For surely the waves of the deep, brackish and turbulent sea can signify both the sins among which the reprobate are lost in this life when they delight in evil and also the pit of the future perdition, when at the last judgment they will be sent with the devil into eternal fire.

We should not forget that when the tabernacle was built on Mount Sinai it had the Red Sea to its west, and when it was brought into the land of promise and set up at Shiloh by Joshua it had the Great Sea in the same direction. Mystically, therefore, we can understand by this that the saints who serve the Lord in this life and make a tabernacle for him in their hearts despise the proud boasting of the impious, confidently mindful that it is soon to pass away: when they are established with the Lord in the future homeland, they shall look at the perpetual punishment of the impious without any interruption of their own felicity. Consequently, the elders give thanks to the Lord because they also contemplate the evil things from which he has delivered them.

But when Jerusalem was being built, it was not built in a place where there was not a city, but there was a city at first which was called Jebus, whence the Jebusites. This having been captured, overcome, made subject, there was built a new city, as though the old were thrown down; and it was called Jerusalem, vision of peace, City of God. Each one therefore that is born of Adam does not yet belong to Jerusalem: for he bears with him the offshoot of iniquity, and the punishment of sin, having been consigned to death, and he belongs in a manner to a sort of old city. But if he is to be in the people of God, his old self will be thrown down, and he will be built up new.

Therefore we must believe that also here, in imitation of these things, Scripture relates that lots are drawn by Jesus [Joshua], and the inheritance for each of the tribes is determined by divine dispensation; and that in this casting of lots, through the ineffable providence and foreknowledge of God, a model of the future inheritance in heaven is dimly sketched. Since indeed, the law is said to hold a shadow of good things to come,^[1] and there is some city in heaven that is called Jerusalem and Mount Zion—just as the apostle says concerning those who would come to the Lord Jesus Christ, You have drawn near to Mount Zion and are come to the city of the living God, heavenly Jerusalem^[2]—certainly it is not without a reason that Benjamin receives Jerusalem and Mount Zion in his lot. Doubtless, it is because the nature of that heavenly Jerusalem established it that the earthly Jerusalem, which preserved a figure and form of the heavenly one, ought to be given to none other than Benjamin.