Commentary on the Song of Songs

This little book is an epithalamium, that is, a wedding song, and it seems to me that Solomon wrote it in the manner of a drama. He sang it in the person of a bride who is being married and who burns with heavenly love for her bridegroom, who is the Word of God. For she has loved him deeply, whether she is the soul made in his image or the church. But this same scripture also teaches us what words that magnificent and perfect bridegroom used to the soul, or the church, joined to him. From the same book, which is entitled the Song of Songs, we also learn what the bride's companions, the young maidens placed with the bride, said, and what the friends and companions of the bridegroom said. For even the bridegroom's friends were given the opportunity to say something, though only what they had heard from the bridegroom himself, as they rejoiced at his union with the bride. So the bride speaks not only to the bridegroom but also to the young maidens, and again the bridegroom's words are directed not only to the bride but also to the bridegroom's friends. This is what we said above: that the wedding song was written in the manner of a drama. For a drama is what we call the kind of story usually acted on the stage, where different characters are brought on, and as some come on and others go off, the course of the story is completed by different speakers to different hearers. This scripture contains each of these things in its own order, and its whole body is formed of mystical speech.

But first we must know that just as the age of childhood is not moved to passionate love, so the little and infant age of the inner person is not admitted to take in these words either; I mean those who are fed with milk in Christ, not with solid food, and who are only now beginning to long for the reasonable milk without guile. For in the words of the Song of Songs is that food of which the Apostle says: "Solid food belongs to the perfect"; and it requires hearers who, according to their capacity for receiving it, have senses trained to distinguish good and evil. Now if the little ones we have spoken of come to these passages, it may be that they gain nothing from this scripture, yet are not greatly harmed either, whether by reading what is written or by going over what must be said to explain it. But if someone comes to it who is a man only according to the flesh, no small danger and peril will arise for him from this scripture. For not knowing how to hear the names of love purely and with chaste ears, he will turn all his hearing away from the inner person to the outer and carnal man; he will be turned from the spirit to the flesh and will nourish fleshly desires in himself, and it will seem that he is being moved and incited by divine scripture to the lust of the flesh. For this reason I warn and advise everyone who is not yet free of the troubles of flesh and blood and has not withdrawn from the feeling of material nature to abstain entirely from reading this little book and what will be said about it. For they say that among the Hebrews too it is observed that unless someone has come to a full and mature age, he is not even permitted to hold this book in his hands. We have also received from them that this is kept: since it is their custom that all the scriptures, together with those they call deuteroseis, are handed down to boys by the teachers and the wise, four passages are observed until last: the beginning of Genesis, where the creation of the world is described; the beginning of the prophet Ezekiel, where the cherubim are spoken of; the end of the same, which contains the building of the temple; and this book, the Song of Songs. It therefore seems necessary to me, before we come to discuss what is written in this little book, first to say a few things about love itself, which is the chief subject of this scripture; and after that about the order of Solomon's books, in which this book seems to stand third; then also about the title of the little book itself, why it is headed the Song of Songs; and further, how it seems to be composed in the manner of a drama, like a story usually acted on the stage with a change of characters.

Among the Greeks, many learned men, wishing to search out the truth, published many and various writings on the nature of love, some even in the form of dialogues. They tried to show that the power of love is nothing other than what leads the soul from earth to the lofty heights of heaven, and that the highest blessedness cannot be reached except under the urging of the desire of love. Questions about it are also reported as being put forward at banquets, among people, I think, who held a banquet not of food but of words. Others left writings on certain arts by which this love might seem to be begotten or increased in the soul. But carnal men dragged these arts into vicious desires and the mysteries of a culpable love. So it should be no wonder if among us too, where the simpler people seem the more numerous and so the more unskilled, we have called a discussion of the nature of love difficult and close to danger. For even among the Greeks, who are reputed learned and wise, there were some who did not take these things as they were written, but on the occasion of what had been said about love fell headlong into the lapses of the flesh and the precipices of unchastity, either taking certain prompts and incitements from what had been written, as we mentioned above, or holding up the writings of the ancients as a veil for their own incontinence. So that we too may not fall into something of the kind, taking in a vicious and carnal sense what the ancients wrote well and spiritually, let us stretch out the palms of both body and soul to God, so that the Lord, who gave the word to those who preach the good news with great power, may give us too, by his power, a word by which we may show, from what is written, a sound understanding, fit to build up chastity, both of the name and of the nature of love. At the beginning of the words of Moses, where the making of the world is described, we find that two men are said to have been created: the first made in the image and likeness of God, the second formed from the mud of the earth.

The apostle Paul knew this well and was clearly taught in these matters, and in his letters he wrote more openly and plainly that there are two men in each single person. For he said: "Though our outer man is wasting away, the inner man is being renewed day by day"; and again: "For I delight in the law of God according to the inner man"; and how many similar things he writes! Therefore I think no one ought now to doubt that Moses wrote of the making or fashioning of two men at the beginning of Genesis, since he sees that Paul, who certainly understood better than we do what Moses wrote, says that there are two men in each person. Of these he records that one, the inner, is renewed day by day, while the other, the outer, he declares to be wasting away and weakened in certain saints such as Paul was. If anyone still thinks there is some doubt about this, it will be better explained in its proper places. Now let us pursue the reason why we mentioned the inner and the outer man. For we want to show from this that in the divine scriptures, by homonyms, that is, by similar designations, or rather by the very same words, both the members of the outer man and the parts and dispositions of the inner man are named, and that they are compared with each other not only in their words but in the things themselves. For example, someone is a boy in age according to the outer man; he can grow, be brought to the age of a youth, and then by further growth come to be a perfect man and become a father. We have chosen to use these names so as to put terms in harmony with divine scripture, namely with what was written by John. For he says: "I have written to you, children, because you have known the Father; I have written to you, fathers, because you have known him who is from the beginning; I have written to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one."

It is obvious, and I think no one at all doubts it, that John here calls them children or youths or young men or fathers according to the age of the soul, not of the body. Paul too says in one place: "I could not speak to you as to spiritual people, but as to carnal people, as to little ones in Christ; I gave you milk to drink." A little one in Christ is without doubt so named according to the age of the soul, not of the flesh. Then the same Paul says in another place: "When I was a little one, I spoke as a little one, I thought as a little one, I reasoned as a little one. But when I became a man, I put away the things of the little one." And again elsewhere he says: "Until we all come to the perfect man, to the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ." For he knows that all who believe will come to the perfect man and to the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ. So just as these names of ages that we have mentioned are applied in the same words both to the outer and to the inner man, so you will also find the names of bodily members transferred to the members of the soul, or rather these should be called the faculties and dispositions of the soul. Thus it is said in Ecclesiastes: "The eyes of the wise man are in his head." Again in the Gospel: "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." In the prophets too: "The word of the Lord which came by the hand of the prophet Jeremiah," or of any other. Similar is what someone says: "But your foot has not stumbled"; and again: "But my feet were almost moved." The belly of the soul too is plainly indicated where it is said: "Lord, from fear of you we have conceived in the womb." And who would doubt it, when it is said: "Their throat is an open grave"? And again: "Cast them down, Lord, and divide their tongues." And also what is written: "You have broken the teeth of sinners"; and again: "Break the arm of the sinner and the evil man."

But why should I collect more of these, when the divine scriptures are filled with the most abundant testimonies? From them it is plainly shown that these names of members can in no way be fitted to the visible body, but must be referred to the part and powers of the invisible soul. For they have similar words, but openly and without any ambiguity they carry the meanings not of the outer but of the inner man. So this material man, who is also called outer, has food and drink akin to his nature, namely this bodily and earthly kind. Likewise the spiritual man himself, who is called inner, has his own food, such as that living bread which came down from heaven. His drink too is from that water which Jesus promises when he says: "Whoever drinks of this water which I give him will never thirst." So throughout, the likeness of the words is kept for both men, while the proper reality of each is kept distinct: corruptible things are offered to the corruptible, and incorruptible things are set before the incorruptible. Hence it happened that certain simpler people, not knowing how to distinguish and separate what in the divine scriptures is to be assigned to the inner man and what to the outer, were deceived by the likeness of the words and gave themselves to foolish fables and empty fictions, so that they believed that even after the resurrection bodily food is to be used and drink taken, not only from that true vine that lives forever, but also from these vines and the fruits of the tree. But of these things we shall see elsewhere. Now then, as we distinguished in the preceding observation, according to the inner man one person is childless and barren, another is rich in children. In this sense we take the saying: "The barren has borne seven, and she who was rich in children has been weakened"; and as it says in the blessings: "There shall not be among you one childless and barren." If these things are so, then just as there is said to be a certain carnal love, which the poets have also called Cupid, according to which the lover sows in the flesh, so there is also a certain spiritual love, according to which the inner man, loving, sows in the spirit.

To put it more plainly: if anyone still bears the image of the earthly according to the outer man, he is driven by earthly desire and love; but whoever bears the image of the heavenly according to the inner man is driven by heavenly desire and love. And the soul is driven by heavenly love and desire when, having beheld the beauty and comeliness of the Word of God, it has fallen in love with his loveliness and has received from him a dart and wound of love. For this Word is the image and splendour of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, in whom all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible. So if anyone has been able with a capacious mind to grasp and consider the comeliness and loveliness of all the things created in him, struck by the very beauty of things and pierced by the magnificence of their splendour as by a chosen arrow, as the prophet says, he will receive from him a saving wound and will burn with the blessed fire of his love. We must also know that, just as an unlawful love against the law can befall the outer man, for example that he loves not his betrothed or his wife but a prostitute or an adulteress, so too a love can befall the inner man, that is, the soul, directed not to the lawful bridegroom, whom we have said to be the Word of God, but to some adulterer and corrupter. The prophet Ezekiel plainly declares this under the same figure where he brings in Oholah and Oholibah under the figure of Samaria and Jerusalem, corrupted by adulterous love, as the passage of prophetic scripture itself shows to those who wish to know more fully. This spiritual love of the soul is set on fire sometimes, as we have shown, toward certain spirits of wickedness, and sometimes toward the Holy Spirit and the Word of God, who is called the faithful bridegroom and husband of the instructed soul, and whose bride the soul is chiefly called in this scripture which we have in hand, as, the Lord granting, we shall show more fully when we begin to explain the words of the book itself.

It seems to me that divine scripture, wishing to take care that no fall should arise for readers under the name of love, for the sake of the weaker ones gave the more honourable name of charity or affection to what the wise of this world call desire or love. For example, when it says of Isaac: "And he took Rebecca, and she became his wife, and he loved her." And again scripture says similarly of Jacob and Rachel: "But Rachel was lovely to the eyes and beautiful in face, and Jacob loved Rachel and said: I will serve you seven years for Rachel your younger daughter." The changed use of this word appears still more plainly in Amnon, who fell in love with his sister Tamar. For it is written: "And it came to pass after this that Absalom the son of David had a sister very beautiful in appearance, and her name was Tamar; and Amnon the son of David loved her." It put "loved" for "fell in love with." "And Amnon was distressed," it says, "so that he became ill because of Tamar his sister, for she was a virgin, and it seemed hard in Amnon's eyes to do anything to her." And shortly after, about the violence Amnon did to his sister Tamar, scripture says: "And Amnon would not listen to her voice, but overpowered her and humbled her and lay with her. And Amnon hated her with a very great hatred, for the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love with which he had loved her." So in these and in many other places you will find that divine scripture has avoided the word "love" (amor) and put "charity" and "affection" instead. Sometimes, though rarely, it does call love by its own name and invites and urges souls to it, as when it says in Proverbs of wisdom: "Love her, and she will keep you; encircle her, and she will exalt you; honour her, and she will embrace you." And in the book called the Wisdom of Solomon it is written of wisdom herself: "I became a lover of her beauty."

I think that where no occasion for a fall appeared, there alone did it insert the name of love. For what passion or what indecency could anyone notice in the love of wisdom, or in one who professes himself a lover of wisdom? But if it had said that Isaac fell in love with Rebecca, or Jacob with Rachel, some indecent passion might have been understood by these words in holy men of God, especially by those who do not know how to rise from the letter to the spirit. Yet most openly in this very book we have in hand the name of love has been exchanged for the word charity, where it said: "I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my kinsman, tell him that I am wounded by charity," in place, that is, of saying: I am pierced by the dart of his love. So it makes no difference in the divine scriptures whether one says charity, or love, or affection, except that the name of charity is so exalted that even God himself is called charity, as John says: "Beloved, let us love one another, for charity is from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God; but whoever does not love does not know God, for God is charity." And although it belongs to another time to say something about what we have brought forward from John's epistle as an example, it did not seem absurd to touch briefly on some of it. "Let us love one another," he says, "for charity is from God"; and shortly after: "God is charity." In this he shows both that God himself is charity and again that he who is from God is charity. And who is from God but he who says: "I came forth from God and came into this world"? But if God the Father is charity, and the Son is charity, and the charity of the Father and the charity of the Son are one thing, not one person, then it follows that the Father and the Son are rightly said to be one. And therefore Christ is fittingly called charity, just as he is called wisdom, power, righteousness, word and truth. And therefore scripture says that if charity abides in us, God abides in us; and God, that is, the Father and the Son, who also come to him who is perfect in charity, according to the word of our Lord and Saviour who says: "I and the Father will come to him and make our dwelling with him."

