Works (CSEL) 3 part 1/2

First of all, how great a reverence we learn to render to our parents, when we read that whoever was blessed by his father was blessed, and whoever was cursed was cursed! Therefore God gave this grace to parents, that the piety of children might be called forth. The discipline of children, then, is the prerogative of parents. Honour, therefore, your father, that he may bless you. Let the dutiful son honour his father for grace's sake, the ungrateful for fear's sake. Even if the father is poor and has no abundance of riches to leave to his sons, yet he has the inheritance of his final blessing, by which he may bestow upon his successors the wealth of sanctification. And it is far better to become blessed than to become rich. Joseph hastened to receive the blessing.

Indeed he also presented his sons Manasseh and Ephraim, whom Jacob blessed; so that, since he had twelve sons and the thirteenth, the apostle Paul, was to be as it were a later-chosen one, the thirteenth tribe might be sanctified from his grandsons Manasseh and Ephraim, divided into the two; so that Paul might not be found outside the number of the paternal tribes—Paul who, as the distinguished preacher of both the Old Testament and the New, might easily prove that the inheritance of the paternal blessing had profited him also.

How illustrious are the mysteries in this, that Joseph, taking his sons whom he had begotten in Egypt—Ephraim at his right hand, but at the left of Israel his father, and Manasseh at his own left, but at the right of Israel—brought them before his father; but Israel, stretching out his right hand, laid it upon the head of Ephraim, who was the younger and stood at the left of his grandfather, and laid his own left hand upon Manasseh, who was at the right; and thus, with his hands crossed, he blessed them!

In this Joseph too preserved the order of nature, that he might give more honour to the elder son, just as Isaac also wished to confer the prior blessing upon Esau the elder son; but he believed that the younger son, as a type of the younger people, was to be preferred, just as he himself had been preferred by his mother. Indeed Manasseh, by the Latin interpretation, is marked as 'from forgetfulness,' in that the people of the Jews forgot their God who made them; and whoever from that people believes is, as it were, recalled from forgetfulness. But Ephraim, by the interpretation of his name, promises the fecundity of faith—he who increased his father, as Joseph himself says, saying: 'For God has increased me in the land of my humiliation.'

This is proper to the younger people, which is the body of Christ, increasing the Father and not forsaking its own God. Indeed the elder declared spiritually that this mystery concerned the peoples. For when his son supposed that he had erred through the defect of his dimmer sight, he wished to turn his hands, saying: 'Not so, father; for this one is the firstborn. Lay your right hand upon his head.' And he would not, but said: 'I know, son, I know. This one too shall be a people, and this one shall be exalted; but his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his seed shall become a multitude of nations.' Indeed he prophesied that Ephraim was to be preferred to his elder brother even in the sequence of blessing, saying: 'In you shall Israel be blessed, men saying: God make you as Ephraim and Manasseh.'

And therefore, although they were grandsons, they were adopted in the place of sons, that they might not be without share in the ancestral blessing. When this blessing had been celebrated, he also called his sons. And he who before had preferred the younger to the elder began with the first, so that in the former he might prefer the grace of the mystery, while in the latter he might preserve the order of age; and at the same time because before, in the two, he had blessed all together with all their posterity and the offspring of those to come, lest either the repeated blessing of the people should seem superfluous, or the former should be reckoned weak. And deservedly he says that he is conferring rather a repeated announcement of those things which were to befall in later times than a blessing. Indeed he thus began:

'Reuben, my firstborn, you are my strength and the beginning of my children, hard to bear and hardly rash, you treated me with insult. Boil not over like water; for you went up to your father's bed: then you defiled the couch to which you went up.' Does he not seem to be reproved rather than blessed? And therefore it is prophecy rather than blessing. For prophecy is the announcement of things to come, but blessing is the votive bestowal of sanctification and of graces. And the Jews suppose that the old man says these things to his son Reuben for this reason: because he lay with Bilhah, his father's concubine, and defiled his father's couch—but they are easily refuted;

for this had been done before—but Jacob promises that he will speak of the things that were to come in the last days, not of the things that had been done. Therefore the judgement of the patriarch is fitting and consistent with himself, who, foreseeing the future passion of the Lord at the hands of the persecuting Jews, execrates the monstrous audacity of the firstborn people, which, unbelieving and not subject to the law of God, and not knowing how to bear the yoke of Christ upon its hard neck, assailed the author of life not only with the crime of slaying, but also with the injury of sacrilegious insult.

