Numbers 24:5

Now let us already see what things he says in what follows: "How good," he says, "are your houses, O Jacob, your tents, O Israel! Like shady groves, like gardens beside rivers, and like the tents which the Lord has pitched, like cedars beside the waters." When he calls the houses of Jacob good, I do not think that he is praising their earthly dwellings; for nothing of such a kind among them, beyond the other nations, is recorded. But let us see whether perhaps, since the people was divided by tribes, and each single tribe was apportioned by clans, and again the clans by kindreds, and the kindreds by the houses of families, and again the houses of families were numbered by the number of names and by heads—that is, everyone who was from twenty years and above, a male able to go forth to war—it is these houses that Balaam, beholding them in the spirit, magnifies and extols. But the meaning is not to be contemplated in these things by the letter alone, since indeed what Balaam speaks he speaks having taken up his parable. In parables, therefore, let us too hear what is said. For if you consider those divisions and orders of the peoples which will exist in the resurrection among the people of the true Israel, when each one shall rise in his own order, if you are able to behold those tribes and clans and kindreds in which there is not so much the kinship of flesh and blood as of mind and soul, then you will understand how good are the houses of Jacob and how good the tents of Israel. But if you should also inquire into the difference between houses and tents, and the diversity between Jacob and Israel, concerning this too some such distinction is to be maintained. A house is a thing founded and stable and enclosed by fixed boundaries; but tents are certain dwellings of those who are always on the way and always walking and have not found the end of their journey. Therefore Jacob is to be understood in the persons of those who are perfect in acts and in work; but Israel are to be understood those who bear a zeal toward wisdom and knowledge. Since, then, the exercises of works and deeds are closed by a fixed end—for the perfection of works is not without an end—when someone has fulfilled all that he ought to do and has come to the end of the perfection of works, that very perfection of works will be said to be his good houses. But of those who apply themselves to…