Judah’s Lion and Dan’s Serpent

It was your wish, my dear brother Theophilus, to be fully informed about the matters I set before you in summary, so I have thought it right to lay these questions out plainly for you, drawing freely on the holy Scriptures themselves as on a holy spring. Then you will not only have the pleasure of hearing them on human testimony; you will also be able to look at them in the light of God’s own authority, and so give glory to God in everything. This will be like a sure supply of provisions we are furnishing you for your journey through this present life, so that with your argument ready to hand you may take things most people neither grasp nor understand and sow them in the soil of your heart as in rich, clean ground. By these you will also be able to silence the people who oppose and contradict the word of salvation. [a]

Only see that you do not hand these things over to unbelieving and blasphemous tongues; that is no ordinary danger. Give them instead to devout and faithful men who want to live holy and upright lives in the fear of God. There was a reason the blessed apostle urged Timothy: “Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you. Avoid godless chatter and the contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge, which some have professed and so have wandered away from the faith.” And again: “You, then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus; and what you have heard from me through many appeals, entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others as well.” If, then, the blessed apostle handed these things down with a devout caution, in matters anyone could easily have learned, because he saw in the Spirit that “not everyone has faith” — how much greater will our danger be if we hand the revelations of God over to profane and unworthy men, rashly and without thinking?

The blessed prophets were made, so to speak, eyes for us. Through faith they saw the mysteries of the word in advance, and they became servants of those things to the generations that came after them, not only reporting what was past but also announcing the present and the future. That way a prophet would not turn out to be a prophet for his own moment only, but would foretell what was coming for every generation, and so be counted a real prophet. [f]

These fathers were furnished with the Spirit and greatly honored by the Word himself. It was like a musical instrument: they had the Word always joined to them, like the pick that strikes the strings, and when he moved them the prophets announced what God willed. They did not speak out of their own power — make no mistake about that — nor did they declare whatever pleased them. First they were given wisdom by the Word; then they were rightly instructed about the future by visions; and then, once they were fully convinced themselves, they spoke the things God had revealed to them alone and hidden from everyone else.

For why should a prophet be called a prophet unless he saw the future in spirit? If a prophet spoke about some chance event, he would be no prophet, since he would be speaking about things everyone could already see. But the man who sets out in detail things still to come was rightly judged a prophet. That is why, from the very first, prophets were with good reason called “seers.”

And so we too, who have been rightly taught what they declared long ago, do not speak out of our own ability. We make no change, one way or the other, among ourselves in the words they spoke of old. We make public the Scriptures in which those words are written, and we read them to those who can believe rightly. That benefits both sides: the one who speaks, in holding in memory and setting out correctly what was said long ago, and the one who hears, in giving his attention to what is spoken. Since, then, there is work assigned here to both of them together — to the speaker, that he speak faithfully and without regard to the risk, and to the hearer, that he hear and receive in faith what is spoken — I beg you to strive together with me in prayer to God.

Do you want to know, then, how the Word of God, who is also God’s servant, as he was of old the Word, gave his revelations to the blessed prophets in earlier times? It is this way. The Word shows his compassion, and his refusal to play favorites, among all the saints: he gives them light, and fits them to what is good for us, like a skilled doctor who understands human weakness. He loves to teach the ignorant, and he turns those who go astray back onto his own true road. He is easily found by those who live by faith, and to those with a clean eye and a holy heart who want to knock at the door he opens at once. He throws none of his servants away as unworthy of the divine mysteries. He does not rate the rich man above the poor, and he does not look down on a poor man for his poverty. He does not scorn the foreigner, and he does not set the eunuch aside as though he were not a man. He does not hate the female because of the woman’s act of disobedience at the beginning, and he does not reject the male because of the man’s wrongdoing. He seeks everyone and wants to save everyone; he wishes to make everyone children of God, and he calls all the saints into one perfect man. For there is one Servant of God as well, and through him we too, receiving new birth through the Holy Spirit, want to come, all of us, into one perfect and heavenly man. [i]

The Word of God was without flesh; then he took holy flesh upon himself from the holy Virgin, and like a bridegroom he wove a robe for himself in the sufferings of the cross. He did this so that by joining his own power to our mortal body, and by mixing the imperishable with the perishable and the strong with the weak, he might save a human race that was perishing. So the loom beam is the Lord’s suffering on the cross; the warp stretched on it is the power of the Holy Spirit; the weft is the holy flesh woven by the Spirit; the thread is the grace that binds and unites the two into one by the love of Christ; the beating rods are the Word; and the workers are the patriarchs and the prophets, who weave the beautiful, full-length, perfect tunic for Christ. The Word passes through them like the rods, and through them completes what his Father wills. [k]

