Homilies on the Song of Songs 4

"Behold, you are beautiful, my close one; behold, you are beautiful; your eyes are a dove's. Behold, you are beautiful, my beloved, and indeed comely. Our couch is shaded; the beams of our houses are cedars, our panelled ceilings cypresses. [I am a flower of the plain, a lily of the valleys.] As a lily among thorns, so is my close one among the daughters. As an apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the sons. In his shade I desired and sat down, and his fruit was sweet in my [throat]. Bring me into the house of wine; set love upon me. Strengthen me with ointments, heap me up with apples, for I am wounded by love. His left hand is under my head, and his right hand will embrace me. I have adjured you, daughters of Jerusalem, by the powers and by the strengths of the field, that you do not rouse or awaken love [until it pleases]."

They say that those who refine gold, if the beauty of its brilliance has been dulled by some [impurity], cure the bad colour by melting it in the fire, and do this many times, and at each melting look to see how much brighter the gold has become in the following melting compared with the one before, and do not stop purifying the material by fire until the very form of the gold bears witness to itself that it is pure and unadulterated. Why we have mentioned these things as we take up the contemplation of the present reading will become clear to us from the very sense of what is written. Human nature was at the beginning something golden, shining with its likeness to the undefiled good; but afterwards it became discoloured and black through the admixture of wickedness, as we heard at the beginning of the Song from the bride, that neglect of the vineyard made her black. Curing her ugliness, God, who fashions all things in wisdom, does not devise some new beauty for her that did not exist before, but leads her back to the first grace, by the dissolving of what [had been mixed] with evil, toward the undefiled. Just as, then, the exact assayers of gold, after the first melting, look to see how far the material has advanced in beauty by spending its dross in the fire, and again, after a second melting, if it was not sufficiently purified compared with the first, reckon the beauty added, and doing the same many times always recognize the additions of beauty by their expert testing, so now the one who cures the blackened gold, having made the soul bright as in a melting pot by the remedies applied to her, in what went before bore witness to the comeliness of a horse in what appeared; but now he welcomes the beauty that has appeared in her at last as that of a virgin. For he says, "Behold, you are beautiful, my close one; behold, you are beautiful; your eyes [are a dove's]."

By what is said the word teaches that this is the recovery of beauty: to come close to the spring of the beautiful and draw near again to the true beauty from which she had gone away. For he says, "Behold, you are beautiful, my close one." "This is why you were not beautiful before, because, estranged from the archetypal beauty, you were made like the loathsome by your wicked neighbourhood with evil." What is said is this. Human nature has come into being receptive of whatever it wills, and toward whatever the inclination of its free choice leads it, according to that it is changed. Receiving the passion of anger, it becomes angry; and when desire prevails, it is dissolved into pleasure. When the inclination is toward cowardice and fear and each of the passions, it puts on the forms of each passion; just as, on the contrary, receiving in itself patience, purity, peaceableness, freedom from anger and from grief, courage, fearlessness, it marks the character of each of these on the state of the soul, being calm in tranquillity. Since virtue stands directly opposed to wickedness, it follows that both cannot be present at the same time to one person. For the one who has departed from self-control is surely in the licentious life, and the one who has loathed the impure life has achieved the unstained by turning away from evil. So too with all the rest: the humble-minded is separated from arrogance, and the one who has puffed himself up with vanity has thrust humility away. What need to spend time in listing each? How, in things opposed by nature, the absence of one becomes the presence and existence of the other … Since, then, our free choice is such that it has power to be conformed to whatever it wishes, … the word rightly says to the one made beautiful: "Having departed from the fellowship of evil you have drawn near to me; and having come close to the inaccessible beauty you too have become beautiful, formed like a mirror by my character." For human nature is truly like a mirror, changed according to the reflections of its free choices. If it sees gold, it appears gold and shows the same gleams of the material by reflection; and if something loathsome appears in it, it takes the impress of its ugliness by likeness too, imitating in its own way a frog, or a toad, or a centipede, or some other unpleasant sight, whichever of these it is found to face. Since, then, the soul purified by the Word, having put evil behind its back, has received the sun's disc in itself and has shone together with the light seen in it, for this reason the Word says to her, "You have now become beautiful by coming close to my light, drawing to yourself the fellowship of beauty by your nearness." "Behold, you are beautiful," he says, "my close one."

