Commentaria in Genesim
Prophecy and Blessing of Benjamin
Verse 27. BENJAMIN SHALL BE A RAVENING WOLF, IN THE MORNING HE SHALL EAT THE PREY, AND IN THE EVENING HE SHALL DIVIDE THE SPOILS.—The Chaldee renders and explains this thus: In the land of Benjamin shall dwell the majesty of the temple, and in his possession shall be built the sanctuary (for Jerusalem, in which was the temple, belonged properly to the lot of the tribe of Benjamin). Morning and evening the priests shall offer oblations, and at evening time they shall divide the remainder; as if the altar were here called a ravening wolf, because it seized the victims as though they were prey, and consumed them with fire. So too the Hebrews and Lipomanus explain it. But this exposition is improper, harsh and unseemly: for who would dare to call the altar of God a ravening wolf?
Secondly, therefore, and in the genuine sense, Jacob here literally foretells that the tribe of Benjamin shall be like a ravening and warlike wolf, which places its right in strength and arms. For so the Romans boasted that their Romulus became rapacious, combative and strong in wars because he was nourished with the milk of a she-wolf. This exposition is plain, and was confirmed in fact in the war of Gabaa, which the Benjamites alone, on account of the outrage committed by them against the wife of the Levite, waged against all the other tribes, and sustained to the point of extermination; and at last they carried off the daughters of Silo, Judges 20. So Procopius, Eusebius, Theodoret, Abulensis and others.
Again, Jacob here alludes to and foretells the plunderings
Note: “To eat the prey” and “to divide the spoils” are the same thing, namely, to plunder, and to divide and eat the plunder. It is a metalepsis: for by the eating of the prey he understands the plundering that preceded it, as if to say: Benjamin like a wolf shall seize, that is, he shall overcome his enemies, and snatch plunder from them, tear it, divide it, devour it, and do everything that conquerors are wont to do to the conquered. So Vatablus (2).
Allegorically, however Calvin may growl here, nearly all the Latin Fathers, such as St. Jerome and Augustine (sermon 1 On the Conversion of St. Paul, among the newly published ones here at Louvain), understand this wolf to be St. Paul, who, descended from Benjamin and called Saul, or Saulus, in the first “morning,” that is, in his youth, raged like a wolf against Christ and the Christians, dragging men and women to prison, stoning Stephen by the hands of others, breathing out threatenings and slaughter against all; but converted by Christ, and changed from Saul into Paul, from a wolf of the devil into a wolf of God, in the “evening,” that is, being now an old man, he divided the spoils of the Gentiles, wrested from the devil, between Christ and the Church. It is as if to say: As with Benjamin, so with Paul, his wolfish disposition, always like itself, was rapacious, warlike, accustomed to spoils and plunder; hence morning and evening, that is, before conversion and after conversion, he did nothing else than plunder, but before his conversion he was an unjust and impious plunderer, and after it a just and holy one; who not only snatched back from the devil the spoils he had before brought to him, but wrested almost all nations from his mouth and claws, stripped him of them, and restored them to Christ and the Church. As, therefore, the lion is taken now in a good sense, now in a bad, and Christ is called the lion of the tribe of Juda, as well as the devil, who goes about as a lion seeking whom he may devour: so likewise the wolf can be taken in a good as well as in a bad sense. “Paul,” says St. Ambrose, “was a wolf when he devoured the sheep of the Church; but he who came a wolf became a shepherd. Therefore Rachel, when she bore Benjamin, called his name, Son of my sorrow, prophesying that from that tribe would come Paul, who would afflict the children of the Church and vex the mother with grievous sorrow; and yet the same afterwards divided the food, preaching the Gospel to the Gentiles and calling very many to the faith. Beloved of the Lord, because he was made a vessel of election: he shall dwell confidently, and God shall overshadow him all the days, and he shall rest between his shoulders,” Deuteronomy 33.
Verse 28. ALL THESE ARE THE TWELVE TRIBES OF ISRAEL.—That is, all these tribes of Israel are twelve; as if to say: From these twelve sons of Jacob descended and were named the twelve tribes of Israel. For the several sons of Jacob (who were twelve in number) are here counted, and consequently Levi and Joseph are counted too, so that each son of Jacob makes one tribe. But in the division of the holy land Levi is not counted, because he had no part of it: for the portion of Levi was the Lord, that is, the victims and firstfruits offered to the Lord; nor is Joseph counted, but his two sons, Ephraim and Manasses: for these, put in the place of Levi and Joseph, received a double tribe, and consequently a double lot in Chanaan (1).