But time now presses for the question in hand, and what has already been said by way of introduction about the glory of God is enough. It is right, then, that we take the holy Scriptures themselves in hand and find out from them what the coming of Antichrist is and what sort of thing it is: on what occasion and at what time that godless one will be revealed; where he comes from, and from which tribe; what his name is, which Scripture indicates by a number; how he will work error among the people, gathering them from the ends of the earth; how he will stir up affliction and persecution against the saints; how he will glorify himself as God; what his end will be; how the sudden appearing of the Lord will be revealed from heaven; what the burning of the whole world will be; what the glorious and heavenly kingdom of the saints is to be, when they reign together with Christ; and what the punishment of the wicked by fire will be. [l]

Now our Lord Jesus Christ, who is also God, was prophesied of under the figure of a lion, on account of his kingship and his glory; and in the same way the Scriptures long ago spoke of Antichrist as a lion, on account of his tyranny and his violence. For the deceiver wants to make himself look like the Son of God in everything. Christ is a lion, so Antichrist is a lion too. Christ is a king, so Antichrist is a king too. The Savior was shown as a lamb, so he too will appear as a lamb, though inside he is a wolf. The Savior came into the world circumcised, and he will come the same way. The Lord sent apostles out among all the nations, and he in the same way will send false apostles. The Savior gathered together the sheep that had been scattered, and he in the same way will bring together a scattered people. The Lord gave a seal to those who believed in him, and he will give one too. The Savior appeared in human form, and he too will come in human form. The Savior raised up and displayed his holy flesh like a temple, and he will raise a temple of stone in Jerusalem. His tricks for luring people we will set out in what follows; for now, let us turn to the question before us. [m]

Now the blessed Jacob speaks as follows in his blessings, bearing prophetic witness to our Lord and Savior: “Judah, may your brothers praise you. Your hand will be on the neck of your enemies; your father’s sons will bow down before you. Judah is a lion’s cub. From the shoot, my son, you have gone up. He stooped down, he lay down like a lion, and like a lion’s cub — who will rouse him? A ruler will not depart from Judah, nor a leader from his loins, until the one comes for whom it is kept in store; and he will be the expectation of the nations. He binds his donkey to a vine, and his donkey’s colt to the vine tendril. He will wash his robe in wine, and his clothes in the blood of the grape. His eyes will be glad with wine, and his teeth whiter than milk.” [o]

I know how to explain these things in detail, but for the present I think it right simply to quote the words themselves. Still, since the expressions press us to speak of them, I will not leave that undone; they are truly divine and glorious, and well suited to do the soul good. When the prophet uses the expression “a lion’s cub,” he means the one who sprang from Judah and from David in the flesh — who was not in fact made from David’s seed, but was conceived by the Holy Spirit and came out of the holy shoot of the earth. For Isaiah says, “A rod will come out of the root of Jesse, and a flower will grow up out of it.” What Isaiah calls a flower, Jacob calls a shoot: first he shot up, and then he flowered in the world. [p]

And the words “he stooped down, he lay down like a lion, and like a lion’s cub” refer to Christ’s three days’ sleep — his death, his lying down. Isaiah says the same thing: “How has faithful Zion become a prostitute! It was full of judgment; righteousness lay down in it, but now murderers.” And David says the same: “I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the Lord will support me” — words that point to his sleep and his rising again. And Jacob says, “Who will rouse him?” That is just what David and Paul are both referring to, as when Paul says, “and God the Father, who raised him from the dead.”

And in saying, “A ruler will not depart from Judah, nor a leader from his loins, until the one comes for whom it is kept in store; and he will be the expectation of the nations,” he pointed the fulfillment to Christ. For he is our expectation. We expect him, and by faith we see him as he comes from heaven with power. “He binds his donkey to a vine”: that means he joins his people of the circumcision to his own calling, for he was the vine. “And his donkey’s colt to the vine tendril”: that stands for the Gentile peoples, since he calls the circumcised and the uncircumcised into one faith. [r]

“He will wash his robe in wine” — that is, according to his Father’s voice, which came down through the Holy Spirit at the Jordan. “And his clothes in the blood of the grape.” The blood of what grape, if not his own flesh, which hung on the tree like a cluster of grapes? From his side, too, two streams flowed, of blood and water, and in them the nations are washed and cleansed — the nations he may be understood to wear about him like a robe. [s] “His eyes glad with wine.” And what are the eyes of Christ but the blessed prophets, who foresaw in the Spirit and announced beforehand the sufferings that would come upon him, and who rejoiced to see him in power with spiritual eyes, equipped for it by the Word himself and by his grace? And in saying, “And his teeth will be whiter than milk,” he pointed to the commands that come from the holy mouth of Christ, which are as pure as milk.

