Unstable as water, you shall not excel; because you went up to your father's bed; then you defiled it: he went up to my couch.
All Commentaries on Genesis 49:4 Go To Genesis 49
Ambrose of Milan
AD 397
Doesn’t this seem to be a reproach rather than a blessing? Thus it really is more a prophecy than a blessing. For a prophecy is an announcement of events to come, whereas a blessing is the longed for bestowal of sanctification and of graces. The Jews suppose that the old man is saying these things to his son Reuben on this account, because the latter lay with Bilhah, his father’s concubine, and polluted his father’s bed. But they are easily refuted; this had already taken place. Now Jacob is promising that he will speak of events to come in the last days, not what took place before. Therefore the meaning is consistent and in accord with the thought of the patriarch himself: he sees the future passion of the Lord under persecution from the Jews and execrates the boundless audacity of that firstborn people …. For Israel itself was called the firstborn and said to be stiffnecked, and of it Moses said, “You are a stiffnecked people.”