Then, waiting, and as it were seeing her come to an addition and intensification of beauty, he takes up the same word again, saying, "Behold, you are beautiful." But in the first case he called her his close one; here, the one known by the form of her eyes; "for your eyes," he says, "are a dove's." For earlier, when she was likened to a horse, the praise was for [her cheeks] and neck; but now, when her own beauty has appeared, the grace of her eyes is praised. And the praise of the eyes is that they are a dove's eyes, which seems to me to show some such sense as this: since the faces of those who gaze into them are seen in the pure pupils of the eyes (for those who are expert in such natural science say that the eye produces sight by receiving the impact of the images that flow off visible things), for this reason the form of the dove appearing in their pupils becomes praise of the comeliness of the eyes. For whatever one gazes at, he receives its likeness in himself. Since, then, the one who no longer looks to flesh and blood looks to the spiritual life, as the apostle says, living by the spirit, walking by the spirit, putting to death the deeds of the body by the spirit, and becoming wholly spiritual, not soulish or fleshly, for this reason the soul freed from bodily attachment is testified to have the form of the dove in her eyes, that is, to have the character of the spiritual life shining in the soul's power of sight. Since, then, her eye has become pure, receptive of the dove's character, she is therefore able to behold the beauty of the bridegroom too. For now for the first time the virgin gazes at the bridegroom's form, when she has the dove in her eyes. "For no one can say 'Lord Jesus' except in the Holy Spirit." And she says, "Behold, you are beautiful, my beloved, and indeed comely. Since nothing else seems beautiful to me, but I have turned away from everything that was formerly counted among beautiful things, my judgment of the beautiful no longer goes astray, so as to think anything beautiful besides you: not human praise, not glory, not distinction, not worldly power. For these, to those who look to the senses, are coloured with the appearance of the beautiful, but are not what they are thought to be. How could anything be beautiful that has no subsistence at all? For what is honoured in this world has its being only in the opinion of those who think it to be. But you are truly beautiful; not only beautiful, but always such by the very essence of the beautiful, always being what you are, neither blooming for a season nor in turn shedding the bloom at a season, but stretching your loveliness along with the eternity of your life; whose name is love for mankind. For Christ has risen for us from Judah, and the people of the Jews is a brother of the one who comes to you from the nations; rightly, because of the manifestation of your Godhead that came about in the flesh, [you are named] the beloved (adelphidos) of the [soul from the nations]."

Then she added, "Our couch is shaded." That is, [the couch] made shaded by the economy. "For you came," she says, "the beautiful, the beloved, the comely, to our couch, having yourself shaded the unmixed ray of the Godhead … by covering yourself with the form of a slave. Who could have endured your appearing? For no one shall see the face of God and live. You came, then, the comely one, but having become such as we are able to receive. You came, overshadowing the rays of the Godhead with the covering of the body. For how could mortal and perishable nature have been able to be joined in the undefiled and inaccessible union, unless the shade of the body had mediated toward the light for us who live in darkness?" The bride calls it a couch, expressing by a figurative meaning the mingling of human nature with the divine; just as the great apostle too joins us to Christ as a virgin and dresses the soul as a bride, and says that the joining of the two into the fellowship of one body is the great mystery of the union of Christ with the church. For having said, "The two shall become one flesh," he added, "This mystery is great; but I speak with reference to Christ and the church." Because of this mystery, then, the virgin soul named the fellowship with the divine a couch. And this could come about in no other way than by the Lord's appearing to us shaded through the body.