We must know, then, that this charity which is God, when it is in anyone, loves nothing earthly, nothing material, nothing corruptible. For it is against its nature to love anything corruptible, since it is itself the fountain of incorruption. For it alone has immortality, since God, who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, is charity. And what else is immortality but eternal life, which God promises to give to those who believe in him, the only true God, and in Jesus Christ his Son whom he sent? Therefore first and before all else this is said to be lovable and pleasing to God: that one love the Lord his God with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his strength. And since God is charity, and the Son who is from God is charity, he requires in us something like himself, so that through this charity which is in Christ Jesus, who is charity, we may be joined to him by a kind of kinship through the name of charity; as he too who was already joined to him said: "Who shall separate us from the charity of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord?" This charity loves every person as a neighbour. For this reason the Saviour rebuked a certain man who thought that a righteous soul does not keep the rights of kinship toward one involved in iniquities, and for this reason he wove that parable which says that a certain man fell among robbers as he went down from Jerusalem to Jericho; and he blames the priest and the Levite, who saw him half dead and passed by, but embraces the Samaritan who showed mercy. And he confirmed by the questioner's own answer that this man had been his neighbour, and said to him: "Go and do likewise." For by nature we are all neighbours to one another; but by the works of charity he becomes a neighbour who is able to do good to one who is not able. Hence our Saviour too became our neighbour and did not pass us by when we lay half dead from the robbers' wounds. So we must know that the charity of God always tends toward God, from whom it took its origin, and looks toward the neighbour, with whom it has entered into fellowship, as one likewise created in incorruption. So whatever has been written about charity, take it as said about love, not troubling about the names; for the same power is shown in both. But if someone says that we are said to love money and a prostitute and other such evils with the same word that seems to be derived from charity, we must know that charity is named in these not properly but by misuse. So too, for example, the name God belongs principally to him from whom are all things, through whom are all things, and in whom are all things, which plainly declares the power and nature of the threefold unity.

In the second place, and so to speak by misuse, scripture also calls gods those to whom the word of God came, as the Saviour confirms in the Gospels. The heavenly powers too seem to be called by this name, when it is said: "God stood in the assembly of the gods, and in the midst he judges the gods." In the third place, no longer by misuse but falsely, the gods of the nations, who are demons, are so called, when scripture says: "All the gods of the nations are demons." So too the first use of the name charity is in God, which is why we are commanded to love God with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our strength, since it is from him that we have this very power to love. In him, without doubt, it is already included that we should love wisdom, righteousness, piety, truth and all the virtues alike; for to love God and to love good things are one and the same. In the second place, with a name used by extension and derived from that, we are also commanded to love our neighbour as ourselves. The third is what is falsely named under the title of charity: to love money, or pleasures, or anything that belongs to corruption and error. So it makes no difference whether God is said to be loved (amari) or held dear (diligi); nor do I think anyone could be blamed if he called God love, just as John called him charity. Indeed, I remember that one of the saints, Ignatius by name, said of Christ: "My love has been crucified"; and I do not judge him worthy of reproach for this.

We must know, however, that everyone who loves money or the things in the world that are of corruptible matter is drawing the power of charity, which is from God, down to earthly and perishable things, and is misusing the things of God for what God does not will. For God gave men the use of these things, not the love of them. We have discussed these matters somewhat at length because we wanted to distinguish more clearly and carefully the nature of charity and of love, lest, since scripture says that God is charity, everything that is loved, even if it is corruptible, should be thought to be from God and to be charity and affection. But it is shown that charity is indeed a thing of God and his gift, yet it is not always taken up by men for the things of God and for the work that God wills. And we must know this too, that it is impossible for human nature not always to love something. For everyone who has come to the age called puberty loves something, either less rightly, when he loves what he ought not, or rightly and profitably, when he loves what he ought. But some draw this disposition of love, which has been implanted in the rational soul by the kindness of the Creator, either to the love of money and the pursuit of avarice; or to the hunting of glory, and they become greedy for vainglory; or to the pursuit of harlots, and they are found captives of unchastity and lust; or they pour out the power of so great a good on other things like these. And even when this love is directed to various arts carried out by hand, or to pursuits of the present life that are merely necessary, for instance, to the art of wrestling or the exercises of running, or even when it is brought to bear on geometry or music or arithmetic, and on other disciplines of this kind, not even so does its use seem to me commendable. For if what is good is also commendable, and the good is understood properly not in bodily pursuits but first in God and in the virtues of the soul, it follows that the love that is commendable is the one fitted to God and to the virtues of the soul.

That this is so is shown by the Saviour's own definition, when he was asked by someone which was the greatest and first commandment of all in the law, and answered: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself." And he added: "On these two commandments hangs the whole law and the prophets," showing that just and lawful love consists in these two, and that the whole law and the prophets hang on them. And the saying "You shall not commit adultery; you shall not kill; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness," and any other commandment, is summed up in this word in which it says: "You shall love your neighbour as yourself." This will be more easily explained in this way. Suppose, for example, a woman burning with love for some man and longing to be taken into partnership with him: will she not do everything, and so regulate all her movements as she knows will please the one she loves, lest perhaps, if she acts in any way against his will, that excellent man should refuse and spurn her company? Could this woman, who burns with love for that man with all her heart, all her soul and all her strength, commit adultery, when she knows he loves chastity? Or murder, when she knows he is gentle? Or theft, when she knows generosity pleases him? Or covet what belongs to others, when she has all her desires occupied with love for that man? So in the perfection of charity every commandment is said to be summed up, and the force of the law and the prophets to hang on it. Because of this good of charity or love the saints are not distressed in tribulation, nor despair when perplexed, nor perish when cast down, but what is momentary and light in their tribulation works for them beyond measure an eternal weight of glory. For it is not to all, but to Paul and those like him, that this present tribulation is called momentary and light, because they have the perfect charity of God in Christ Jesus poured into their hearts through the Holy Spirit. So too his love for Rachel did not let the patriarch Jacob, set to labour for seven continuous years, feel the burning of the heat by day and the cold by night.

So too I hear Paul himself, on fire with this love, saying: "Charity bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things; charity never falls." So there is nothing that one who loves perfectly does not endure. But when we do not endure many things, it is certainly because we do not have the charity that endures all things. And if we do not bear some things patiently, it is because we lack the charity that bears all things. In the wrestling too that we have against the devil, there is no doubt that we often fall because that charity which never falls is not in us. It is this love, then, that the present scripture speaks of, with which the blessed soul is filled and inflamed toward the Word of God; and through the Spirit it sings this wedding song by which the church is joined and united to the heavenly bridegroom, Christ, longing to be united with him through the Word, so that she may conceive by him and be saved through this chaste bearing of children, if they continue in faith and holiness with sobriety, as children conceived from the seed of the Word of God and born and begotten either by the spotless church or by a soul that seeks nothing bodily, nothing material, but burns only with love for the Word of God. This is what has occurred to us for the present about the love, or charity, spoken of in the wedding song of the Song of Songs. But we must know that as much should be said about this charity as about God, since he himself is charity. For just as no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal him, so no one knows charity except the Son. Likewise no one knows the Son himself, since he too is charity, and charity itself is from God the Father, except the Father. Yet in the sense in which God the Father himself is called charity, so also is the Son, who proceeds from the Father and therefore knows the things that are in God, as the spirit of a man knows the things that are in a man. But now the Paraclete, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, goes about seeking whether he may find worthy and capable souls to whom he may reveal the greatness of this charity which is from God. Now, then, calling upon God the Father himself, who is charity, through the charity which is from him, let us come to discuss the remaining matters as well.

Let us try first to inquire why it is that, when the church of God has received three volumes written by Solomon, the book of Proverbs is placed first among them, second the one called Ecclesiastes, and the volume of the Song of Songs is held in third place. What can occur to us on this point is as follows. The general disciplines by which one attains knowledge of things are three, which the Greeks called ethics, physics and theoric; we can call them moral, natural and inspective. Some among the Greeks indeed placed logic, which we can call rational, fourth in number. Others said that it is not outside these but bound up and interwoven through the whole body of the three disciplines we mentioned above. For logic, or as we say rational philosophy, is the one that seems to contain the meanings of words and sayings, their proper and improper uses, their genera and species, and to teach the figures of each saying; and it is fitting that this discipline be not so much separated from the others as inserted and woven into them. Moral philosophy is the name for that by which an honourable way of life is shaped and habits tending to virtue are prepared. Natural philosophy is the name where the nature of each thing is discussed, so that nothing in life is done against nature, but each thing is assigned to the uses for which it was brought forth by the Creator. Inspective philosophy is the name for that by which, going beyond visible things, we contemplate something of the divine and heavenly and gaze on them with the mind alone, since they go beyond bodily sight. These things, it seems to me, the wise men of the Greeks took from Solomon, since he had learned them through the Spirit of God far earlier in age and time than they, and they brought them forward as their own discoveries and left them, comprised in the volumes of their teachings, to be handed on to posterity. But, as we have said, Solomon discovered and taught these things before all others through the wisdom he received from God, as it is written: "And God gave Solomon understanding and very great wisdom and breadth of heart like the sand on the seashore,

and wisdom was multiplied in him above all the ancient sons of men and above all the wise." So Solomon, wishing to distinguish and separate from one another these three disciplines which we said above are general, that is, the moral, the natural and the inspective, set them out in three books, each fitted in its own order one after another. First, in Proverbs he taught the moral part, composing rules of life in concise and brief sayings, as was fitting. The second, called natural, he comprised in Ecclesiastes, in which, discussing many things about natural matters and separating the empty and vain from the useful and necessary, he warns that vanity must be left behind and what is useful and right pursued. The inspective part he handed down in this book which we have in hand, that is, the Song of Songs, in which he instils into the soul the love of heavenly things and the desire for divine things under the figure of the bride and the bridegroom, teaching that one must come to fellowship with God by the paths of charity and love. That in laying the foundations of true philosophy and establishing the order of the disciplines and teachings the rational part too did not escape him and was not cast aside by him, he shows plainly at the very beginning of his Proverbs. First of all, by the very fact that he entitled his book Proverbs, a name which surely signifies that one thing is said openly and another is indicated inwardly. Common usage of proverbs teaches this, and John in the Gospel writes that the Saviour said: "These things I have spoken to you in proverbs; the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in proverbs, but will tell you plainly of the Father." So much for the inscription of the title itself. In what follows he at once adds a distinction of speech: he distinguishes knowledge from wisdom and discipline from wisdom, puts understanding of words as something else, and says that prudence consists in being able to grasp the cunning of words. He also distinguishes true righteousness from the right direction of judgment; and he names a certain shrewdness as necessary for those whom he instructs, I believe the one by which the subtlety of sophisms can be understood and avoided. And therefore he says that shrewdness is given to the innocent through wisdom, no doubt so that they may not be deceived by sophistic fraud in the word of God.

But in this he seems to me to have had in mind the rational discipline, by which the meanings of words and sayings are discerned by instruction and the proper sense of each expression is distinguished with sure reason. Boys especially should be trained in it; for this is what he urges when he says: "To give the young boy sense and thought." And because whoever is trained in these things necessarily governs himself rationally by what he has learned and balances his life with greater moderation, he therefore says: "But the man of understanding will acquire the art of steering." After this, knowing that in the divine words by which the order of living was handed down to the human race through the prophets there are different tropes of speech and various kinds of expression, and knowing that there is in them a figure called parable, another called dark saying, others named riddles, and others called sayings of the wise, he writes: "You will also understand a parable and a dark saying, the sayings of the wise and riddles." By each of these things, then, he sets out the rational part clearly and plainly, and after the manner of the ancients unfolds great and perfect meanings in concise and brief sayings. These, if there is anyone who meditates on the law of the Lord day and night, and if there is anyone like the mouth of the righteous which meditates on the wisdom of the Lord, he will be able to investigate more carefully and to find, provided he seeks rightly, and seeking knocks at the door of wisdom, asking God that it be opened to him, and is found worthy to receive through the Holy Spirit the word of wisdom and the word of knowledge, and to become a sharer in that wisdom which said: "For I stretched out my words, and you did not listen." And rightly did it say that it stretched out its words in the heart of the one to whom God has given, as we said above, breadth of heart. For the heart of the one who can explain what has been said briefly in mysteries with broader teaching, drawing statements from the divine volumes, is enlarged. So according to this same teaching of the most wise Solomon, whoever wishes to know wisdom must begin with moral instruction and understand what is written: "You have desired wisdom: keep the commandments, and the Lord will give her to you." For this reason this teacher, who first teaches men divine philosophy, placed the book of Proverbs at the beginning of his work, in which, as we have said, the moral part is handed down; so that when someone has advanced in understanding and conduct, he may also come to the discipline of natural understanding, and there, distinguishing the causes and natures of things, may recognize that vanity must be left behind and that one must hasten to what is eternal and everlasting. And so after Proverbs one comes to Ecclesiastes, which teaches, as we said, that all visible and bodily things are perishable and fragile. When someone who studies wisdom has found that this is so, he will without doubt despise and look down on them, and, renouncing, so to speak, the whole world, will strive toward the invisible and eternal things, which are taught in the Song of Songs with spiritual meanings but veiled under certain figures of love.

