Chapter II.
On the blessing of Reuben the firstborn, which is not so much a blessing as a prophecy: on the error of the Jews concerning it; and on the mysteries signified by the same.
After this blessing was celebrated, he also called his sons (Gen. XLIX, 1). And the one who had preferred the younger to the elder began with the first, so that he might bestow favor upon him in that mystery, and observe the order of age in this. At the same time, he who had previously blessed them both, along with all their posterity and future offspring, lest the repeated blessing of the people should appear superfluous, or the former be considered weak, rightly declares that he is repeating more of an announcement of things that would happen in later times, rather than conferring a blessing.
Finally, he began like this: Ruben, my firstborn, you are my strength, and the beginning of my children, you are stubborn and reckless. You have insulted me, as if water does not boil. For you went up to your father's bed, you defiled the marriage bed when you went up (Ibid., 3 et seq.). Doesn't it seem to be more of a rebuke than a blessing? And therefore, prophecy is more than a blessing. For prophecy is the announcement of future events, but blessing is the sanctification and offering of thanks.
And the Jews think that the reason this old man speaks to Reuben, the son, is because he slept with Bala, his father's concubine, and defiled his father's bed. But this is easily refuted; for this happened before: Jacob, however, promises to speak of things that will happen in the last days, not things that have already happened. Therefore, it is appropriate and clear in the judgment of the Patriarchs, who, seeing the future passion of the Lord and the Jewish persecutors, curse the audacity of the first-born people, which, being incredulous and not subject to God's law, and not knowing how to bear the yoke of Christ on their necks, afflicts the author of life not only with the wickedness of death, but also with the insult of sacrilege.
'Do not bubble up,' he says, 'like water; may it not burst forth into greater madness, and may the fervor of rage and insanity not allow sinners to repent: but let them repent of their sins; for the people lie hard in the bed of the Father, and defile the holy marriage bed, which is the flesh of the Lord Jesus, our Creator, affixing it to the gallows of the cross, in which, like in a certain bed and ancestral marriage bed, may they rest in the salvific refreshment of his holy. ' Who, therefore, would deny what is said about the people, when all these things apply to the people as a whole? For he himself is called the firstborn of Israel, he himself is said to be stubborn. Moses himself said about him: 'But you are a people of stubborn neck' (Exod. XXXIII, 3, and elsewhere). And truly, who is as stubborn, reckless, and insolent as the Jewish people, who whipped and crucified the Lord Jesus, through whom they had seen the dead raised, the blind cured, while they couldn't deny his divine works? And therefore, the holy Prophet fled from such a great crime of usurping the principality, lest the patriarchs dare to claim the same privilege through the succession of their lineage.