He is not only bridegroom but also builder, himself fashioning the house in us and becoming [the whole of] the art. For he puts a roof on the house, beautifying the work with incorruptible material; such are the cedar and the cypress, the strength in whose wood is superior to every cause of decay … Of these, the cedars, because they are long, span the breadth of the house in the roof; the cypresses, through what is called panelling, beautify the inner construction of the house. The wording runs thus: "The beams of our houses are cedars; our panelled ceilings cypress." The riddles shown through the woods are surely clear to those who follow the train of thought. In the Gospel the Lord calls the various assaults of temptations rain, saying of the one who built his house well on the rock, "The rain came down, and the winds, and the rivers came, and the building remained unharmed by them." Because of this evil downpour, then, we need such beams. These would be the virtues, which do not admit the inflow of temptations within themselves, being firm and unyielding, and [keeping] in temptations what cannot be softened toward evil. We may learn what is said from the [saying] in Ecclesiastes, which says, "Through sloth the roofing will sink, and through idleness of hands the house will leak." For just as, if the timbers that span the roof are weak and slack through thinness, and the master of the house is lazy about care for the roof, he gets no benefit from the covering, since the rain [comes through] … the roof, yielding to the weight of the water, and the slackness of the timbers does not hold out against the force of the weight but gives way; for this reason the water passes through to the inside, and these drops, according to the proverb, drive a man out of his own house on the day of rain. So by the riddle of the parable he commands [us to be] unyielding against the inflow of temptations through the strength of the virtues, lest, softened by the falling in of the passions, we become hollow and receive into our storerooms the inflow of such waters running from outside into the heart, by which our stored goods are ruined.

These are the cedars of Lebanon, which the Lord planted, in which the sparrows will make their nests, among which the stork's nest leads. These cedars, then, the virtues, [roof] the house of the bride …, [the souls] becoming sparrows and flying above the snares, whose leader is the stork's nest, which the word calls … They say that this bird is averse to mixing [with others] … and is held back by some necessity of nature, signifying distaste. Hence the word seems to me to signify purity in a riddle by this name. … [The wise master-builder Paul fitted] such things together well and harmoniously, he who says, "Let all things among you be done decently and in order." These, then, are the beams the bride sees on the roofs of the pure bridal chamber. She also sees the ornament of cypress through a well-smoothed and harmonious joining; for she said that what is done is the panelled ceilings of the roof, and panelling is said to be a rhythmic and carved fitting of boards that variegates the beauty of the ceiling. What, then, do we learn from these? Cypress is fragrant by nature and does not admit rot, and is well suited for all the craftsmanship of carpentry, becoming smooth and well fitted, and suitable for ornamentation by carving. By what is said, then, I think we are taught not only that the virtues must be achieved as a settled state in the soul invisibly, but also that we must not be careless of seemliness in what appears. For we must take thought for what is honourable before the Lord and before men; be made manifest to God, persuade men, have a good testimony from outsiders, shine with works of light before men, and walk becomingly toward those outside. These are the panelled ceilings, wrought skilfully in the seemliness of life through the fragrance of Christ, of which the cypress is a riddle, as …

When these have been achieved in this way, an increase of the beauty in us takes place, the broad plain of our nature giving forth the fragrant and pure flower. The flower's name is lily, whose natural brilliance hints at the gleam of self-control. For the bride relates these things about herself, saying: "After the bridegroom came to our couch, shaded by the body, who built himself the house, having roofed my covering with the cedars of the virtues and [panelled] the roof with the fragrance of [cypresses], I have become a flower of the plain of nature, differing from the other flowers in colour and fragrance. For I sprang up a lily from the valleys." The wording runs thus: "I am a flower of the plain, a lily of the valleys." For truly the soul cultivated by what we have contemplated [has become a flower] in the breadth of nature. For when we heard "plain", we understood the breadth of human nature, because it is receptive of many and countless thoughts and words and lessons. The soul, then, laboured over in the said way by the one who cultivates our nature, springs up as a fragrant, bright and pure flower from the plain of our nature. And this plain, even if it is called a valley in comparison with the heavenly way of life, is no less a plain, and the soul well cultivated in it is not hindered from becoming a flower; for the shoot rises from the hollow to the height, as one can see happening with the lily. For the stalk of the lily, running up far and straight from the root like a reed, then gives forth the flower from its top, setting it a considerable distance from the earth, so that, I think, its beauty may remain pure in the air, [not] soiled by [contact] with the earth.

