Commentary on the Song of Songs 3.184–3.196

Like this, I think, is also what is written: “Under the shadow of your wings I will exult.” And in what follows in this little book the Bride says: “My kinsman is mine and I am his, who feeds among the lilies until the day breathes and the shadows are removed,” teaching by this that the time will come when all shadows will be removed and by the mercy of God the truth alone will lie open. And her saying, “And his fruit was sweet in my throat,” is, I believe, the word of that soul which has nothing dead, nothing insensible in its throat, and is in no way at all like those of whom it is said, “Their throat is an open grave.” For all who bring forth words of death and destruction from their throats have throats that are called graves: such are all who either speak against the true faith or utter anything against the discipline of chastity and righteousness and sobriety. These, then, are the ones whose throats are graves and places of death, from which words of death come forth. But the righteous man says: “How sweet are your words to my throat!” And another, who taught the words of life, says: “Our mouth is open to you, O Corinthians; our heart is enlarged.” And another, who opened his mouth to the word of God, says: “I opened my mouth and drew in the spirit.” Verse 4: “Bring me into the house of wine.” These are still the Bride's words, but directed, I think, to the friends and intimates of the Bridegroom, whom she seems to ask to bring her into the house of gladness, where wine is drunk and banquets are prepared. For she who had already seen the royal chamber now desires also to enter the royal banquet and to enjoy the wine of gladness. We said above that the friends of the Bridegroom are to be understood as the prophets and all who have ministered the word of God from the beginning of the world. To them the Church of Christ, or the soul that clings to the Word of God, may rightly say that they should bring her into the house of wine: that is, where Wisdom has mixed her wine in the bowl and calls through her servants to everyone who is foolish and lacking in sense, saying, “Come, eat my bread, and drink the wine which I have mixed for you.”

This is the house of wine and the house of the banquet, at which banquet all who come from the east and the west will recline with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of God. To this house and this banquet the prophets lead souls, those at least that hear and understand them; and so do the holy angels and heavenly powers who are sent to minister for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation. This is the wine for which those psalms are written that are entitled “for the winepresses.” This is the wine gathered from that vine which says, “I am the true vine,” and which the heavenly Father, the husbandman, has pressed out. This is the wine borne by those branches which abode in Jesus, not only on earth but also in the heavens. For so I hear the saying, “Every branch that does not abide in me cannot bear fruit.” For no one produces the fruit of this wine except one who abides in the Word and in Wisdom and Truth and Righteousness and Peace and all the virtues. This is the wine with which it is counted desirable even for all the righteous and holy to be made drunk. Noah, I think, already then beholding these things in the spirit, is said to have been drunk; and David, marvelling at the cup of this banquet, says, “And your inebriating cup, how excellent it is!” To this house of wine, then, the Church, or every soul that is perfect, desires to enter, and to enjoy the doctrines of wisdom and the mysteries of knowledge as the sweetness of a banquet and the gladness of wine. We must know, of course, that as there is this wine, pressed from the doctrines of truth and mixed in the bowl of wisdom, so there is a contrary wine, when sinners are made drunk with iniquity, as are those who take up the pernicious doctrines of a false knowledge.

Of whom Solomon says in Proverbs: “But these eat the food of ungodliness, and are made drunk with the wine of iniquity.” Of this same wine of iniquity we read in Deuteronomy as well: “Their vine is of the vineyards of Sodom, and their branch from Gomorrah; their grape is a grape of gall, and their cluster is bitterness to them; their wine is the fury of dragons, and the incurable fury of asps.” But the wine that comes from the true vine is always new. For through the progress of learners the knowledge of divine wisdom and understanding is always renewed. And therefore Jesus said to his disciples, “I shall drink it new with you in the kingdom of my Father.” For the knowledge of secrets and the revelation of hidden things is always renewed through the Wisdom of God, not only for men but also for angels and the heavenly powers. Verse 4: “Set love in order in me.” These are words of the same Bride to the same persons, except that perhaps the apostles of Christ too can be counted among those to whom this is said. Her saying, then, “Set love in order in me,” has this sense. All people without doubt love something, and there is no one who has reached the age at which he can love who does not love something; and, as also in the preface of this work, love in some proceeds in its proper order and fittingly arranged, but in most against order. Love is said to be against order in someone when he either loves what he ought not, or loves what he ought but loves it more than is right, or less than is right. In such a person, then, love is said to be disordered; but in those, whom I think very few, who walk along the way of life and turn aside neither to the right nor to the left, in them alone is love ordered and keeps its order. Its order and measure are of this kind, for example: in loving God there is no limit and no measure, except this alone, that you give him all that you have. For in Christ Jesus God is to be loved with the whole heart, and with the whole soul, and with all one's strength. In this, then, there is no measure. But in loving one's neighbour there is a certain measure: “Love your neighbour,” he says, “as yourself.” If, then, either in the love of God you do anything less than you can and than is within your strength, or between yourself and your neighbour you do not keep equality but make some difference, love in you is not ordered nor keeping its order.

