Commentary on the Song of Songs 3.211–3.223

what he says, “the natures of animals and the tempers of beasts,” is understood in this way. For unless he had known well the natures of animals, the Saviour would never have said in the Gospels, “Tell that fox,” nor would John have said of some, “Serpents, brood of vipers,” nor would the prophet say of some that they became stallions; and again another: “Man, when he was in honour, did not understand; he was compared to the senseless beasts and became like them.” And he too had diligently learned the tempers of beasts who said: “Their fury is after the likeness of a serpent, like the deaf asp that stops its ears.” The same will be the reason of his saying “the violent forces of spirits”: visibly he speaks of the winds and blasts of the air, but invisibly of the violence of unclean spirits, which Paul too called winds of doctrine. After this it follows that he knows the thoughts of men: bodily, those that proceed from the human heart; but invisibly he understands those who cast evil and most wicked thoughts into men, as it is written in the Gospel: “When the devil had put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot to betray the Lord.” And as is said in Proverbs: “If the spirit of one who has power rises up against you, do not leave your place, for healing will check great sins.” But there is also an author of good thoughts; and for this reason, I think, it is written in the Psalms: “Blessed is the man whose help is from you, O Lord; he has set ascents in his heart.” And again: “The thought of man shall confess to you, and the remnants of thought shall keep festival to you.” Thus, then, all things, according to what we said before, can be referred from the visible to the invisible, from bodily things to incorporeal, from the manifest to the hidden; so that the very creation of the world may be understood to have been founded by divine Wisdom with such a dispensation that it teaches us invisible things from visible ones by things themselves and by examples, and carries us over from earthly things to heavenly. And these

principles are found not only in all creatures, but the divine Scripture too has been written with a certain such art of wisdom. For on account of certain hidden and mystical things the people is visibly led out of this earthly Egypt and makes its way through the desert, where there was the biting serpent and the scorpion and thirst, where there were no waters, and the other things that are related as having taken place among them. All these, as we said, hold the forms and images of certain hidden things. And this you will find not only in the scriptures of the ancients but also in the deeds of our Lord and Saviour that are related in the Gospels. If, then, all things that are manifest, according to what we established above, are referred to certain things that are hidden, it follows without doubt that this visible stag, or the roe that is written of in the Song of Songs, according to the reason of the nature which they bear bodily, are referred to certain causes of incorporeal things, so that to those hidden and invisible stags may be seen to apply what is said: “The voice of the Lord perfecting stags.” For what perfection comes to these visible stags from the voice of the Lord? Or what teaching ever came down to them from the voice of the Lord? But if we seek spiritual stags, whose form and image that bodily animal bears, you will find that they can be brought to the summit of perfection by the voice of the Lord. And whose stags it would befit the Lord to watch over in calving, and stand by in labour as one offering the services of healing until they bring forth such offspring as would oppose and pursue the race of serpents, as befits the divine majesty: we ought to consider of what kind of stags it befits God to watch over the calving, lest they fall into miscarriage; and to number their months full for bearing, and to guard their labours and pains, so that their generations may not fall in vain but their birth may be perfect, and they may be in labour until Christ is formed in them.

The young of such stags the Lord nourishes: of those, that is, who cast their care upon the Lord, that he himself may nourish them; and he himself watches over their birth pangs, when from the fear of God they have conceived in the womb, and been in labour, and brought forth the spirit of salvation. Such birth pangs the Lord himself watches over and cares for. And he also sends forth their pains, so that going they may go and weep, bearing their seeds, and may be in the troubles of men and scourged with men, lest perhaps pride take hold of them. These same stags too, as he says, break loose their young. For those whom they have begotten through the Gospel they break loose from the chains of sins and from the snares of the devil, so that they are no longer held bound to his will. These too will be multiplied and, as he says, will not return. For they will not imitate Lot's wife; they will not go back. For they know that whoever puts his hand to the plough, if he looks back, will not be fit for the kingdom of heaven; but they always forget what lies behind and stretch out to what lies before them. Such stags the voice of the Lord makes perfect. And what voice of the Lord, unless that which is in the law and the prophets and reached as far as John, who was the voice of one crying in the desert? For the very voice of John, who said, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight the paths of our God,” made stags perfect, so that they were perfect in the same mind and in the same knowledge. For whoever is such rightly says: “As the stag longs for the springs of waters, so my soul longs for you, O God.” And who else will be seen as the stag of friendships, but he who slew that serpent which had seduced Eve and, pouring into her the venom of sin by the breath of its speech, had infected all the offspring of her posterity with the contagion of transgression; and who came to dissolve in his flesh the enmities which that harmful mediator had brought about between God and man? And the foal of graces can be taken as the Holy Spirit, from whom those who thirst for and desire God obtain spiritual graces and heavenly gifts.

