Homilies on the Song of Songs 9

Homily 9 (Song 4:10–15)

"[How fair have] your breasts [become], my sister bride! How fair have your breasts become from wine, and the fragrance of your garments beyond all spices! Your lips drip honeycomb, bride; honey and milk are under your tongue, and the fragrance of your garments is like the fragrance of frankincense. A garden locked [is my sister bride, a garden locked,] a fountain sealed. Your shoots are a paradise of pomegranates with the fruit of fruit trees, henna with nard; nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with all the trees of Lebanon, myrrh and aloes with all the first perfumes. A fountain of a garden, and a well of living water, and [a stream from Lebanon]."

"If you were raised with Christ, [set your mind on] the things above, not on the things on earth": so says to us the one who speaks in Paul. "For you have died," he says, "and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, your life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed in glory." If, then, we have become dead to the nature below, having moved the hope of life from earth to heaven, and the life in the flesh is hidden in us, according to the proverbial word which says that "the wise hide [perception]," let us wait for the true life, which is Christ, to be revealed in us, so that we too may be revealed in glory, transformed toward what is more divine. So we shall hear the present words as men who have died to the body, not dragged down in mind by what is said. For the one who is dead to passions and desires will carry the meanings of the words over to what is pure and undefiled, setting his mind on the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of the Father, in whom there is no passion, and forgetting low and grovelling thoughts. Let us hear, then, the divine words by which the Word describes the beauty of the undefiled bride; and let us hear them as those who have come to be outside flesh and blood and have been changed in their elements into the spiritual nature.

"How fair have your breasts become, my sister bride! How fair have your breasts become from wine, and the fragrance of your perfumes beyond all spices!" That everyone who does the will of God is his brother and sister and mother, and that the pure virgin betrothed to the Lord, to share in the undefiled bridal chamber, is properly named bride, would be plain to anyone who is not ignorant of the God-inspired words. But as I search out the sense of these divine sayings, I see that it is not mere praise that the Word offers the bride by such a name; rather, I say, the bridegroom goes through the causes of her growth in beauty. She would not have been made fair in the fountains of good teachings, which he names breasts in a figurative sense, had she not first made herself the Lord's sister by good works, and, renewed into virginity through the birth from above, become the betrothed and bride of the one who joined her to himself. So he who named her his sister and bride states the cause of the change of her breasts to what is better and more perfect: they no longer gush with milk, the food of infants, but pour out pure wine for the gladness of the more perfect, whose grace the water of the hucksters has not spoiled.

In what is said the loving kindness is preserved, as in a wedding's delight, with the two in turn returning to each other their loving disposition. For the bridegroom greets the church in turn with the same words with which she had first sung his beauty at the beginning. At once, in her first words, when she longed for the Word from the divine mouth to come into her own mouth (she signified this by the riddle of the kiss), she stated the cause of her desire: that his breasts were good, surpassing the nature of wine by what they supply, and passing all the fragrance of perfumes and spices. Thus she said: "Your breasts are good beyond wine, and the fragrance of your perfumes beyond all spices." In all other matters too we learn this teaching from the divine philosophy: that the Divine always becomes for us such as we show ourselves to God by our free choice. For David testifies in his prophecy that he is good to the good; to those who have become beasts by their way of life another of the prophets says he is a bear and a leopard. By riddles he sets forth beforehand the teachings of the gospel, in which the character of the King's words is seen to be one toward those on the right and another toward those on the left: to some he is good, [to others stern], fitting himself correspondingly to the free choice of those who are judged.

For this reason the Word now makes a fitting return to the bride: in the same terms in which she sang the beauty of the Master, the Lord gives her praise in return. For he too welcomes the change of her breasts to what is better through their activity, because they have stopped bearing milk [and give] wine, [from which] comes gladness for those who are no longer tossed about by infancy, but are able to fill their mouths from the mixing bowl of wisdom and the goods [it offers]. Having praised her breasts for bearing wine, he adds praise of her fragrance, saying: "And the fragrance of your garments beyond all spices."

