Reuben, you are my firstborn, my might, and the beginning of my strength, the excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power:
All Commentaries on Genesis 49:3 Go To Genesis 49
Rufinus of Aquileia
AD 411
It seems to me that, according to the mystical interpretation, Reuben may play the role of the first Jewish people, that is, the firstborn and the beginning of the children, as the prophet says: “Israel is my firstborn.” The words of God in fact were first addressed to that people. And the Scriptures relate that that people was hard and reckless. About whom the prophet says, “Whatsoever this people says, is hard.” Elsewhere he says again about the Jews, “You stiffnecked people, uncircumcised in heart.” And these people offended God the Father when they turned their back to him and not their face. They defiled the concubine’s bed into which they got, that is, the law of the Old Testament, which they often stained with their transgressions. Paul teaches us that the concubine symbolically represents the law of the Old Testament by saying, “Abraham had two sons, one by a slave and one by a free woman: these are the two Testaments”; and Hagar, who was the concubine, clearly is the figure of the Old Testament. One indeed was the perfect dove or mother, the church that, as a chaste virgin and as a queen for her bridegroom the king, is united through the gospel to Christ.
