Commentary on the Song of Songs 2.155–2.168

The cheeks are the parts of the face in which the modesty and shame of the soul are recognized; by them, no doubt, those among the members of the church are indicated who cultivate the honour of chastity and purity. For their sake, then, it is said to the whole body of the bride: "How beautiful your cheeks have become!" And notice that he did not say, "How beautiful your cheeks are," but "How beautiful they have become," to show that before they were not so beautiful; but after she received the bridegroom's kisses, and he who formerly spoke through the prophets came in person and cleansed his church for himself by the washing of water, made her have no spot or wrinkle, and granted her knowledge of himself, then her cheeks became beautiful. For then chastity and purity and virginity, which had not been before, were spread over the cheeks of the church with beautiful comeliness. This beauty of the cheeks, that is, of purity and chastity, is compared to turtledoves. They say that the nature of turtledoves is such that the male does not go to any female besides one, nor does the female admit more than one male; so that if it happens that one is taken and the other survives, the love of mating is extinguished in it together with its mate. So the likeness of the turtledove is fittingly applied to the church, either because she knows no marriage to another husband after Christ, or because a multitude, as it were, of turtledoves of continence and purity flies about in her. According to this understanding let us also take the bride's neck. These no doubt should be understood as the souls which take up the yoke of Christ, who says: "Take my yoke upon you, for my yoke is easy." Her obedience, then, is called her neck.

Her neck, then, has become beautiful like necklaces, and rightly. For the one whom the disobedience of transgression had formerly made ugly, the obedience of faith has now made comely and beautiful. "Your neck," then, has become beautiful "like necklaces"; for "has become beautiful" is understood with both. By necklaces he means here the clasps or fastenings of ornaments that usually sit on the neck, from which the rest of the ornament hangs and comes down over the whole throat. To the very ornament usually put on the neck and throat, then, he compared the bride's neck. We take this saying thus. We said that the neck means subjection and obedience, because it takes up, as it were, the yoke of Christ and offers obedience to his faith. The ornament of her neck, which is obedience, is therefore Christ. For he first became obedient; and as through the disobedience of one, namely Adam, many were made sinners, so through the obedience of one, namely Christ, many are made righteous. The ornament and necklace of the church's neck, then, is the obedience of Christ. And the church's neck, that is, her obedience, has become like the obedience of Christ, which is the necklace of the neck. Great, then, is the bride's praise in this, great the church's glory, when the imitation of her obedience is made equal to the obedience of Christ, which the church imitates. This same kind of necklace is also mentioned in Genesis, given by the patriarch Judah to his daughter-in-law Tamar when he lay with her as with a harlot. This mystery is not plain to all. It is understood by this: that Christ gave the church, which he had gathered out of the prostitution of many doctrines, these pledges of her future perfection, and put this necklace of obedience on her neck. "We will make you likenesses of gold with studs of silver, until the king is at his couch." We said above that this book is arranged in the form of a drama and woven together by the change of characters; and now these words seem to be spoken to the bride by the friends or companions of the bridegroom, who, according to the mystical understanding, as we have already said above, can be understood as angels, or also prophets, or patriarchs. For it was not only when the Lord was tempted by the devil in the desert after John's baptism that angels came and ministered to him; they always ministered before the coming of his bodily presence.

For the law too is said to have been ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator. And the Apostle, writing to the Hebrews, says: "For if the word spoken through angels proved firm." They, then, were like stewards and guardians appointed for the little bride, together with the law as tutor, until the fullness of time should come and God should send his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, and should lead her out from under the stewards and guardians and the law as tutor, so that she might receive the kisses of the Word of God himself, that is, his teaching and words. Before he was present, then, the bride was cultivated in many things by the ministry of angels, who then appeared to men and spoke what the matter and the time required. For do not think that she is called bride or church only from the coming of the Saviour in the flesh, but from the beginning of the human race and from the very foundation of the world; or rather, to seek the origin of this mystery higher with Paul as guide, even before the foundation of the world. For he says: "As he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and spotless before him in love, predestining us to adoption as sons." And in the Psalms it is written: "Remember your congregation, Lord, which you gathered from the beginning." For the first foundations of the congregation of the church were laid at once from the beginning; hence the Apostle too says that the church is built not only on the foundation of the apostles but also of the prophets. And among the prophets Adam too is counted, because he prophesied the great mystery in Christ and in the church, saying: "For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall be in one flesh." For it is plainly of these words of his that the Apostle says that this mystery is great: "But I speak of Christ and the church."

