What does God’s left hand mean, except the reprobate, who are to be placed at God’s left hand? The elect are called God’s right hand. For at God’s right hand there is a fiery law, because by no means do the elect hear the heavenly commands with cold hearts but flame up at these commands like torches of inner love. The word comes to their ears, and their minds burn with the flame of inner sweetness.

Moses wished by his priestly power to absolve Reuben from his transgression and sin, in that he had lain with Bilhah, his father’s concubine, so that when his brothers should rise, he might not be cut off from their number. So he said in the beginning of his blessing, Reuben shall live and not die and shall be in the number.

That man desires to know God more closely who, out of love for piety, does not want to know those he knew according to the flesh. Divine knowledge suffers a grave loss if it is shared with fleshly knowledge. Each one ought to stand apart from his relatives and neighbors if he wishes to be joined more truly to the Father of all. Those he manfully neglects for the sake of God he loves more firmly, to the extent that he ignores the passing attachment of carnal relationship. In the world of time, indeed, we should be more helpful to those we are related to more closely than to others, since this flame grows into a fire when fuel is supplied. But the fire first burns where it is kindled. We ought to acknowledge the bond of earthly relationship but ignore it when it blocks the journey of the mind. This happens when the faithful soul, on fire with devotion to God, does not despise what is joined to it below, rightly orders these relations within itself and transcends them by its love of what is highest. So we ought to see to it by resourceful concern lest such love should make its entry for the sake of the flesh and turns the heart’s progress away from the right path. It could weaken the power of higher love and press the rising mind down by loading a weight on it. Thus one ought to sympathize with his relatives’ needs in such a way that, through compassion, he does not allow the effect of his decision to be blocked. The emotions of the mind should fill the heart but not turn it away from its spiritual vocation. For holy men do not love their carnal relatives by failing to give them what they need, but by love of spiritual things they conquer that love in themselves, insofar as they temper it with the reins of discretion. Through this love, at least in a small measure, they will not stray from the right path. Cows are figures that suggest these men to us.^[1] As the cows move to the high place before God’s ark, they walk with eagerness and a determined pace, while their calves have been left in the stable. For Scripture has it, walking on and lowing, giving forth bellows from within, and yet not turning their steps away from the path, they have set out.^[2]

The ten thousands of Ephraim and the thousands of Manasseh, that is, let him rule over both the Jews and the Gentiles and acquire the fullness of the church for himself from both peoples.

Moses blessed this tribe, saying, Dan is a lion’s whelp, and he shall flee away from Bashan, that is, from confusion. For this reason we ought rather to interpret according to the Greek, from which our translation comes, that Dan himself became a serpent sitting in the way. Dan expounds judgment, and therefore that tribe has entered into a severe danger of judgment, for the serpent, the antichrist, has slipped into it to injure it with his poisons as it runs.

With this oil the church anoints the necks of its children so that they might take up the yoke of Christ. With this oil it anointed the martyrs so that it might wash them clean of worldly filth. With this oil it anointed the confessors so that they might not cease to labor nor succumb to fatigue and so that they might not be overcome by the commotion of this world. For that reason it anointed them, so that spiritual oil might refresh them.

Moses says this with regard to the holy church. Shoe^[1] in Holy Scripture means the office of preaching, as is written, Feet have been shod in preparation for the gospel of peace.^[2] Since iron means virtue and bronze means perseverance, a man’s shoes are said to be iron and bronze when his preaching is strengthened with incisiveness and persistence. With iron he penetrates opposing evils, and with bronze he preserves the good he had patiently proposed.

[W]e find it written about Antichrist . . . “Dan is a lion’s cub, and he shall leap from Bashan” [Dt 33:22]. But that no one may err by supposing that this is said of the Savior, let him listen carefully. “Dan,” he says, “is a lion’s cub”; and in naming the tribe of Dan, he declared the tribe from which Antichrist is destined to spring. For as Christ springs from the tribe of Judah, so Antichrist is to spring from the tribe of Dn And that the case stands thus, we also see in the words of Jacob: “Let Dan be a serpent, lying upon the ground, biting the horse’s heel” [Gn 49:17]. What, then, is meant by the serpent but Antichrist, the deceiver who is mentioned in Genesis [Gn 3:1], who deceived Eve and supplanted Adam? . . . [I]t is out of the tribe of Dan, then, that that tyrant and king, that dread judge, that son of the devil, is destined to arise.