Charles Ellicott Commentary Genesis 49:9

"Judah is a lion`s whelp; From the prey, my son, thou art gone up: He stooped down, he couched as a lion, And as a lioness; who shall rouse him up?" — Genesis 49:9 (ASV)

Judah is a lion’s whelp. —We have seen that the sons of Jacob each had his signet, and that Judah’s was so large that he wore it attached to a cord fastened around his neck (Genesis 38:18). Probably his emblem was a lion; Zebulun’s, a ship; Issachar’s, an ass; Dan’s, an adder; and so on.

Using his self-chosen emblem, Jacob then compares him, first, to a lion’s whelp, full of activity and enterprise, and which, after feasting on its prey, goes up to its mountain lair, calm and fearless in the consciousness of its strength. But as Judah is a young lion in his activity and fearlessness, so he is a lion full-grown and majestic in his repose, which Jacob’s words literally describe. For the stooping down is the bending of the limbs together before the lion couches—that is, lies down in his den.

As an old lion. —Heb., as a lioness; the female is said to be fiercer than the male and to resent more angrily any disturbance of its rest.