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The City of God

Chapter 42.--Of the Sons of Joseph, Whom Jacob Blessed, Prophetically Changing His Hands.

Now, as Isaac's two sons, Esau and Jacob, furnished a type of the two people, the Jews and the Christians (although as pertains to carnal descent it was not the Jews but the Idumeans who came of the seed of Esau, nor the Christian nations but rather the Jews who came of Jacob's; for the type holds only as regards the saying, "The elder shall serve the younger" ¹ ), so the same thing happened in Joseph's two sons; for the elder was a type of the Jews, and the younger of the Christians. For when Jacob was blessing them, and laid his right hand on the younger, who was at his left, and his left hand on the elder, who was at his right, this seemed wrong to their father, and he admonished his father by trying to correct his mistake and show him which was the elder. But he would not change his hands, but said, "I know, my son, I know. He also shall become a people, and he also shall be exalted; but his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his seed shall become a multitude of nations." ² And these two promises show the same thing. For that one is to become "a people;" this one "a multitude of nations." And what can be more evident than that these two promises comprehend the people of Israel, and the whole world of Abraham's seed, the one according to the flesh, the other according to faith?

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De civitate Dei (CCSL)

Caput XLII: De filiis Ioseph, quos Iacob prophetica manuum suarum transmutatione benedixit.

Sicut autem duo Isaac filii, Esau et Iacob, figuram praebuerunt duorum populorum in Iudaeis et Christianis - quamuis, quod ad carnis propaginem pertinet, nec Iudaei uenerint de semine Esau, sed Idumaei; nec Christianae gentes de Iacob, sed potius Iudaei; ad hoc enim tantum figura ualuit, quod dictum est: maior seruiet minori - , ita factum est etiam in duobus filiis Ioseph; nam maior gessit typum Iudaeorum, Christianorum autem minor. quos cum benediceret Iacob, manum dextram ponens super minorem quem habebat ad sinistram, sinistram super maiorem quem habebat ad dextram: graue uisum est patri eorum, et admonuit patrem uelut corrigens eius errorem et quisnam eorum esset maior ostendens. at ille mutare manus noluit, sed dixit: scio, fili, scio. et hic erit in populum, et hic exaltabitur; sed frater eius iunior maior illo erit, et semen eius erit in multitudinem gentium. etiam hic duo illa promissa demonstrat. nam ille in populum, iste in multitudinem gentium. quid euidentius quam his duabus promissionibus contineri populum Israelitarum orbemque terrarum in semine Abrahae, illum secundum carnem, istum secundum fidem?