All these things have been said by us so that the reason might become plainer why the Bride seems to compare her kinsman to a young stag. And if this too must be asked, why he is compared not to a stag, as elsewhere, but to a young stag: notice that, though he was in the form of God, a son was given to us and a child born to us, whose government is upon his shoulder. Therefore he is a young stag, because he was born a little child. And perhaps the stags can be taken as all the saints, such as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, David and Solomon, and all from whose seed Christ descended according to the flesh. These stags the voice of the Lord makes perfect, and theirs is this young one, who was born from them a child according to the flesh. I am moved also by what is written in the hundred and third psalm, where it says, “The high mountains for the stags.” And indeed we said above that by stags are understood all the saints, who came into this world for this purpose, to destroy the venom of the serpent. But let us see what the high mountains are, which seem set apart for stags alone, and to which no one can ascend unless he is a stag. I think that he called the persons of the Trinity the high mountains, to the comprehension of which no one ascends unless he is made a stag. But these same, who here are called high mountains in the plural, elsewhere are called a high mountain in the singular; as Isaiah says: “Go up on a high mountain, you who bring good tidings to Zion; lift up your voice with strength, you who bring good tidings to Jerusalem.” For the same who there is understood as Trinity on account of the distinction of persons, is here understood as one God on account of the unity of substance. Let this suffice about the young stag. Now let us see how the kinsman is also compared to a roe or gazelle. This animal, as far as the Greek name is concerned, received its name from seeing and looking out more clearly. And who is there that sees as Christ sees?

For he alone it is who sees, that is, knows the Father. For even if those who are pure in heart are said to be going to see God, they will see doubtless by his revealing; for the roe too has this in its nature, that not only does it itself see and discern most keenly, but it also furnishes sight to others. For those skilled in medicine assert that there is within this animal's inward parts a certain humour which drives away dimness of the eyes and sharpens any duller sight. Rightly, then, is Christ compared to the roe or gazelle, because not only does he himself see the Father, but he also makes him seen by others, whose sight he himself has healed. But take care, when you hear that the Father is seen, not to think of something bodily and suppose God visible. The sight by which God is seen is not of the body but of the mind and spirit. This the Saviour himself too distinguished in the Gospel with a proper word when he said, “No one sees the Father but the Son.” Accordingly, to those whom he makes see God he gives the spirit of knowledge and the spirit of wisdom, that through that very spirit they may see God. And therefore he said to the disciples, “He who sees me sees the Father also.” And surely we shall not be so foolish as to think that whoever saw him according to the body saw the Father too; otherwise the scribes and Pharisees and hypocrites, and Pilate who struck him with scourges, and all the people who cried, “Crucify, crucify him,” seeing Jesus according to the flesh, would be found to have seen God the Father too. This seems not only absurd but also impious. For just as, when the crowds were pressing him as he went with his disciples, none of those who pressed and crowded him is said to have touched him except that one woman who had suffered a flow of blood, who came and touched the fringe of his garment, and to her alone he bears witness, saying, “Someone touched me, for I perceived that power had gone out from me”; so too, though there were many who saw him, no one is said to have seen him except the one who recognized that he is the Word of God and the Son of God, in whom, surely, the Father is said to be recognized and seen at the same time.