For this book holds the last place so that one may come to it when he has been cleansed in conduct and has learned the knowledge and distinction of corruptible and incorruptible things, by which he can in no way stumble over these figures by which the love of the bride for the heavenly bridegroom, that is, of the perfect soul for the Word of God, is described and shaped. For when those things have gone before by which the soul is purified through actions and conduct and is led to the discernment of natural things, one fittingly comes to doctrinal and mystical matters and ascends with a sincere and spiritual love to the contemplation of the Godhead. I think that this threefold form of divine philosophy was also prefigured in those holy and blessed men because of whose most holy ways of life the most high God willed to be called the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. Abraham displays moral philosophy through obedience. For so great was his obedience and observance of the commandments that when he heard: "Go out from your land and from your kindred and from your father's house," he did not hesitate but did it at once, and indeed did something more. For hearing that he should sacrifice his son, he did not hesitate even then but obeyed the command, and, to give posterity an example of obedience, which is moral philosophy, he did not spare even his only son. Isaac holds natural philosophy when he digs wells and searches out the depths of things. And Jacob holds the inspective part, since he was named Israel because of his contemplation of divine things, and saw the camps of heaven and the house of God and beheld the paths of angels, that is, the ladders stretching from earth to heaven. Hence we rightly find that these three blessed men built altars to God, that is, consecrated the progress of their philosophy to him, to teach that these things are to be credited not to human arts but to the grace of God.

They also live in tents, to show by this that one who studies divine philosophy must have nothing of his own on earth but must always be moving on, not so much from place to place as from the knowledge of lower things to the knowledge of perfect things. You will find many other things in the divine scriptures that indicate, according to this same form, the order which we said is contained in Solomon's books; but it would take long for us to pursue them now, since we have something else in hand. So if someone has fulfilled the first part, indicated by Proverbs, in amending his conduct and keeping the commandments, and after this, having detected the vanity of the world and perceived the fragility of perishable things, has come to renounce the world and all that is in the world, he will then also come to contemplate and desire the things that are unseen and eternal. Yet to reach these we need the divine mercy, if perhaps, having beheld the beauty of the Word of God, we may be kindled with a saving love for him, so that he too may deign to love such a soul, which he has seen has desire for him. After this, the sequence of our discourse requires us to speak also about the title itself, the Song of Songs. For this is like what in the tabernacle of witness are called the Holy of Holies, and what are mentioned in the book of Numbers as the works of works, and what in Paul are called the ages of ages. But how the Holy of Holies differ from the holy things in Exodus, and how works differ from the works of works in the book of Numbers, we have said in our treatises as well as we could. And the age of ages has not been passed over in the places where it occurs; so let that suffice, lest we repeat the same things. Now, then, let us first inquire what the songs are of which this is said to be the Song.

I think, then, that the songs are those that were sung long ago through the prophets or through angels. For the law is said to have been ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator. So all the things announced through them were songs going before, sung by the friends of the bridegroom. But this is the one song that was to be sung, in the form of a wedding song, to the bridegroom himself as he was about to receive his bride; in it the bride no longer wishes to be sung to through the bridegroom's friends, but longs to hear the words of the bridegroom himself, now present, saying: "Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth." Hence it is rightly preferred to all songs. For the other songs that the law and the prophets sang seem to have been sung to the bride while she was still a little girl and had not yet entered the threshold of mature age; but this song seems to be sung to her when she is grown up, already very strong, and capable of manly power and of the perfect mystery. In this sense it is said of her that she is the one perfect dove. As a perfect bride of a perfect husband, then, she has received the words of perfect teaching. The first song, then, was sung to God by Moses and the children of Israel when they saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore, and when they saw the strong hand and the uplifted arm of the Lord and believed God and his servant Moses. Then they sang, saying: "Let us sing to the Lord, for he has been gloriously glorified." But I think that no one can come to this perfect and mystical song and to this perfection of the bride contained in this scripture unless he first walks on dry ground in the midst of the sea, and the water becomes a wall for him on the right and on the left, and so escapes from the hands of the Egyptians, so that he sees them dead on the seashore and, beholding the strong hand of the Lord, how he slew the Egyptians, believes the Lord and his servant Moses.

By Moses I mean the law and the Gospels and all the divine scriptures; for then he will rightly sing and say: "Let us sing to the Lord, for he has been gloriously glorified." But one will sing this song when he has first been freed from the slavery of the Egyptians. After this, when he has passed through all the things written in Exodus and in Leviticus and has come to be taken up into the divine numbers, then he will sing the second song, when he has come out of the valley of Zared, which is interpreted 'alien descent', and has come to the well of which it is written: "And the Lord said to Moses: Gather the people, and I will give them water from the well to drink." For there he will sing and say: "Begin the song to the well. The princes dug it, the kings of the nations hewed it out in their kingdom, when they rule over them." But of these things we have spoken more fully on the book of Numbers, as the Lord granted us. So one must come to the well dug by princes and hewn by kings, in which work no commoner labours, but all are princes, all kings, that is, royal and princely souls, which search out the depth of the well that holds living water. After that song one comes to the song of Deuteronomy, of which the Lord says: "And now write for yourselves the words of this song, and teach it to the children of Israel, and put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for me among the children of Israel." And see how great and of what kind this song is, for the hearing of which the earth is not enough, but heaven too is summoned. For it says: "Give heed, O heaven, to what I shall speak, and let the earth hear the words of my mouth." See how great, how vast are the things that are said. "Let my speech be awaited like the rain," it says, "and let it come down like the dew upon the grass and like snow upon the hay, for I have called on the name of the Lord," and so on. The fourth song is in the book of Judges, of which it is written: "And Deborah and Barak the son of Abinoam sang on that day, saying: When the princes in Israel began, in the willingness of the people bless the Lord. Hear, O kings, give ear," and so on. The one who sings these things must be a bee, whose work is such that kings and common people use it for their health.

For Deborah, who sings this song, is interpreted 'bee', and Barak sings with her; and Barak is interpreted 'lightning'. And this song is sung after a victory, because no one can sing what is perfect before he has conquered his adversaries. So too in this song itself it is said: "Arise, arise, Deborah, rouse the thousands of the people. Arise, arise, sing a song; arise, Barak." But you will find these things too discussed more fully in the little addresses we have published on the book of Judges. The fifth song after these is in the second book of Kingdoms, when David spoke to the Lord the words of this song on the day when the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul, and said: "The Lord is my rock and my fortress; the Lord is my deliverer; my God will be my keeper." So if you too can consider who are the enemies of David whom he overcomes and lays low in the first and second books of Kingdoms, and how he was made worthy to deserve the Lord's help and to be delivered from such enemies, then you too will be able to sing this fifth song. The sixth song is in the first book of Chronicles, where David at the beginning appointed Asaph and his brothers to praise the Lord, and the beginning of that song is this: "Praise the Lord and confess him, and call upon him in his name; make known his purposes among the peoples; sing to him and say a hymn; tell all his wonderful works that the Lord has done," and so on. We must know, however, that the song in the second book of Kingdoms is very like Psalm 17; and the one in the first book of Chronicles, in its opening parts up to the place where it says, "And do no harm to my prophets," is like Psalm 104; while the later parts, from this place on, resemble the first parts of Psalm 95, where it says, "Sing to the Lord, all the earth," up to the place where it says, "For he comes to judge the earth."

So if the number of the songs is to be closed with these, this book, the Song of Songs, will seem to stand in the seventh place. But if someone thinks that the song of Isaiah too should be counted with the others, although it does not seem very fitting to think that the song of Isaiah came before, since Isaiah wrote it at a much later time, yet if someone thinks that prophetic sayings are to be weighed not by their times but by their meaning, he will add that song too; and he will say that this song which Solomon sang is the Song of Songs not only of those that were sung before but also of those that were to be sung afterwards. And if someone thinks that songs should also be taken from the book of Psalms, wherever a song or a song of a psalm is written in it, he will gather a multitude of preceding songs. For he will join to the others the fifteen songs of the steps as well; and examining the power of each song, gathering from them the steps of the advancing soul, and arranging again the spiritual order and sequence, he will be able to show with what magnificent strides the bride advances through all these until she reaches the bridegroom's chamber, passing into the place of the wonderful tabernacle, even to the house of God, with the voice of exultation and confession, the sound of one keeping festival; and reaching, as we have said, the very chamber of the bridegroom, so that she may hear and speak all these things contained in the Song of Songs. We can still inquire into this too before we come to the body of the book itself: why Solomon, who in these three books seems to be obeying the will of the Holy Spirit, is called in Proverbs "Solomon son of David, who reigned in Israel"; while in the second book it is not "Solomon" that is written but "The words," it says, "of Ecclesiastes, son of David, king of Israel in Jerusalem." There he writes that he is the son of David, as in the first, and king of Israel; but there he put "proverbs" and here "words", and himself, whom there he named Solomon, he here names Ecclesiastes. And whereas there he had put only the nation over which he had reigned, here he put the nation and also indicates the place of his reign, Jerusalem. But in the Song of Songs he writes neither the name of the nation, nor the place where he reigns, nor that he is a king at all, nor that he has David for his father, but only: "The Song of Songs, which is Solomon's." And although it seems difficult to me either to search out or to reach the differences between these, or, having somehow investigated them, to bring them forth openly and entrust them to paper, yet so far as our understanding or the hearing of our readers can take it, we shall try to set it out in a few words.

I do not think it should be doubted that Solomon in very many respects bears the figure of Christ, whether in that he is called peaceable, or in that the queen of the South came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon. So he reigns in Israel both in that he is called son of David, and in that he reigns over those kings in relation to whom he himself is called King of kings. And again, he himself is the true Ecclesiastes, who, though he was in the form of God, emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, in order to gather the church; for Ecclesiastes is so called from gathering the church. And who is so truly Solomon, that is, peaceable, as our Lord Jesus Christ, who has been made for us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and peace? So in the first book, Proverbs, when he instructs us in moral disciplines, he is said to be king in Israel, not yet in Jerusalem; because although we are called Israel on account of faith, we have not yet come so far as to seem to have reached the heavenly Jerusalem. But when we have advanced and have come to be joined to the church of the firstborn which is in heaven, and, having examined the ancient and natural causes more carefully, recognize that the heavenly Jerusalem is our mother, then Christ himself also becomes Ecclesiastes for us, and is said to reign not only in Israel but also in Jerusalem. And when the perfection of all things has come, and the whole rational creation, at least, is joined to him as a perfect bride, because he has made peace through his blood not only for the things on earth but also for those in heaven, then he will be called only Solomon, when he has handed over the kingdom to God the Father, when he has destroyed every rule and authority. For he must reign until he puts his enemies under his feet, and the last enemy, death, is destroyed. And so, when all things have been made peaceful and subjected to the Father, when God is all in all, he will be named only Solomon, that is, the only peaceable one.

Fittingly, then, in this book, which was to be written about the love of the bride and the bridegroom, neither "son of David" nor "king" nor any other of these things that could belong to a bodily understanding is written, so that the bride, now perfect, may rightly say of him: "Even if we once knew Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer"; lest anyone think that she loves something bodily or placed in the flesh, and that some stain is believed to enter into her love. For this reason the Song of Songs is only "Solomon's", not "the son of David's" or "the king of Israel's", and no understanding of a carnal name is mixed into these things at all. And do not be surprised that, though our Lord and Saviour is one and the same, we speak of him as lesser at first in Proverbs, then advancing in Ecclesiastes, and after this having perfection in the Song of Songs, since you see this written in the Gospels too, where for our sake and in us he himself is said to advance. For it is related that Jesus advanced in age and wisdom with God and men. I think, then, that it is for all these reasons that neither "son of David" nor "king of Israel" is written, and also because in the Song of Songs the bride had now advanced so far that there was something greater than the kingdom of Jerusalem. For the Apostle says that Jerusalem is heavenly and records that believers come to it. But this bridegroom, toward whom the bride now hastens, the same Paul, when he calls him the greatest high priest, describes as one who is not in the heavens but has passed through all the heavens, so that there too this perfect bride of his may follow him, or rather, clinging to him and joined to him, may ascend there; for she has become one spirit with him. Hence it seems to me that he said to Peter too, who could not follow him at first, when he said: "Where I am going you cannot come now," "But you will follow afterwards." That there is something greater even than Israel we gather from the fact that in the book of Numbers all Israel is numbered, and the twelve tribes of Israel are registered under one number, while the tribe of Levi, as more eminent than the rest, is held above this number and is in no way counted in the number of Israel. For it says thus: "This is the census of the children of Israel by the houses of their families. Their whole census with their strength was six hundred and three thousand five hundred and fifty.

But the Levites were not numbered with them, as the Lord commanded." You see how the Levites, as more eminent, are set apart from the children of Israel and are not counted in their number. And again the priests are written as more eminent than the Levites. For the same scripture contains this: "And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Take the sum of the Levites, and you shall set them before Aaron the priest, and they shall minister to him." You see in this too how it names the priests as higher than the Levites, and again sets the Levites as more eminent than the children of Israel? We have discussed these things somewhat more curiously, wishing to show by them too the reason why Solomon used necessary differences even in the titles of his books, and indicated one thing in Proverbs, another in Ecclesiastes, and another again in the Song of Songs by the very inscription of the title. And further, as to why in the Song of Songs, where perfection is now shown, neither "son of David" nor "king" is written, this too can be said: that when the servant has become like his lord and the disciple like his teacher, the servant seems no longer to be a servant, having become like his lord, nor the disciple a disciple, since he has been made like his teacher; but he was once a disciple and now is like his teacher, and he was once a servant, but now is like his Lord. By similar reasoning it will seem that the same can be observed of the king and of those over whom he reigns, when the kingdom is handed over to God the Father. But let this not escape notice either: some write the title of this book as "Songs of Songs", which is not written correctly. For here it is called not in the plural but in the singular the Song of Songs.

These things we have said, as in a preface, about the title or inscription of the book itself. Now, with our Lord helping us, let us attack the beginning of the work itself; and yet let us not leave out even this point, which some have thought should still be inquired into concerning the title and inscription of the book, which reads thus: "The Song of Songs, which is Solomon's." For they take it as if he had said that this is the song of Solomon's songs, so as to indicate that this is one out of his many songs. But how shall we accept such an understanding, when neither has the church of God received any songs of Solomon from outside to be read, nor among the Hebrews, from whom the oracles of God seem to have been handed over to us, is anything more contained in the canon besides these three books of Solomon, which we too have? Those who assert this, however, want to confirm their opinion from what is written in the third book of Kingdoms, that Solomon had many songs, so as to establish that this is one of many. This is what is related there: "And God gave Solomon understanding and very great wisdom and breadth of heart like the sand on the seashore; and Solomon became very wise, above the wisdom of all the ancients and above all the wise men of Egypt, and above Ethan the Ezrahite and Heman, and Chalcol and Darda, the sons of Mahol; and he was renowned among all the nations round about. And Solomon spoke three thousand parables, and his songs were five thousand." They want it to seem that out of these five thousand songs this is the one song we have; but how far or where they were sung has come not only not into the use but not even into the knowledge of the churches of God. It would be laborious and far from the task in hand if we now wished to inquire how many books are mentioned in the divine scriptures of which no reading at all has been handed down to us. But we find that not even among the Jews is there any use of such readings: whether because they contained some things beyond human understanding and it pleased the Holy Spirit that they be removed from the midst, or because they were among those scriptures called apocryphal, since many things in them are found corrupted and contrary to the true faith, the elders did not see fit to give them a place or admit them to authority.

It is beyond us to pronounce on such matters. Yet this much is plain: many examples have been brought forward by the apostles or the evangelists and inserted in the New Testament which we never read in the scriptures we hold as canonical, but which are found in the apocrypha and are evidently shown to have been taken from them. But not even so is a place to be given to the apocrypha; for the boundaries which our fathers set are not to be crossed. For it may be that the apostles or evangelists, filled with the Holy Spirit, knew what was to be taken from those scriptures and what rejected; but for us, who have no such abundance of the Spirit, it is not without danger to presume anything of the kind. And therefore on the present verse we hold to the version we set out above, especially since there is an evident distinction in it, where it says: "The Song of Songs, which is Solomon's." For if he had wished it to be understood that this is the song of Solomon's songs, he would surely have said: "The Song of the songs which are Solomon's," or "The Song from the songs of Solomon." But since he said "which is Solomon's," it is shown that this Song which is in our hands, and which he had to sing, is Solomon's. And let this suffice about the title which he set forth. Let us now see what follows.

"Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth." We must remember what we pointed out in the preface: that this book, which has the form of a wedding song, is written in the manner of a drama. And we said that a drama is where certain characters are brought on who speak, and others now and then come in, others go off or come near, and so the whole is carried on by changes of characters. This, then, will be the form of the whole book, and according to it we shall fit the historical exposition as well as we can. The spiritual understanding, however, as we indicated in the preface, is directed either to the church in relation to Christ under the title of bride and bridegroom, or to the union of the soul with the Word of God. So now, in the form of a story, a certain bride is brought on who has received from a most noble bridegroom most worthy gifts by way of betrothal and dowry. But since the bridegroom delays for a very long time, she is troubled by longing for her love and wastes away grieving at home, doing everything she can to see her bridegroom at last and enjoy his kisses. Since she sees that she can neither put off her love nor obtain what she longs for, she turns to prayer and pleads with God, knowing that he is the Father of her bridegroom. Let us picture her, then, lifting up holy hands without anger or dispute, in modest dress with reverence and sobriety, adorned with the worthiest ornaments, such as befit a noble bride; but burning with longing for the bridegroom and stirred by the inner wound of love, pouring out prayer to God, as we said, and saying of her bridegroom: "Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth." This is what the historical explanation, composed in the manner of a drama, contains.

Now let us see whether the inner meaning can be fittingly applied in this way. Let it be the church longing to be joined to Christ; and by the church understand the assembly of all the saints. Let this church, then, be as it were one person made of all, who speaks and says: "I have everything; I am filled with gifts which I received before the wedding by way of betrothal or dowry. For long ago, when I was being prepared for marriage to the King's Son and the firstborn of all creation, his holy angels waited on me and served me, bringing me the law as a betrothal gift; for the law is said to have been ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator. The prophets too served me. For they too spoke all things, by which they not only showed and declared to me about the Son of God, to whom they wished to betroth me with these gifts that are called pledges and dowry presents, but also, to kindle me with love and longing for him, they proclaimed to me with prophetic voices his coming, and, filled with the Holy Spirit, preached his countless powers and his immeasurable works. They also described his beauty and comeliness and gentleness, so that by all these things I was inflamed beyond bearing with love for him. But since the age is now almost ended, and his own presence is not granted me, but I see only his ministers ascending and descending to me, for this reason I pour out my prayer to you, the Father of my bridegroom, and beg that, taking pity at last on my love, you send him, so that he may no longer speak to me only through his ministers, the angels and the prophets, but may come himself in person and kiss me with the kiss of his mouth, that is, pour the words of his own mouth into my mouth; that I may hear him speaking himself and see him teaching himself." For these are the kisses of Christ which he offered to the church when at his coming, being himself present in the flesh, he preached to her the words of faith and charity and peace, as Isaiah had promised, who was sent ahead to the bride and had said: "Not an ambassador nor an angel, but the Lord himself will save us."

In the third place of the exposition let us bring on the soul, whose whole effort is to be joined and united to the Word of God and to enter into the mysteries of his wisdom and knowledge as into the chamber of the heavenly bridegroom. To this soul too gifts have been given, namely by way of dowry. For just as the church's dowry was the volumes of the law and the prophets, so for this soul let the natural law, rational sense and freedom of choice be counted as dowry gifts. Having these gifts of her dowry, let her have the teaching of her first instruction coming down from guardians and teachers. But since in these she finds no full and perfect fulfilment of her desire and love, let her pray that her pure and virginal mind may be enlightened by the illuminations and visitations of the Word of God himself. For when the mind is filled with divine perceptions and understandings without the ministry of any man or angel, then let it believe that it is receiving the kisses of the Word of God himself. For these and such kisses, then, let the soul say in prayer to God: "Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth." For as long as she was incapable of receiving the pure and solid teaching of the Word of God himself, she received kisses of necessity, that is, meanings from the mouth of teachers. But when she has begun of her own accord to discern what is obscure, to untie what is tangled, to unravel what is involved, to explain parables and riddles and the sayings of the wise along the fitting lines of understanding, then let her believe that she has received the kisses of her bridegroom himself, that is, of the Word of God. And he put "kisses" in the plural so that we may understand that the illumination of each obscure meaning is a kiss of the Word of God brought to the perfect soul. In this sense perhaps the prophetic and perfect mind said: "I opened my mouth and drew in the Spirit." By the mouth of the bridegroom we understand the power of God by which he enlightens the mind and, as by a word of love addressed to it, if only it deserves to receive the presence of such great power, makes plain to it whatever was unknown and obscure. And this is the truer, nearer and holier kiss, which is said to be offered by the bridegroom, the Word of God, to the bride, that is, the pure and perfect soul.

An image of this is the kiss which we give one another in church at the time of the mysteries. So whenever we find in our heart, without guides, something sought concerning divine doctrines and meanings, let us believe that kisses have been given us by the bridegroom, the Word of God. But when, seeking something about the divine meanings, we cannot find it, then, taking up the disposition of this prayer, let us ask God for the visitation of his Word and say: "Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth." For the Father knows the capacity of each soul and knows at what time, to which soul, and what kisses of his Word he ought to offer, at least in understandings and perceptions. "For your breasts are better than wine, and the fragrance of your ointments above all spices." I understand first, as in the drama of the story, that the bride has poured out prayer to the Father with hands lifted up to God and has prayed that the bridegroom might now come to her and himself give her a kiss of his own mouth. And while she was praying this to the Father, in the very prayer in which she said, "Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth," she prepares to add other words of prayer, and to say that at this beginning of her speech the bridegroom had come, had stood by her as she prayed, and had revealed his words to her, and that the bridegroom himself stood there anointed with wonderful ointments, such as it befitted a bridegroom to be fragrant with. And when the bride saw that he was present for whose presence she was praying, and that what she was asking for had been granted to her while she was still speaking, and that the kisses she had asked for had been given her by him, rejoicing at this and moved by the beauty of his breasts and the scent of his fragrance, she turned the speech of the prayer she had begun to the presence of the bridegroom, who was there; and having said, "Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth," she then adds, speaking to the bridegroom now present: "Your breasts are better than wine, and the fragrance of your ointments above all spices."

So much, for the present, for the historical understanding, which we said was woven in the manner of a drama. Now let us inquire what the inner meaning holds. We find that the ruling part of the heart is called by different words in the divine scriptures, and these words are usually fitted to the causes and matters under discussion. Sometimes it is called the heart, as in "Blessed are the pure in heart," and "With the heart one believes unto righteousness." But if it is the time of a banquet, then, according to the posture and order of those reclining, it is called the bosom or the breast; as John relates in the Gospel about a certain disciple whom Jesus loved, that he reclined in his bosom or on his breast: the one, namely, to whom Simon Peter beckoned and said, "Ask who it is of whom he speaks." And after this, leaning on Jesus' breast, he says to him: "Lord, who is it?" In these words it is certain that John is said to have rested in the ruling part of Jesus' heart and in the inner meanings of his teaching, seeking and searching out there the treasures of wisdom and knowledge that were hidden in Christ Jesus. And I think it does not seem unfitting that the bosom of Christ be taken to stand for holy doctrines. So, as we had begun to say, the ruling part of the heart is designated in different ways in the holy scriptures, as also in Leviticus, where in the sacrifices the breast of separation and the shoulder are set apart for the priests; and by this breast and shoulder set apart and separated it means that the ruling part of the heart and the honour of works, excelling other men, should be in the priests. We have explained this more fully on the book of Leviticus, as the Lord deigned to grant. In keeping with these things, then, in the present passage too, since the drama being acted seems to be one of love, let us understand the ruling part of the heart by the breasts, so that what is said seems to be this: "Your heart, my bridegroom, that is, the doctrines that are within you, or the teachings of grace, surpasses all wine, which is wont to gladden the heart of man." For just as in the case of those of whom he says, "For they shall see God," "heart" seems to have been fittingly said, and among those reclining the bosom and breast are mentioned, no doubt because of the posture of those reclining and the form of the banquet; and again, as among the priests the breast and shoulder are designated in mystical speech; so too, I think, in the present passage, where the posture and conversation of lovers are described, this same ruling part of the heart is most gracefully called the breasts.