For this reason the righteous eye [of the bridegroom, seeing] the one who has become this, or [wishes] to become it (for we have understood both from what is said: either that she boasts as having already become what she longed for, or that she asks the farmer to become a flower, running up through his wisdom from the valleys of human life into the beauty of a lily); whether, then, she wishes to become this, or has already become what she wished, the righteous eye of the bridegroom, looking at the good desire of the one who looks to him, rightly nodded assent that she should become a lily, not choked by the thorns of life, which he named daughters, showing, I think, by implication [the ones] whose father is named the inventor of evil. "As a lily among thorns," he says, "so is my sister among the daughters." See how much advance in the ascent to the height takes place in the soul. The first ascent was to be likened to the mare that destroys the Egyptian power. The second ascent was to become close and to make her eyes a dove's. The third ascent, then, is to be named no longer close but sister of the Master. "Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven," he says, "he is my brother and sister and mother." Since, then, she has become a flower, not harmed at all by the thorn-bearing temptations so as to keep her from becoming a lily, and, forgetting her people and her father's house, has looked to the true Father, she is therefore named sister of the Lord, adopted into this kinship by the spirit of adoption. And freed from fellowship with the daughters of the falsely named father, she becomes again higher than herself, and sees the mystery through the dove's eyes, I mean by the spirit of prophecy. What she says is this: "[As an apple tree among] the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the sons." What, then, has she beheld? Holy Scripture customarily calls the material life of human beings a forest, which hides the various kinds of passions, whose nature, remaining inactive in light and sun, has its strength through darkness. For after the sun sets, the prophet says, when night comes on, the beasts come out of their dens in it. Since, then, the solitary boar fed in the forest ravaged the fair vine of human nature, as the prophet says, "The boar from the forest ravaged it, and the solitary wild beast fed on it," for this reason … [the Lord, appearing among] the powers hostile to human life … [became an apple tree among the trees of the forest, and she sat in his shade,] "and his fruit was sweet in my throat." The apple tree, by being a tree, is of the same substance as human material; for he was tempted in all things in likeness, without sin. But by bearing such fruit, through which the senses of the soul are sweetened, it differs more from the forest than the lily from the thorns. For the lily has its delight only as far as appearance and fragrance; but the grace of the apple is fittingly divided among three senses, gladdening the eye with the loveliness of its form, sweetening the sense of smell through its fragrance, and becoming food [for taste] … So the bride saw her own difference from the Master: that he becomes for us the grace of the eyes, being light; ointment for the smell; and life for those who eat. "For the one who eats him will live," as the Gospel says somewhere. But human nature, perfected through virtue, becomes a flower, not feeding the farmer but adorning itself. For he does not need our goods, but we need his, as the prophet says, "For you have no need of my goods." That is why she sees the bridegroom, the purified soul, as an apple tree come to be among the trees of the forest, so that, grafting into herself all the wild branches of the forest, she may make them abound with like fruit. Just as, then, we understood the daughters, because they were likened to thorns, to be the children of the falsely named father, who, growing up beside the flower, in time pass over themselves to the grace of the lily, so here too, hearing of those likened to such trees of the forest, we took it that not friends of the bridegroom are signified but his opponents, whom, being sons of darkness and children of wrath, he refashions by sharing his fruit into sons of light and sons of day. That is why the soul whose senses are trained says, "His fruit was sweet in my throat"; and the fruit is surely the teaching. "For how sweet to my throat are your words," says the prophet, "more than honey to my mouth."

"As an apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the sons. In his shade [I desired and sat down, and his fruit was sweet in my throat]." For the senses of the soul are truly sweetened by the Word when the shade of the apple tree walls us off from the blaze of temptations, [so that we are not] scorched by such a sun boiling over our bare head. And one cannot be refreshed under the shade of the tree of life otherwise than by desire leading the soul up to it. You see why the desiring power is placed in you: to make you long for the apple tree, whose enjoyment is manifold for those who come near. For the eye rests on the loveliness of its beauty, the nostril breathes its fragrance, the body is fed, the mouth is sweetened, the burning heat is turned away, and the shade becomes a throne, on which the soul sits that has refused the seat of the pestilent.