That is how the Scriptures preached beforehand about this lion and lion’s cub. And in the same way we find it written about Antichrist. Moses speaks this way: “Dan is a lion’s cub, and he will leap out of Bashan.” But so that no one goes wrong by supposing this is said about the Savior, let him attend carefully to the matter. “Dan,” he says, “is a lion’s cub” — and by naming the tribe of Dan he declared plainly the tribe Antichrist is destined to spring from. For as Christ springs from the tribe of Judah, so Antichrist is to spring from the tribe of Dan. And that this is how the case stands we see also from the words of Jacob: “Let Dan be a serpent lying on the ground, biting the horse’s heel.” What, then, is meant by the serpent but Antichrist — that deceiver mentioned in Genesis, who deceived Eve and tripped Adam by the heel? But since this claim has to be proved by testimony enough to carry it, we will not shrink from the task. [t]

That it really is out of the tribe of Dan that this tyrant and king, this dreadful judge, this son of the devil, is destined to spring up and arise, the prophet testifies when he says, “Dan will judge his people, as one tribe also in Israel.” But someone may say that this refers to Samson, who came from the tribe of Dan and judged the people twenty years. Well — the prophecy had its partial fulfillment in Samson, but its complete fulfillment is kept in store for Antichrist. For Jeremiah also speaks to this effect: “From Dan we are to hear the sound of the swiftness of his horses; the whole land trembled at the sound of the neighing, at the driving of his horses.” And another prophet says: “He will gather together all his strength, from the east as far as the west. Those he calls, and those he does not call, will go with him. He will make the sea white with the sails of his ships, and the plain black with the shields of his armies. And whoever opposes him in war will fall by the sword.” That these things are said of no one else but that tyrant, that shameless one, that enemy of God, we will show in what follows. [v]

But Isaiah also speaks this way: “And it will come about that when the Lord has finished all his work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, he will punish the proud mind, the king of Assyria, and the loftiness of the glory of his eyes. For he said: By my strength I will do it, and by the wisdom of my understanding I will remove the boundaries of the peoples and rob them of their strength. I will make the inhabited cities tremble; I will gather the whole world in my hand like a nest, and I will pick it up like eggs that have been left behind. And there is no one who will escape me or contradict me, or open his mouth and chirp. Will the axe boast itself apart from the man who chops with it? Or will the saw make itself great apart from the man who pulls it? As if someone were to lift a rod or a staff, and the staff were to lift itself up! It is not like that. But the Lord will send dishonor upon your honor, and into your glory a burning fire will burn. And the light of Israel will be a fire, and will make him holy in flame, and will consume the forest like grass.” [x]

And again he says in another place: “How the collector has ceased, and how the taskmaster has ceased! God has broken the yoke of the rulers of sinners — he who struck the people in wrath with an incurable blow, who strikes the people with an incurable blow that he did not spare. He has come to rest in confidence; the whole earth shouts with rejoicing. The trees of Lebanon rejoiced over you, and the cedar of Lebanon said: Since you were laid down, no woodcutter has come up against us. Hades below is stirred at meeting you: all the mighty ones, the rulers of the earth, are gathered together, the lords up from their thrones. All the kings of the nations, all of them, will answer together and say: You too have been taken, as we were; you are counted among us. Your pomp has been brought down to the earth, and your great rejoicing; they will spread rot beneath you, and the worm will be your covering. How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, you who rise early! He who sent to all the nations is shattered to the ground. And you said in your mind: I will go up into heaven, I will set my throne above the stars of heaven; I will sit on the lofty mountains toward the north; I will go up above the clouds; I will be like the Most High. Yet now you will be brought down to Hades, and to the foundations of the earth. Those who see you will stare at you and say: This is the man who shook the earth, who made kings tremble, who made the whole world a wilderness and destroyed its cities, who did not release those he had carried off. All the kings of the earth lay in honor, each one in his own house; but you will be thrown out on the mountains like a loathsome corpse, along with many who fall, run through with the sword and going down to Hades. As a garment stained with blood is not clean, so you too will not be clean, because you destroyed my land and killed my people. You will not last, you will not endure forever, you wicked seed. Get your children ready for slaughter, for the sins of your father, so that they do not rise up and take possession of my land.” [y]