The bridegroom's breasts, then, are good, since the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in them. The bride compares these breasts with wine, but compares them so as to prefer them. By wine we must understand the doctrines and teachings which the bride had been accustomed to take through the law and the prophets before the bridegroom's coming. But now, considering this teaching that flows from the bridegroom's breasts, she marvels and is amazed, seeing that it is far more excellent than that by which she had been gladdened before the bridegroom's coming, as by the spiritual wine which the holy fathers and prophets served; they too planted vineyards of this kind, as Noah first, and Isaiah on a horn in a fruitful place, and they cultivated them. So, seeing now the great eminence of doctrines and knowledge in the bridegroom, and that a far more perfect teaching flows from him than there was among the ancients, she says: "Your breasts are better than wine," that is, than that teaching by which I was gladdened by the ancients. For it is of this wine of the ancients that Ecclesiastes is to be understood to speak where he says: "I said in my heart: Come, I will test you with gladness; I will laugh in good things." And again, speaking of the same vineyards, Ecclesiastes says: "I made my work great; I built myself houses, I planted myself vineyards, I made myself gardens and orchards," and so on. This vineyard also has certain mystical ministers, who are called cupbearers. For he says: "And I made myself singing men and singing women, for the delight of the sons of men, cupbearers, men and women." See, then, whether we can understand, both in other places and in this one, the Saviour mixing the new streams of his breasts with the old wine, when Mary and Joseph sought and found him in the temple sitting among the teachers, listening to them and questioning them, when all were amazed at his answers. And perhaps the form of this figure is also fulfilled there where, going up the mountain, he taught the people and said: "It was said to the ancients: You shall not kill;

but I say to you: Everyone who is angry with his brother without cause will be liable to judgment"; and: "It was said to the ancients: You shall not commit adultery; but I say to you: Everyone who looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart." As far, then, as this teaching of his surpasses that ancient one, so far does the bride understand and declare that his breasts are better than wine. And the fact that the Son of Man is called a glutton and a drinker, and they say, "Look, a gluttonous man and a drinker of wine," also has this in view. Such too was that wine of Cana in Galilee which was drunk at the wedding; when it ran out he made other wine, to which the master of the feast bore witness that it was very good and far more excellent than the wine that had been used up, when he says: "Everyone serves the good wine first, and when they have drunk freely, what is worse; but you have kept the good wine until now." Consider also Solomon, who for the wisdom he received from God was the object of admiration to the queen of Sheba, who had come to test him with questions. What the things were for which the same queen admired him, hear scripture telling: "And the queen of Sheba saw all the wisdom of Solomon, and the house that he had built, the arrangement of his banquet, the seating of his servants, the order of his ministers, and their clothing, and his cupbearers, and the burnt offerings which he offered in the house of God, and she was amazed," and so on. Notice in these words how she who came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon marvels, among other things, at the food of his banquet or at his cupbearers, and is said to have been amazed at these. But I do not know whether we should think the queen so foolish that, having come from the ends of the earth for this purpose, to hear the wisdom of Solomon, she should marvel at bodily food and this common wine and the cupbearers of wine in the king's service. For what in these things would seem worthy of a queen's admiration, which are common to almost all men?

But it seems to me that she marvelled at the food of his teaching and the wine of the doctrines that were proclaimed by him through divine wisdom. This was the wine too of which Jeremiah tells concerning the sons of Jonadab the son of Rechab: at the time when the sins of the people had grown strong and captivity threatened for the iniquities of the people, they were called together to drink wine, and they said that their father Jonadab had commanded them not to drink wine, they or their sons for ever, nor to build houses, nor to sow seed, nor to plant vineyards, but to live in tents all the days of their life. And God embraces them because they kept their father's command and would not drink wine. For because of the sins of the people at that time and their iniquities, their vine was from the vine of Sodom and their branches from Gomorrah; their grapes were grapes of gall and their clusters bitterness; the venom of asps and the fury of dragons was their wine. For this reason, then, the sons of Jonadab are held praiseworthy, for they refused to drink and take in such wine, that is, poisoned doctrines foreign to the faith of God. For this reason too perhaps God struck the vines of the Egyptians, as is written in the psalm, so that they might not make such wine. So if we have understood the differences of wine, and have perceived that they consist in the diversity of doctrines, when the bride says here, "For your breasts are better than wine," let us understand good wine, not bad. For the bridegroom's doctrines are preferred when compared with good doctrines, not bad. She had tasted good wine before in the law and the prophets; having been prepared by it, as it were, to receive gladness of heart and to make herself ready to receive also that teaching which was to come through the breasts of the bridegroom himself, more excellent and more eminent than all, she says: "Your breasts are better than wine."

And see whether we can still fit to this figure that parable of the Gospel which says: "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field; whoever finds it hides it, and in his joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field." This treasure, then, is hidden not in some desert place nor in the woods, but in a field. And it is surely possible that that field also has vineyards which yield wine, and also has the treasure for which the man who had found the treasure there sold everything and bought that field. So the one who bought the field can say that the treasure in the field is better than the wine in it. So too the bridegroom and the bridegroom's breasts, which are like a treasure hidden in the law and the prophets, are better than the wine that is in them, namely the teaching that is open and gladdens its hearers. The bridegroom's breasts, then, are good. For the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in him; and when they have been opened and revealed to the bride's eyes, they will seem to her far more excellent than that former wine of the law and the teaching of the prophets. And if we are to take the third exposition, of the perfect soul and the Word of God, we can say that while someone is a little one and has not yet offered himself wholly to God, he drinks the wine that the field produces, which also holds within it the hidden treasure, and in drinking he is gladdened by the wine. But when he has offered and vowed himself to God and has become a Nazirite, and has found the hidden treasure and come to the very breasts and fountains of the Word of God, he will no longer drink wine and strong drink, but will say to the Word of God himself concerning these treasures of knowledge and wisdom hidden in him: "For your breasts are better than wine." Now the bridegroom has certain ointments, whose fragrance delights the bride, and she says: "The fragrance of your ointments is above all spices." Spices are kinds of perfumes.

The bride had a certain use and knowledge of spices, that is, of the words of the law and the prophets, by which, before the bridegroom's coming, she seemed to be instructed, though modestly, and trained for the worship of God, being still a little girl and living under guardians, stewards and tutors; for the law was our tutor unto Christ. All these were spices, in which she seemed to be nourished and prepared for her bridegroom. But when the fullness of time came and she had grown up, and the Father sent his only-begotten, anointed with the Holy Spirit, into this world, the bride, catching the fragrance of the divine ointment and perceiving that all those spices she had used before were far inferior in comparison with the sweetness of this new and heavenly ointment, says: "The fragrance of your ointments is above all spices." And since Christ is called both bridegroom and high priest, high priest in that he is the mediator between God and men and all creation, for which he also became the propitiation, offering himself as a sacrifice for the sin of the world; and bridegroom in that he is joined to the church that has no spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind; consider whether perhaps that high-priestly ointment which in Exodus is ordered to be compounded by the perfumer's art holds the meaning of this ointment whose fragrance the bride now marvels at. And seeing that the spices of which the ointment with which Aaron was anointed was compounded were earthly and of bodily matter, while this ointment with which she now sees the bridegroom anointed is spiritual and heavenly, she therefore says: "For the fragrance of your ointments is above all spices." Let us see, then, how that ointment was compounded. "And the Lord spoke to Moses," it says, "saying: Take for yourself the flower of choice myrrh, five hundred shekels, and of sweet cinnamon two hundred and fifty shekels, and of sweet calamus two hundred and fifty, and of cassia five hundred shekels by the holy shekel, and of olive oil a hin; and you shall make of it the oil of holy chrism, an ointment by the perfumer's art."

The bride had heard these things related in the law, but now she perceives their meaning and truth. See, then, that these four kinds of this ointment held the figure of the incarnation of the Word of God, who took a body compounded of four elements; in that body the myrrh preserves the signs of his death, which he underwent whether as high priest for the people or as bridegroom for the bride. And that it is written not simply "myrrh" but "the flower of myrrh" and "of choice myrrh" indicated not only his death but also that he would be the firstborn from the dead, and that those who had been planted together in the likeness of his death would be not only called but chosen. The cinnamon is called spotless, no doubt because of the church, which he purified by the washing of water and made spotless, having no spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind. The calamus too is taken, because his tongue is also the reed of a scribe writing swiftly, signifying the grace of teaching by the sweetness of the perfume. The iris too is added, a kind said to be very hot and burning; in it is shown the figure either of the fervour of the Holy Spirit or of the future judgment by fire. The number five hundred or two hundred and fifty shekels holds the mystery either of the five senses perfected a hundredfold in him, or else the fifty, the number of remission, placed five times, signifies the forgiveness of sins given through him. All these are gathered together with pure oil, by which it is shown either that it was by mercy alone that he who was in the form of God took the form of a servant, or that what had been taken from material substance in Christ was brought into one by the Holy Spirit and made into one form, which is the person of the mediator. That material oil, then, could in no way be called the oil of gladness.

But this oil, that is, the ointment of the Holy Spirit with which Christ was anointed, and whose fragrance the bride now perceives and admires, is rightly called the oil of gladness, because the fruit of the Spirit is joy; with it God anointed him who loved righteousness and hated iniquity. For this reason it is said: "The Lord his God anointed him with the oil of gladness above his fellows." And therefore the fragrance of his ointments is above all spices. We use a similar exposition if this saying is transferred to each soul set in the love and desire of the Word of God, which has run through in order all the teachings in which it seems to have been trained and instructed before it knew the Word of God, whether they come from the moral or from the natural schools. For all these were spices of a kind for it, since in them a commendable training and the amendment of conduct are sought, since in them the vanity of the world is detected and the false wonders of perishable things are rejected. So all these were for it like spices and fragrances, perfumes of the soul. But when it has come to the knowledge of the mysteries and the understanding of divine doctrines, when it has approached the gates of wisdom itself, and not the wisdom of this world nor of the rulers of this world who are coming to nothing, but the wisdom of God itself which is spoken among the perfect, and where the mystery which was not known to former generations has been revealed to the sons of men; when, I say, the soul has ascended to the knowledge of so great a secret, it rightly says: "The fragrance of your ointments," that is, the spiritual and mystical understanding, is "above all spices," the moral and natural philosophy. Let it not escape us that in some copies, instead of what we read, "For your breasts are better than wine," we find written, "For your words are better than wine." Although this seems to express more plainly the very things we have set out by the spiritual interpretation, we keep to what the Seventy Translators wrote in everything, being certain that the Holy Spirit willed that the figures of the mysteries should be hidden in the divine scriptures and not be had openly and in plain view.

"Your name is an ointment emptied out. Therefore the young maidens have loved you and drawn you after them. We shall run after the fragrance of your ointments." The historical exposition runs on in the present passage as in what preceded, until there is some change of characters; for the order of the drama which we have adopted in this exposition requires it. Certainly a kind of prophecy about Christ may be seen in these words, spoken in the person of the bride: what was to happen at the coming of our Lord and Saviour, that his name would be so spread through the globe of the earth and the whole world that it would become a fragrance of sweetness in every place; as the Apostle too said: "For we are the good fragrance of Christ in every place; to some a fragrance from death to death, to others a fragrance from life to life." For if it had been a fragrance from life to life for all, he would surely have said here too: "All have loved you and drawn you." But as it is he says: when your name became an ointment emptied out, those who loved you were not the aged souls clothed with the old man, having wrinkles and spots, but the young maidens, that is, souls set in the growth of age and beauty, who are always being made new and are renewed day by day, putting on the new man who was created according to God.

For the sake of these young maidens, then, who are set in the growth of life's progress, he who was in the form of God emptied himself, so that his name might become an ointment emptied out; so that he might no longer only dwell in unapproachable light and remain in the form of God, but that the Word might become flesh, so that these young maidens, the souls set in the growth of progress, might not only love him but also draw him to themselves. For each soul draws and takes the Word of God to itself according to the measure of its capacity and faith. And when souls have drawn the Word of God to themselves and planted him in their perceptions and understandings, and have felt the sweetness of his delight and fragrance, when they have caught the fragrance of his ointments, that is, have recognized the reason for his coming, the causes of redemption and passion, and the charity by which he, the immortal, went even to the death of the cross for the salvation of all, then, invited by all these as by the scents of some divine and ineffable ointment, the young maidens, that is, souls made full of vigour and eagerness, run after him, and hasten toward the fragrance of his sweetness not with slow step or tardy pace but with swift course and all speed; as he too who said, "So I run that I may lay hold." As for the saying, "Your name is an ointment emptied out; therefore the young maidens have loved you and drawn you after them; we shall run after the fragrance of your ointments": the young maidens draw Christ to themselves, if it is understood of the churches, which is one when it is perfect, but many young maidens while they are still being instructed and making progress. These, then, draw Christ to themselves through faith; for when Christ sees two or three gathered in faith in his name, he goes there and is in their midst, drawn by their faith and called forth by their unanimity. But if this is to be understood in the third exposition, of the soul following the Word of God, then whatever soul has been instructed first in moral matters, and secondly trained in natural matters, through all the things which we showed above are taught in these disciplines, its very amendment of conduct, its learning in things, and the uprightness of its discipline draw the Word of God to it, and he is gladly drawn; for he comes most willingly to instructed souls, and graciously allows himself to be drawn by them, and kindly consents.