And let this not escape us either: that he is compared first to a roe, and now to a young stag, though the stag certainly seems a larger animal than the roe. But consider whether this reason should not rather be held in these things: since the salvation of believers consists in two things, in the knowledge of faith and in the perfection of works, the principle of faith, which for its insight and the gaze of contemplation is compared, as we said, to the roe, is held as the first step of salvation; and in the second place is named the perfection of works, which bears the form of the stag that conquers and destroys the venom of serpents, that is, the arts of the devil. If, then, the Bride says that her kinsman is like a roe or a young stag on the mountains of Bethel, and Bethel is interpreted “house of God,” then the mountains which are in the house of God can be taken as the books of the law and the prophets, and also the Gospel and apostolic books, in which both faith in God is perfected and contemplated, and the perfection of works is taught and fulfilled. Verses 9–10: “Behold, he stood behind our wall, leaning upon the windows, looking through the nets. My kinsman answers and says to me.” When I consider the difficulties of searching out the meaning in the words of Scripture set before us, I see that I undergo something like a man who goes out to track game by the scent of a keen-nosed dog. There it often happens that when the hunter, intent on the tracks, has thought himself close to the hidden lairs, suddenly the traces of the tracks are lost, and following scents more firmly impressed he goes back along the same paths he had traced, until he finds the place where the game, starting off more deeply, secretly crossed over to another path; and when the hunter has found it, he pursues more eagerly, more certain in hope of the prey and more confident in the firmness of the track. So we too, where the tracks of the explanation set before us have in some way withdrawn, going back a little over what we have covered and following an order of exposition plainer than it seemed before, hope that the Lord our God will deliver the game into our hands; so that, preparing it and seasoning it with the salt of the rational word according to the knowledge of our mother Rachel, we may deserve to obtain blessings from our spiritual father Jacob. For this reason it seems necessary, as we said, to repeat briefly what has been said and to go back over the earlier explanation, so that the clearer meaning may be opened.

It seems to me, then, that from the beginning of the drama set before us it is to be understood that the Bride stands outside at a crossroads and, out of love for the Bridegroom, looks out this way and that, in case he should come, in case he should appear, and does not wish to take any road while she does not know from where he is more likely to come; nor does she stand at home, but outside, and is stirred by longing for him and says, “Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth”; and when the Bridegroom has come, she says, “Your breasts are better than wine,” and the rest, up to the place where she says, “We will run after you.” After this, now beloved and receiving love in return from the Bridegroom himself, she is brought into his chamber and says, “The king has brought me into his chamber.” And the other things written afterwards she speaks to the Bridegroom when placed inside, with the Bride's maidens and the Bridegroom's companions present and standing by. Yet let it be understood that the Bridegroom, being a man, is not always at home, nor always sitting with the Bride who is placed within the house; but he goes out often, and she, anxious as it were from love of him, seeks him when he is absent; and he too returns to her at times. For this reason, throughout the little book, the Bridegroom seems sometimes to be sought as absent, sometimes to speak with the Bride as present. And the Bride herself, having seen many magnificent things in the Bridegroom's chamber, asks also to be brought into the house of wine. When she had entered it and perceived that the Bridegroom, being a man, had not stayed in the house, she, stirred again by love of him, went outside and, going round, wanders about the house without entering, and looks out on every side for when the Bridegroom will return to her; and behold, suddenly she sees him surmounting the ridges of the neighbouring mountains with immense bounds, descending to the house in which the Bride burns, anxious with love of him. And the Bridegroom, reaching the wall of the house, stands a little behind it, considering something, as happens, and turning it over in his mind. But now, feeling something of love toward the Bride himself, he makes use of his height, which reaches to the windows of the house, which windows have some part of lattice work, as they say. And then he leans indeed on the windows, but is taller than the windows and reaches to their upper parts, which are marked out, as we said, with lattice work; and looking out from there he addresses the Bride and says, Verse 10: “Arise, come, my near one, my fair one, my dove,” and the rest.

These are the things which, as we indicated above, seemed to us to involve the greatest difficulty in setting out the order and opening the meaning; and this repeated tracking of the words, I think, will have made them clearer. But the spiritual exposition of them is not so laborious and difficult. For the soul, the bride of the Word, which dwells in the royal house, that is, in the Church, is taught by the Word of God, who is her Bridegroom, all that is stored up and hidden within the royal court and the king's chamber. She learns in this house, which is the Church of the living God, the cellars too of that wine which has been gathered from the holy winepresses, cellars of wine not only new but also old and sweet, which is the teaching of the law and the prophets. Sufficiently exercised in these, she receives into herself him who in the beginning was God the Word with God, yet not as abiding always with her (for this is not possible for human nature): she is sometimes visited by him and sometimes left, so that she may desire him the more. And when she is visited by the Word of God, according to the sense of the verse before us, he is said to come to her leaping over the mountains, that is, revealing to her lofty and exalted meanings of heavenly knowledge, so that she comes as far as the building of the Church, which is the house of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth; and he stands beside the wall, or behind the wall, so as to be neither wholly hidden nor wholly in view. For the Word of God and the discourse of knowledge does not appear set out in public and openly, to be trodden underfoot; but when it has been sought, it is found, and found not, as we said, set out in the open, but covered, and as it were hiding behind a wall. And the soul which is said to be in the Church is not understood as placed within buildings of walls, but as set within the fortifications of faith and the buildings of wisdom, and covered by the lofty roofs of love. A good purpose, then, and faith in right doctrines make the soul to be in the house of the Church; and the parts of this house, chamber, or house of wine, or others of this kind, are named according to the degrees of graces and the diversities of spiritual gifts.