But since our discussion is about the order of love, let us inquire more carefully, point by point, whom we ought to love and how much. For if, as the Apostle says, we are members of one another, I think we ought to have such an affection toward our neighbours that we love them not as other bodies but as our own members. According, then, as we are members of one another, it will be fitting to have an equal and like love toward all. But according as there are in the body some members more honourable and more seemly, and others less seemly and lower, I think that the measure of love too ought in turn to be weighed according to the merits and honour of the members. If anyone, then, purposes to do everything reasonably according to the word of God and to temper even his affections, I think he ought both to know and to keep the order of love in each of these. But to make what we say clearer, let us use rather more evident indications. If someone, for example, labours in the word of God, and instructs and enlightens our souls, teaches the way of salvation and hands on the rule of living, does it not seem to you that he too is indeed a neighbour, but to be loved far more than another neighbour who has done none of these things? For although that one too is to be loved, since we are members of one body and of one substance, yet this one much more: while he has with us the right of a neighbour which other people have, he nevertheless gives this greater cause for love toward himself, that he shows the way of God and brings salvation to the soul by the illuminations of the divine Word. And if someone calls me back to the light of truth when I am straying and set on the precipice of sin with a woman, and rescues me from destruction itself and draws me back to salvation and snatches me from the very jaws of eternal death, does it not seem to you that he is to be loved, if it can be, with that very fullness of love with which we love God, after God? And lest you think that we presume this on our own, hear the apostle Paul saying of those who labour in the word of God: “That you hold such people exceedingly in love because of their work.” Let us see yet another order of love, the love, that is, which is seen to be held toward neighbours. If there is someone who does not have the grace of teaching or instructing, nor of preaching the word of the Lord, but is nevertheless a man of holy life, innocent, spotless, who walks blameless in the ordinances and commandments of God, does it seem to you that such a man is to be held in the same order of love as one who does none of these things, since both are called neighbours? Is not he too, because of his work and the merit of his life, according to the Apostle's saying, to be held exceedingly in love, like the one who labours in the word of God, because of the work of his life?

There is yet another order of love. For we are commanded to love even our enemies. But let us see whether even among them there will be one single measure of love, or whether that saying will have a place there which says, “Set love in order in me.” I think, then, that there is an order of love among them. For example, someone is my enemy, yet in other respects does well, is chaste, sober, keeps most of God's commandments, though erring in some things, as a man does. Another is also an enemy to us, but is an enemy of his own life and soul as well, ready for crimes, headlong into shameful deeds, regarding nothing as holy, nothing as sacred: does it not seem to you that even among enemies themselves some difference of love must be kept? I think, indeed, that it is sufficiently clear from this that the power of love is one, yet has many causes and many orders of loving, and that for this reason the Bride now says, “Set love in order in me,” that is, teach me the different orders of love. And if it seems that something should still be added to this, we can also bring forward what the Apostle says: “Husbands, love your wives as your own bodies, as Christ loved the Church.” What then? Ought husbands to love their own wives, but not to love other women at all, in all chastity and holiness? Will not they too be seen to be among our neighbours? Is love to be given to a wife, or to a mother, or to a sister, provided they are believers and cleave to God, while to no other woman, although she too is called a neighbour, is love to be given by us? If this seems absurd, and according to the order of the commandment a chaste love ought to be shown toward them also, then certainly among those persons of women to whom love is to be given an order in love and a fitting distinction must be kept. Love is to be given to a mother with greater honour, and in the next degree, though still with a certain reverence, to sisters as well.

