Homilies on the Song of Songs 2

"I am black and beautiful, daughters of Jerusalem, like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon. Do not look at me, for I have been blackened, because the sun has looked askance at me. My mother's sons fought in me; they made me a keeper in the vineyards; my own vineyard I did not keep. Tell me, you whom my soul has loved, where you pasture, where you rest at midday, lest I become like one who is veiled beside the flocks of your companions. If you do not know yourself, O beautiful [among women, go out in the footsteps of the flocks], and pasture the kids beside the tents of the [shepherds]."

In the holy tent of witness what showed on the outside was not of equal worth with the beauty hidden within. The court of linen hangings, the curtains of goats' hair, and the coverings of red skins made up the outward array of the tent, and nothing great or precious appeared besides these to those who saw the outside. But within, the whole tent of witness shone with gold and silver and precious stones: the pillars, the bases, the capitals, the altar of incense, the altar [of sacrifice] …, the veils at the entrances, whose beauty was blended from every kind of brightly coloured dye: golden thread woven with skilled fine work, beautifully, together with blue and purple and fine linen and scarlet, a blend of them all, made the woven fabric flash as in the rays of a rainbow. What I have in view in beginning from this will surely become clear from what is to be said.

Again the Song of Songs is set before us, for the teaching of all knowledge of God and philosophy. This is the true tent of witness, whose outer coverings and curtains and the surrounding of the court are certain words and expressions of love, displaying the attachment to the beloved, and a description of beauty, and mention of bodily members, both those that appear in the face and those within; but within there is truly a lampstand of many lights, an ark full of mysteries, the altar of fragrance and the means of cleansing from sin, that all-golden altar of incense of piety, the beauty of the veils gracefully woven from the bright colours of the virtues, the unswerving pillars of the thoughts, the immovable bases of the doctrines, the beauty of the capitals, by which the grace of the soul's ruling part is expressed, the basins for washing souls, and everything that looks to the heavenly and incorporeal way of life, which the law commands in riddles: all this is in the thoughts hidden in the wording, if only we make ourselves fit, by care for our life, for entry into the Holy of Holies, having washed away in the basin of the word all the stain of shameful thought, lest, against the command of the law, we die, having touched some thought that is dead or one of the unclean desires, and be shut out without seeing the wonders inside the tent. For the law of the Spirit does not admit such people to enter unless one washes the garment of his own conscience, as Moses commanded for one who has touched a dead and abominable thought.

The sequence of what has already been examined leads our discourse to the contemplation of what the bride says to the maidens. It is this: "I am black and beautiful, daughters [of Jerusalem, like the tents] of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon." The teacher rightly begins to lead the souls she is instructing into good things from the point where she should. For they are eager, as they promise, to value the grace flowing from her spiritual breasts above every human word, which they call wine figuratively, saying in so many words, "We will love your breasts more than wine, because uprightness has loved you." She, however, adds to her disciples' wonder at her, so that we may learn the more the measureless love of the bridegroom for mankind, who by his love bestows beauty on the one he loved. "Do not wonder," she says, "that uprightness has loved me, but that I was black from sin and akin to darkness through my deeds, and he made me beautiful through love, exchanging his own beauty for my shame. For having taken over to himself the stain of my sins, he gave me a share in his own purity and made me partner of his own beauty. First he made me lovely from loathsome, and so he loved me." After this she urges the maidens to become beautiful themselves, holding out her own beauty as an example, like the great Paul when he says, "Become as I am, for I also became as you are," and, "Be imitators of me, as I also am of Christ." For this reason she does not let the souls she instructs despair of becoming beautiful by looking at their past life, but bids them look at her and learn from the example that the present becomes a veil over the past if it is blameless. For she says: "Even if my beauty now shines, which was formed on me by being loved by uprightness, yet I know that I was not bright at the beginning but black. Such an appearance, dark and gloomy, was produced in me by my former life. Yet though I was that, I am this; for the likeness of shame has been remade into the form of beauty. You too, then, daughters of Jerusalem, look up to your mother, the Jerusalem above. Even if you were tents of Kedar, because the ruler of the power of the [air] dwelt in you (for Kedar is interpreted as darkness), you will become curtains of Solomon, that is, you will be the temple of the king, King Solomon having made his dwelling in you." Solomon means peaceable, the one named after peace. By "curtains of Solomon" she named, from a part, the whole covering of the royal tent.

