The Geography of Favor Text: Deuteronomy 33:23
Introduction: The Land is Never Just Land
We live in a materialistic age, which is another way of saying we live in a profoundly stupid age. Modern man, in his rebellion against God, has flattened the world. To him, dirt is just dirt, water is just H2O, and land is just real estate. He sees the world as a collection of resources to be exploited or a meaningless cosmic accident to be marveled at, but either way, it is mute. It has no voice, no meaning, no story. But the Christian knows better. The Christian knows that the world is a theater of God's glory, and that every mountain, every sea, and every parcel of land is drenched in theological significance.
God is the great geographer. He determines the boundaries of nations, and He does so with redemptive purpose (Acts 17:26). The promises He makes to His people are never abstract, floating ideals. They are always landed. They are earthy. They have to do with soil and water and inheritance. When Moses, on the cusp of his own death, pronounces the final blessings on the tribes of Israel, he is not just reciting poetry. He is prophesying. He is defining their future, and he is doing it in geographical terms. These blessings are not just well-wishes; they are sovereign declarations that will shape history.
Our secularists want a world of rights without responsibilities, blessings without a Blesser, and favor without a source. They want to be "satisfied" and "full," but they look for it in the barren wells of self-fulfillment and materialism. But Moses tells us here that true satisfaction and fullness are gifts, bestowed by the covenant-keeping God of Israel. And these gifts are not meant to be hoarded in a private "spiritual life." They are meant to be taken, possessed, and put to work in the real world, on the ground, in the sea and the south.
The blessing on Naphtali is a beautiful microcosm of the gospel. It is a promise of unearned favor, abundant blessing, and a concrete inheritance. And as we will see, the specific geography of this inheritance is no accident. God had a plan for this particular piece of land that would reverberate into eternity. This is not just a dusty word for an ancient tribe; it is a word for us, who have been grafted into the true Israel and have received an even greater inheritance.
The Text
Of Naphtali he said,
“O Naphtali, satisfied with favor,
And full of the blessing of Yahweh,
Take possession of the sea and the south.”
(Deuteronomy 33:23 LSB)
Satisfied with Favor
We begin with the internal state that God grants to this tribe.
"O Naphtali, satisfied with favor..." (Deuteronomy 33:23a)
The first thing to notice is that this satisfaction is a gift. Naphtali is not commanded to become satisfied, nor is he praised for achieving satisfaction. He is declared to be satisfied. And the source of this satisfaction is "favor." This is the Hebrew word ratson, which means good pleasure, acceptance, or delight. This is a covenantal word. It speaks of God's sovereign, unilateral, gracious disposition toward His people. It is not earned. It is not deserved. It is freely given.
This cuts the legs out from under every form of moralism and every bootstrap religion. The world tells you to find satisfaction by looking within, by achieving your potential, by earning the approval of others. The Bible tells you that true satisfaction is found when you receive the unmerited favor of God. You are not satisfied because you are good; you are satisfied because He is good, and He has chosen to set His favor upon you.
This is the heart of the gospel. We are "accepted in the Beloved" (Eph. 1:6). God's ratson, His good pleasure, rests on us not because of our performance, but because we are united by faith to His Son, in whom He is well-pleased. The world is full of anxious, striving, perpetually unsatisfied people because they are trying to fill a God-shaped hole with self-shaped achievements. But the Christian, the one who understands grace, can be at rest. We are satisfied with favor. This is not a call to complacency, but the very foundation of all true and grateful action. You don't work for favor; you work from favor.
Full of the Blessing
This internal satisfaction overflows into an external, tangible reality.
"And full of the blessing of Yahweh..." (Deuteronomy 33:23b)
Favor is the disposition of God's heart toward you; blessing is the action of God's hand upon you. The two are inseparable. Those whom God favors, He blesses. And this is not a stingy, half-hearted blessing. Naphtali is to be full of it. The word implies being stuffed, brimming, overflowing. This is the nature of our God. He is not a cosmic miser, doling out blessings with an eyedropper. He is a fountain of life, and His desire is to drench His people in His goodness.
