Numbers 23:24

After this: "Behold," it says, "a people shall rise up like a lion's cub, and shall exult like a lion." In these words he seems to me to describe the confidence of the people believing in Christ, and the freedom which it has in faith, and the exultation which it bears in hope. For it is compared to a lion's cub while it presses toward perfection, glad and swift; but it is likened to a lion when it now obtains the things that are perfect. For just as the lion and the lion's cub fear no animal, no beast, but all things are subjected to them, so also to the perfect Christian, who takes up his cross and follows Christ, who can say: "For to me the world is crucified, and I to the world," all things are subjected, all things are trodden underfoot. For he despises and scorns all things that are in this world, and imitates him who is called the lion of the tribe of Judah and the lion's cub, because, just as he himself is the light of the world and gave to his disciples that they too should be the light of the world, so also, since he himself is a lion and a lion's cub, he ascribes to those who believe in him the name of lion and lion's cub. But see that these things are evidently said not about that people which existed then, but about this people which was to be; for it says: "Behold, a people shall rise up like a lion's cub, and shall exult like a lion." He says the people that was to be would rise up. For if he were speaking of the one he was seeing, he would doubtless have said: "Behold, a people has risen up like a lion's cub." But it is certain that he speaks of that people, of which it is also written in the Psalms: "And they shall announce his righteousness to a people that shall be born, whom the Lord has made." This people, then, is a lion's cub while, still like newly born infants, they desire the reasonable and guileless milk; but a lion exulting, when, having become a man, it has put away the things that were of a little child.

"It shall not sleep until it devours the prey, and drinks the blood of the slain." In these words, who will be so contentious a champion of the historical narrative — nay rather, who will be found so brutish — as not to flee, shuddering at the sound of the letter, by very necessity to the sweetness of allegory? For how will this people, so praiseworthy, so magnificent, of which the discourse recounts such great praises, come to this, that it should drink the blood of the slain — when the eating of blood is forbidden by God with such strong precepts, so that even we who have been called from the gentiles are necessarily commanded to abstain, just as from the things sacrificed to idols, so also from blood? Let them tell us, then, who is this people that has the practice of drinking blood. These were the things which, hearing them in the Gospel also, those who followed the Lord from among the Jews were scandalized and said: "Who can eat flesh and drink blood?" But the Christian people, the faithful people, hears these things and embraces them and follows him who says: "Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you will not have life in yourselves; for my flesh is truly food, and my blood is truly drink." And indeed, he who said these things was wounded for men; for "he himself was wounded for our sins," as Isaiah says. But we are said to drink the blood of Christ not only by the rite of the sacraments, but also when we receive his words, in which life consists, just as he himself says: "The words which I have spoken are spirit and life." He himself, then, is the wounded one, whose blood we drink — that is, whose words of doctrine we receive. But those too were no less wounded who preached his word to us; for when we read the words of them also — that is, of his apostles — and gain life from them, we drink the blood of the slain. "It shall not," it says, "sleep until it devours the prey." For this people, which is compared to a lion's cub or a lion, will not rest nor sleep until it seizes the prey — that is, until it plunders the kingdom of heaven, because "from the days of John the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent plunder it." But that you may more evidently recognize that these things are written about our people, which is confederated in the sacraments of Christ, hear how Moses too pronounces similar things elsewhere, saying: "Butter of…