'Boil not over,' he says, 'like water,' lest it break forth into greater madness, and lest the fervour of fury and frenzy not allow the sinners to come to their senses, but that they may do penance for their offences; since the hard people went up to the father's bed and defiled the holy couch—that is, fixing to the gibbet of the cross the flesh of the Lord Jesus our Creator, on which, as upon a certain couch and ancestral bed, His saints rest in saving refreshment. Who then would deny that it is said of the people, since all these things suit the people? For he himself was called the firstborn of Israel; he himself is said to be of a hard neck; of him Moses said: 'But you are a people of a hard neck.'

And in truth, who is so hard and so rash and so insolent as the people of the Jews, who scourged with whips and pierced with nails the Lord Jesus, through whom they had seen the dead raised and the blind enlightened, although they could not deny His divine works? That this was committed both with the scribes and the high priests as instigators, and with Caiaphas the chief of the priests likewise raging, the narrative of the Gospel has declared. And therefore the holy prophet shunned partaking in so great a crime, lest through the succession of his race they should dare to claim for themselves fellowship with so great a patriarch. The righteous man bears witness and disowns the posterity which would not preserve its father's disposition; and because he foresaw the wickedness, he shudders at the contagion of their counsel.

'Into their counsel,' he says, 'let not my soul come, and into their congregation let not my inward parts contend; for in their wrath they slew a man, and in their lust they hamstrung a bull.' What he says, he says indeed of his sons Simeon and Levi. But by their names he signifies the tribes, which were called by a like appellation. The Jews derive a most beautiful interpretation of this, and judge that he reproves the sons of Jacob for this reason: because, on account of the rape of their sister, these two beyond the other brothers, desiring to go and avenge it, pretended that they wished to enter into amity with the Shechemites, and therefore persuaded them that they ought to be circumcised, so that, by a concord of religion, peace might be established among them and a fellowship of acquired kinship be made firm.

But, attacking those who were circumcised while their wounds were still fresh and their strength weakened, which the pain had dissolved—on the third day, when it came upon them—they slew them when they were broken. And perhaps therefore these two are avengers beyond the others, because they are the originators of the scribes and the priests; for none more than the wise and the priests ought to vindicate chastity. But in this too the Jews err. For these very men had furnished their father the causes of his grief, asserting that they, though of that youthful age, had been avengers of outraged piety and vindicators of violated chastity.

This indeed holy Jacob could not condemn, because they did not suffer their sister, who had both lost her virginity and had no solace of vengeance, to remain in the position of a harlot, unavenged—especially since he himself approved that the deed was so done that, when he possessed Shechem, he gave it in death to his most beloved son Joseph, saying to him: 'I give you Shechem as a special portion above all your brothers, which I took from the hands of the Amorites with my sword and bow.' That this was done cannot be denied; yet we can interpret that by Shechem the shoulders are signified, by the shoulders works. He chose therefore holy Joseph beyond the others as heir of good works, whose works the brothers could not equal. For who could equal the deeds of Christ?

Then moreover, undefiled and chaste, he carried off spoils from this earthly lodging and from the authors of impurity, seizing by heavenly words and a spiritual sword a place given over to debaucheries and wickednesses for the habitation of the saints; so that where before dwellers in wantonness and princes of luxury had lived, where there had been incitements of lust and fuel of iniquity, there now holy priests might teach the lessons of chastity, and very many examples of virginal integrity might shine forth with a certain radiance of supernal light.

