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| Of the Blessing Which Jacob Promised in Judah His Son.
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Chapter 41.—Of the Blessing Which
Jacob Promised in Judah His Son.
If, on account of the Christian
people in whom the city of God sojourns in the earth, we look for
the flesh of Christ in the seed of Abraham, setting aside the sons
of the concubines, we have Isaac; if in the seed of Isaac, setting
aside Esau, who is also Edom, we have Jacob, who also is Israel; if
in the seed of Israel himself, setting aside the rest, we have
Judah, because Christ sprang of the tribe of Judah. Let us hear,
then, how Israel, when dying in Egypt, in blessing his sons,
prophetically blessed Judah. He says: “Judah, thy brethren
shall praise thee: thy hands shall be on the back of thine
enemies; thy father’s children shall adore thee. Judah is a
lion’s whelp: from the sprouting, my son, thou art gone up:
lying down, thou hast slept as a lion, and as a lion’s whelp; who
shall awake him? A prince shall not be lacking out of Judah, and
a leader from his thighs, until the things come that are laid up
for him; and He shall be the expectation of the nations. Binding
his foal unto the vine, and his ass’s foal to the choice vine; he
shall wash his robe in wine, and his clothes in the blood of the
grape: his eyes are red with wine, and his teeth are whiter than
milk.”971
I have
expounded these words in disputing against Faustus the Manichæan;
and I think it is enough to make the truth of this prophecy shine,
to remark that the death of Christ is predicted by the word about
his lying down, and not the necessity, but the voluntary character
of His death, in the title of lion. That power He Himself
proclaims in the gospel,
saying, “I have the power of
laying down my life, and I have the power of taking it again. No
man taketh it from me; but I lay it down of myself, and take it
again.”972
So the
lion roared, so He fulfilled what He said. For to this power what
is added about the resurrection refers, “Who shall awake
him?” This means that no man but Himself has raised Him, who
also said of His own body, “Destroy this temple, and in three
days I will raise it up.”973
And the very nature of His death,
that is, the height of the cross, is understood by the single words
“Thou are gone up.” The evangelist explains what is added,
“Lying down, thou hast slept,” when he says, “He bowed His
head, and gave up the ghost.”974
Or at least His burial is to be
understood, in which He lay down sleeping, and whence no man raised
Him, as the prophets did some, and as He Himself did others; but He
Himself rose up as if from sleep. As for His robe which He washes
in wine, that is, cleanses from sin in His own blood, of which
blood those who are baptized know the mystery, so that he adds,
“And his clothes in the blood of the grape,” what is it but the
Church? “And his eyes are red with wine,” [these are] His
spiritual people drunken with His cup, of which the psalm sings,
“And thy cup that makes drunken, how excellent it is!” “And
his teeth are whiter than milk,”975
—that is, the nutritive words
which, according to the apostle, the babes drink, being as yet
unfit for solid food.976
And it is He in whom the promises
of Judah were laid up, so that until they come, princes, that is,
the kings of Israel, shall never be lacking out of Judah. “And
He is the expectation of the nations.” This is too plain to
need exposition.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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