Paul seems to me to have entered into these thoughts quite closely in the letter to the Romans, where he commends God's love for us, that while we were sinners and black he made us … and lovely through his grace. For as at night everything, even if it is bright by nature, is blackened together with the prevailing darkness, but when light shines on it, the likeness to darkness does not remain in what was darkened, so when the soul is transferred from error to truth, the dark form of its life is changed too into luminous grace. Paul says to Timothy what the bride of Christ says to the maidens, Paul who afterwards became bright from black: that he too was counted worthy to become beautiful, he who was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and an insolent man and black; that Christ came into the world to make the black bright, calling not the righteous to himself but sinners to repentance, whom by the washing of regeneration he made to shine like lights, washing off their gloomy appearance with water. This very thing David's eye sees in the city above, and he makes the sight a wonder: how in the city of God, of which glorious things are spoken, Rahab the prostitute is also remembered, and foreigners and Tyre and the people of the Ethiopians come to be in her; so that no one any longer reproaches this city with having no inhabitants, saying, "No one will any longer say to Zion, 'A man was born in her.'" For there the foreigners become citizens of the city, and the Babylonians become Jerusalemites, and the prostitute a virgin, and the Ethiopians bright, and Tyre the city above. So here too the bride encourages the daughters of Jerusalem, commending the goodness of the bridegroom, that even if he takes a black soul he makes it beautiful by communion with himself, and even if one is a tent of Kedar, it becomes a dwelling of light when the true Solomon, that is, the peaceable king, has come to dwell in it. That is why she says, "I am black and beautiful, daughters of Jerusalem," so that you may look at me and become curtains of Solomon, even if you were tents of Kedar.

Then she adds to what she has said what follows, by which she necessarily secures the minds of her disciples against attributing the cause of the dark appearance to the Creator, [and teaches them that] each one's free choice [is] the beginning of the appearance. "[Do not look] at me," she says, "for I have been blackened. I did not come to be such at first. For it was not fitting that one shaped by the luminous hands of God should be coloured over with a dark and black appearance. I was not such," she says, "but I became so. For I am not black by nature; this shame was brought in on me from outside, when the sun changed my form from bright to black. 'For the sun,' she says, 'looked askance at me.'" What, then, do we learn through this? The Lord tells the crowds in a parable that the one who sows the word sows not only on the good heart, but whether it is stony, or overgrown with thorns, or by the roadside and trodden down, he throws the seeds of the word on all out of love for mankind. And explaining in his discourse what is peculiar to each, he says of the stony soul that what is sown does not take root in depth, but at once promises the ear through a shallow shoot; then, when the sun heats what lies beneath more strongly, because there is no moisture under the roots, it withers. And in the explanation he calls the sun temptation. From the teacher, then, we learn this doctrine: that human nature came into being as an image of the true light, far from dark features, gleaming with likeness to the archetypal beauty; but temptation, falling on it by deceit with its burning heat, while the first shoot was still tender and without root, before it had acquired any settled possession of the good and before it gave drink to its roots in depth by the cultivation of thoughts, at once dried up through disobedience its green and flourishing appearance, and through the burning made it black. If the hostile assault of temptation is called the sun, let none of my hearers be surprised, since he is taught such things in many places by the God-inspired Scripture. For in the second of the songs of ascents it pronounces this blessing on the one who has help from him who made heaven and earth, that he will not be burned by the sun by day. And the prophet Isaiah, prophesying the state of the church, sketches a kind of procession for her way of life, brightening the account with his word. He speaks of daughters carried on shoulders and children in litters with parasols … the light. In riddles he describes by this the life of virtue: by the infant age showing what is newborn and innocent; by the parasols, the relief from the burning heat that comes to souls from self-control and purity. From this we learn that the soul being dressed as a bride for God must be carried on shoulders, not trampled by the flesh but seated on the bulk of the body. And hearing of a litter, we learn of the shining grace of baptism, through which we become children, no longer pressing our footprint on the earth but carried on it to the heavenly life. And our life becomes shaded and dewy, since the burning heat is quenched by the parasols of virtue. This, then, is the sun, when its blaze is not walled off by the cloud of the Spirit, which the Lord spread out for them as a covering. This is the sun that scorches the bright appearance of the body by the assault of temptations …