There are therefore three tribes which are designated by the names of the patriarchs, because from the tribe of Simeon come the scribes, from the tribe of Levi the chief priests, who completed their wickedness in the passion of the Lord, filling up the whole measure of their fathers' impiety. They themselves devised a counsel against the Lord Jesus, that they might slay Him, as Isaiah says: 'Woe to their soul, for they have devised an evil counsel against themselves, saying: Let us bind the just man, for he is unprofitable to us.' They themselves slew the prophets and apostles who announced the coming of the saving Lord and proclaimed the glory of His passion and resurrection. They themselves afterward, in their lust:

because they desired earthly wickednesses while shunning divine fellowships—chastity of body, sobriety of mind, contempt of money, the gain of grace—they hamstrung the bull, namely that one bringing forth horns and hooves, whom the poor see and rejoice, since by the word of God He exalted the horn of His people, by which He both repelled the enemies and earned the reward of the heavenly crown. This is the bull by which the Church is figured, then fuller as in the moon, when, as if resting upon bovine horns, she encloses the span of the whole world. Yet to this prophecy too he seems to add the grace of blessing. For both, to the firstborn Reuben, saying:

'Boil not over like water,' he established as a reproach of sin, because water is wont rather to cleanse offences and to recall our minds from all the fervour of vices; and again, saying to Simeon and Levi: 'I will divide you in Jacob and scatter you in Israel,' he showed that they were to be redeemed by the gathering of the nations; for when the shepherd was smitten, that flock which had before been gathered was scattered, so that he who was not within might enter, and thus all Israel might be saved. And especially on account of the tribe of Levi we ought to believe this, because from that tribe the Lord Jesus seems, according to the assumption of the body, to derive His lineage. From which tribe are the priests Levi and Nathan, whom holy Luke, in the book of the Gospel which he himself wrote, reckoned among the ancestors of the Lord.

For the priest of the Father and prince of all priests, as it is written: 'You are a priest for ever,' had to claim the succession of priestly origin. Whence Moses also blessed this tribe, saying: 'Give to Levi the lot of his suffrage and his truth to the holy man.' Moses also blessed the tribe of Reuben, as you have it written: 'Let Reuben live and not die, and let him be many in number.' For he would not have blessed, if according to the patriarch's judgement he had known them unworthy of blessing. Certainly what the one passed over briefly, the other completed. And because, through the mingling of lineage, the tribes of Judah and Levi were joined, therefore Matthew describes His family from the tribe of Judah. And the Apostle says:

that our Lord arose from Judah—so that from the tribe of Levi a priestly inheritance, full of holiness, might be reckoned, but from the tribe of Judah, from which were David and Solomon and the rest of the kings, the splendour of royal succession might shine forth—that the same one might be shown by the testimony of the Scriptures to be both king and priest. And deservedly holy Jacob poured himself out concerning the grace of Judah, saying: 'Judah, your brothers shall praise you; your hands upon the back of your enemies; the sons of your father shall adore you. Judah is a lion's whelp. From the shoot, my son, you have gone up to me. Reclining, you slept as a lion and as a whelp: who shall rouse him? A ruler shall not fail from Judah, nor a prince from his loins, until He come for whom it is laid up, and He is the expectation of the nations:

binding his foal to the vine and the colt of his ass to the choice vine, he shall wash his robe in wine and his garment in the blood of the grape: his eyes are merrier than wine and his teeth whiter than milk.' The address indeed seems to be directed to Judah the patriarch, but that later Judah, the true confessor, is expressed, who was born from that tribe—He who alone is praised by His brothers, of whom He says: 'I will declare Your name to my brothers'—Lord by nature, brother by grace, whose hands, which He stretched out to the unbelieving people, are upon the back of His enemies. For with those same hands and by that same passion He both covered His own and subdued the adverse powers, and made subject to Himself all who were strangers to faith and piety. Of whom the Father says to the Son:

'And You shall have dominion in the midst of Your enemies.' These enemies their own malice made, not the will of Christ. In which is the great grace of the Lord. For the spiritual wickednesses which before were wont to bend our neck under the yoke of captivity—so that David himself wrote that he in some way felt the hands of those triumphing over him, saying: 'Upon my back the sinners have wrought'—these now, made subject to the triumph of Christ and to certain hands of His, that is, subjected to His deeds and works, undergo the misery of perpetual captivity. He surely it is who is adored by the sons of His Father, when He is adored by us, to whom He Himself granted that we should call upon the Father, whose servant it is a mark of virtue to be. 'Judah is a lion's whelp.'

Did he not clearly express both the Father and declare the Son? What is so evident, by which the Son is taught to be God of one nature with the Father? That one a lion, this a lion's whelp. By a humble comparison the unity of the same nature or power is understood. A king proceeded from a king, a strong one from a strong one. Because he foresaw those who would assert the Son to be of a younger age, he met them, adding: 'From the shoot you have gone up to me. Reclining, you slept as a lion and as a whelp.' And elsewhere you have that the whelp himself is the lion of the tribe of Judah. Therefore, because he had said 'whelp,' he rightly at once set 'lion,' as if to say: let not your ears be caught because they heard 'whelp'; I have expressed the Son, I have not said a lesser one. And He Himself is a lion just as the Father.

Let them hear that he called Him both a lion and a whelp—a lion as of perfect and full power, a whelp as a son—lest anyone, when he heard it, should think the Son not equal to the Father. The Son is not praised in such a way that He be separated from the Father. He proves Him equal who confesses Him Son. And wonderfully too he expressed His incarnation, saying: 'From the shoot you have gone up to me,' in that, like a sprout of the earth, He budded in the womb of the Virgin, and like a flower of good fragrance for the redemption of the whole world, sent forth from the maternal bowels with the splendour of a new light, He went up; as Isaiah says: 'A rod shall come forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower shall ascend from the root.' The root is the family of the Jews, the rod is Mary, the flower of Mary is Christ.

Rightly is it called a rod, which is of royal lineage from the house and fatherland of David, whose flower is Christ, who abolished the stench of worldly pollution and poured in the fragrance of eternal life. You have, then, the Incarnation; receive now the Passion. 'Lying down,' he says, 'you slept like a lion,' when he lay in the tomb at rest as in a certain sleep of his own body, just as he himself says: 'I slept and took my rest, and I rose up again, for the Lord will sustain me.' Whence also Jacob says: 'Who shall rouse him up?' That is: whom the Lord will sustain. Who else is there to raise him again, save that he himself should raise himself by his own and his Father's power? I behold him born by his own authority; I behold him dead by his own will; I behold him sleeping by his own power.

He who made all things by his own decision—by whose other aid would he need help in order to rise again? He therefore is the author of his own resurrection, who is the arbiter of death, who is awaited by the nations. Therefore, until he come, the leader shall not fail from Judah, that until his rising the faith of the royal succession may be preserved uncorrupted. For afterward, as we have taught in the treatise we delivered upon the Gospel, through Herod the succession was adulterated and lost the prerogative of dignity. For because they denied the true king, they began to have false ones. Therefore the patriarch says this:

There shall be preserved among the judges or kings of the Jews the inheritance of an unbroken succession carried on through kings, until he come for whom it is laid up, that he may gather the Church of God out of the assembly of all nations and from the devotion of the Gentile peoples—that is, it remains for him, it is reserved as a debt owed to him, to him is conferred the prerogative of so great a grace. And he himself is the expectation of the nations. He said more than if he had said: him the nations await; namely, that all the hope of the Church rests upon him. Therefore it is said to Moses: 'Loose the sandal from your feet,' lest he himself be believed the Bridegroom of the Church, who was being chosen as leader of the people. Therefore Joshua son of Nun loosed his sandal, that he too might preserve for him who was to come the grace of so great a gift. Therefore John says:

'After me comes a man whose sandal-thong I am not worthy to loose.' Therefore he says: 'He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices with joy.' That is: He alone is the Husband of the Church; this is the expectation of the nations; to him, surrendering the bond of nuptial grace, the prophets loosed their sandals. He is the Bridegroom, I am the friend of the Bridegroom: I rejoice because he has come, because I hear the nuptial voice, because now we hear not the harsh punishments of sins, the harsh torments of the Law, but the remission of crimes, the voice of gladness, the sound of delight, the exultation of the wedding feast.