What is the blessing of Yahweh? In the Old Covenant, it certainly included material prosperity: fertile land, abundant crops, healthy children, and victory over enemies. God is not a Gnostic; He cares about our physical lives. But the ultimate blessing of Yahweh has always been His presence. To be blessed is to have God with you, for you, and in you. All the material gifts are simply signposts pointing to the Giver.
For us in the New Covenant, this fullness of blessing has come to its zenith in Christ. Paul tells us we have been blessed "with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ" (Eph. 1:3). We are not lacking anything. We are full. The problem is that we often live as though we are empty. We have been given a feast, but we go rooting around in the garbage cans of the world for scraps. This blessing is an objective reality for every believer. The command for us is to live like it's true. To believe we are full, and to draw from that fullness in everything we do.
Take Possession
This satisfaction and fullness are not for passive enjoyment alone. They are fuel for a mission.
"Take possession of the sea and the south." (Deuteronomy 33:23c)
Here the blessing gets specific coordinates. Naphtali's inheritance was in the northern part of Canaan, a beautiful and fertile region that included the western and southern shores of the Sea of Galilee. The "sea" is the Sea of Galilee, and the "south" refers to the southern part of their allotted territory, a warm and fruitful area. This was a prime piece of real estate. But notice the verb: "Take possession." The Hebrew is yarash, which means to inherit, to occupy, to seize. God gives the gift, but His people must take it.
This is a fundamental principle of the Christian life. God has given us the victory in Christ, but we must fight. He has promised to bless our work, but we must work. He has given us the nations as an inheritance (Psalm 2), but we must go and make disciples. A lazy, passive, pietistic faith is a contradiction in terms. The favor and fullness of God are not a retirement plan; they are marching orders. They empower us for conquest.
This is where our postmillennial optimism is rooted. We believe that the blessings of God are not just for escaping this world, but for taking possession of it. Christ has all authority in heaven and on earth. And because He does, we are to go. We are to take possession of every area of life, family, education, arts, business, government, for the glory of King Jesus. We are satisfied with favor and full of blessing, and therefore we are commanded to advance.
The Galilean Light
But there is a far greater significance to this specific geography. Why this land? Why the "sea and the south" of Naphtali? The prophet Isaiah gives us the answer hundreds of years later, and the apostle Matthew confirms it.
"But there will be no gloom for her who was in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he has made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone." (Isaiah 9:1-2)
This very region, the inheritance of Naphtali, this "way of the sea," would later be known as Galilee of the Gentiles. It was a place looked down upon by the Jerusalem elite. But it was here, in the land promised to the tribe that was "satisfied with favor," that the ultimate Light of the world would begin His public ministry.
Matthew quotes this very passage from Isaiah to explain why Jesus, after His baptism, moved to Capernaum, a town on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, right in the heart of Naphtali's ancient territory (Matthew 4:12-17). The fullness of the blessing of Yahweh, promised here in seed form to one tribe, exploded into world-altering glory when the Son of God Himself walked those shores. The light dawned not in the halls of power in Rome or in the temple courts of Jerusalem, but in the backwater region of Naphtali.
This is the way of our God. He chooses the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. He gives favor to the undeserving. He fills the empty. And He commands them to take possession of the world. The blessing given to Naphtali was a down payment, a prophetic pointer to the day when the true Son of God would come and, from that very spot, launch a campaign to "take possession" of the entire world.
"And Jesus came and said to them, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations...'" (Matthew 28:18-19)
That is the blessing of Naphtali writ large. We, the Church, are now the people satisfied with favor and full of the blessing of the Lord. And our inheritance is not just the Sea of Galilee and the south. It is the sea of humanity and the south pole. It is the entire globe. God has given it to His Son, and we, as His body, have been given our marching orders. So let us, in the strength of His favor and the fullness of His blessing, go and take possession.