We must understand such praise by learning from holy Scripture the nature of the spices named. Every sweet-smelling spice is a pleasure to the sense of smell. So let us understand the word to mean by spices whatever Scripture has taught us is fragrant. For example, Noah offers the sacrifice to God, and the Lord smelled an odour of fragrance. So the sacrifice becomes a spice to God. Many sacrifices were offered to God after this through the law, sacrifices of propitiation, of thanksgiving and of peace, of purification, and for sin. Put all these among the spices: the whole burnt offerings and the holocausts, and the partial dedications of the portions set aside, the breast of the victim, the lobe of the liver, the fat over the kidneys, and besides these the frankincense, the [fine flour mixed] with oil, the compounded incense, and everything else that had its nearness to God through fire: let these be in the list of spices. When, then, we hear that the bride's perfume is thought worthy of greater acceptance than all spices, we learn by this word that the mystery of the truth, accomplished through the teaching of the gospel, is alone fragrant to God, preferred above all the spices of the law, since it is no longer covered by type and shadow but has become fragrant by the manifestation of the truth. For if the Lord smelled any of the earlier spices for an odour of fragrance, each of them was thought worthy of acceptance according to the meaning that showed through it, not according to the obvious and bodily form of what was done. This is plain from the prophet's great saying: "I will not accept calves from your house, nor goats from your flocks; for I will not eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats." Yet many animal sacrifices were often made; but even if these are done, what is legislated for you through them in a riddle is something else: that the passions must be slaughtered in you. For "a sacrifice to God," it says, "is a broken spirit; [a broken and humbled heart God] will not despise." Hence comes our sacrifice of praise, which glorifies the one who smells such a fragrance.

Since, then, [the soul that has learned to see beyond] all the types of the law, like Paul, who was a fragrance of Christ, has itself become fragrant by its way of life, breathing out sweetly the perfume of the priesthood and the compounded incense through the varied contribution and mixture of the virtues, it has appeared worthy of the bridegroom's sense of smell, for an odour of fragrance. For this reason the divine perception, as Solomon names it, adds to the bodily spices of the law that immaterial and pure fragrance compounded from the virtues, saying: "And the fragrance of your perfumes beyond all spices."

The next word leads the praise higher, testifying to the abundance of spiritual gifts that has come to her from study and attentiveness. For the proverbial word wishes the disciple of wisdom to go to the bee (and you certainly understand from the disciples who the teacher is), saying to the lovers of wisdom: "Go to the bee, and learn how industrious she is, and how she carries on her work as something solemn; her labours kings and private persons [use] for health." [Understanding] this force of the word, [the bees] carry [what they gather] fittingly to each. And it says that she is longed for by all and held in honour, weak in strength, but having honoured wisdom, and for this reason she has been brought forward as an example of life for the virtuous. "For having honoured wisdom," it says, "she was advanced." By these words it advises us to keep away from none of the good teachings, but, flying over the meadow of the God-inspired words, to [gather] from each something for the acquisition of wisdom, [building] the honeycomb for oneself, laying up this industry in one's own heart as in a hive; constructing, as it were, cells in a honeycomb, separate storehouses for the many kinds of teaching in the memory, unconfused; and so, in imitation of that wise bee, whose honeycomb is sweet and whose sting does not wound, to carry on this solemn work of the virtues continually. For he truly trades, exchanging the labours of this life for the eternal goods, and giving his own labours to kings and private persons for the health of the soul; so that such a soul becomes [longed for] by the bridegroom and held in honour by the angels, perfecting power in weakness through the honour it pays to wisdom.