Then she says, "Bring me into the house of wine, set love upon me; strengthen me with ointments, heap me up with apples, for I am wounded by love." [See] how the one well [likened] to the horse runs the divine course, straining forward [with ever-renewed] leaps to what lies ahead and not turning back to what is behind. How much she has obtained in what went before, and she still thirsts! And the intensity of her thirst is so great that she is not content with the mixing bowl of wisdom, nor does she think it enough to cure her thirst that the whole bowl should be poured into her mouth; but she seeks to be brought into the very house of wine, and to hold her mouth under the winepresses themselves overflowing with sweet wine, and to see the cluster pressed in the winepresses, and that vine which nourishes such a cluster, and the farmer of the true vine, who makes the cluster so well nourished and sweet. It would be superfluous to examine each of these, since the figurative meaning seen in each is plain. She surely wishes also to see that mystery, how the bridegroom's garments are reddened in the winepress, of which the prophet says, "Why are your garments red, and your clothing as from a trodden winepress?" For these reasons and the like she longs to be inside the house in which is the mystery of the wine. Then, once inside, she leaps up again to the greater. For she seeks to be subjected to love. And God is love, according to John's word; and David declared that the soul's being subjected to him is salvation. "Since, then, I have come," she says, "into the house of wine, subject me to love," or, "set love upon me." However you take the inversion of the word, the same is signified by each: being set under love, and love being set upon her.

Or perhaps we are also taught by this saying a doctrine of the more refined kind: what kind of love it is fitting to offer to God and how to be disposed toward others. For if all things must be done in order and decently, much more is order fitting in such matters. For Cain would not have been condemned for dividing wrongly if, together with offering rightly, he had kept what was fitting in order, both in what was left for his own use and in what was consecrated to God. For when he should have offered the first-fruits of the sacrifice to God from the first produce, he filled himself with the more valuable and received God with the leftovers. One must know, then, the order of love which he sets forth through the law: how God must be loved, how one's neighbour, and one's wife, and one's enemy, lest the fulfilment of love become disordered and confused. For God must be loved with all one's heart and soul and strength and perception; one's neighbour as oneself; one's wife, if one is of a purer soul, as Christ loved the church; but if one is more passionate, as one's own body; for so the one who ordained such things commands; and the enemy, by not returning evil for evil but repaying injustice with kindness. But now one can see love confused and disordered among most people, working astray through unfitting disharmony. For money and honours and women, if they happen to be warmly disposed toward them, they love with all their soul and strength, so that they would even be willing to give their life for them; but God only as much as seems fitting; and to their neighbour they would barely show the love prescribed for enemies. And their attitude toward those who hate them is to take revenge on those who first grieved them with a greater evil. "Set love upon me, then," she says, "so that I may offer to God as much as is owed, and in the case of each of the others not miss the fitting measure." Or perhaps one may also understand this by the word: "Since, having been loved at the first, I was counted among the enemies through disobedience, but now I have come back to the same grace, joined to the bridegroom through love, confirm for me," she says, "the ordered and immovable state of this grace, you friends of the bridegroom, keeping for me by care and attention, with firmness, my inclination toward the better."

Having said this, she goes up again to what is higher; for she seeks to be strengthened with ointments for the stability of good things. "Strengthen me," she says, "with ointments." O paradoxical and new supports! How do ointments become the pillars of a house? How is the firmness of a roof's construction propped up by fragrance? Or is it quite clear that the matter of the virtues, achieved in us in many forms, is also named according to the differences of their activities? For virtue is not only seeing the good and coming to participate in the better, but also being preserved unchangeable in the good. The one, then, who wishes to be strengthened with ointments seeks to come to be in the virtues. For virtue is ointment, because it is separated from all the stench of sins. One might wonder also at the sequence of what is said: with what she desires the house to be heaped. Not with brambles and thorns and grass, or straw (or rather, as the apostle says, not with wood and straw and grass), with which material houses are built; but apples become the heaping of the house's roof. For she says, "Heap me up with apples," so that this fruit may become all in all to her: beauty, ointment, sweetness, food, refreshment through shade, the throne that gives rest, the pillar that makes firm, the roof that covers. For as beauty it is seen with desire, as ointment it sweetens the smell, as food it fattens the body and sweetens the taste, as shade it cools the burning heat, as a throne it rests weariness, as the roof of a house it becomes a covering for the one who dwells in it, as a pillar it gives steadfastness, as a visible apple it adorns the ceiling. For what more beautiful sight could one imagine than an arrangement of apples, when the well-arranged fruit, continuously joined on some flat surface, is variegated to the sight, the red of the fruit mingled with the whitish? If, then, it were possible to see an arrangement of apples hanging above from a flat surface, what would be more elegant than such a sight? This is not impossible in the desire for intelligible goods. For the form of that fruit is not heavy, weighed down and dragged toward the earth, but has by nature its inclination toward the height. For virtue grows upward and looks upward. That is why the bride desires the ceiling of her own house to be adorned with the beauty of such apples.

