e devices adopted by the four great
divisions of the host in the wilderness.

The blessing pronounced by Jacob on Judah runs, "Judah is a lion's
whelp: from the prey, my son, thou art gone up: he stooped down, he
couched as a lion, and as an old lion; who shall rouse him up?" "The
Lion of the tribe of Judah" is the title given to our Lord Himself in
the Apocalypse of St. John.

[Illustration: OPHIUCHUS AND THE NEIGHBOURING CONSTELLATIONS.]

The blessing pronounced upon Joseph by Moses bears as emphatic a
reference to the bull. "The firstling of his bullock, majesty is his;
and his horns are the horns of the wild-ox."

Jacob's blessing upon Joseph does not show any reference to the ox or
bull in our Authorized Version. But in our Revised Version Jacob says of
Simeon and Levi--

"In their anger they slew a man,
And in their self-will they houghed an ox."

The first line appears to refer to the massacre of the Shechemites; the
second is interpreted by the Jerusalem Targum, "In their wilfulness they
sold Joseph their brother, who is likened to an ox." And in the blessing
of Joseph it is said that his "branches (_margin_, daughters), run over
the wall." Some translators have rendered this, "The daughters walk upon
the bull," "wall" and "bull" being only distinguishable in the original
by a slight difference in the pointing.

Of Reuben, his father said, "Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel;"
and of Dan, "Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path,
that biteth the horse heels, so that his rider shall fall backward."

These two last prophecies supply the "water" and the "serpent," which,
added to the "man" and "eagle" of the cherubic forms, are needed to
complete the traditional standards, and are needed also to make them
conform more closely to the constellation figures.

No such correspondence can be traced between the eight remaining tribes
and the eight remaining constellations. Different writers combine them
in different ways, and the allusions to constellation figures in the
blessings of those tribes are in most cases very doubtful and obscure,
even if it can be supposed that any such allusions are present at all.
The connection cannot be pushed safely beyond the four chief tribes, and
the four cherubic forms as represented in the constellations of the four
quarters of the sky.

These four standards, or rather, three of them, meet us again in a very
interesting connection. When Isra