Then she tells where the change of our good colour into black began. "My mother's sons," she says, "fought in me; they made me a keeper in the vineyards; my own vineyard I did not keep." And let the hearer grant me this: not to be too exact about the construction of the wording, but to look to the train of thought. If [something seems disjointed, let him put it down to the inexperience] of those who rendered the Hebrew tongue into the Greek language. For those who have taken care to be trained in the Hebrew language find nothing of the kind that seems to be disjointed. But the structure of our language, not [corresponding] to the structure of Hebrew eloquence, causes some confusion for those who follow the meaning of the wording too superficially. The sense of the words quoted above, as far as we have grasped it, is this: that at the beginning man came into being lacking none of the divine goods. His only task was to keep the goods, not to acquire them. But the plot of the enemies stripped him of what he had, since he did not keep the good fortune given to his nature by God. This, then, is the sense of the words; and the handing on of this thought through the riddling words runs thus: "My mother's sons," she says, "fought in me; they made me a keeper in the vineyard; my own vineyard I did not keep." The word teaches many doctrines in a few words. First, what Paul too likewise declared, that all things are from God, and there is one God and Father from whom are all things, and there is nothing among the things that exist which does not have its being through him and from him. For "all things," it says, "came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being." But since all that God made is very good (for he made all things in wisdom), he gave the rational nature the grace of self-determination and added a power of discovering what it desires, so that what is in our power might have its place and the good might not be forced and involuntary but the achievement of free choice. And since this self-determining movement leads us with sovereign power toward what seems good, there was found in the nature of beings one who used his power badly and, in the apostle's words, became an inventor of evils. Inasmuch as he too is from God, he is our brother; but inasmuch as he willingly fell away from participation in the good, introducing the entry of evils and becoming the father of lies, he placed himself in the rank of an enemy against all those whose aim of free choice looks toward the better. Since through him, then, the occasion for flying away from good things came to be in the rest, which indeed happened to human nature too, she who was once black but now beautiful rightly attributes the cause of her gloomy appearance to such sons of her mother, teaching us through what is said that there is one cause of beings, like a father, for all that exist; and for this reason all things understood among beings are brothers of one another; but the difference of free choice has split nature into friend and enemy. For those who have stood away from their relation to the good and by apostasy from the better have given evil subsistence (for evil has no other subsistence than separation from the better) put all their zeal and ingenuity into drawing others too into partnership in evil. And this is why she says, "The sons of my mother" (for the plural signifies the many divisions of wickedness) "set up war in me," not fighting from outside by invasion, but making the soul itself the battlefield of the war within it. For the war is in each one, as the divine apostle explains, saying, "I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and taking me captive to the law of sin that is in my members." "Since, then, this civil war was set up in me by my brothers, who are enemies of my salvation, I became black, defeated by the enemies, and I did not keep my own vineyard."

We must understand the vineyard to be the same as paradise. For there too man was appointed to keep the [paradise] …; and neglect of keeping casts man out of paradise, removes him from the east and makes him a dweller in the west. That is why the east appears to the west. "Sing," it says, "to the Lord who rides upon the west," so that, as the light shines in darkness, the darkness may be changed into the ray, and the black one become beautiful again. The apparent disjointedness of the wording with respect to the sense we have found can be eased in this way. ["They made me a keeper in the vineyards"] is equivalent to "They made Jerusalem a garden-watchman's hut." For they did not appoint her keeper of the divine vineyard, as one might suppose at first sight; rather, the one who appointed her is God, while they only fought in her and made her like a booth in a vineyard and like a watchman's hut in a cucumber field. For, deprived of the fruit she was guarding through disobedience, she was left a useless sight, since what was guarded in her was no longer there. And since God set man to work and keep paradise, the bride says this: "When God set my soul for life (for the delight of paradise was life, in which God set man to work and to keep it), the enemies removed it from the delight of paradise so that it should take pains over their vineyard, whose cluster cultivates bitterness and whose grape gall." Such a vineyard was Sodom, such a vine-branch Gomorrah, condemned together with Sodom, through which the incurable wrath of dragons overflowed in the wicked winepresses of the Sodomites. Even until now one can see most people as caretakers and keepers of such vineyards, who carefully guard the passions within themselves as if afraid of losing their evil. You see the wicked keepers of idolatry, both that practised in impiety and that practised in greed, how they keep watch in guarding their evils, thinking it a loss to be deprived of their lawlessness. And in the same way with the others one can see how those who have received pleasure deep within, or arrogance, or vanity, or anything else of the kind, cling to such things with every care, counting it gain that their soul is never cleansed of the passions. This is what the bride laments, saying: "This is why I became black, because, keeping and tending the tares of the enemy and their wicked branches, I did not keep my own vineyard." O how much feeling this stirs in those who listen with perception: "My own vineyard I did not keep"! The cry is plainly a lament, moving the groans of the prophets to sympathy. How has the faithful city Zion, full of judgment, become a prostitute? How has the daughter of Zion been left like a booth in a vineyard? How does the city that was full of people sit alone? She who ruled over provinces has become subject to tribute. How has the gold grown dim, how has the good silver changed? How has she become black, who at first shone together with the true light? "All this happened to me," she says, "because I did not keep my own vineyard." The vineyard is immortality; the vineyard is freedom from passion and likeness to the divine and estrangement from all evil. The fruit of this vineyard is purity, this bright and ripe cluster, distinctive in appearance and sweetening the senses of the soul in chastity. The tendril of the vineyard is the embrace of and union with eternal life; the branches that grow are the heights of the virtues climbing up to the height of the angels; the leaves waving on the branches are the manifold adornment of the divine virtues, which flourish together with the Spirit … "Possessing all these," she says, "and shining in the enjoyment of them, because I did not keep the vineyard I was blackened with mourning; for, falling from purity, I put on the gloomy appearance." Such in appearance is the tunic of skin. "But now, having become beautiful and luminous again through the uprightness that loved me, I am anxious about my good fortune, lest I lose my beauty again, failing in my keeping through ignorance of the way to be secure."