I ask, indeed: if his name alone, because it became an ointment emptied out, has done so great a work and so roused the young maidens that first they drew him to themselves, and having him with them caught the fragrance of his ointments and at once ran after him; if, I say, all this was brought about by his name alone, what do you think his very substance will do? What power, what vigour will these young maidens receive from it, if in some way they can at some time reach his incomprehensible and ineffable substance itself? I think that if they ever reach this, they will no longer walk or run, but, bound by certain bonds of his charity, will cling to him, so that no room for any movement remains in them any longer, but they are one spirit with him, and what is written is fulfilled in them: "As you, Father, are in me and I in you, and we are one, so may these also be one in us." But now for the present, as it seems, the bride, having joined to herself many young maidens, of whom it is said later on that there is no number, records that she runs toward the fragrance of the bridegroom's ointments, captivated by one sense only, that is, by smell; whether because she herself still needs running and progress, or because she herself is perfect but confesses that she too runs for the sake of these young maidens who still need running and progress; as he too who, though not himself under the law, yet became as under the law in order to win those under the law, and again, though he was under the law of Christ, yet to those without the law became as without the law himself, in order to save those without the law. And this happens, as we said, when only his fragrance has as yet been received. What do you think they will do when the Word of God has taken possession of their hearing and sight and touch and taste, and has supplied to each sense powers from himself suited to their nature and capacity? So that the eye, if it can see his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten from the Father, will no longer wish to see anything else, nor the hearing to hear anything other than the Word of life and salvation. And whoever's hands have handled the Word of life will handle nothing material, nothing fragile and perishable any more; nor will the taste, when it has tasted the good Word of God and his flesh and the bread that came down from heaven, allow itself to taste anything else after this.

For because of his sweetness and delight every other flavour will seem harsh and bitter to it, and therefore it will feed on this alone. For whatever sweetness it desires it will find in him, since he makes himself suited and fit for all things. Thus for those who are born again of incorruptible seed he becomes reasonable milk without guile; for those who are weak in some respect he offers himself as vegetables, for the friendship and favour of hospitality. But for those who, according to their capacity for receiving, have senses trained to distinguish good and evil, he offers himself as solid food. And if there are any who have come out of Egypt and, following the pillar of fire and cloud, have come into the desert, he comes down to them from heaven, offering them a fine and delicate food like that of angels, so that man eats the bread of angels. He has many other and countless differences of food in himself, which meanwhile one who is clothed with skin and flesh, bones and sinews cannot receive. But whoever is found worthy to depart and be with Christ, and who, having been found faithful in little, will be set over much, will taste and receive the delight of the Lord, being led to a certain place which, because of such abundance and variety of foods, is called the place of delights. For this reason too he is said to have been placed in Eden, which means delights. For there it will be said to him: "Take delight in the Lord." And he will take delight not in the one sense of eating and tasting only, but will take delight in hearing and sight, and in touch and smell. For he will run toward the fragrance of his ointment.

And so whoever has come to the height of perfection and blessedness will take delight with all his senses in the Word of God. Hence, being in these passages, we beg those who hear them to mortify their carnal senses, so as not to take anything of what is said according to the movements of the body, but to bring those diviner senses of the inner man to grasp these things; as Solomon teaches us, saying: "You will find a divine sense." And as Paul too writes to the Hebrews about the perfect, as we mentioned above, that they have senses trained to distinguish good and evil; showing that there are in man, besides these bodily senses, five others too, which are acquired by training and are said to be trained when they examine the understanding of things with keener sharpness. For what the Apostle says about the perfect, that they have senses trained to distinguish good and evil, is not to be heard carelessly or at random. To make this clearer, let us take an example, if you will, from these bodily senses, and then at once come to those divine senses which scripture names the senses of the inner man. If the bodily eye has the exercise of sight with no obstacle in the way, it will perceive the colours, sizes and qualities of bodies wholly and without any falsehood. But if sight is hindered by darkness or some other weakness, it will think red to be white and green black, or something straight when it is crooked and twisted; the judgment of the mind will without doubt be confused, and one thing will be done for another. So too the inner sight, unless it has been trained by instruction and diligence so that through much experience it has the discernment of good and evil, but ignorance and inexperience have fallen on its eyes like darkness, or the sickness of some wickedness has come upon it as on bleary eyes, cannot see the difference between good and evil at all; and so it will come about that it does evil things instead of good and spurns good things as if evil. According to this pattern which we have treated concerning the sight of the body and of the soul, you will consequently also recognize clearly, regarding hearing, taste, smell and touch, by referring each of the powers of the bodily senses of its own kind to the senses of the soul, what exercises should be applied to each, or what amendment should be provided. We have pursued these matters in a somewhat broader digression, wishing to show that the sense of smell of the bride and the young maidens, by which they smelled the fragrance of the bridegroom's ointments, is said not of the bodily sense, but of that divine sense of smell of the one who is called the inner man.

This sense of smell, then, where it is sound and whole, on receiving the fragrance of Christ leads from life to life. But if it is not sound, on receiving this fragrance it casts down from death to death, according to him who said: "For we are the good fragrance of Christ, to some from life to life, to others a fragrance from death to death." Indeed, those skilled in the knowledge of herbs and perfumes say that there are certain perfumes at whose scent some animals die at once, while others are refreshed by the same scent and recover life. So now too, in these very expositions and discourses which we have in hand, there seems to be life from life for some, and death from death for others. For if the one called the natural man, who cannot perceive and understand the things of the Spirit of God, hears these things expounded in this way, he will without doubt laugh, and declare them foolish and empty, saying that dreams rather than the causes of things and divine doctrines are being treated. For these, then, this fragrance of the Song of Songs is declared to be from death to death, that is, from the death of unbelief to the death of judgment and condemnation. But to those who follow the spiritual and subtle sense, and understand that there is greater truth in the things that are not seen than in those that are seen, and that invisible and spiritual things are held truer with God than visible and bodily things, such an understanding will without doubt seem worth embracing and following. For they recognize that such is the way of understanding the truth by which one comes to God. But if the one who judges these things foolish and laughable is a stranger to the faith, it is no wonder. But if he is one of those who seem to believe and accept the authority of the scriptures, and yet does not accept the form of this spiritual exposition but laughs at it and disparages it, let us try to instruct and persuade him from other passages of the scriptures. If perhaps he can come to his senses in this way, let us say some such things to him: it is written, "The commandment of the Lord is bright, enlightening the eyes."

Let him tell us, then, what are the eyes that are enlightened by the light of the commandment. And again: "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." What are these ears, such that only one who has them is said to hear the words of Christ? And again: "For we are the good fragrance of Christ to God"; and elsewhere: "Taste and see that the Lord is sweet." And what another says: "Our hands have handled the Word of life." Do you think he will not be moved by all these to notice that all of them are said not of the bodily senses but of those which we have taught are in each person according to the inner man? Unless one who is like this is driven by the vice of contentiousness and boasting. For since by these vices the inner sight is blinded, the smell is blocked, and the hearing is hardened, he rightly can neither see nor hear spiritual things, nor catch this fragrance of Christ. Having now received it, these young maidens, in whom this sense was quite sound and vigorous, run after him toward the fragrance of his ointments, and do not faint as they run or grow weary, because, refreshed by the sweetness of his fragrance, which is from life to life, they continually grow stronger. The saying "Your name is an ointment emptied out; therefore the young maidens have loved you" can also be taken in this way. The only-begotten Son of God, though he was in the form of God, emptied himself and took the form of a servant. He emptied himself, no doubt, of the fullness in which he was. Those, then, who say that we have all received of his fullness are the young maidens, who, receiving of that fullness of which he emptied himself, so that his name became an ointment emptied out, say: "We shall run after you toward the fragrance of your ointments." For unless he had emptied out the ointment, that is, the fullness of the divine Spirit, and humbled himself to the form of a servant, no one could have received him in that fullness of divinity, except perhaps the bride alone, since she seems to indicate that this ointment emptied out gave cause for love not to herself but to the young maidens.

For she says: "Your name is an ointment emptied out; therefore the young maidens have loved you." As if to say: The young maidens have loved you for this reason, that you emptied yourself of the form of God and your name became an ointment emptied out; but I have loved you not for the ointment emptied out but for the very fullness of the ointments. For she indicates this in the place where she says: "The fragrance of your ointments is above all spices." And as for her saying that she too will run after him with the young maidens, I say the reason is that all who are perfect become all things to all, in order to win all, as we have already explained above. "The king has brought me into his chamber; let us exult and rejoice in you." Having shown her bridegroom that the young maidens, captivated by his fragrance, were running after him, and that she too would run with them in order to give them an example in everything, now, as if she had already won the prize of her labour for having run together with those running, she says that she has been brought by the bridegroom, the king, into his chamber, to see there all the royal riches. In this she rightly rejoices and exults, since she has now looked upon the king's secrets and hidden things. This, according to the order of the drama set out, is as it were the historical understanding. But since the subject is the church coming to Christ, or the soul clinging to the Word of God, what else is to be believed to be Christ's chamber and God's storeroom, into which he brings the church or the soul cleaving to him, but his own hidden and secret mind, of which Paul too said: "But we have the mind of Christ, so that we may know the things freely given us by God"? Those are the things which eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor have they entered into the heart of man, which God has prepared for those who love him.

So when Christ leads the soul into the understanding of his mind, she is said to be brought into the king's chamber, in which are hidden his treasures of wisdom and knowledge. It seems not without meaning that, though she could have said, "My bridegroom has brought me," or "my kinsman," or something of the kind, as is her custom, now, since she was going to say "chamber", she said "the king's chamber" and put no other name in which perhaps someone even of middling rank could be understood. I think the king is named here so that by this name the chamber might be shown to be very rich, being royal and filled with many and immense riches. Very near this, it seems to me, was he too who said that he had been caught up to the third heaven and thence into paradise, and had heard unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to speak. For what do you think were those words he heard? Did he not hear them from the king? And did he hear them placed in the chamber, or near the chamber? And I believe those words were such as to urge him to greater progress and to promise him that if he persevered to the end he too could enter the chamber, according to what is also promised through the prophet: "I will give you treasures dark, hidden, unseen; I will open them to you, that you may know that I am the Lord your God, who called your name Israel." So the young maidens run after him and toward his fragrance, each one, however, according to her strength: one more swiftly, another a little more slowly, another lower than the rest and last, another in the first place.

Yet all run, but one is perfect, who runs so as to arrive and alone receive the prize. For she alone it is who says, "The king has brought me into his chamber," whereas before she had spoken not of herself alone but of many: "We shall run after you toward the fragrance of your ointments." So she is brought into the king's chamber and becomes queen, and she it is of whom it is said: "The queen stood at your right hand in gilded clothing, arrayed in many colours." But of these young maidens who ran after her and had remained far behind her in the course of the running, it is said: "Virgins shall be brought to the king after her; her companions shall be brought to you; they shall be brought with gladness and exultation, they shall be led into the king's temple." We must also notice this here: just as the king has a certain chamber into which he brings the queen or his bride, so the bride too has her own chamber, into which she is told by the Word of God to enter and shut the door, and so, with all her riches enclosed within that chamber, to pray to him who sees in secret and perceives what wealth, namely the virtues of the soul, the bride has stored within her chamber, so that seeing her riches he may grant her petitions. For to everyone who has, more will be given. As for the words "Let us exult and rejoice in you," they seem to be said in the person of the young maidens, wishing and asking the bridegroom that, just as the bride has attained what is perfect and exults, so they too may deserve to complete their course and come to the king's chamber, so that, having seen and looked on all the things the bride glories in, they too may exult as she does and rejoice in him. Or it may also be taken as said to the bride by the young maidens, congratulating her and promising and asking that they may become sharers in her exultation and gladness. "We shall love your breasts more than wine." The bride, after she was found worthy to receive kisses from the very mouth of the bridegroom and to enjoy his breasts, says to him: "Your breasts are better than wine." But the young maidens, who had not yet come to that blessedness nor received the height of perfection, nor had fulfilled by practice and works the fruits of perfect charity so as to declare from experience that his breasts are good, yet seeing the bride delighted and refreshed by the bridegroom's breasts, that is, by the fountains of wisdom and knowledge that flow from his breasts, and taking the cups of heavenly teaching, as imitators of her perfection and longing to walk in the same footsteps, make a promise and say: "We shall love your breasts more than wine"; that is: We have not yet risen to such perfection as already to love your breasts more than wine, or your breasts that are above wine (the sense will hold either way); yet we have hope, being young maidens, of advancing to the age at which we may not only be fed and nourished from the breasts of the Word of God, but also love the one who nourishes us.