Since, then, the stories about that wise bee are an example of instruction and love of labour, and the various distributions of spiritual gifts come to those who have laboured in proportion to their zeal, he therefore says to the bride: "Your heart has become full of the honeycombs from every kind of instruction; from there you bring out of the good treasure of the heart the honeyed drops of words, so that your word is honey mixed with milk." For "your lips drip honeycomb, bride," he says; "honey and milk are under your tongue." For your word is prepared, not displaying a uniform benefit to its hearers, but fitted to the capacity of those who receive it, so as to suit both the more perfect and those who are still infants: honey to the perfect, milk to infants. Such was Paul, nursing the newborn with the gentler of his words, but speaking wisdom among the perfect in a mystery, the wisdom hidden from the ages, which this age does not hold, nor its rulers. He says that this provision of honey and milk lies under the tongue, showing by this expression the well-managed and timely use of words. For the one who knows how he ought to answer each person has under his tongue [the teaching suited to] the varied [capacities of] his hearers, [to bring out] in season what is needed.

Having offered such praise to the mouth and tongue of the bride, he passes again to greater praises, saying: "[And the] fragrance of your garments is like the fragrance of frankincense." This word is a kind of philosophy, showing men what the life of virtue looks toward. For the goal of the virtuous life is likeness to the Divine; and for this reason purity of soul, and freedom from admixture with every passionate disposition, are achieved by the virtuous through diligence, so that by a nobler life some stamp of the nature that lies above us may come to be in them too. Since the way of life according to virtue is not uniform or of one kind only, but, as in the making of fabrics the art of weaving makes the garment from many threads, some stretched straight and others drawn across, so too in the virtuous life many things must come together, through which the noble life is woven; just as the divine apostle counts up such threads, through which the weaving of pure works is made, naming love and joy and peace, patience and kindness, and all such things, with which the one is adorned who puts off the perishable and earthly life and puts on heavenly incorruption. For this reason he welcomes the adornment in the bride's clothing as like frankincense in its fragrance.

And yet before this he said that the fragrance of the bride's perfume surpasses all spices, so that this might seem a lowering of the praises, if she who was set above every spice is now likened by comparison to one of the spices, since the Word says: "The fragrance of your garments is like the fragrance of frankincense." But since the incense of frankincense was, for some reason, set apart in a special way for the honour of the Divine, she who was judged to be above all spices is thought worthy of being likened to the one spice that is dedicated to God. So the sense of the riddle is this: "Your clothing of the virtues, O bride, imitates the divine blessedness, being made like the unapproachable nature through purity and freedom from passion." For such is the fragrance of the divine garments that it resembles the frankincense dedicated to the honour of God.

Again, through the next praises we learn how someone may become the Lord's sister and yokefellow, where he says, "A garden locked, my sister bride." So if anyone lays claim to become a bride by cleaving to the Lord, and a sister by doing his will, as the gospel says, let him become a garden in bloom with all the loveliness of plants: the sweet fig, the fruitful olive, the palm with lofty foliage, the flourishing vine; not some thorny bush, nor fleabane, but in their place the cypress and the myrtle. For so the great David and the lofty Isaiah know how to make such a garden lovely. The one says, "The righteous will flourish like a palm"; and, "But I am like a fruitful olive"; and, "Your wife is like a flourishing vine." And by another prophet the one who rests under his own fig tree is called blessed. Isaiah says that instead of the bush the cypress, and instead of the fleabane the myrtle, will spring up. To set out in detail the riddles about each of these trees which the prophecy has shown us would be superfluous, since it is plain to all what the sweet fruit of the fig is: from a most pungent juice it is at first bitter and inedible, but later it becomes a peaceable fruit and sweetens the senses of the soul. And what the olive's bearing of fruit gives us, through the most pungent and bitter juice nourished in the fruit at first, which afterwards by suitable ripening and husbandry it changes into the nature of oil, which becomes the material of light, a release from weariness, a relief from labours, a brightening of the head, and a help for those who compete lawfully in the contests. And how the palm makes its fruit hard for thieves to get at, storing it on high and not bearing it near the ground; and the grace of the vine, and the fragrant cypress, and the sweetness of the myrtle. All these things, understood by a figurative contemplation with reference to the word of virtue, are plain to everyone who listens intelligently, as to what they point to. So the one who has become a garden of such trees, flourishing and well planted, and [fenced] on every side by the hedge of the commandments, [will] give the thief and the beasts no way in against him. For the one who [is fenced] round about with the hedge is not ravaged by the wild boar from the forest. If, then, anyone is a garden and is secured, he becomes sister and bride of the one who says to such a soul, "A garden locked, my sister [bride]."