But love is to be shown to spouses in a way of its own, set apart from these. After these persons, love is to be given to each according to merits and reasons, in all chastity, as we said. We have observed the same with regard to a father or a brother and other relatives. But toward the saints who begot us in Christ, and also toward pastors and bishops, or presbyters who preside over the word of God, or those who minister well in the Church, or who excel others in faith, how shall the affection of love not be weighed according to the merits of each, far higher than can be held toward those who have done none of these things, or not wholly? And between believing and unbelieving parents, and believing and unbelieving brothers and sisters, can it be that a different order of love is not kept toward each of these? Seeing these differences, and seeing that knowledge of all these things appears necessary for the soul that is tending to perfection, so that it may keep the measures of love for each place and order, the Bride says to the friends of the Bridegroom, namely those who minister the word of God, “Set love in order in me”: that is, teach me and hand on to me how the order of love ought to be kept in each of these. For all people, as we have already said, inasmuch as they are like us, are to be loved alike; indeed, every rational creature is to be loved equally by us, since we are rational. Yet in love something must be added for each beyond the fact that he is a human being and that he is rational: if, for example, he excels others in morals, or in work, or in purpose, or in knowledge, or in studies; and for each of these, according to each one's merit, something of special love must be added to the general love. But that there may be greater authority on these points, let us take an example from God himself. For he loves all things that exist equally, so that he hates none of the things he has made, for he did not make anything in order to hold it in hatred; yet he did not for this reason love the Egyptians as he loved the Hebrews, nor Pharaoh as he loved Moses and Aaron. Nor again did he love the rest of the sons of Israel as he loved Moses and Aaron and Miriam; nor again did he love Aaron and Miriam as he loved Moses, though it is true, as is said to him: “But you spare all, because all are yours, O Lord, lover of souls; for your incorruptible spirit is in all.” Yet he who ordered all things by measure and number and weight tempers the balance of his love, without doubt, according to the measure of each one's merits.

Shall we not think that Paul was not loved by him in the same way when he was persecuting the Church of God as he was loved while he himself was enduring persecutions and torments for her and saying that the care of all the churches was upon him? It is a large matter now to insert among these orders of love something also about the affection of hatred, which seems contrary to this affection of love; for the Lord too says, “I will be an enemy to your enemies, and will oppose your adversaries.” And again: “If you stand by a sinner and one whom the Lord hates, you are his friend.” These have the same resolution as the saying, “Honour your father and your mother,” and again, “Whoever does not hate his father,” and the rest: in which surely the excess of love toward God seems to produce a contrary affection toward those who oppose him, since there can be no harmony between light and darkness, nor of Christ with Belial, nor the same portion for a believer with an unbeliever. These things concerning the orders of love having been set out as well as we could, it is now open to understanding what it is that the Bride, that is, the Church or the soul tending to perfection, asks to be furnished to her by the friends of the Bridegroom. For she had asked to be brought into the house of wine, where she had doubtless understood that in all she had seen the grace of love stands out and excels, and had learned that love is the greatest of all and that love alone never fails; therefore she asks to learn its order, lest perhaps, doing something disordered, she receive some wound from it, as is said in what follows, “I am wounded by love.” And if we take these words to be said to angels, by whom she asks to be instructed and fortified, it will not seem absurd, in keeping with what is said of the people: “Rejoice, you nations, with his people, and let all the angels of God strengthen them”; and as is said elsewhere: “The angel of the Lord encamps round about those who fear him, and will deliver them”; and again elsewhere: “Do not despise one of these little ones who are in the Church, for their angels always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven.”

And in the Apocalypse of John too the Son of God bears witness to the angel of Thyatira for the love which that angel himself set in order in the Church entrusted to him. For thus it is written: “I know your works and your love and faith and ministry and patience, and your last works greater than the first.” And if we refer these words to the prophets, who ministered the word of God before the coming of the Bridegroom, so that she seems to be instructed through their teaching by the prophetic books, it will not seem absurd. And all the saints too who have departed from this life, still having love toward those who are in this world: if they are said to care for their salvation and to help them by their prayers and their intercession with God, it will not be unfitting. For it is written thus in the books of the Maccabees: “This is Jeremiah, the prophet of God, who always prays for the people.” And that these words are said to the apostles too, as I said above, will not seem foreign; for through them the whole Church of God, or the soul seeking God, is brought into the house of wine, as we said above, and is filled with spices and fragrances and ordered for the better, as we read in what follows; and we are taught the whole order and reason of love. Verse 5: “Strengthen me with ointments, surround me with apples, for I am wounded by love.” In the Greek indeed it reads, “Strengthen me with myrrhs,” naming by this word a certain kind of tree; but the Latins, thinking it was named from myrrh, translated it “ointments.”

