But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and you shall go forth, and grow up like calves of the stall.
All Commentaries on Malachi 4:2 Go To Malachi 4
Ambrose of Milan
AD 397
Because Jacob’s faith and devotion were unconquerable, the Lord revealed his hidden mysteries to him by touching the side of his thigh. For it was by descent from him that the Lord Jesus was born to a virgin, and Jesus would be neither unlike nor unequal to God. The numbness in the side of Jacob’s thigh foreshadowed the cross of Christ, who would bring salvation to all by spreading forgiveness of sins throughout the whole world and would give resurrection to the departed by the numbness and torpidity of his own body. On this account the sun rose on holy Jacob, for the saving cross of the Lord shone brightly on his lineage, and at the same time the Sun of justice recognizes God, because he is himself the everlasting light. But Jacob limped because of his thigh. “On account of this the children of Israel do not eat the sinew even to the present day.” Would that they had eaten it and believed! But because they were not about to do the will of God, therefore they did not eat. There are those too who take the passage in the following sense that Jacob limped from one thigh. Two people flowed from his lineage, and there was then being revealed the numbness which one of them would presently exhibit toward the grace of faith. And so it is the people itself that limped by reason of the numbness of its unbelief.