But this garden also needs a fountain, so that the grove may remain flourishing, continually enriched by the water. For this reason he joined the fountain to the garden in the praises, saying, "A garden [locked], a fountain sealed." The Proverb teaches us the meaning of the fountain by a riddle, where it says: "Let the fountain of water be sweet to you, and let it be yours alone, and let no stranger share it with you." As there it forbids the water of the fountain to be spent on strangers, so here it testifies that the fountain is in no way open to strangers by saying "sealed," which is the same as saying "guarded." What is said is this: properly speaking, in my judgment, the fountain is the thinking power of our soul, which gushes and wells up all sorts of thoughts in us. But the movement of the mind becomes ours when it moves toward what is good for us, giving us every help toward acquiring goods. But when someone turns the activity of his thoughts to the devising of evil, then [the fountain flows to strangers], watering the thorny life with the alliance of wicked thoughts, while the better planting dries up and withers, since no moisture from good thoughts nourishes its root.

Since, then, the seal [gives] security [to what it guards against the] thief, and everything that is not stolen remains intact for its master, the praise here seems to testify to the bride's highest virtue: that her mind remains untouched by enemies, guarded in purity and freedom from passion. Purity seals this fountain for its own Master, with no mud of thoughts disturbing the clearness and airy brightness of the heart. To bring the thought out more clearly, it is this. Of the things in us, some are truly ours, whatever belongs to the soul; others we claim as ours, I mean what concerns the body and external things, thinking through some mistaken supposition that what belongs to another is our own. For what has the immaterial nature of the soul in common with material grossness? [The word does not allow] the fountain of our mind to be spent on what is foreign to us, I mean what concerns the body and external things, but [bids it] busy itself with its own garden, enriching God's planting. We have learned that the virtues are God's planting; and when the thinking power of our soul is occupied with them and flows away to none of the external things, it is sealed with the stamp of the truth by its relation to the good.

Let us see also the force of the next praises. "Your shoots," it says, "are a paradise of pomegranates with the fruit of fruit trees, henna with nard; nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with all the trees of Lebanon; myrrh and aloes with all the first perfumes. A fountain of gardens, a well of living water, rushing from Lebanon." That some vast and extraordinary thought lies in these words, through which the beauty of the soul lifted up according to God becomes a wonder, praised by manifold extravagances of praise, is plain even from the surface wording. But what the true sense is that these words signify, only one would know clearly who knows, as holy Paul did, how to speak the divine mysteries in the Spirit. For how is what is sent out by the bride a paradise of pomegranates? How is the fruit of fruit trees borne from the pomegranates? How do the fruit trees become a list of perfumes and spices? For among the fruits of the fruit trees are henna and nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, and every tree of Lebanon, so that no variety of the spice of Lebanon is missing from those counted; to these are added myrrh and aloes, and all the first perfumes. And she who was earlier named a garden above by the one who praises her is now called a fountain of gardens, and a well of living water rushing from Lebanon. But the true account of these things would be seen, as I said before, by those who can search out the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God. As for us, so that we may not be left wholly without a taste or enjoyment of the goods in this place, we shall bring a few words to the text, making God the Word himself the guide of our effort.

The whole list of praises, both that spoken before these and all that the word has now set before us about her, seems not to look primarily to mere praise, but to put power through what is said for the heart's ascent to what is greater and higher. Thus she is named sister and bride of the Word; and each of these names joins the soul to the bridegroom: the meaning of "bride" makes her one body, as Paul says, with the incorruptible bridegroom, while her zeal for his will leads her into the kinship of a sister, according to the voice of the gospel. Then the nature of breasts that pour out wine instead of milk is praised, and plainly the praise becomes a deed. For [it is not a word only, but the soul's own growth]. Besides this her perfume is judged above all spices. This would not have been so judged had she not truly run up to that height through her advance in the better. After this the honeycombs of [her] word, dripping, are admired, and the mixed provision of wisdom lying under the tongue, milk mixed with honey. And these are power, not words. For, led by the hand by the Word to the ascent of higher things, she grew so much as to make her mouth a fountain of honey and her tongue a storehouse of mixed wisdom, in which the land of promise is seen, flowing with honey and milk. Having lifted her so high by these ascents, the Word leads her higher still, saying that her clothing breathes the fragrance of frankincense, by which the Word testifies that she has put on Christ. For the end of every virtuous life is participation in God; and through frankincense the Divine is indicated.

