XVIII.

As the Lord Jesus Christ made His sojourn with us in the flesh (which He received) from the holy, immaculate Virgin, and took to Himself the tribe of Judah, and came forth from it, the Scripture declared His royal lineage in the word of Jacob, when in his benediction he addressed himself to his son in these terms:  “Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise: thy hands shall be on the neck of thine enemies; thy father’s children shall bow down before thee. Judah is a lion’s whelp; from a sprout,^19261926    βλαστοῦ my son, thou art gone up: he stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as a lion’s whelp:^19271927    σκύμνος. who shall rouse him up? A ruler^19281928    ἄρχων. shall not depart from Judah, nor a leader^19291929    ἡγουμενος. from his thighs,^19301930    ἐκ τῶν μηρῶν. until what is in store for him^19311931    τὰ ἀποκείμενα. shall come, and he is the expectation^19321932    καὶ αὐτὸς προσδοκία. of the nations.”^19331933    Gen. xlix. 8–10. Mark these words of Jacob which were spoken to Judah, and are fulfilled in the Lord. To the same effect, moreover, does the patriarch express himself regarding Antichrist. Wherefore, as he prophesied with respect to Judah, so did he also with respect to his son Dan. For Judah was his fourth son; and Dan, again, was his seventh son. And what, then, did he say of him? “Let Dan be a serpent sitting by the way, that biteth the horse’s heel?”^19341934    Gen. xlix. 17. And what serpent was there but the deceiver from the beginning, he who is named in Genesis, he who deceived Eve, and bruised Adam in the heel?^19351935    πτερνίσας.