This is he who binds his foal to the vine and the colt of his she-ass to the choice vine, so that the gathering of the nations—formerly remiss and neglectful, but now devoted through Christ—may possess the fervor of the Holy Spirit, and that we may be bound to that everlasting Vine, that is, to the Lord Jesus, who says: 'I am the vine, my Father is the husbandman,' bound as fruitful branches by certain indissoluble bonds of faith. This is that mystery which bade the colt of the she-ass be loosed in the Gospel, and the Lord Jesus himself sat upon it, that, bound to the vine, it might rest in the perpetual sweetness of the saints. 'He shall wash,' it says, 'his robe in wine.'

A good robe is the flesh of Christ, which covered the sins of all, took up the offenses of all, concealed the errors of all—a good robe, which clothed all with the garment of gladness. He washed this robe in wine when, as he was being baptized in the Jordan, the Holy Spirit descended like a dove and remained upon him. By this is signified that the fullness of the Holy Spirit was undivided in him and did not depart. Whence also the Evangelist says that the Lord Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan. He washed therefore his robe—not that it might cleanse his own filth, which was not in it, but ours, which was there. Finally he added: 'and in the blood of the grape his mantle'—that is, in the Passion of his body he washed the nations with his own blood.

For the mantle of the Word is the nations, as it is written: 'As I live, says the Lord, I will surely clothe myself with them all as with a garment'; and elsewhere: 'As a cloak you shall change them, and they shall be changed.' Not therefore with his own blood did he cleanse his own sins, which did not exist, but our offenses which we committed. And well did he say 'one' grape, because as a cluster he hung upon the wood. He himself is the Vine, he himself the Cluster: the Vine clinging to the wood; the Cluster, because the soldier's lance, opening his side, sent forth water and blood. For so John said, that there went out from him water and blood—water for the laver, blood for the price. The water washes us, the blood redeems us. And therefore the prophet says: 'His eyes are gladdened by wine and his teeth whiter than milk,' signifying the prophets and apostles.

For some, like the eyes of Christ, foresaw and announced his coming—of whom he himself says: 'Abraham saw my day and rejoiced'; and one of the prophets says: 'I saw the Lord of Sabaoth.' Beholding him, they were filled with spiritual gladness. But the others, that is the apostles, whom the Lord cleansed from every stain of sins, were made whiter than milk, whom afterward no spot defiled. For milk is temporal, but the grace of the apostles abides perpetually; for they, preparing for us those spiritual and heavenly nourishments, fattened the inward parts of the inner mind.

There are also those who reckon the commandments of the Lord, luminous and uttered by the divine mouth, to have been made for us as milk; nourished by which we have come to the sustenance of the heavenly bread. Whence also Paul says: 'I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able.' The Corinthian at the beginning of faith is imbued with the drink of milk; but those holy ones, whose faith is proclaimed in all the world, being as it were weaned, are strengthened with more solid food. 'Zebulun shall dwell by the sea, and he himself by the landing-places of ships, and shall extend as far as Sidon.' The very interpretation of the name promises better things, in that the Latin rendering signifies a deliverance from things of the night—which is altogether good and belongs to him who hopes under the wings of the Lord, who encompasses him.