And not even here did the soul stop, which is always led higher by the Word; but after she has been made like the fragrance of frankincense, she becomes a garden in the likeness of paradise: a garden not, as it was with the first human beings, unguarded and left open, but walled on every side by the memory of the commandment. Do you see how much power she has gained toward what is above? Look again, please, at the ascent beyond this. For she has not only become a garden locked, bearing sweet food as fruit, but she also becomes drinkable to the thirsty, changed into the nature of a fountain, and a sealed one at that. And not even here did she stop, but she reached so far in growth toward the greater that a paradise sprouts from her mouth. For whoever attends to the sense of the Hebrew [finds that] instead of saying, "Your shoots from your mouth," it says, "a paradise of pomegranates." This means: "The word sent out from your mouth is a paradise of pomegranates." And the pomegranates [yield] a wealth of every fruit, with nard, and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, and every kind of Lebanon, and myrrh, and aloes, and the first perfumes.

Since, then, according to the blessing in the psalm, the help coming to her from God, she has set these fair ascents in her heart, always going from strength to strength, the shoots of her mouth are fittingly named a paradise of pomegranates in her more perfect state. The word "shoots" (literally "things sent out") has been fitted aptly to the underlying thought. For what is sent passes from the sender to the receiver. This can be learned from the common use of the word, as the gospel also says that the Word named the disciples sent out to preach the truth "apostles." What, then, is it that the mouth of the bride sends out? Plainly the word of faith, which, coming to be in those who receive it, becomes a paradise, planted in their hearts through hearing. Common usage calls a grove thickly planted and shaded with trees a paradise. So that we may learn the kind of plants that are cultivated by the Word in the souls of believers, it names pomegranates the trees which the Word tends, the Word sent out from the bride's mouth. The pomegranate [has] branches hard to handle [for their thorns], and it encloses and nourishes its fruit in a covering harsh and bitter to the taste. In its own time, after ripening, the fruit shows within, sweet to see and pleasant, honey-like and painless in taste, and [delightful]. For this reason the word sent out from the bride's mouth seems to me to work a paradise of pomegranates in the souls of the hearers, so that we may be taught by what is said not to grow soft in the present life through slackness and luxury, but to choose the life made hard by self-control. For so the fruit of virtue would become unapproachable to thieves, fenced by the astringent covering of self-control, and through a solemn and unsmiling bearing, as by the points of thorns, piercing those who approach with evil intent. But when the season gives the signal for enjoying the fruits, the pomegranate becomes a wealth of food from every kind of fruit tree, the enjoyment of the fruits coming not in sloes or [wild fruits] or the like, but a varied and manifold nature of spices is found from the fruit trees.

[Henna] with nard is a fine pairing, the one hot, the other fragrant. For heat is not praiseworthy in itself, when the heat is a foul-smelling burning; but purity must be attested together with the heat through the fragrance, so that one may become fervent in spirit, which is to be found in the fruit trees; and the other spices, nard, it says, and saffron. The fragrance of nard we learned in the words above; it remains to present the riddle of the saffron in words. Those who have studied the power of this flower say that it stands midway between cold and heat and avoids excess in either direction; so that by this perhaps [the word teaches] us the account of virtue: for every virtue is a mean between evils, between falling short of the good and overshooting it. For example, they say that courage and liberality, the one [is a mean between] cowardice and rashness, the other between stinginess and prodigality. Cowardice and stinginess they say arise in vice by falling short of what is fitting, prodigality and rashness by excess and overshooting; and the mean between the excesses on either side they name virtue. So the account of the saffron might have something to say about virtue, in keeping with the middle position of its power, expressing the condition of virtue as lacking nothing and having nothing superfluous.