So, then, the wall too is now a certain part of this house, which can signify the firmness of doctrines. Under it the Bridegroom is said to stand, and in them he is so great and lofty that he towers above the whole building and looks out at the Bride, that is, the soul; and he does not yet show himself to her open and whole, but, as it were looking through the nets, he exhorts her and challenges her not to sit idle within, but to come out to him; and to strive to see him no longer through windows and nets, nor through a mirror in an enigma, but, coming outside, to see him face to face. For now, since she cannot yet behold him so, he therefore stands not in front but behind, and after the wall. And he leans through the windows, which without doubt were open to receive light to illuminate the house. Leaning and looking through these, then, the Word of God challenges the soul to rise and come to him. We can understand the windows as the bodily senses, through which either death or life enters the soul; for so the prophet Jeremiah indicates when he speaks of sinners, saying, “Death has come up through your windows.” How does death come up through the windows? If the eyes of a sinner see a woman and commit adultery with her in his heart, so death has entered the soul through the windows of the eyes. And when someone takes in vain hearing, and especially the doctrines of the perverse teachings of a false knowledge, then death enters the soul through the windows of the ears. But if the soul, beholding the adornment of the world, understands from the beauty of creatures that God is the founder of all, and wonders at his works and praises the creator of the works, life enters this soul through the windows of the eyes. And when it inclines its hearing to the Word of God and delights in the reasons of his wisdom and knowledge, the light of wisdom enters its soul through the windows of the ears.

Looking through these windows, then, the Word of God, directing his gaze at the Bride, the soul, exhorts her to rise and come to him, that is, to leave bodily and visible things and hasten to incorporeal, invisible and spiritual things; “for the things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are not seen are eternal.” So too the Spirit of God is said to go about and seek worthy souls, which can fittingly and rightly be made a dwelling place of wisdom. And his being said to look through the nets of the windows indicates without doubt that, so long as the soul is placed in the house of this body, it cannot grasp the wisdom of God naked and open, but contemplates the things that are invisible and incorporeal through certain examples and indications and images of visible things; and this is the Bridegroom's looking at her through the nets of the windows. But if we expound these things of Christ and the Church, the house in which the Church dwelt is the Scriptures of the law and the prophets. For there too is the king's chamber, filled with all the riches of wisdom and knowledge; there is the house of wine, namely teaching, whether mystical or moral, which gladdens the heart of men. Christ, then, arriving, stood a little behind the wall of the Old Testament. For he stood behind the wall when he was not manifested to the people; but when the time came, and he began to appear through the windows of the law and the prophets, that is, through the things that had been foretold of him, and to show himself to the Church sitting within the house, that is, within the letter of the law, he challenges her to come out from there and come outside to him. For unless she goes out, unless she comes forth and advances from the letter to the spirit, she cannot be joined to her Bridegroom nor united with Christ. He calls her, then, and invites her from fleshly things to spiritual, from visible to invisible, to come from the law to the Gospels. And therefore he says to her, “Arise, come, my near one, my fair one, my dove.” And to anticipate some of the things to be said later, fearing to lose the meaning that occurs in this place: perhaps for this reason he also says to her that the winter has passed and the rain has gone, indicating at the same time the time of his passion, that he suffered when the winter was over and the rains past; and at the same time signifying also by spiritual understanding that until the time when Christ suffered there were rains upon the earth.

