament: The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be. The sceptre is the emblem of kingship, the lawgiver the emblem of rule; and Jacob declares that these shall remain with the tribe of Judah until one called Shiloh comes — a name long understood to mean “he to whom it belongs,” the rightful king, the Messiah. To this coming one belongs not only the rule of Judah but the gathering of the peoples, the obedience of the nations. In a single breath the dying patriarch links the lion, the sceptre, and the Messiah, and binds them all to the tribe of Judah. Everything that follows in the long history of this symbol is the unfolding of what was spoken over Judah’s head in that hour.

The Lion as the Symbol of the Tribe of Judah

From Jacob’s blessing forward, the lion became the standard of the tribe of Judah, and it is no accident that this tribe rose to pre-eminence among the twelve. When Israel marched through the wilderness, each tribe camped under its own banner, and Jewish tradition has long held that the standard of Judah bore the figure of a lion. Judah took the leading place in the order of march and the foremost position in the encampment; when the tribes went up to battle, Judah went up first. The lion was not chosen at random. It expressed the character that Judah was to bear among his brethren: strength to lead, courage to go before, and the dignity of one marked out for rule. The blessing spoken at the deathbed became the emblem stitched upon the banner.

The lion is, throughout the Scriptures, an image of might and majesty. It is called, in the proverb, the strongest among beasts, that turneth not away for any; the righteous are said to be bold as a lion; and when the prophet would describe the terror of the Lord’s voice he asks, The lion hath roared, who will not fear? To make the lion the symbol of Judah was therefore to declare that this tribe carried within it something of the strength and the sovereignty that belong, in their fullness, to God alone. The lion of Judah was a creature of dominion, and the tribe that bore it was destined for dominion — not for its own sake, but as the channel through which the promised King would come. The emblem pointed beyond itself, from the first, to a greater Lion yet to be revealed.

From the Tribe to the Throne: The House of David

The promise of the sceptre found its first great fulfillment in David. Out of the tribe of Judah, from the town of Bethlehem, God raised up the shepherd who would become Israel’s greatest king, and to David He made a covenant that gathered up and carried forward the blessing of Jacob: thine house and thy kingdom shall be established for ever before thee: thy throne shall be established for ever. The sceptre that was not to depart from Judah now rested in the hand of the house of David, and the lion of Judah became, by natural extension, the lion of the royal line. The kings of Judah who sat upon David’s throne in Jerusalem ruled under that ancient emblem, and the great seal of Solomon and the lions that flanked his ivory throne testified to the same truth: that the kingship of Israel belonged to Judah, and through Judah to David, and through David to the one yet to come.

Here the thread tightens, for the prophets did not let the house of David fall into the past as a closed chapter. Even after the throne in Jerusalem was overturned and the last king of Judah was carried into exile, the prophets kept the promise alive, looking forward to a son of David yet to be born. Isaiah foretold a shoot from the stem of Jesse, David’s father, upon whom the Spirit of the Lord would rest; Jeremiah promised a righteous Branch raised up unto David, a King who would reign and prosper; Ezekiel spoke of one shepherd, even David, who would feed the flock. The royal line of Judah, the line of the lion, was never merely a dynasty among dynasties. It was the appointed channel of the Messianic hope, and every promise made to it pointed forward to the King in whom the sceptre and the lion would find their everlasting rest.

The Lion of Judah as a Symbol of Jerusalem and the Jewish People

Because Jerusalem was the capital of the kingdom of Judah, the lion that belonged to the tribe came in time to belong to the city, and it remains to this day among the most recognized symbols of the Jewish people. The visitor to modern Jerusalem will find the lion of Judah everywhere — upon the official emblem and flag of the city, carved into stone, worked into iron, set upon public buildings and even upon the humblest street fixtures. It is no museum relic but a living symbol, worn proudly by a people who know themselves to be, in the main, the descendants of the tribe of Judah, from whom the very name Jew is drawn. To this day, the lion announces a simple and defiant truth: that this city and this people belong to a story older than any empire, a story whose first chapter was written at the deathbed of Jacob.

For the friend of Israel, this is a matter of no small importance. The Lion of Judah is not first a Christian symbol borrowed for the church’s use; it is, in its origin and through all the centuries, a Jewish national and cultural symbol, the emblem of the tribe of Judah, the House of David, and Jerusalem. The lions that flank the Ten Commandments in the synagogue, the lion upon the banners of Israel, the lion that the Jewish people have carried through exile and return alike — these are the inheritance of the covenant people. When the believer in the Messiah speaks of the Lion of Judah, he does not take the symbol away from Israel; he confesses that the King he loves came from Israel, was born of the tribe of Judah, and fulfilled the hope that Israel has carried in that lion for three thousand years. To honor the Lion is to honor the people from whom the Lion came.

