Commentaria in Genesim
UNTIL THE DESIRE CAME,—that is, until the desire come, as some manuscript codices have. It is an enallage of mood.
...of Christ, desiring nothing of the things that are seen, that I may find Jesus Christ.” Read his whole epistle to the Romans. St. Bernard: “Nothing is sung more sweetly, nothing heard more joyfully, nothing thought more sweetly than Jesus the Son of God. Jesus is honey in the mouth, melody in the ear, a song of joy in the heart.” Dionysius the Martyr, when he was seized at Rome by Diocletian and led joyfully to execution, repeated nothing else the whole way but: “Even if I could be put to death a thousand times, I would not cease to confess my Lord Jesus Christ.” Who would not say: “Jesus, my love, my heart, and my all?” And when the proconsul sat in judgment over Cyprian, who was about to be condemned to death, he said: “Christ the Lord is my salvation and my strength, whom I desire to serve without end.”
THE DESIRE OF THE EVERLASTING HILLS,—namely Christ, who is the last and greatest of all the blessings and promises, and the crown of them all; whom therefore all men, indeed all irrational creatures, the earth, the sea, the hills and all creatures, desire.
...the hills, from their beginning, most eagerly await as the redeemer of men and the repairer and reformer of the whole universe, and inwardly desire him with an affection that is neither rational nor sensitive, but natural. It is a prosopopoeia, like that by which the Apostle, Rom. chap. 8, verse 22, says that every creature groans and travails in pain, until through Christ it is delivered from the servitude of corruption and brought into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. The sense therefore is, as if Jacob said: This blessing of mine, O Joseph, is greater than the blessing of the fathers, and shall last until Christ, who shall bring to you and to the whole world the greatest blessing.
Secondly, symbolically, Christ is the desire of the everlasting hills, that is, of the Patriarchs, Prophets and illustrious Saints, who excel other men in wisdom, virtue and holiness, and will excel for ever in heaven, just as hills rise above valleys. So Rupert, Cajetan and Lipomanus.
Thus Jacob desired Christ, saying: “I will wait for thy salvation, O Lord.” And David:
“Show us, O Lord, thy mercy, and grant us thy salvation.” And Moses: “Send, O Lord, him whom thou art to send.” And Isaias: “Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the Just One; let the earth be opened, and bud forth a Saviour.” And Habacuc: “But I will rejoice in the Lord, and I will joy in God my Jesus.” And Daniel, who was on that account called “a man of desires”; and the Spouse in the Canticles: “I have gone about the streets and the broad ways; I have sought him whom my soul loveth.” Much more did Christians desire Christ after he was born. St. Paul: “I desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ.” St. Peter wept abundantly; being asked why, he answered, “from desire of the Lord.” The holy Deacon and Martyr, when the tyrant asked him in the midst of torments about his family, house and country, answered nothing else than: “I am a Christian; this is my name, my family, my country, my teaching; I am nothing else.” ...that I may gain Christ; for me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” Eusebius is witness, book 5, chapter 1. St. Ignatius in chains said: “Now I begin to be a disciple...” When the proconsul said to Cyprian: “I grieve for your lot, and would wish to counsel you,” Cyprian answered: “I seek no better counsel for myself than that, adoring my God, I hasten to him with all the eagerness of my mind; for the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come.” So Pontius in the Life of St. Cyprian.
Note: the Hebrew is taavah, which properly signifies desire, from the root avah, that is, he longed for, he desired. Jarchi, Kimchi and R. Solomon, however, render the word as a boundary, from the root ta, that is, he bounded, and translate it, “to the boundary of the hills of the age,” as if to say: These my blessings shall last as long as the hills of the age shall last, that is, until the end of the age; or, as R. Solomon explains: These my blessings shall be spread abroad to all the bounds of the hills, the mountains and the lands. Lastly, you may take by the boundary Christ, who is the boundary or summit on the top of the mountains. But the Hebrew taavah properly signifies not a boundary but desire, as I have said, and so our Vulgate, the Chaldee and others render it (1).
LET THEM COME,—let all these blessings flow together upon the head of Joseph, and rest firmly upon it. For “let them come” depends on the word blessings which went before, and the pronoun which must be inserted there; for then the connection will be clear, and the sense will be thus: “The blessings of thy father, which are strengthened with the blessings of his fathers, let them be upon the head of Joseph.”
AND ON THE TOP OF THE NAZARITE AMONG HIS BRETHREN.—Note: Joseph is here called a Nazarite, that is, separated, crowned and consecrated, as the Chaldee renders it; for nezer signifies both separation, and a crown, and consecration. For Joseph was thus separated from his brethren: first, in morals and innocence; secondly, in place and manner of life: for his brethren hated and shunned Joseph. Again, Joseph, sold into Egypt, was for twenty-three years separated from his father and from his brethren dwelling in Chanaan. Thirdly, in prison, where Joseph had unshorn hair, left to God alone, devoted and consecrated, like the Nazarites, who vowed themselves and their abstinence, as well as their hair, to God, Numbers 6. Fourthly, by the crown of the kingdom, or the principality in Egypt. Again, by the crown of the kingdom of Israel, which his posterity obtained; for Joseph was crowned with this and separated from his brethren, and therefore he is called a Nazarite. Hence the Septuagint, for Nazarite, render prefect, or leader and prince of his brethren. And from this place some think that Christ, as the antitype of Joseph, is called a Nazarene, Matt. 2, verse 23. So St. Ambrose, On the Blessings of the Patriarchs, chap. 11, and Rupert. However that may be, certainly Joseph the Nazarite was an express type of Christ the Nazarite, that is, one separated from the Jews and from the common life of men, and consecrated to God, and crowned as the supreme king and priest of the world (1).