For the Lord was still commanding the rain clouds, that is, the prophets, to rain the rain of the word upon the earth. But since the prophetic offices end with John the Baptist, rightly are the rains said to have gone away and departed. And the prophetic rains ceased not to the loss of believers but to the greater gain of the Church. For what need is there of rains where the river of God gladdens the city? where in the heart of each believer there comes to be a fountain of living water springing up to eternal life? What need of rains, where flowers have now appeared in our land, and since the Lord's coming the fig tree that formerly bore no fruit is no longer cut down? For now it has put forth its green figs. And the vines too have given their fragrance. Hence one from that vineyard said: “For we are the good fragrance of Christ to God in every place, in those who are being saved and in those who are perishing.” But these things, as we indicated above, we have ventured to say before coming to those places of Scripture, lest perhaps the meaning which seemed to occur at the time should escape us. Now let us go back to how he is said to look through the nets. It is written: “For not without cause are nets spread for birds”; and again the righteous man, if he falls into sin, is commanded to escape, as the gazelle from the snares and the bird from the nets. The life of mortals, then, is full of snares of stumbling, full of nets of deceit, which he spreads against the human race who is called against the Lord the giant hunter Nimrod.

For who else is the true giant but the devil, who rebels even against God? The snares of temptations, then, and the traps of plots are called the nets of the devil. And since the enemy had spread these nets everywhere and had entangled almost all in them, there had to be someone who would prove stronger and higher than they and would crush them, so as to open the way for those who follow him. For this reason, therefore, the Saviour too, before he came into marriage and union with the Church, is tempted by the devil, so that, conquering the nets of temptations, he might look through them and through them call her to himself, teaching her without doubt and showing her that she must come to Christ not through ease and pleasures but through many tribulations and temptations. There was no one else, then, who could overcome these nets. For all have sinned, as it is written. And again, as Scripture says: “There is no righteous man on earth who has done good and has not sinned.” And again: “No one is clean from filth, not even if his life be of one day.” Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ alone, then, is he who did no sin; but the Father made him sin for us, so that in the likeness of sinful flesh he might condemn sin by sin. He came, then, to these nets, but he alone could not be entangled in them; rather, having broken and crushed them, he gives his Church confidence that she may now dare to make the snares void and to pass through the nets and say with all eagerness: “Our soul has been rescued like a sparrow from the snare of the hunters; the snare is broken, and we are delivered.” And who broke the snares, but he who alone could not be held in them? Though he too was in death, voluntarily, and not as we are, by the necessity of sin. For he alone is the one who was free among the dead. And because he was free among the dead, therefore, having vanquished him who had the power of death, he drew away the captivity that was held in death. And not only did he raise himself from the dead, but he also raised together those who were held in death, and made them sit together in the heavenly places. For ascending on high he led captivity captive, not only leading out souls but also raising their bodies, as the Gospel testifies that many bodies of the saints were raised and appeared to many and entered the holy city of the living God, Jerusalem.

This exposition of the nets has been taken up by us in the second place. Let it be for the reader to judge which of the two can more worthily be fitted to the mystical words. Verses 10–13: “Arise, come, my near one, my fair one, my dove; for behold, the winter has passed, the rain has gone and departed to itself; flowers have appeared in the land; the time of pruning has come; the voice of the turtledove has been heard in our land. The fig tree has put forth its shoots; the flowering vines have given their fragrance.” What the order of the drama contains we have already described above; now let us consider what the Word of God must be understood to say to the soul that is worthy of him and fitted to him, or what Christ says to the Church. But meanwhile let the Word of God speak first to this fair and comely soul, to which he appeared through the bodily senses, that is, through looking at the reading and hearing the teaching, as through windows, and showed the tallness of his greatness, so that above he spoke to her leaning, and from there called her out, that she might come outside and, being now outside the bodily senses, might cease to be in the flesh, so that she may rightly hear: “But you are not in the flesh but in the spirit.” For the Word of God would not call her near to him unless he joined himself to her and she became one spirit with him; nor would he call her fair unless he saw her image renewed day by day; and unless he saw her capable of the Holy Spirit, who descended in the form of a dove upon Jesus at the Jordan, he would not say to her, “My dove.” For she had conceived love for the Word of God and longed to reach him in swift flight, saying, “Who will give me wings like a dove, and I will fly and be at rest?” I will fly in senses, I will fly in spiritual understandings, and I will rest when I have grasped the treasures of his wisdom and knowledge.