His truth shall deliver him, that he fear not the terror by night, nor the matter that walks in darkness. This Zebulun, then, 'shall dwell by the sea,' it says, that he himself, immune from danger, may behold the shipwrecks of others and watch others tossed in the strait of this world, who are carried about by every wind of doctrine, while he himself remains unmoved, rooted in faith—as is the most holy Church, rooted and grounded in faith, beholding the storms of heretics and the shipwrecks of the Jews, since they have denied the helmsman whom they had. He dwells, therefore, near the waves, not tossed by the waves, and more ready to bring help than exposed to danger, so that if any, driven by grievous tempests, wish to flee to the harbor—

—the Church may be at hand as a harbor of salvation, which with arms outspread calls the imperiled into the bosom of her tranquillity, showing the place of a faithful anchorage. The Churches, then, in this age, like maritime harbors spread along the shores, meet the laboring, telling those who believe that a refuge is prepared, whither vessels battered by the winds may draw themselves to safety. In these Churches are the princes of Zebulun and the princes of Naphtali, as the sixty-seventh Psalm teaches; of whom some are deliverers from the nocturnal tempest, crying: 'Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light'; others are of apostolic breadth, who can say: 'Our mouth is open to you, O Corinthians, our heart is enlarged.'

These are they who, when they were in darkness, saw a great light, as the prophet testifies, saying: 'The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, the way of the sea beyond the Jordan. The people who sat in darkness saw a great light; on them who sat in the region of the shadow of death a light has arisen.' Therefore the Lord our God set scouts near the landing-places of ships—the heirs of this patriarch, whose ever-watchful care and spiritual succession extends as far as Sidon, that is, reaches even to the nations, so that the mercy of the Lord may lift away the sins of the peoples. For Sidon is the firstborn son of Ham—of him, namely, who because of irreverence toward his father's piety was condemned by his father's curse.

Therefore the nocturnal deliverance, set as it were in the watch-posts of a spiritual rampart, lest anyone strike upon the rocks of this life, extends even to the sinners of the gravest crimes and to the Sidonians themselves, who formerly, in their vehement superstition, were called 'hunters of wickedness,' as the interpretation teaches; the inheritance of the curse being dissolved and the inheritance of blessing being bestowed, it absolves them—so that where the guilt was greater, there now grace might be more abundant. 'Issachar desired what is good, resting between the boundaries; and seeing that rest is good, and the land that it is rich, he set his shoulder to labor and became a man tilling the soil.'

Issachar is interpreted 'reward,' and therefore he is referred to Christ, who is our reward, in that we purchase him for ourselves unto the hope of eternal salvation not with gold or silver, but with faith and devotion. Whence David also says of him: 'Behold, sons are an inheritance of the Lord; the fruit of the womb a reward.' And Moses says of him: 'A reward for those who dwell by the sea.' This is he who desired what is good from the beginning, and knew not how to desire what is evil. Of whom Isaiah also says: 'Before the child knows to call father or mother, he does not trust in malice, choosing what is good.' He rested between the lots of the Old and New Testament, or in the midst of the prophets.

And therefore he appeared in the midst between Moses and Elijah, to show us that he has his rest in their words, through whom very many, renouncing their sins, believe in the living God; or that they themselves are witnesses of his resurrection and blessed repose. And so, that he might call the nations to the grace of his resurrection—for that is the rich and fertile land which bears eternal fruits, fruits a hundredfold and sixtyfold—he set his shoulder to labor, subjecting himself to the cross, that he might bear our sins. And therefore the prophet says: 'whose government is upon his shoulder,' that is, upon the passion of his body is the power of his divinity, or the cross towering above his body.

He set his shoulder, then, bending over the plow, patient in undergoing all reproaches, so subjected to labor that he was wounded for our iniquities and made weak for our sins. And he became a man tilling the soil, knowing how to sow his land with good grain and to plant fruitful trees with deep root. 'Dan shall judge his people as one tribe in Israel. And Dan became a serpent lying in the way, biting in the path the horse's heel, and the rider shall fall backward, awaiting salvation from the Lord.' The simple sense indeed holds this: that Dan too gave a judge to the tribe in Israel. For after Joshua son of Nun there were judges of the people from the various tribes.