He crouches like a lion recumbent,
the king of beasts–who would dare rouse him?
The scepter shall never depart from Judah,
or the mace from between his legs,
While tribute is brought to him,
and he receives the people’s homage.
This passage had a provisional fulfillment in the life of Judah. Looking back on it, however, we can see the Messianic context, the promise of one who the archangel would later say, "will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end" (see Luke 2:33). Revelation makes the point even more explicit
And one of the elders said to me, “Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals” (see Revelation 5:5).
Now when we're given the genealogy we can recognize that the fact that Jesus was descended from Judah was not merely an arbitrary data point along the way to his birth. That fact was as caught up in the promises as the fact the he was an heir of the promise to Abraham and the fact that he was not only a son of David among others but the true heir to the Davidic throne.
Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers.
Judah became the father of Perez and Zerah,
whose mother was Tamar.
The whole reason there was any Messianic expectation at all was because of the historicity of this genealogy, because God himself was at work, writing his own higher story through the story of all of these individuals, pointing toward and fulfilled by the birth of Jesus himself.
It was not as though Israel had suddenly discovered a Bible code years after the fact. It was rather a steady drumbeat over the course of years that marked the relationship of the Jewish people with their God. They did not come to this expectation suddenly, but rather after years of increasing longing as they were made ready to receive it. In a similar way the liturgical cadence of the year is meant to drill ever greater expectations in us of the way in which God desires to bring ever increasing reception of those promises in our own lives. One of the ways it does this is by reminding us of the O Antiphons year in and year out. We have received Jesus as the Wisdom of God. But we have decidedly not exhausted that gift. The liturgy reminds us emphatically that there is more, and that Christmas is a wonderful and graced time to open ourselves to receiving it.
May his name be blessed forever;
as long as the sun his name shall remain.
In him shall all the tribes of the earth be blessed;
all the nations shall proclaim his happiness.
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