AND HE BLESSED EVERY ONE WITH THEIR PROPER BLESSINGS.—From this it seems that hitherto Jacob’s words were not so much blessings as prophecies, after which he here added and imparted to each a last blessing, though what it was Scripture does not express.
But the contrary is more true: and so the sense is, “he blessed every one,” etc., that is, he declared and assigned to each the blessings hitherto recounted as proper to him. For although to Simeon and Levi he did not properly give a blessing but a rebuke, yet this fatherly rebuke was in fact a blessing. So St. Chrysostom, Cajetan, Lipomanus. For if these blessings given by Jacob to his sons had been different from those already spoken and recounted, and proper to each, Moses would surely have recounted them.
Verse 31. THERE ALSO LIA LIES BURIED.—In Hebrew it is, and there I buried Lia: whence it is clear that Lia died in Chanaan and was buried there by Jacob, and not that she died in Egypt and was thence carried with her husband’s body into Chanaan, as some will have it. The Hebrews hold that Lia died in the forty-fourth year of her age; but from what was said in chapter 35, verse 19, she seems to have been older.
...Jacob, when dying, charged his people to keep mutual peace and concord, and the fear, obedience and worship of the one true God, and to flee the idolatry of the Egyptians.
AND HE GATHERED UP HIS FEET UPON THE BED.—Jacob, while prophesying and blessing his sons, had raised himself and sat on the bed with his feet hanging down; now, his discourse finished and bidding his people farewell, he gathers his feet up onto the bed, and gently expires.
See here how peaceful is the death of the just. Thus St. Lucius the Martyr, condemned to death by the prefect Urbicius, gave thanks, saying: “I am freed from evil masters, and pass to God, the best Father,” as Eusebius testifies, book 4, chapter 17. Babylas the Martyr, when he offered his neck to be struck, said: “Return, O my soul, into thy rest, for the Lord hath been bountiful to thee. For he hath delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from falling. I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living.” For death, says St. Chrysostom, is a tranquil harbour, true rest, sleep, a passage to better things, deliverance from evils, a departure from earth to the Lord of angels. Hence, when Sapor, king of the Persians, was slaying the Christians, and Pusices, prefect of all the king’s artificers, saw Ananias, for whom slaughter was now being prepared, trembling, he said: “Close your eyes for a little while, old man, and be of good heart; for presently you shall see the light of God.” For this reason his tongue was torn out, and, cruelly tortured, he met a glorious martyrdom: Sozomen is witness, book 2 of his History, chapters 9 and 10. On the contrary, how anxious, troubled and tumultuous is the death of the wicked appears from the deaths of Antiochus, Herod, Herodias, Chrysaorius and others.
HE WAS GATHERED TO HIS PEOPLE,—he died, and as to his soul went down to the fathers and the just who dwelt in limbo and the bosom of Abraham. Thus Scripture speaks, to signify that the souls of the Saints after death lead not a solitary and sorrowful life, but a social and joyful one; whereas the souls of the wicked, though joined together in the fire, are yet divided by perpetual hatreds and quarrels, and tear one another, after the manner of dogs, with curses and blasphemies.
Note the course of Jacob’s life. Jacob was born in the year 452 after the flood. Fleeing from Esau he went to Haran to Laban in the seventy-seventh year of his age; thence after twenty years, that is, in the year 97, he returned to Chanaan. After ten years, that is, in the year 107, Rachel died, and Benjamin was born, and Joseph was sold into Egypt. After that Jacob remained in Chanaan for twenty-three years more. For in the hundred and thirtieth year of his age, summoned by Joseph, he set out with all his family for Egypt, and there lived seventeen years, and died in the hundred and forty-seventh year of his age, which was the year of the world 2256. More on these matters I have said at chapter 47, verse 28. Finally, for the epitaph and praises of Jacob see Wisdom, chapter 10, verse 10, and Ecclesiasticus, chapter 44.