The Lion Revealed: Revelation 5:5 and the Root of David

It is in the last book of the Bible that the phrase “Lion of the tribe of Judah” appears at last in its full and explicit form, and the scene in which it appears is among the most dramatic in all of Scripture. The apostle John, caught up in vision to the throne room of heaven, beholds in the right hand of Him that sat upon the throne a sealed scroll, written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals. A mighty angel proclaims with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof? And no one is found — not in heaven, nor in earth, nor under the earth — able to open the scroll or so much as to look upon it. John weeps much, for it seems the purposes of God shall remain forever sealed. And then one of the elders speaks the words that turn his grief to wonder: Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.

Every strand of the ancient promise is gathered into that one announcement. He is the Lion of the tribe of Judah — the fulfillment of Jacob’s blessing, the rightful heir of the sceptre that was not to depart. He is the Root of David — the fulfillment of the covenant made to David, the son who is also, mysteriously, the source of his royal father. And He hath prevailed, He has overcome, He has triumphed: the long-awaited Shiloh has come, and to Him belongs the gathering of the people. The one who is worthy to open the scroll of the future, to set in motion the final acts of God’s redemptive purpose, is none other than the Lion who was promised from the beginning. In the Christian reading of these Scriptures, the question “who is the Lion of Judah?” here receives its answer in the person of the Messiah, the descendant of Judah and of David according to the flesh.

The Lion and the Lamb: The Great Paradox

What follows in John’s vision is the most astonishing turn in the whole of Scripture, and it is the heart of the matter. The elder has announced a Lion; John turns to look upon this conquering Lion of the tribe of Judah — and what he sees is not a lion at all. And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne… stood a Lamb as it had been slain. The Lion is the Lamb. The mighty One who prevailed to open the scroll is the same who was slain, whose blood was shed, who bears in His risen body the marks of His sacrifice. Heaven announces a Lion; heaven reveals a Lamb; and the two are one. Here is the paradox upon which the gospel turns: that the Lion of Judah triumphed not by the force of His strength but by the surrender of His life, that He conquered death by dying, that the King of kings reigns from a cross before He reigns from a throne.

This is why the Lion of Judah is no mere emblem of raw power, though power belongs to Him in full measure. The lion of the prophecy is a royal lion, but its royalty is perfected in sacrifice. The same Scriptures that name Him the Lion of the tribe of Judah name Him also the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world. He is the lion in His majesty, His kingship, His coming dominion over the nations; He is the lamb in His meekness, His suffering, His atoning death. The believer who knows Him only as the gentle Lamb has not yet seen the Lion who shall return in glory to judge and to reign; and the one who knows Him only as the conquering Lion has not yet understood that the throne He ascends was purchased at the altar. The Lion and the Lamb are not two saviors but one, and the wonder of the gospel is that they are the same.

Why the Lion Came From Judah and Not Another Tribe

It is worth pausing to ask why the lion, and the kingship, were given to Judah, the fourth son, and not to the firstborn or the favorite. Reuben was the eldest, but he forfeited his pre-eminence; Joseph was the beloved, and received a double portion in his sons; yet the sceptre passed to Judah. The book of Genesis tells the story without flattering its hero, for Judah was no flawless man. Yet it was Judah who, when the brothers stood before the ruler of Egypt who was secretly their brother Joseph, stepped forward and offered himself as a pledge and a substitute for his youngest brother Benjamin, willing to become a slave that the boy might go free. In that act of self-sacrificing surety, the character of the tribe was disclosed, and the character of the One who would come from it was foreshadowed. The lion of Judah was, from the beginning, a lion who would lay down his life for his brethren.

This is the deep fitness of the choice. The kingship was given to the tribe whose founder offered himself as a pledge of safety for another, because the King who would come from that tribe would offer Himself as the pledge and the ransom for many. The whole pattern of the Lion who is also the Lamb is written, in shadow, into the reason the lion was given to Judah at all. The strength of Judah was always a strength bent toward sacrifice; the dominion of Judah was always a dominion won through surrender. When the New Testament names the Messiah the Lion of the tribe of Judah, it draws upon a symbol that already contained, in its origin, the seed of the cross. The choice of Judah was no arbitrary thing. It was the first sketch of the gospel.

The Lion of Judah and the Gathering of the Nations

Return once more to the words of Jacob: unto him shall the gathering of the people be. The promise made to the lion of Judah was never narrow. It spoke of one to whom the obedience of the nations would belong, one whose dominion would reach beyond the borders of a single tribe or a single land to gather in the peoples of the earth. This is the great hope that the Lion of Judah carries, and it is the very hope to which the friend of Israel is summoned. For the Scriptures foretell a day when the nations shall flow to the mountain of the Lord, when the law shall go forth from Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, when the King who reigns from the city of David shall be acknowledged by all the kindreds of the earth. The Lion of Judah is the King of that day, and His reign is the answer to the longing of every nation that has ever groaned under the weight of its own pride and bloodshed.

And so the symbol that belongs first to Israel becomes, through Israel, the hope of the world — not by being taken from the Jewish people, but precisely by remaining theirs. The Lion came from Judah; the King is a son of David; the throne is in Jerusalem; the law goes forth from Zion. The friend of the covenant people does not spiritualize these things away into mist and metaphor, nor does he imagine that the church has replaced Israel in the affections of God. He confesses, rather, that the covenant promises made to Abraham and to David stand unbroken, that the Lion of Judah is the pledge of their fulfillment, and that the gathering of the nations will come to pass under the reign of a Jewish King in a Jewish city, exactly as the prophets foretold. The hope of the Gentiles and the hope of Israel are, in the end, the same hope, and its name is the Lion of the tribe of Judah.

The Lion Carried Through Exile and Return

There is something deeply moving in the way the Jewish people have carried the lion of Judah through the long centuries of their dispersion. When the throne in Jerusalem was overturned and the people scattered to the four corners of the earth, they did not lay the lion down. It appeared above the ark in the synagogues of exile, two lions of Judah flanking the tablets of the law or the scrolls of the Torah, lifting up the word of God in lands far from the city of David. It was worked into the carved wood and the wrought silver of a people who had lost their land but not their hope, who remembered Zion by the rivers of Babylon and in every exile after, and who kept the emblem of their royal tribe alive against the day of return. The lion of Judah became a quiet act of defiance and of faith: a declaration, made in the very teeth of dispersion, that the sceptre had not finally departed and the King had not finally failed.

And the return came. The same people who had carried the lion through two thousand years of exile carried it home again, and today it stands upon the emblem of Jerusalem, the capital of a restored and sovereign Israel. The friend of Israel who has watched the ingathering of the exiles in our own generation cannot look upon the lion of Judah without a measure of awe, for here is a symbol that outlasted every empire that sought to destroy the people who bore it. Babylon fell, and the lion endured; Rome fell, and the lion endured; the long night of the exile passed, and the lion was lifted again over the gates of the very city from which it first arose. To the eye of faith, the survival of the lion of Judah is itself a kind of prophecy — a sign that the God who made the covenant keeps it, and that the King who is the Lion of the tribe of Judah will not fail to come at last to His own.

What the Lion of Judah Means for the Friend of Israel

Several things follow from this study for those who would understand the theological foundations of Christian support for Israel, and they are worth gathering plainly. The first is that the Lion of Judah binds the Christian and the Jew together at the deepest level, for the King whom the believer confesses is the very fulfillment of the hope that Israel has carried in that lion through every century of her long history. The believer who understands this cannot despise the people from whom his Savior came, nor imagine that God has cast away the nation that gave the world the Lion of Judah. The second is that the symbol rebukes every theology that would sever the church from Israel, for the Lion is a Jewish lion, the Root is a Davidic root, and the King is a son of Judah. To love the Lion is to love His kindred.

The third lesson is one of comfort. The Lion of Judah has prevailed; the scroll of the future is in the hands of one who is worthy to open it; and the people of Israel, like all who trust in the God of Abraham, are kept by a King who does not slumber. When the nations rage and gather against the covenant people, as they have raged and gathered in every generation, the friend of Israel does not despair, for he knows who holds the seals of history. The same Lion who was slain as a Lamb shall rise as the conquering King, and the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. To know the Lion of Judah is to read the headlines of a troubled age without fear, confident that the last word does not belong to the enemies of Israel but to the King who came from Judah and shall return in glory.

The Lion Who Was Slain, and Lives

We end where the vision of John ends, with heaven gathered in worship before the Lion who is the Lamb. The four living creatures and the four and twenty elders fall down before Him, and a new song is sung: Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation. Then the voices of many angels round about the throne, ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands, lift up the great acclamation: Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing. The Lion of the tribe of Judah is worshipped as the Lamb that was slain, and the worship of heaven joins the two names in one song.

This, then, is the answer to the question with which we began. Who is the Lion of Judah? He is the one foretold at the deathbed of Jacob, the lion’s whelp grown to royal strength; He is the heir of the sceptre that did not depart, the Shiloh to whom the gathering of the people belongs. He is the King who came from the tribe of Judah and the House of David, the Root of David who is also David’s son and David’s Lord. He is the one who prevailed to open the sealed scroll of the future, and who prevailed by being slain. He is the Lion who is the Lamb, the conqueror who reigns from a cross before He reigns from a throne, the King of Israel who is the hope of the nations. The lion that Israel has carried upon her banner for three thousand years still crouches in royal patience, and the day draws near when He shall rise, and roar, and reign — and unto Him shall the gathering of the people be.