But I say, even if what is said is somewhat homely, that the riddle of the saffron perhaps [applies] more properly to the account of faith. For the flower is nourished in a threefold calyx, and the calyx itself, in its airy colour, is a flower. When the covering of the calyxes is opened, there are always found three flowers, fragrant and useful for healing, hidden in the calyxes, alike to one another in size and beauty and fragrance and the particular quality of their power, and the three shown to be one in every respect, in good colour, as has been said, and in fragrance, and in the quality of their power. Beside them grow three others, yellow to look at, but without any quality for any healthful use. About these the inexperienced go astray, who because of their good colour pick the spurious instead of the better. This is what those who err about the faith do now, choosing sophistical deceptions before sound doctrines. Let the hearer's judgment choose from either account what it wishes, whether one of them or both. For in a way both are one, the [possession] of perfect virtue and the possession of the Godhead; for virtue is not outside the Godhead.

Let us pass on to the contemplation of the remaining spices, mentioned in sequence by the word. "Calamus," it says, "and cinnamon," and fruit trees. The fruit trees are those borne as fruit from the pomegranates of the bride's paradise. They say that calamus surpasses the others in fragrance, so that it is [prescribed] by the law also for the holy incense. [Cinnamon] they claim has a varied effect through some natural power, much of which seems beyond belief. For they say that when water is boiling in a cauldron, if only this spice touches it, it cools the water at once; and brought into a fiery bath it changes the stifling heat in the air to coolness; and that it has the nature of destroying the creatures bred from some corruption; and they go through other such things about it which seem beyond the belief of the hearers. For they say that if it is put in the mouth of a sleeper, the sleeper is in no way hindered from answering those who question him, but remains asleep and gives sober and articulate answers word for word. To affirm firmly that this is so, without having learned by experience the truth of what is told of it, would be rash and unconsidered. But since this spice too was counted, by some mystical reason, in the list of the fruit trees, not because it truly grows from pomegranates (for the bride's mouth does not send out such perceptible paradises), but so as to become a symbol of some thought that contributes to the praise of the bride, I do not think it right to leave out the tales told about the cinnamon, both those the word has now gone through and anything else besides that those who describe it see fit to relate. For from what is said some contribution might be made to the praise of virtue, each thing told being clearly taken over to show the perfection of the life of virtue.

For in the instructed and reasoning one may find this cinnamon in the soul, when someone, boiling either with desire or with anger, quenches the passions by reasoning; or when, in the sleep of this life, holding in his mouth this sober cinnamon of reason, like the sleepless and wakeful angels, he displays the sense of what is said unerring and unconfused, imitating by the truth of his word the sleepless nature of the angels, whom no compulsion of any imagining dislodges from the truth. Such a one might be said to make cinnamon well up through his mouth, by which the burning of desire and the boiling of anger around the heart are quenched, and he is cleansed by reason of all the dreamlike imagining and confusion of this life. And let no one, looking at the incredibility of what is said about the cinnamon, slander the word as not offering the bride praise drawn from what is true. For holy Scripture often knows how to take over even certain myths from outside to help its own purpose, and without shame to mention certain names from mythical story, to show more vividly the thought at hand. So with the daughters of Job: the word, marvelling exceedingly at their beauty, showed by their names the surpassing wonder about them, saying that one was called Day, another Cassia, and the third Amalthea's Horn. It is plain to everyone that a Greek myth invented the story of Amalthea, who they fable was a goat that nursed that Cretan; when one of her horns broke off, the myth made every kind of fruit gush from its hollow. Did holy Scripture, then, believe the tales told of Amalthea? It is not so; but by this name it presents the abundance of the goods of virtue, testifying it of Job's daughter, so that one who listens to Scripture with reason may understand the aim of the praise from the name alone and let the mythical marvels go. So too when we hear "Cassia" and "Day," we did not learn from the names either the aromatic material or the sun's course above the earth; we have taken the names as showing their way of life in virtue. Of these, the one indicates the purer and fragrant character of their practices, and Day their seemliness, as the apostle says that those who live purely are named children of light and sons of the day. So here too the things said of the cinnamon do not fail to contribute to the praises of the bride, [for the same reason].