But it does not seem to me that the word is primarily concerned with this, that some visible sight should be seen on the heap through the arrangement of apples. For what guidance toward virtue would come from these, unless some thought that profits us were in what is said? What, then, do we conjecture? The one who out of love for mankind sprouted up in the forest of our nature, by sharing in flesh and blood, became an apple tree. For in this fruit one can see by its colour a likeness to each of these. By its whiteness it imitates the particular quality of flesh, and the red coloured over it is testified by its form to be akin to the nature of blood. When, then, the soul that delights in divine things desires to see this roof …, we are taught this by the riddle: from looking upward and attending to the apples we are guided to the heavenly way of life through the teachings of the Gospel, which the one who comes from above and is above all showed us through his manifestation in the flesh, having shown in himself the examples of all good ways of life, as the Lord says, "Learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart." The apostle too, setting forth humility for us, says the same; for it is possible to confirm the whole truth in discourse through one contemplation. For to those who look to the things above he says, "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave," he who came to dwell in life through flesh and blood, and instead of the joy set before him willingly came into a share in our lowliness, and descended even to the experience of death. That is why the bride says, "Heap me up with apples," so that, looking always to the height, I may see the examples of good things shown in the bridegroom. There is gentleness, there freedom from anger, there forgetfulness of wrongs toward enemies, love toward those who grieve us, [repaying] wickedness with kindness, … patience, [freedom] from all vainglory and deceit.

Having said this, she praises the archer for his good aim, since he directed the arrow well at her. "For I am wounded by love," she says. She shows in her word the arrow that lies deep in her heart. The archer of the arrow is love; and we have learned from holy Scripture that God is love, who sends his chosen arrow, the only-begotten Son, upon those who are being saved, having coloured the threefold edge of the point with the Spirit of life. The point is faith, so that in whomever it comes to be, it brings in the archer together with the arrow, as the Lord says, "I and the Father are one," and, "we will come and make our dwelling with him." The soul, then, raised up through the divine ascents, sees in herself the sweet arrow of love by which she was wounded, and makes the wound her boast, saying, "I am wounded by love." O beautiful wound and sweet blow, through which life slips into the inner parts, the opening made by the arrow opening for her as it were a door and entrance! For as soon as she received the arrow of love, the shooting was at once changed into bridal delight. It is clear how the hands handle the bow, dividing their activities for the use. The left grips the bow; the right draws the string toward itself, pulling the arrow by its notch while it is aimed at the target by the left hand held out in front. She, then, who a little before had become the target of the arrow, now sees herself in place of the arrow in the archer's hands, the right and the left holding the arrow in different ways. But since, through the figure of the wedding, the meanings of the contemplations are carried forward in sequence, he did not make the arrow's point held by the left hand, nor the right holding the other end, so that the soul might become an arrow in the hand of the mighty, aimed at the target above; but he made the left hand placed under the head in place of the point, and the rest held by the right, so that, I think, the word might philosophize at once in the double riddles about the divine ascent, showing that the same one is both our bridegroom and archer, using the purified soul both as bride and as arrow: as an arrow, aiming her at the good target; as a bride, taking her up to share in incorruptible eternity, granting length of life and years of life through his right hand, and through his left the wealth of eternal goods and the glory of God, in which those who seek the glory of the world have no share. That is why she says, "His left hand is under my head," through which the arrow is aimed at the target; "and his right hand," holding me and drawing me to himself, makes me light for the upward flight, sent there and yet not separated from the archer, so that I am at once carried by the shot and at rest in the Master's hands. And the proverb states the particular qualities of these hands: that length of life and years of life are in the right hand of wisdom, and in her left wealth [and glory].

