Issachar

Abstract

"The blessing of Jacob (and the blessing of Moses in Deuteronomy 33) has long been considered by critical scholars to be a collection of originally inde- pendent oracles that circulated in oral form as folk literature, perhaps during the period of the judges. They are said to have been gathered together in this chapter by an unknown redactor, possibly J. Some of the oracles, therefore, are positive, and some are negative. Since they arose independently, there is no inherent unity in the chapter and no common author for the sayings"