The one who has already become so great, and has reached this height of praises by his way of life, shows in himself in every respect the features of the divine image. This is what the one shows who says, "From all the trees of Lebanon." For those who have observed such things say that the tree from which [frankincense] flows is not of one kind; there is some difference among the trees, the form of the spice varying with the kind of tree. So the one who marks the godlike on himself in all the practices of life shows in himself the beauty of all the trees of Lebanon, by which the divine form is stamped. But no one becomes a partaker of God's glory without first being conformed to the likeness of death. Therefore the praise says this too in the list of spices: that the fruit trees of the pomegranates are the rest of the spices which the word went through, and with them myrrh and aloes and the first perfumes. By the former, I mean the myrrh and the aloes, fellowship in burial is shown, as the lofty gospel says that the burial for the death on our behalf was done with these. By the first perfumes the word shows what is pure and unmixed with all hucksters' tampering; as Amos too reproaches those who live in luxury with these, saying: "Those who drink strained wine and anoint themselves with the first perfumes"; and before this, "Those who eat kids from the flock and calves from the midst of the herds, who clap to the sound of the instruments." There neither does dregs cloud the wine, nor does any mixture spoil the purity of the perfume's fragrance. There, certainly, we must think that the prophecy reproaches the Israelites, because, though they were filled with the unmixed word of Scripture, strained of all dregs, and had the unadulterated fragrance of the perfumes, and enjoyed the spiritual feast in every way, they gained nothing from such luxury, since their evil free choice turned even the clearness of the wine into a muddy stirring-up, and spoiled the purity of the first perfumes by the admixture of wicked thoughts. Here, however, the word testifies to the bride that her doctrines are unadulterated and pure, by her bearing of the first perfumes as fruit.

And not even here did the bride stop, straining herself forward to higher things, nor did the Word stop working with her toward the ascent. For she whose shoots from her mouth are paradises of pomegranates and spices now becomes a fountain, [watering] the paradises that have grown up from her: not as we have learned in the case of Paul and Apollos, where one plants and the other waters, but she does both, at once making the paradises grow and watering them. Or perhaps the praise contains some loftier meaning. For it says that she is a fountain, not of some stream poured out, but of gardens: [a fountain that sends forth] not streams of waters but the gardens themselves, welling them up and making them gush forth. So the divine apostle made living gardens gush forth among those with whom he was, making the paradise of the church grow by his teaching.

Then the word leads the bride by its praises to the very summit, naming her a well of living water, rushing from Lebanon. [What this water is] we have learned from holy Scripture concerning the life-giving nature: at one time the prophecy says in the person of God, "They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water"; again the Lord says to the Samaritan woman, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, 'Give me water to drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water"; and, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture said, rivers of living water will flow from his belly. This he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive." Since, then, everywhere the divine nature is understood by the living water, here the truthful testimony of the word establishes that the bride is a well of water whose flow is from Lebanon. This indeed is the most paradoxical of all. For of all wells, which hold their water collected together, the bride alone has water running through her, so that she has the depth of the well and the perpetual motion of the river. Who could worthily reach the wonders shown, as through the likeness now coming to be in her? Perhaps she no longer has anywhere to rise above herself, having been made like the archetypal beauty in every respect. For she has exactly imitated the fountain with her fountain, the life with her life, the water with her water. The Word of God is living; the soul that has received the Word lives too. That water flows from God, as the fountain says: "I came forth from God and am here." She holds what flows into the well of the soul, and therefore becomes a storehouse of that living water which flows, or rather rushes, from Lebanon, as the word has named it. May we too become sharers in it, having acquired that well, so that, according to the command of wisdom, we may drink our own water and not another's, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory for ever. [Amen.]