THE RULER’S STAFF — or the ruler who holds it; the word is a participle of chaqaq, to inscribe or decree, and Hebrew lets it mean either the decreer or his baton of office. It stands in eight verses. Two of them are on these pages and they pull in different directions: Genesis 49:10 promises that the sceptre will not depart from Judah ‘nor the mechoqeq from between his feet’, and Numbers 21:18 has the nobles of Israel digging a well with one. ⭐ A quietly useful fact about the shelf: no version crosses between the two senses between the two verses. The KJV, Geneva, RV 1909 and RV60 keep a PERSON in both (lawgiver / «legislador»), and so does the Douay, though with different words each time (‘a ruler’ in Genesis, ‘the lawgiver’ here); the ASV, NIV and NVI keep an OBJECT in both (ruler’s staff, sceptre, bastón de mando); the NWT 1984 and TNM 1987 print the identical phrase, ‘commander’s staff’, twice. So the disagreement is about the word itself, not about either passage. This translation follows Genesis 49’s wording in both. → first discussed at Num 21:18