That is why, leaving off her speech to the maidens, she calls on the bridegroom again in prayer, making her inner attachment to him the name of the one she longs for. For what does she say? "Tell me, you whom my soul has loved, where you pasture, or where you rest at midday, lest I become like one who is veiled beside the flocks of your companions." Where do you pasture, good shepherd, who carry the whole flock on your shoulders? For the whole of human nature is one sheep, which you took up on your shoulders. Show me the place of the green pasture, make known to me the water of rest, lead me out to the nourishing grass, call me by name, so that I, your sheep, may hear your voice, and give me through your voice eternal life. "Tell me, you whom my soul has loved." For so I name you, since your name is above every name and is inexpressible and uncontainable for every rational nature. Your name, then, which makes your goodness known, is my soul's attachment to you. For how should I not love you, who so loved me, and that when I was black, that you laid down your life for the sheep whom you pasture? One cannot conceive a greater love than this, that you exchanged your life for my salvation. "Show me, then," she says, "where you pasture," so that, finding the saving pasture, I may be filled with the heavenly food, without eating which one cannot enter into life; and running to you, the spring, I may draw the divine drink, which you pour out for the thirsty from your side, opened by the iron …, whoever tastes it becoming a spring of water welling up to eternal life. For if you pasture me among these, … lying down in peace together, I shall rest in the shadowless light. For midday is shadowless on every side, the sun shining down from the summit; in it you bring to rest those whom you have pastured, when you receive your children with yourself into the bed. But no one is counted worthy of the midday rest who has not become a son of light and of day; whoever has separated himself equally from the darkness of evening and of dawn, that is, from where evil begins and where it ends, is brought to rest at midday by the sun of righteousness. "Make known to me, then," she says, "how I must rest, and what is the way of the midday rest, lest, falling away from your good guidance, ignorance of the truth make me one of a flock with herds foreign to your flocks."

She said this in anxiety about the beauty that had come to her from God, and asking to learn how her comeliness might remain with her for ever. But she is not yet counted worthy of the bridegroom's voice, since God foresaw something better for her: that the delay of enjoyment might kindle her desire into a greater longing, so that her gladness might grow together with her longing. Instead the friends of the bridegroom speak to her, setting forth by counsel the way to keep secure the goods she has. Their word too is veiled in obscurity. The wording runs thus: "If you do not know yourself, O beautiful among women, [go out in the] footsteps of your flocks and pasture the kids beside the tents of the [shepherds] …" [whoever does not know himself] fails of both, letting go of the one and unable to hold the other. The sense of these words is clear from the sequence of what has been examined, but the construction seems somehow obscure. What, then, is the sense? The surest safeguard for us is not to be ignorant of ourselves, and not to think that we are seeing ourselves when we see something else of what is around us. This is what happens to those who do not examine themselves: seeing in themselves strength, or beauty, or reputation, or power, or some abundance of wealth, or vanity, or pomp, or size of body, or good fortune of form, or something else of the kind, they think that they are such things. That is why they are unreliable guardians of themselves: through their attachment to what is foreign they overlook their own and leave it unguarded. For how could anyone guard what he does not know? The surest guard of the goods in us, then, is not to be ignorant of ourselves, and for each to know himself as he is, and to distinguish himself accurately from what is around him, so that he may not without noticing guard what is foreign instead of himself. For the one who looks to the life in this world and judges the things honoured here worthy of keeping does not know how to distinguish his own from what is foreign. For nothing that passes away is ours. How could anyone hold what is transient and flowing? Since, then, the intelligible and immaterial nature is lasting and always the same, while matter passes away, always changing through a kind of flow and movement, of necessity the one who separates himself from what stands, [holding to] what passes and abandoning what stands, [is deprived] of both. That is why [the counsel] of the bridegroom's friends says what was said: "If you do not know yourself, O beautiful among women, go out in the footsteps of the flocks and pasture the kids beside the tents of the shepherds." What is this? That the one who does not know himself falls out of the flock of the sheep and becomes a companion of the kids, whose place was thrust off to the left; for so the good shepherd set the sheep on his right and separated the kids from the better portion to the left. From the counsel of the bridegroom's friends, then, we are taught that we must look at the very nature of things and not guess at the truth by following misleading footprints.