And the same Apostle, when he says, "For he loved the church so as to give himself up for her, sanctifying her by the washing of water," surely does not show that she did not exist before; for how would he have loved one who did not exist? But no doubt he loved her who existed. And she existed in all the saints who had been from the beginning of the world. Loving her, therefore, he came to her. And since the children shared in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same, and gave himself up for them. For they were the church which he loved, so as either to increase her in number, or adorn her with virtues, or by the charity of perfection carry her from earth to heaven. So the prophets ministered from the beginning, and the angels ministered too. For what else was happening when three men appeared to Abraham as he sat at the oak of Mamre? Although that appearance of angels showed something more than an angelic ministry; for the mystery of the Trinity was being disclosed there. This was so too in Exodus, when the angel of the Lord is said to have appeared to Moses in a flame of fire in the bush. But immediately in what follows it is written that the Lord and God speaks in the angel, and he himself is designated as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Some of the heretics, reading this, said that the God of the law and the prophets is far inferior to Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit; and they carried their impiety so far as to place fullness in Christ and in the Holy Spirit, but imperfection and weakness in the God of the law. But of these things elsewhere. As to how the holy angels, who before Christ's coming took care of the bride while she was still little, are themselves the friends and companions of the bridegroom, who seem to say to her: "We will make you likenesses of gold with studs of silver, until the king is at his couch."

They indicate, then, that they make for the bride not gold (for they did not have such gold as was worthy to be offered to the bride), but instead of gold they promise to make likenesses of gold, and not one likeness but many. They speak likewise of silver; but as having some material of silver, though small, they promise to make for her not likenesses but studs of silver, since they did not have so much material of silver as to produce from it any connected and solid work, but only studs, and certain small marks like dots, which they would insert into the work they were making for her from the likeness of gold. These, then, are the ornaments which the bridegroom's friends, of whom we spoke above, make for the bride. But what secret is contained in these things, and what the very novelty of the expression brings forth, let us pray the Father of the almighty Word and bridegroom that he himself may open to us the bolts of this secret, so that we may be enlightened not only to understand these things but also to set them forth, and receive, according to the measure of those who will read, moderation of spiritual speech. We have often shown in many places that the appearance of gold holds the figure of the invisible and incorporeal nature, and silver the power of word and reason; according to which the Lord too says through the prophet: "I gave silver and gold, but you made silver and gold Baals"; showing and saying by this: I gave you sense and reason by which you could perceive and worship me, God; but you have transferred the sense and reason that are in you to the worship of demons. The words of the Lord too are called pure words, silver tried by fire. And elsewhere the tongue of the righteous is called refined silver. The cherubim are called golden, since they are interpreted as the fullness of the knowledge of God. And the lampstand in the tabernacle of witness was commanded to be made of solid gold; which seems to me to hold the figure of the natural law, in which the law of knowledge is contained.

But why need I collect many testimonies, when it is easy for those who wish to know it that in many places of scripture gold is referred to sense and mind, and silver to word and speech? Now, then, let us hasten to consider how, according to what we have set out, the bridegroom's friends say that they make for the bride likenesses of gold with studs of silver. It seems to me, then, that the law, which was ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator, since it has a shadow of the good things to come, not the very image of the things, and whatever happened to those who are related in the law happened in figure and not in truth: all these were likenesses of gold, not true gold. True gold, namely, is to be understood in the things that are incorporeal and invisible and spiritual; but the likeness of gold, in which there is not the truth itself but a shadow of the truth, is to be taken of these bodily and visible things. For example, this tabernacle made with hands was a likeness of gold, of which the Apostle says: "For Jesus did not enter a sanctuary made with hands, a copy of the true ones, but heaven itself." So the invisible and incorporeal things in heaven are the true things; but these visible and bodily things on earth are said to be copies of the true, not the true things. These, then, are what are called likenesses of gold: among them are the ark of the covenant, the mercy seat, the cherubim, the altar of incense, the table of the presence and the loaves, and also the veil, the pillars and the bars, the altar of burnt offerings, and the temple itself, and everything written in the law. All these were likenesses of gold. And even the visible gold itself, because it was visible, was not true gold, but was a likeness of that true invisible gold. These likenesses of gold, then, the bridegroom's friends, namely the angels and prophets, who ministered in the law and the other mysteries, made for the bride, the church. Paul too, I think, understood this when he said: "In the worship of angels, in what he has seen, puffed up without reason by the sense of his flesh." So all Jewish worship and religion are likenesses of gold. But when someone turns to the Lord and the veil is taken away from him, then he will see the true gold; and before this gold was present and offered itself to be known, his friends made likenesses of it, so that the bride, prompted and stirred by those likenesses, might conceive a desire for the true gold. Paul indicates that these things were done so when he says: "These things happened to them in figure, but they were written for our sake, on whom the end of the ages has come."

But do not understand the end of which Paul speaks as a bodily one. For a bodily end will find many for whom these things were not written; for such people will not receive the understanding of them. But understand the end of the ages as the perfection of things, which is said to have come to Paul and those like him, and for whose sake these things are said to have been written. But we have said these things by way of digression, wishing to show how the bridegroom's friends say to the bride that they make likenesses of gold with studs of silver for her, namely through what they handed down in writing in the law and the prophets through figures, images, likenesses and parables. Yet there are in these also certain small studs of silver, that is, signs of the spiritual sense of the word and of rational interpretation, though very rare and slight. For before the Lord's coming hardly anywhere did any of the prophets open a little of the hidden meaning: for example, Isaiah, when he says, "The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the man of Judah his beloved new planting"; and again elsewhere, "Many waters are many nations." And Ezekiel, naming two sisters Oholah and Oholibah, distinguishes the one as Samaria and the other as Judea. And wherever such things are opened by the prophets' own interpretation, they are called studs of silver. But when our Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ came, making all things known by the word of his power, a sign was given at his passion that what had been held in hiding and was secret would be brought into the light and come to manifestation, by the fact that the veil of the temple, by which the Holy of Holies and the secret things were veiled, was torn from top to bottom, declaring that what seemed covered within would be open to all. So what was ministered through angels and prophets was a likeness of gold, with small and slight studs of silver; but what has been handed down through our Lord Jesus Christ himself is set in true gold and solid silver.

For this likeness of gold with studs of silver made by the bridegroom's friends is not promised to last for ever, but a time is set for it by those very ones who say: "Until the king is at his couch." For when, lying down, he has slept like a lion and like a lion's whelp, and after this the Father has raised him and he has risen from the dead, those who are conformed to his resurrection will no longer remain in the likeness of gold, that is, in the worship of bodily things; but they will receive true gold from them, believing and hoping not for the things that are seen but for those that are not seen, not for the things on earth but for those in heaven, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God; and they will say: "Even if we once knew Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer." They will no longer use small studs of silver, but silver spread out in breadth. For they will hear that in that likeness of gold the rock which is said to have followed and given the people drink is Christ, and the sea is baptism, and the cloud is the Holy Spirit, and the manna is the Word of God, and the Passover lamb is the Saviour, and the blood of the lamb is the passion of Christ, and the veil in the Holy of Holies, by which those divine and secret things were covered, is his flesh; and countless other things will be opened from his resurrection, no longer by a small stud, as before, but disclosed by the broadest exposition.

To make clearer what is said, "Until the king is at his couch," we shall also bring forward the second prophecy of Balaam, which contains this about Christ: "A star shall rise out of Jacob," it says, "and a man shall come forth from his seed, and shall rule many nations. His kingdom shall be exalted above Gog, and his kingdom shall increase. God led him out of Egypt; he has the glory of the unicorn; he shall devour the nations of his enemies, and drain their fatness of its marrow, and pierce them with his arrows. Lying down, he shall rest like a lion and like a lion's whelp. Who shall rouse him?" Consider these things more carefully, then, and see how every likeness of gold is said to stand until the last time, namely until the king's lying down. Here, then, his kingdom shall be exalted above Gog, that is, above the roofs, when it has been carried from earth to heavenly roofs. But we have treated these things more fully on the book of Numbers, as the Lord granted. Let us inquire, indeed, whether to the holy fathers themselves and the prophets who ministered the word before the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ the grace of this perfection and of the true gold was also given; or whether they only understood that these things were to come and foresaw in the Spirit that they would come; and whether it was only for this reason that the Lord said of Abraham that he longed to see his day and saw it and rejoiced, namely because he foresaw future things in the Spirit. And perhaps that saying confirms this more, which says: "Many righteous men longed to see what you see and did not see it, and to hear what you hear and did not hear it." Yet they cannot have lacked the perfection that comes from faith. For what we believe has been done, they believed with greater expectation would be done.

Just as, then, faith in things past brings those who believe since Christ's coming to the height of perfection, so faith in things to come brought them too. But if the exposition is referred to each soul, it will seem that while the soul is still little and imperfect, and placed under guardians and stewards, whether the teachers of the church or the angels who are said to belong to the little ones and always to see the face of the Father who is in heaven, likenesses of gold are made for it, since it is fed not with the solid and strong food of the Word of God, but is steeped in likenesses, as if we were to say it is taught by parables and examples; for whose sake Christ himself is said to grow in age and wisdom and favour with God and men. In these likenesses, then, it is steeped, and small studs of silver are made for it. For sometimes a few rare things from the more secret mysteries are opened even to those who are being instructed, so that they may conceive a desire for greater things. For nothing can be desired if it is entirely unknown. And therefore, to beginners and those placed in the first instructions, just as not everything is to be laid open at once, so the spiritual mysteries are not to be entirely hidden either; but, as the divine word says, studs of silver are to be made for them, and certain sparks of spiritual understanding are to be kindled in their souls, so that they may in some way get a taste of the sweetness to be desired, lest, as we said, if it is entirely unknown, it should not be desired at all. But let no one take our calling the soul little as if it were called little in substance; rather, if anyone lacks instruction and has slight understanding and very little experience, we call that a little soul. So it is fitting that these things be done until the king is at his couch, that is, until such a soul advances so far as to receive the king and have him lying down within itself. For so this king says: "I will dwell in them and walk among them," surely in those who offer such breadth of heart to the Word of God that he is even said to walk about in them, that is, in the more ample spaces of a broader understanding and knowledge. So too he is said to lie down, no doubt, in that soul of which the Lord himself says through the prophet: "On whom shall I rest, but on the humble and quiet one, who trembles at my words?"

This king, then, who is the Word of God, has his couch in that soul which has already come to perfection, provided there is no vice in it, but it is full of holiness, full of piety, faith, charity, peace and all the virtues. For then it delights the king to lie down in it and have his couch there. For it was to this soul that the Lord said: "I and my Father will come, and will sup with him, and make our dwelling with him." Where Christ sups with the Father and makes his dwelling, why should he not lie down? Blessed is the breadth of that soul, blessed the couch of that mind, where the Father and the Son, together, I do not doubt, with the Holy Spirit, lie down, sup and make their dwelling. With what riches, do you think, with what abundance are such guests fed? Peace is the first food there; humility is served with it, and patience, meekness too and gentleness, and what is of the highest sweetness to him, purity of heart. Charity holds the chief place at this banquet. In such a way, then, it will seem that by a third exposition too what he says can be referred to each soul: "We will make you likenesses of gold with studs of silver, until the king is at his couch." "My nard gave forth its fragrance," or "his fragrance". In the form of the drama this seems to be shown: after these words the bride went in to the bridegroom and anointed him with her ointments, and in a wonderful way, the nard, which had not given its fragrance before when it was with the bride, then gave forth its fragrance when it touched the bridegroom's body, so that the nard seems not so much to have given him fragrance as to have taken it from him. But if we read according to the difference found in other copies, "My nard gave forth his fragrance," something still more divine is found: that this ointment of nard with which the bridegroom was anointed took not only its own fragrance, which is naturally in nard, but that of the bridegroom himself, and the nard brought back his fragrance to the bride; so that in anointing him she received the bridegroom's fragrance through the gift of that very ointment, and this is what she seems to say: My nard, with which I anointed the bridegroom, returning to me brought me the bridegroom's fragrance, and, its own natural scent overcome by the bridegroom's fragrance, brought me his sweetness.

This is what the explanation of the historical drama holds; but let us now come to the spiritual understanding. Let us place here the bride, the church, in the person of Mary, who is fittingly said to bring a pound of ointment of pure and precious nard, to anoint the feet of Jesus and wipe them with her hair, and in a way to receive and take back to herself through the hair of her head the ointment imbued with the quality and power of his body; drawing to herself through the hair with which she wiped his feet the fragrance not so much of the nard through the ointment as of the Word of God himself, and putting on her head the fragrance not so much of nard as of Christ; and to say: My nard, poured on the body of Christ, gave back his fragrance. See how these very things are related: "Mary," it says, "brought a pound of ointment of pure and precious nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped them with the hair of her head. And the whole house," it says, "was filled with the fragrance of the ointment." This surely shows that the fragrance of the teaching that proceeds from Christ and the fragrance of the Holy Spirit filled the whole house of this world and the whole house of the church. Or else it filled the whole house of that soul which has received a share in the fragrance of Christ, offering first the gift of its faith like the ointment of nard, and receiving from this the grace of the Holy Spirit and the fragrance of spiritual teaching. What difference does it make, then, whether in the Song of Songs the bride anoints the bridegroom with ointment, or in the Gospel the disciple anoints the teacher and Mary Christ, hoping, as we said, that from this ointment the fragrance of the Word and the sweetness of Christ would return to her, so that by this very thing she may say: "We are the good fragrance of Christ to God"? And since that ointment was full of faith and precious affection, for this reason Jesus too bore witness to her, saying: "She has done a good work for me." So again in the Song of Songs, a little later, he welcomes the bride's shoots, as here Mary's work; for he says: "Your shoots are a paradise with fruit of apples; henna with nard; nard and saffron."

So in these words too he welcomes the bride's shoots and gifts. We have noticed indeed that in the words we have just recalled he put "nard" first in the plural and afterwards in the singular; which I think was said for the reason that the merchant of the kingdom of heaven first trades in many pearls until he comes to the one precious pearl. And perhaps when he said, "Your shoots are a paradise with fruit of apples," he indicates those fruits with many nards which we bring from the teachings and doctrine of the prophets. But our shoots and gifts that come from the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ himself have not many nards but one. But now let us return to her who says, "My nard gave forth its fragrance"; and see whether we can also understand in the present passage that, if ever we are able to expound the Godhead of Christ fully and fittingly, and to set forth his power and majesty with worthy statements, then perhaps that church, or that soul which has been able to expound his glory so clearly, will rightly say: "My nard gave forth its fragrance." Nor should it seem strange if Christ, just as he is a fountain and rivers of living water proceed from him, and just as he is bread and gives life, so too is nard and gives forth fragrance, and is ointment, with which those who are anointed become christs, as he says in the Psalm: "Do not touch my christs." And perhaps, according to what the Apostle says about those who have senses trained to distinguish good and evil, Christ becomes each thing for each sense of the soul. For this reason he is called the true light, so that the eyes of the soul may have that by which they are enlightened; for this reason the Word, so that the ears may have something to hear; for this reason the bread of life, so that the soul's taste may have something to taste. For this reason, then, he is also called ointment or nard, so that the soul's smell may have the fragrance of the Word. For this reason he is also said to be palpable and touchable by the hand, and the Word made flesh, so that the hand of the inner soul can touch the Word of life.

Yet all these things are one and the same Word of God, who, changed in these several ways according to dispositions, leaves no sense of the soul without experience of his grace. "A bundle of the drop is my kinsman to me; he will stay between my breasts," or "will dwell." These are still the words of the bride, speaking, it seems, to the young maidens. Before she had said that her nard had given fragrance to the bridegroom, and that through the ointment with which she had anointed him she had received the fragrance of his scent; but now she says: My kinsman is fragrant to me like a drop, and this not spread out nor scattered at random, but bound up and drawn together, so that the scent of its sweetness may be made denser and stronger. And he, she says, being such, stays and dwells between my breasts, and makes his rest and dwelling in the place of my heart. But since the bride now for the first time has called him her kinsman, and uses this name frequently through almost the whole text of the book, I think it worthwhile first to seek the reason for this name, and to explain what a kinsman is called, or from where. A brother's son is called a kinsman (fratruelis). Let us first ask who is the bride's brother, whose son he is held to be. See whether we can say that the bride is the church from the gentiles, and her brother the former people, and, as the facts show, the elder brother. Since, then, Christ is born from that people according to the flesh, for this reason he is called by the church of the gentiles her brother's son.