[94] Such a serpent does Jacob pray that Dan may become, and speaks on this wise:
“Dan shall judge his people,
As if indeed one tribe of Israel,” and
“Let Dan become a serpent in the way,
Seated on the beaten track, biting the horse’s heel,
And the horseman shall fall backward,
Waiting for the salvation of the Lord.”
Of those born of Leah Issachar is Jacob’s fifth genuine son, or if Zilpah’s two sons are reckoned in, he is the seventh. But Jacob’s fifth son is Dan, by Bilhah Rachel’s handmaid. The occasion of this remark we shall discover in my special treatise on the subject. The subject of Dan demands further study.
[95] The soul bears two kinds of offspring, the one divine, the other perishable. The better kind she has already conceived, and with it she ceases to bear. For when the soul had attained to making full submission and acknowledgement to God there was no better possession for it to go on to gain. This is why she ceased when she had borne Judah, the spirit of praise and acknowledgement.
[96] The soul now goes on to the fashioning of the mortal race. The mortal subsists by swallowing. For the taste, like a foundation, is the cause of living creatures continuing to live. And Bilhah means “swallowing.” From this woman there springs Dan, whose name signifies sifting or distinguishing: for this race distinguishes and separates things immortal from those that are mortal. So his father prays that he may prove a lover of self-mastery. But for Judah he will offer no such prayer, for Judah already has the property of praising and pleasing God.
[97] So he says, “Let Dan become a serpent on the road.” The soul is our road; for as on the roads it is possible to see the distinction of existences, lifeless, living; irrational, rational; good, bad; slave, free; young, or older; male, female; foreign, or native; sickly, healthy; maimed, entire; so in the soul too there are lifeless, incomplete, diseased, enslaved, female, and countless other movements full of disabilities; and on the other hand movements living, entire, male, free, sound, elder, good, genuine, and, in a real sense, of the fatherland.
[98] Let then the principle of self-mastery become a serpent upon the soul whose road lies through all the circumstances of life and let it seat itself upon the well worn track. What is this? The path of virtue is unworn, for few tread it, while that of vice is well worn. He calls on him to beset with his ambuscade and to lie in wait upon the beaten road of passion and vice, on which reasoning powers that flee from virtue wear out their life.