The account of these things must be set out more clearly. Many people do not themselves judge how things are by nature, but looking to the custom of those who went before them they miss the sound judgment of what is, putting forward as the criterion of the good not intelligent reasoning but irrational custom. Hence they push themselves into offices and powers and the distinctions of the world, and set great store by material pomp, though it is unclear where each of these will end after the present life. For custom is not a safe guarantor of what is to come; its end is often found to be a flock of kids, not of sheep. You surely understand the word from the voice of the Gospel. … The one who looks to what is proper to human nature, that is, reason, will despise irrational custom and will choose as good nothing [but what] brings gain to the soul. So we must not look at the footprints of the herds, which those who have gone through life before us have imprinted with their heels on earthly life; for the judgment of what is preferable is hidden from what appears, until we are outside of life and learn there whom we have followed. The one, then, who does not distinguish good from worse by the things themselves, but follows the footprints of those who have gone before, setting up the past custom of life as the teacher of his own life, often fails to notice, at the time [of judgment] … So we can hear the friends saying this: "You, soul, who have become beautiful from black, if you care that the grace of your comeliness should last with you for ever, do not wander after the footprints of those who have gone before [and fall away] from the just judgment, becoming a kid instead of a sheep … [as you pass through] life. For it is unclear whether what appears is not a track of kids; following them behind, since those who wore the path with their footprints are not visible to you, once you have passed through life and slipped into the fold of death, you may be added to the flock of kids, which you were following without knowing it through their footprints." For "if you do not know yourself, beautiful among women, go out in the footsteps of the flocks and pasture the kids beside the tents of the flocks." This can be understood more clearly through another copy, so that the construction of the words does not seem disjointed. For it says: "If you do not know yourself, O beautiful among women, you have gone out from the footsteps of the flock and pasture kids instead of the tents of the flocks"; so that the sense appearing in these words agrees exactly with the contemplation of the passage given above.

So that you may not suffer this, then, "Take heed to yourself," as the word says. For this is the safe safeguard of good things: know how far above the rest of creation you have been honoured by your maker. Heaven did not become an image of God, nor the moon, nor the sun, nor the beauty of the stars, nor any other of the things that appear in creation. You alone have become a likeness of the nature that surpasses all mind, a resemblance of the incorruptible beauty, an impression of the true Godhead, a vessel of blessed life, a stamp of the true light; looking to it you become what it is, imitating the one who shines in you by the ray reflected from your purity. Nothing among beings is so great that it can be measured against your greatness. The whole heaven is enclosed in God's span, and earth and sea are held in the hollow of his hand. Yet he who is so great and such, who grips the whole creation in his palm, becomes wholly contained by you and dwells in you, and is not cramped as he passes through all your nature, he who said, "I will dwell in them and walk among them." If you look to these things, you will not occupy your eye with anything on earth. What am I saying? Not even heaven will seem wonderful to you. For how can you admire the heavens, O man, when you see that you are more lasting than the heavens? For they pass away, but you remain for eternity with the one who always is. You will not marvel at the breadth of the earth or at seas stretched out without limit, over which you were appointed to preside, like the charioteer of a pair of colts, having these elements obedient and subject to your will. For the earth serves you for the needs of life, and the sea, like a colt that answers the rein, offers you its back and receives man as its rider. If, then, you know yourself, O beautiful among women, you will look down on the whole world, and, looking always to the immaterial good, you will disregard the error of the footprints of this life. Always take heed to yourself, then, and you will not wander off among the flock of kids; you will not be shown at the time of judgment a kid instead of a sheep, nor be separated from the seat on the right; but you will hear the sweet voice that says to the woolly and gentle sheep, "Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." May we too be counted worthy of it, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom belongs the glory to the ages of ages. Amen.