These young maidens, as we have often said, are souls that seem to have been steeped in the first instructions, of value at the beginning, and gladdened as it were by a kind of wine, the teaching of guardians, stewards and a tutor, being little ones; who had it in their power to love wine, but did not yet have the age to be moved or roused by love of the bridegroom's breasts. But when the fullness of time has come, and Christ has advanced in them in age and wisdom, and they have begun to perceive what the bridegroom's breasts are, and what perfection of the Word of God and what fullness of spiritual teaching is signified in them, they even promise that they will love the bridegroom's breasts more than the wine which they now drink as little ones; that is, that they will be more inclined toward the doctrines of Christ, perfect and established in all fullness, than they seem to have been before, whether in general studies or in the teachings of the law and the prophets. "Righteousness has loved you." This too the young maidens seem to me to say, as though making amends for having promised that they will love the bridegroom's breasts more than wine, and not loving them now in the present nor showing the full force of charity.

This saying, then, is like that of people accusing themselves, as those who have not yet cast off all iniquity and come to righteousness, so as to be able already to love the bridegroom's breasts more than wine; knowing that it is unfitting for any iniquity still to remain in one who has come to the perfection of spiritual and mystical teaching. Since, then, the height of perfection consists in charity, and charity admits no iniquity, and where there is no iniquity there is without doubt righteousness, righteousness is therefore rightly said to be what loves the bridegroom. And see whether this is not also why the Saviour said in the Gospel: "If you love me, keep my commandments." If, then, whoever loves Christ keeps his commandments, there is no iniquity in him, but righteousness abides in him; righteousness, then, is what keeps his commandments and loves Christ. And again: if the one who keeps the commandments is the one who loves Christ, and the commandments are kept in righteousness, then it is righteousness that loves Christ; whoever does anything unrighteous neither keeps the commandments nor loves Christ. So it will be that, as much iniquity as there is in us, so far are we from the love of Christ, and so much transgression of his commandments is found in us. And therefore let us set down righteousness as a kind of straight rule, so that if there is any iniquity in us, applying and laying over it the straightedge of God's commandments, whatever is crooked in us, whatever is twisted, may be cut off by the line of this rule, so that it can be said of us too: "Righteousness has loved you." We can also take it in this way, so that what he said, "Righteousness has loved you," seems like saying: Justice has loved you, and truth, and wisdom, and chastity, and each of the virtues. And do not be surprised if we say that it is the virtues that love Christ, since elsewhere we are accustomed to take Christ as the substance of the virtues themselves. You will often find this applied in the divine scriptures according to the places and occasions. For we find that he himself is called justice, and peace, and truth.

And again it is written in the Psalms: "Justice and peace have kissed"; and: "Truth has sprung from the earth, and justice has looked down from heaven." All these he is said to be, and again they are said to embrace him. He is also called the bridegroom, and the same is also named the bride, as is written in the prophecy: "As a bridegroom he has set a crown on me, and as a bride he has adorned me with ornament."

"I am dark and beautiful, daughters of Jerusalem, like the tents of Kedar, like the skins of Solomon." In other copies we read: "I am black and beautiful." Here again the person of the bride is brought on speaking, but speaking not to those young maidens who usually run with her, but to the daughters of Jerusalem, to whom she seems to reply, as to those who had disparaged her ugliness, and to say: I am dark, or black, as far as colour goes, daughters of Jerusalem; but beautiful, if one looks at the inner lines of my features. For the tents of Kedar, she says, which is a great nation, are black, and the name of the nation Kedar itself is interpreted blackness or darkness. The skins of Solomon too are black; yet not for this is the blackness of the skins unbecoming to so great a king in all his glory. So do not reproach me, daughters of Jerusalem, with the fault of my colour, since beauty of body, whether natural or acquired by exercise, is not lacking. This is what the historical drama and the form of the story set out contain. But let us return to the mystical order. This bride who speaks holds the person of the church gathered from the gentiles. The daughters of Jerusalem, to whom she speaks, are those souls who on account of the election of the fathers are called beloved, but enemies on account of the Gospel. These are the daughters of the earthly city of Jerusalem, who, seeing the church from the gentiles, ignoble as she is because she cannot claim the nobility of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, yet forgetting her own people and her father's house and coming to Christ, despise her and belittle her for the lowliness of her birth.

The bride, perceiving that the daughters of the former people reproach her and for this call her black, as one who lacks the brightness of her fathers' instruction, replies to this and says: I am indeed black, daughters of Jerusalem, because I do not descend from the stock of famous men and have not received the illumination of the law of Moses; yet I have my beauty with me. For in me too there is that first thing, that which was made in me in the image of God; and now, coming to the Word of God, I have recovered my beauty. For though you compare me for the darkness of my colour to the tents of Kedar and the skins of Solomon, yet Kedar too descended from Ishmael; for he was born second from Ishmael, and Ishmael was not without a share in the divine blessing. You also compare me to the skins of Solomon, which are none other than the skins of the tabernacle of God; and yet I wonder at you, daughters of Jerusalem, that you wish to reproach me with the blackness of my colour. How have you not remembered what is written in the law, what Miriam suffered, who disparaged Moses when he had taken a black Ethiopian woman as his wife? How do you not know that the outline of that image is now fulfilled in truth in me? I am that Ethiopian woman; I am black indeed because of the lowliness of my birth, but beautiful because of repentance and faith. For I have received into myself the Son of God, I have received the Word made flesh. I have come to him who is the image of God, the firstborn of all creation, who is the brightness of the glory and the radiance of his substance, and I have become beautiful. Why then do you reproach one who turns from sin, which the law surely forbids? And how do you boast in the law while transgressing the law? But since we are in these passages where the church that has come from the gentiles says that she is black and beautiful, although it seems long and laborious to gather from the divine scriptures in which places and in what way the figure of this mystery went before, yet it seems to me that it should not be passed over entirely, but recalled as briefly as possible.

First, then, in the book of Numbers it is written thus of the Ethiopian woman: "And Miriam spoke to Aaron, and they disparaged Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had taken as wife, and they said: Has the Lord spoken only to Moses? Has he not spoken to us too?" And again in the third book of Kingdoms it is written of the queen of Sheba, that she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, in this way: "The queen of Sheba heard the name of Solomon and the name of the Lord, and came to test him with parables; and she came to Jerusalem with very great power, and camels carrying spices and very much gold and precious stones; and she came in to Solomon and told him all the words that were in her heart. And Solomon declared to her all her words, and there was no word that the king passed over and did not declare to her. And the queen of Sheba saw all the prudence of Solomon, and the house he had built, and Solomon's food, and the seating of his servants, and the order of his ministers, and their clothing, and his cupbearers, and the burnt offerings which he offered in the house of the Lord, and she was amazed, and said to King Solomon: True is the report which I heard in my land about your word and your prudence; and I did not believe those who spoke to me until I came and my eyes saw; and behold, not even half of what was reported to me was told. For you have added good things beyond all the report I heard in my land. Blessed are your women, blessed are these servants of yours who stand before you always and hear all your prudence. Blessed be the Lord your God, who has given you the throne of Israel; because the Lord loved Israel and willed to establish it for ever, he set you as king over them, to do judgment with justice and to judge them. And she gave Solomon a hundred and twenty talents of gold, and very many spices, and precious stones; never had such spices come, nor in such abundance, as the queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon." We have chosen to repeat this story somewhat at length and to insert it into our exposition, knowing that it fits the person of the church which came from the gentiles to Christ so well that the Lord himself made mention of this queen in the Gospels, saying that she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon.

He calls her queen of the South because Ethiopia lies in the southern regions and is placed, as it were, at the ends of the earth, at the extremity. We find that Josephus too mentions this queen in his History, adding also that after she returned from Solomon, King Cambyses, admiring her wisdom, which she had no doubt received from Solomon's wisdom, gave its name, he says, as Meroe. He relates that she held the kingdom not only of Ethiopia but also of Egypt. Let us add further what is contained in the sixty-seventh psalm concerning this same figure. It says there: "Scatter the nations that want wars; let ambassadors come from Egypt; Ethiopia shall stretch out her hand first to God. Kingdoms of the earth, sing to God, sing psalms to the Lord." In the fourth place, in the prophet Zephaniah, it is written of this same figure thus: "Therefore wait for me, says the Lord, on the day of my resurrection, for a witness, that is, for a testimony; for my judgment is to the gatherings of the nations, to receive kings and to pour out upon them all the wrath of my indignation. In the fire of my zeal all the earth shall be consumed. For then I will turn to the peoples a tongue for its generation, that all may call on the name of the Lord and serve him under one yoke. From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia I will receive those who are scattered, and they shall bring me sacrifice. On that day you shall not be put to shame, Sheba, for all your devices by which you acted impiously against me." And in Jeremiah it is written that certain princes of the people of Israel put Jeremiah into the pit of Malchiah the king's son, which was in the house of the prison, and let him down with ropes; and in the pit there was no water but mud, and he was in the mud. "And Abdimelech the Ethiopian, a eunuch, who was in the king's house, heard that they had put Jeremiah in the pit, and spoke to the king and said: My lord king, these men have done evil in all that they have done to Jeremiah the prophet, for they have put him in the pit, and he will die there of hunger, since there is no more bread in the city."

"And the king commanded Abdimelech the Ethiopian himself, saying: Take thirty men from here and bring him up out of the pit, so that he may not die there." In short, it was Abdimelech the Ethiopian who brought Jeremiah out of the pit. And shortly after: "The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, saying: Go and say to Abdimelech: Thus says the Lord God of Israel: Behold, I bring my words upon this city for evil and not for good, and I will save you on that day, and I will not give you into the hands of the men whom you fear. I will surely save you from their face, and you shall not fall by the sword, but your life shall be for safety, because you trusted in me, says the Lord." This is what could occur to us from the holy scriptures for the present, by which the mystery of the verse of the Song of Songs before us seems to me to be confirmed, where she says: "I am dark (or black) and beautiful, daughters of Jerusalem, like the tent of Kedar and like the skins of Solomon." So Moses is found in Numbers to take a dark or black Ethiopian wife, for whom Miriam and Aaron disparage him and say indignantly: "Has the Lord spoken only to Moses? Has he not spoken to us too?" If you consider this carefully, the historical account is not even found to hold together. For what would seem to fit the matter, that, indignant because of the Ethiopian woman, they should say, "Has the Lord spoken only to Moses? Has he not spoken to us too?" For if this were the cause, they ought to have said: You should not, Moses, have taken an Ethiopian wife of the seed of Ham, but one of your own race and of the house of Levi. They say none of this, but say: "Has God spoken only to Moses? Has he not spoken to us too?" In this they seem to me to have understood what was done rather according to the mystery, and to have seen that Moses, that is, the spiritual law, was now passing over into the marriage and union of the church gathered from the gentiles; and that Miriam, who bore the figure of the abandoned synagogue, and Aaron, who held the image of the carnal priesthood, seeing that the kingdom had been taken from them and given to a nation producing its fruits, said: "Has God spoken only to Moses? Has he not spoken to us too?"

Indeed, though so many and such magnificent works of faith and patience are related of Moses himself, he was never raised by God with such praises as now, when he married the Ethiopian woman. Now it is said of him that "Moses was a very meek man, above all men who are on the earth." Now too the Lord says this of him: "If there is a prophet among you, I will speak to him in visions or in dreams; not so with my servant Moses, who is faithful in all my house. Mouth to mouth I will speak to him, in form and not in riddles, and he has seen the glory of the Lord. And why were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?" All this Moses was found worthy to hear from the Lord because of his marriage to the Ethiopian woman. But we have treated these matters more fully on the book of Numbers; whoever thinks them worth knowing, let him look them up there. For now let it suffice to show from these things that she is the black and beautiful one, the Ethiopian woman, whom Moses, that is, the spiritual law, which is without doubt the Word of God and Christ, takes into marriage with himself, though the daughters of Jerusalem, that is, that people with its priests, criticize and disparage. Let us also look at what we brought forward from the third book of Kingdoms about the queen of Sheba, who herself is also an Ethiopian. To her the Lord bears witness in the Gospels that on the day of judgment she will come with the men of the unbelieving generation and condemn them, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and he adds, "Something greater than Solomon is here," teaching by this that the truth is greater than the figures of the truth. So she came; or rather, according to her figure, the church came from the gentiles to hear the wisdom of the true Solomon, the true Peaceable One, our Lord Jesus Christ.

