Naphtali is a hind let loose: he gives beautiful words.
All Commentaries on Genesis 49:21 Go To Genesis 49
Ambrose of Milan
AD 397
“Naphtali is a spreading vine, putting forth beauty in its shoot.” One branch of the vine is cut off, because it seems useless, so that the vine may not run wild in the profusion of its branches and be unfruitful. Another is cut back only for a little while and is permitted to grow so that it may produce fruit. Its beauty is in its product. While it rises to things that are above, it embraces the vine; mounting to the top, it clothes the necks of the crossbeam, as it were, with a necklace of precious vine shoots. There is also such beauty in its product, because it pours forth many fruits from full shoots. This branch is beautiful, but it is a far fairer thing that the reference is to a shoot clinging to a spiritual vine, of which we are the branch and can bear fruit, if we remain on the vine; but otherwise we are cut off. The holy patriarch Naphtali was an abundant shoot. For this reason Moses says, “Naphtali is the abundance of those that receive; he shall be filled with a blessing from the Lord, he shall possess the sea and the south.” This is in explanation of that which Jacob had said, that he is a spreading vine. That is, through the grace of faith he was stripped of the bonds of death, and in him there is foreshadowed the people of God, called to the liberty of faith and to the fullness of grace and spread over the whole world. It clothes the crossbeam of Christ with good fruit and encompasses the wood of that true vine, that is, the mysteries of the Lord’s cross; it does not fear the danger of acknowledging him, but rather, even amid persecutions, it glories in the name of Christ.