The order of the discourse, then, is of this kind: after the Bride had heard words from the Bridegroom's own mouth, and had entered the king's chamber, and the house of wine and the place of the banquet and of wisdom, and had seen in it the victims and the bowl mixed with his sacraments, as though stunned with wonder at all these things, and wounded, she asks of those same friends and companions of the Bridegroom that she may be strengthened and, as though fainting, supported, leaning a little upon the amyron tree or the apple trees. For, struck by the wound of love, she seeks the comfort of trees and woods. This is according to the letter. But to carry through the spiritual understanding from these things we need that grace which Solomon himself merited to obtain from God, to know the natures of all things that exist, of roots and trees and shrubs, so that we too might know what is the virtue and nature of the amyron tree, from which a spiritual exposition could fittingly be adapted. This alone, however, has been able to reach us of knowledge about this tree: that it has only a sweet fragrance but bears no fruit. But the apple tree is known to all, that it not only bears fruit but bears it most sweet and pleasant. All people, then, are called trees, whether good or bad, fruitful or unfruitful, as the Lord says in the Gospel: “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad”; and: “Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and cast into the fire.” There seem, then, to be three differences among men: some bear no fruit at all, and behold, others bear fruit; but among those who bear, the fruits are either bad or good. Here, then, the Bride, that is, the Church of Christ, asks to be strengthened and to recline upon the one apple tree that bears good fruits: and rightly and fittingly.

For the Church is strengthened and surrounded by those who bear fruit and grow in good works. But what does it mean that she wishes to be strengthened with myrrhs, that is, with unfruitful trees that delight only in fragrance? I think that those who delight only in fragrance and do not yet bear the fruits of faith are those whom Paul speaks of, writing to the Corinthians: “Those who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place, theirs and ours.” Because they call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, they have in themselves a certain sweetness of fragrance from the very invocation of the name; but because they do not come to faith with all confidence and freedom, they bear no fruits of faith. In this place we can understand the catechumens of the Church, by whom the churches are in some measure strengthened. For they too have no little confidence and very great hope that they too will one day become fruitful trees and be planted in the paradise of God by the husbandman, the Father himself. For he it is who plants such trees in the Church of Christ, which is the paradise of delights; as the Lord too says: “Every plant which my heavenly Father has not planted shall be rooted up.” The Church, then, is surrounded among the apple trees and rests upon them. Those apple trees are to be thought of as the souls that are daily renewed after the image of him who created them. For since the sons of God restore the image by their renewal, rightly they too are called apple trees, because their Bridegroom too was said above to be like an apple tree among the trees of the wood. And do not wonder that the same one is called both the tree of life and various other things, since the same one is named the true bread, and the true vine, and the Lamb of God, and many other things. For the Word of God becomes all these things to each one, as the measure or desire of the one who partakes requires; just as the manna too, though it was one food, yet gave to each the taste of his desire.

He offers himself, then, not only as bread to the hungry and wine to the thirsty, but to those who wish to take delight he presents himself also as fragrant fruits. Therefore the Bride too, as one already refreshed and well fed, asks to be propped up with apples, knowing that in the Word she has not only every food but also every delight; and she runs to these above all when she feels herself wounded by the darts of love. If there is anyone anywhere who has at some time burned with this faithful love of the Word of God; if there is anyone, as the prophet says, who has received the sweet wound and stroke of his chosen dart; if there is anyone who has been pierced by the lovable spear of his knowledge, so that he sighs for him with longings by day and night, can speak of nothing else, wishes to hear nothing else, knows not how to think of anything else, and has no wish to desire or long for or hope for anything apart from him: such a soul rightly says, “I am wounded by love”; and, “I have received the wound from him of whom Isaiah says: And he has made me as a chosen dart, and in his quiver he has hidden me.” With such a wound it befits God to strike souls, to pierce them with such darts and spears, and to wound them with saving wounds; so that, since God is love, the soul too may say, “For I am wounded by love.” And indeed in this love-drama, as it were, the Bride says she has received the wounds of love; but likewise a soul burning toward the wisdom of God can say, “I am wounded by wisdom”: the soul, namely, which has been able to behold the beauty of his wisdom. Another soul too, beholding the magnificence of his power and marvelling at the might of the Word of God, can say, “I am wounded by power.” Such, I believe, was the one who said, “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?” And another soul, burning with love of his righteousness and beholding the justice of his dispensations and providence, says without doubt, “I am wounded by righteousness.” And another, looking upon the immensity of his goodness and kindness, speaks similarly.

