Pouring out like the waters - This is an obscure sentence because unfinished. It evidently relates to the defilement of his father's couch; and the word פחז pachaz, here translated pouring out, and in our Version unstable, has a bad meaning in other places of the Scripture, being applied to dissolute, debauched, and licentious conduct. See Judges 9:4; Zephaniah 3:4; Jeremiah 23:14, Jeremiah 23:32; Jeremiah 29:23.

Thou shalt not excel - This tribe never rose to any eminence in Israel; was not so numerous by one third as either Judah, Joseph, or Dan, when Moses took the sum of them in the wilderness, Numbers 1:21; and was among the first that were carried into captivity, 1 Chronicles 5:26.

Then thou didst defile - Another unfinished sentence, similar to the former, and upon the same subject, passing over a transaction covertly, which delicacy forbade Jacob to enlarge on. For the crime of Reuben, see Clarke on Genesis 35:22 (note).

5. Simeon and Levi, brethren: They have accomplished their fraudulent purposes.

6. Into their secret council my soul did not come; In their confederacy my honor was not united: For in their anger they slew a man, (איש ish, a noble), And in their pleasure they murdered a prince.

7. Cursed was their anger, for it was fierce! And their excessive wrath, for it was inflexible! I will divide them out in Jacob, And I will disperse them in Israel.

Unstable.

James 1:6-8 But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavers is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed...

2 Peter 2:14 Having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin; beguiling unstable souls...

2 Peter 3:16 As also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood...

thou shall not excel. Heb. do not thou excel.

Genesis 46:8 And these are the names of the children of Israel, which came into Egypt, Jacob and his sons: Reuben, Jacob's firstborn.

Numbers 32:1-42 Now the children of Reuben and the children of Gad had a very great multitude of cattle: and when they saw the land of Jazer...

Deuteronomy 33:6 Let Reuben live, and not die; and let not his men be few.

because.

Genesis 35:22 And it came to pass, when Israel dwelled in that land, that Reuben went and lay with Bilhah his father's concubine: and Israel heard it...

Deuteronomy 5:21 Neither shall you desire your neighbor's wife, neither shall you covet your neighbor's house, his field, or his manservant...

Deuteronomy 27:20 Cursed be he that lies with his father's wife; because he uncovers his father's skirt. And all the people shall say, Amen.

1 Chronicles 5:1 Now the sons of Reuben the firstborn of Israel, (for he was the firstborn; but for as much as he defiled his father's bed...

1 Corinthians 5:1 It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles...

he went up to my couch. or, my couch is gone.

The Messianic Prophecies in the Pentateuch.
In the Messianic prophecies contained in Genesis we cannot fail to perceive a remarkable progress in clearness and definiteness. The first Messianic prediction, which was uttered immediately after the fall of Adam, is also the most indefinite. Opposed to the awful threatening there stands the consolatory promise, that the dominion of sin, and of the evil arising from sin, shall not last for ever, but that the seed of the woman shall, at some future time, overthrow their dreaded conqueror. With the …
Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg—Christology of the Old Testament

General Notes by the American Editor
1. The whole subject of the Apocalypse is so treated, [2318] in the Speaker's Commentary, as to elucidate many questions suggested by the primitive commentators of this series, and to furnish the latest judgments of critics on the subject. It is so immense a matter, however, as to render annotations on patristic specialties impossible in a work like this. Every reader must feel how apposite is the sententious saying of Augustine: "Apocalypsis Joannis tot sacramenta quot verba." 2. The seven spirits, …
Victorinus—Commentary on the Apocolypse of the Blessed John

The Holy Spirit and the Incarnation of the Word. ...
The Holy Spirit and the Incarnation of the Word. We are so familiar with the part assigned in our Creeds to the Holy Spirit in connection with our Lord's birth, that the passage now to be quoted from Justin may at first sight seem very surprising. It may be well to approach it by citing some words from the learned and orthodox Waterland, who in 1734, in his book on The Trinity (c. vi: Works, III, 571: Oxford, 1843), wrote as follows in reference to a passage of St Irenæus: "I may remark by …
Irenæus—The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching