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, ¹ my son, thou art gone up: he stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as a lion's whelp: ² who shall rouse him up? A ruler ³ shall not depart from Judah, nor a leader ⁴ from his thighs, ⁵ until what is in store for him ⁶ shall come, and he is the expectation ⁷ of the nations." ⁸ 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?" ⁹ 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? ¹⁰