But the wound common to all these is this wound of love with which the Bride declares herself wounded. We must know, however, that as there are these darts of God which inflict a wound of salvation on the soul that has a desire for good things, so too there are the fiery darts of the evil one, by which the soul that is not protected by the shield of faith is wounded unto death. Of them the Prophet says: “Behold, the sinners have bent the bow, they have prepared their arrows in their quiver, to shoot in the dark at the upright of heart.” Here by sinners shooting from hiding he means the invisible demons; and they are the ones who have certain darts of sexual immorality, others of covetousness and avarice, by which very many are wounded. They also have shafts of boasting and vainglory; but these are very fine, so that the soul scarcely feels itself pierced and wounded by them, unless it is clothed with the armour of God and stands watchful and immovable against the wiles of the devil, covering itself in every part with the shield of faith and leaving no part of the body at all bare of faith. But however many darts the demons make, if they find a man's mind fortified with faith, even though they be fiery, even though they burn with the flames of desires and the fires of vices, full faith extinguishes them all. Verse 6: “His left hand is under my head, and his right hand shall embrace me.” This is indeed the description of a love-drama, of a Bride hastening to union with the Bridegroom, though it runs on in somewhat open bodily terms. But turn more quickly to the life-giving spirit and, fleeing the bodily terms, perceive truly what is the left hand of the Word of God, what the right, and what also is the head of his Bride, namely of the perfect soul or of the Church; and do not let a fleshly and passionate sense carry you away. For here the right and left hand of the Bridegroom is the same as that which is spoken of wisdom in Proverbs, where it says: “For length of life is in her right hand, and in her left hand riches and glory.” And just as there you will not think that wisdom is called some woman because she seems to be named with a feminine noun, so neither in this case, because the Bridegroom, the Word of God, is spoken of in the masculine gender, ought you to understand his left hand or right hand bodily, nor take the embraces of the Bride or the soul according to the inflection of the feminine gender. But although the Word of God is expressed among the Greeks in the masculine gender and among us in the neuter, yet these things of which we are speaking must be thought of as above the masculine and the neuter and the feminine gender, and above everything at all that pertains to this; and not only the Word of God, but also his Church and the perfect soul, which is also called the Bride.

For so the Apostle also says: “For in Christ there is neither male nor female, but all of us are one in him.” These things are related in divine Scripture in the manner of human speech, for the sake of people who cannot hear otherwise than in the words that are in common use; so that we may hear them in known and customary words, yet think of divine and incorporeal things in the sense that is worthy of them. For just as one who says he is a lover of the beauty of wisdom shows that he has transferred the natural affection of love that is in him to the pursuit of wisdom, so here too the Bride, whether the soul or the Church, asks that her Bridegroom, who is the Word of God, should support her head with his left hand, and with his right embrace and hold close all the rest of her body. Now the left hand is that in which wisdom is said to hold riches and glory. And what riches has the Church, and what glory, but those which she received from him who, though he was rich, became poor, that by his poverty the Church might become rich? And what is the glory? Without doubt that of which he says, “Father, glorify your Son,” signifying without doubt the glory of the passion. Faith in the passion of Christ, then, is the glory and riches of the Church, which are held in his left hand. And the left hand of the Word of God, I think, should be understood in this way: since there are in him certain dispensations carried out before the incarnation, and some also through the incarnation, that part of the Word of God which was accomplished in the dispensations before the assumption of flesh can be seen as the right hand, and this which is through the incarnation can be called the left. Hence the left hand too is said to hold riches and glory. For through the incarnation he sought riches and glory, namely the salvation of all. And in the right hand is said to be length of life: by which without doubt is indicated that part of him in which in the beginning the Word was God with God, his everlastingness.