Then she turns her word to the daughters of the Jerusalem above. The word is an exhortation, given with an oath, to make love abound and increase always, until he who wills all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth makes his will effective. The word she spoke is this: "I have adjured you, daughters [of Jerusalem], by the powers and by the strengths of the field, that you do not rouse or awaken love until it pleases." An oath is a word that confirms the truth by itself; and the working of an oath is double. Either one confirms the truth to the hearer himself, or by adjuring one lays on others the necessity of not lying at all. For example: "The Lord swore truth to David, and he will not set it aside"; here the faithfulness of the promise is made fast by the oath. But when Abraham, taking thought for a noble marriage for his only son, commands his own servant not to [take] any of the race of Canaan, those [condemned] to slavery, in marriage for Isaac, lest mixture with a servile race spoil the nobility of the succession, but to arrange the marriage for the boy from his ancestral land and kindred, he lays on him the necessity of not being slack about the command by adjuring him, that he would do through him all that he had decided about the boy. So the servant is adjured by Abraham to arrange a fitting marriage for Isaac. The working of an oath being double, then, here the soul that has run up to such a height as we contemplated in what was examined before, setting forth for the souls being instructed the progress toward perfection, does not by an oath give her hearers certainty about what she herself has obtained; but by adjuring them she leads them by the hand to the life of virtue, so that they may keep their love sleepless and wakeful until his good will comes to its fulfilment. And this is that all should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. As the adjuring there was done by the patriarch's thigh, so here it is by the powers and by the strengths of the field, the word saying thus: "[I have adjured] you, daughters of Jerusalem, by the powers and by the strengths of the field, that you do not rouse or awaken love until it pleases."

We must consider in these words, then, first what the field is; then what the strength of the field is, and the power, and whether these differ from one another or one thing is signified by both; besides these, what is the rousing and what the awakening of love. For "until it pleases" has been shown already by what was said … That the Master's voice signifies the world by the field is clear to everyone from the Gospels; and that the form of this world passes away and nothing firm is shown in unstable nature is clear from the loud voice of Ecclesiastes, who counted everything that appears and passes away among vanities. What, then, is the power of such a field, which is the world? Or what is the strength, the mention of which makes the command to the daughters of Jerusalem inviolable by the adjuring? For if we look to what appears, as if there were some power in it, Ecclesiastes strikes out such a supposition, calling vain everything shown and sought in these things. For the vain does not subsist; and what does not subsist in being has no strength. Or perhaps through the plural meaning of "power" we can find some conjecture of the thought? For we know such a distinction in holy Scripture in the case of such names: when power is spoken of in the singular, the mind is referred by such a word to the divine; but when it is uttered in the plural form, it presents the angelic nature in the word. For example, "Christ, the power of God and the wisdom," here by the singular it made known the divine. "Bless the Lord, all his powers": here the plural of powers shows the meaning of the intelligible nature of the angels. And the name of strength, taken together with power, has an intensification of the meaning of the thought, Scripture thus [making plain] by repetition what it intends; as in "Lord, my strength and my firm support." For each of the words signifies the same thing; but the combination of words of equal force shows an intensification of what is signified. The plural meaning of powers, then, and the like mention of strengths, seems to lead the hearers' thought to the angelic nature; so that the adjuring offered to the souls being instructed, for confirming what the teaching has decided, is not made by the world that passes away, but by the nature of the angels that remains for ever, to which she bids them look, so that she may confirm by the example the firmness and stability of the life of virtue. For since he has promised that the life after the resurrection will be like the state of the angels (and the one who promised does not lie), it would follow that life in the world should be prepared for what is hoped for afterwards, so that, living in the flesh and spending our time in the field of this world, we do not live according to the flesh nor are conformed to this age, but practise beforehand the hoped-for life through our life in the world. This is why the bride produces in the souls of those being instructed the confirmation through the oath, so that their life achieved in this field may look to the powers, imitating angelic purity through freedom from passion. For when love is roused and awakened in this way, that is, raised up and always increased toward the greater, she said that the good will of God is fulfilled as in heaven so on earth, angelic passionlessness [being achieved] in us too.

This is what we have understood of "[I have adjured] you, daughters of Jerusalem, by the powers and by the strengths of the field, that you do not rouse or awaken love until it pleases." But if some other account should be found that comes closer to the truth of what is sought, we shall receive the grace and give thanks to the one who reveals hidden mysteries through the Holy Spirit, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom belongs the glory to the ages of [ages. Amen].