A ROD — and a TRIBE, exactly like matteh, which is the other word that does both jobs. Hebrew has two words for a stick and both of them came to mean a division of the people; the picture in each case is a branch off one stock. Shevet is the word of Jacob's blessing (Genesis 49:16, 28) and of its most quoted line, the shevet shall not depart from Judah — where it has drifted from a stick toward a ruler's SCEPTRE, the sense it also carries in Psalm 23's your rod and your staff. It is the ordinary word for the disciplinary rod as well, the one Proverbs says a parent should not spare. ⚠ Numbers 18:2 is the one verse in the Bible where shevet and matteh stand side by side in a single phrase naming one and the same tribe — matteh Levi shevet avicha, the tribe of Levi, the tribe of your father — and the Vulgate, followed by the Douay-Rheims, took the second one in its rod sense and rendered it 'the SCEPTRE of thy father'. Genesis prefers shevet where Numbers prefers matteh; they are near-perfect synonyms and this project keeps both as 'tribe'. ⭐ Numbers 24:17 uses the other sense and makes it famous: 'a sceptre rises from Israel', the line that pairs with the star and that named Bar Kokhba's revolt. The rod a chieftain holds, the tribe whose name is on it, and a king's sceptre are one word. → first discussed at Num 18:2