She too came, first testing him with riddles and questions that had seemed insoluble to her before, and she is set free by him concerning the knowledge of the Word of God and the creatures of the world, or the immortality of the soul and the judgment to come, which with her and her teachers, the gentile philosophers, always remained uncertain or doubtful. So she came to Jerusalem, that is, to the vision of peace, with a multitude and great power; for she came not with one nation only, as the synagogue formerly had only the Hebrews, but with the nations of the whole world, bringing gifts worthy of Christ: the sweetness of spices, that is, good works, which go up to God as a sweet fragrance. She came full of gold too, no doubt of the meanings and rational disciplines which she had gathered before faith from general and school learning. She also brought precious stone, which we can take to be the ornaments of conduct. With this array, then, she goes in to the peaceable king, Christ, and opens her heart to him, namely in confession and repentance for her former sins; and she told him all that was in her heart. For this reason Christ too, who is our peace, declared to her all her words, and there is no word which the king passed over and did not declare to her. Then, when the time of his passion was now drawing near, he speaks to her thus, that is, to his chosen disciples: "I will no longer call you servants but friends, because the servant does not know what his master does. But I have made known to you all that I have heard from my Father." Thus is fulfilled what was said, that there was no word which the peaceable Lord did not declare to the queen of Sheba, that is, to the church gathered from the gentiles. And if you look at the state of the church and consider its arrangements and orders, then you will see how the queen marvelled at all the prudence of Solomon. And ask at the same time why it did not say "all the wisdom" but "all the prudence" of Solomon: since learned men want prudence to be understood of human affairs and wisdom of divine. For this reason perhaps the church for the present marvels at Christ's prudence, while she is on earth and lives among men. But when that which is perfect has come, and she has been taken from earth to heaven, then she will see all his wisdom, when she will see each thing no longer through likeness or in riddles but face to face.

She also saw the house which he built, no doubt the mysteries of his incarnation; for this is the house which wisdom built for herself. She also saw Solomon's food: I think it is that of which he said: "My food is that they do the will of him who sent me and accomplish his work." She also saw the seating of his servants: I think it means the order of the church, which is held in the seats of the episcopate or the presbyterate. She also saw the arrangements, or stations, of his ministers: it seems to me it refers to the order of deacons, who stand at the divine ministry. She also saw his clothing: I believe it is that with which he clothes those of whom it is said: "All of you who have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ." And his cupbearers, I think, are said to be the teachers, who mix the Word of God and doctrine for the peoples like wine, to gladden the hearts of the hearers. She also saw his burnt offerings: no doubt the mysteries of prayers and supplications. So when she saw all these things in the house of the peaceable king, that is, of Christ, this black and beautiful one was amazed and said to him: "True is the report which I heard in my land about your word and your prudence." For because of your word, which I recognized to be the true word, I came to you. For all the words that were spoken to me and that I heard while I was in my own land, namely from the teachers and philosophers of this world, were not true. This alone is the true word, which is in you. But perhaps it will seem we must ask how this queen says to the king, "I did not believe what was told me about you," since surely she would not have come to Christ unless she had believed.

But see whether we can resolve the question in this way. "I did not believe," she says, "those who spoke to me." For I did not direct my faith toward those who spoke about you, but toward you; that is, I believed not men but you, God. Through them I heard, but I came to you and believed you, with whom my eyes have seen far more than was announced to me. For indeed, when this black and beautiful one has reached the heavenly Jerusalem and entered the vision of peace, she will behold far more and more magnificent things than are now announced to her. For now she sees as in a mirror and in a riddle, but then she will see face to face, when she attains the things which eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor have they entered into the heart of man. And then she will see that not even half of them is what she heard while placed in this land of hers. Blessed, then, are the wives of Solomon, no doubt the souls who become sharers in the Word of God and his peace. Blessed are his servants who stand before him always. Not those who sometimes stand and sometimes do not, but those who always and without ceasing stand before the Word of God are truly blessed. Such was that Mary who sat at the feet of Jesus and listened to him, to whom the Lord himself bore witness, saying to Martha: "Mary has chosen the best part, which shall not be taken from her." This black and beautiful one says further: "Blessed is he who willed to set you on the throne of Israel." For truly, because the Lord loved Israel and willed it to stand for ever, he set you as king over it. Whom? Without doubt the Peaceable One; for Christ is our peace, who made both one and broke down the dividing wall of the fence. And after all this, it says, the queen of Sheba gave King Solomon a hundred and twenty talents of gold. This number, 120, is consecrated to the life of the men who lived in the days of Noah, to whom this span of life is granted, during which they are invited to repentance.

And this same number of years was also the span of Moses' life. So the church offers Christ in the form and weight of gold not only the multitude of her perceptions and understandings, but indicates that her perceptions are consecrated to the law of God by this number, which contains the years of Moses' life. She also offers sweet spices, such and so great as had never come. Understand by this either prayers or works of mercy. For never had she prayed so rightly as now, when she has come to Christ, nor worked so devoutly as when she learned not to do her righteousness before men but before the Father who sees in secret and will reward openly. But it is a great matter to pursue all these things together in passages that belong elsewhere, which seem to have been taken up for the sake of testimony. Let these things suffice from the third book of Kingdoms. Let us look at some of the things we brought forward from the sixty-seventh psalm, where it says: "Ethiopia shall stretch out her hand first to God." For if you look at how salvation came to the gentiles from Israel's trespass, and how their fall gave the nations a way to enter, you will see how the hand of Ethiopia, that is, the people of the gentiles, comes before and goes ahead to God of those to whom the oracles of God were first entrusted, and how in this is fulfilled "Ethiopia shall stretch out her hand first to God"; and this black one becomes beautiful, even if the daughters of Jerusalem are unwilling, even if they envy and criticize. The testimony of the prophet which we cited, where the Lord receives also those who come from the places beyond the rivers of Ethiopia, and they will bring sacrifices to God, I think should be taken in a similar sense. For it seems to me that he is said to be beyond the rivers of Ethiopia who has been darkened by excessive and overflowing sins, and stained with the black dye of wickedness has been made black and dark; and yet the Lord does not reject even these, but all who offer to God the sacrifices of a contrite spirit and a humbled heart, turned to him by way of confession and repentance, are not rejected by him. For so our peaceable Lord says: "Him who comes to me I will not cast out." It may also seem to be said of those who are placed beyond the rivers of Ethiopia that they too will come to God bringing sacrifices, who, after the fullness of the gentiles has come in, which is compared to the rivers of Ethiopia, will come themselves too, and then all Israel will be saved; and they are said to be beyond the rivers of Ethiopia as those who are further off and later than these stretches in which runs and

overflows the salvation of the gentiles. And so perhaps what is said seems to be fulfilled: "On that day you shall not be put to shame, all Israel, for all your devices by which you acted impiously against me." It remains to explain that testimony which we took from Jeremiah, where Abdimelech, likewise an Ethiopian, a eunuch, when he heard that Jeremiah had been put into the pit by the princes of the people, brings him out of it. And I think it does not seem unfitting if we say that the one whom the princes of Israel condemned and put into the pit of death, this foreigner, a man of an obscure and lowly nation, that is, the people of the gentiles, brings out of the pit of death, believing in his resurrection from the dead; and by his faith he calls back and brings back from the underworld the one whom they had handed over to death. And this Ethiopian is said to be a eunuch, I believe because he made himself a eunuch for the kingdom of God, or also because he does not have the seed of wickedness in himself. He is also the king's servant, because a wise servant rules over foolish masters. And Abdimelech is interpreted 'servant of kings'. And therefore the Lord, leaving the people of Israel for their sins, directs his words to the Ethiopian, and sends the prophet to him, and says to him: "Behold, I bring my words upon this city for evil and not for good; and I will save you on that day, and I will not give you into the hands of men, but I will surely save you." And the cause of his salvation is this, that he brought the prophet out of the pit; that is, by his faith, by which he believes that Christ rose from the dead, he seems to have brought him out of the pit. This dark, or black, and beautiful one has, then, very many testimonies in which she may act freely and say with confidence to the daughters of Jerusalem: I am dark indeed, or black, like the tents of Kedar, but beautiful like the skins of Solomon.

I do not remember anything written specifically about the skins of Solomon. But I think it can be referred to his glory, of which the Saviour says: "Not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed like one of these." Yet we find the word "skins" itself frequently used of the tabernacle of witness, as when it says: "And you shall make skins of goats' hair for a covering over the tabernacle of witness; you shall make eleven skins. The length of one skin shall be thirty cubits and the breadth four cubits; the eleven skins shall have the same measure. And you shall join five skins together and the other six together, and you shall fold the sixth skin double at the front of the tabernacle. And you shall make fifty loops on the edge of one skin and fifty loops on the edge of the other skin, by which they are joined one to the other. And you shall make fifty clasps of bronze and join the skins with them, and it shall be one whole. And you shall fold what remains over of the skins, half of one skin, at the front of the tabernacle, and with the other half that remains you shall cover the back of the tabernacle, a cubit on this side and a cubit on that, from what is over in the length of the skins, and the tabernacle shall be covered on the sides on this side and on that." I think, then, that it is these skins that are mentioned in the Song of Songs, and that they are said to be Solomon's, who is taken to be the peaceable Christ. His, then, is the tabernacle and what belongs to the tabernacle; and especially if we consider that tabernacle which is called the true tabernacle, which God pitched and not man, and of which it says: "For Jesus did not enter a sanctuary made with hands, a copy of the true ones." If, then, the bride compares her beauty to the skins of Solomon, she undoubtedly means the glory and beauty of those skins which cover the tabernacle that God pitched and not man. But if she compared her blackness, for which the daughters of Jerusalem seemed to reproach her, to the skins of Solomon, the skins are to be taken as those of this tabernacle which is called a copy of the true tabernacle; as though they too were black, being woven of goats' hair, and yet provided use and adornment for the divine tabernacle. As for the fact that it seems to be one person speaking, and she compared herself to many tents of Kedar in blackness or to Solomon's skins, this must be taken thus: there seems to be one person, yet the churches spread through the world are countless, and the gatherings and multitudes of peoples immense; just as the kingdom of heaven is called one, yet many dwellings are said to be in it with the Father. It can also be said of each soul which after very many sins turns to repentance, that it is black because of its sins but beautiful because of repentance and the fruits of repentance.

Indeed, of this very one who now says, "I am black and beautiful," because she did not remain in this blackness to the end, the daughters of Jerusalem themselves say afterwards: "Who is this who comes up made white, leaning on her kinsman?" "Do not look at me, for I have been darkened, because the sun has looked askance at me." Darkened, or blackened: if the exposition we wove above about the Ethiopian woman whom Moses took in marriage, or about the queen of Sheba of the Ethiopians who came to hear the wisdom of Solomon, seems to us fittingly applied, then this one who is dark or black and beautiful now rightly seems to make amends for her blackness or darkness and to give reasons to those who reproach her, as one who is not so by nature nor was so created by the Creator, but suffered this from what befell her. It is, she says, because the sun looked askance at me. In this she shows that the discourse is not about the blackness of the body, which the sun indeed usually darkens and blackens when it looks on it rather than when it looks askance. So they say that among the whole nation of the Ethiopians there is a certain natural blackness from the succession of carnal seed, because in those regions the sun burns with fiercer rays, and bodies once scorched and darkened remain so by succession of an inborn defect. But the blackness of the soul is of the opposite order. For it is burned not by the sun's look but by its looking askance, and it is acquired not by being born but by neglect; and so, just as it is taken on by sloth, it is driven off and repelled by diligence. Indeed, as I said above, this very one who is now said to be black is recorded at the end of this Song to come up made white, leaning on her kinsman.

She became black, then, because she went down; but if she begins to come up and lean on her kinsman and cling to him and never be separated from him, she will be made white and shining, and, having cast off all blackness, she will be radiant, surrounded by the light of the true light. So now she says to the daughters of Jerusalem, making amends for her blackness: Do not think, daughters of Jerusalem, that this blackness which you see in my face is natural; but know that it was caused by the sun looking askance at me. For the Sun of righteousness, since he did not find me standing upright, did not himself direct the straight rays of his light on me. For I am the people of the gentiles, who formerly did not look to the Sun of righteousness nor stand before the Lord; and therefore he did not look at me but looked askance, and did not stand by me but passed by. That this is so, you too who are called Israel will now soon know by experience and will say: For just as once, when I did not believe, you were taken up and obtained mercy, and the Sun of righteousness looked upon you, but looked askance at me and spurned me as disobedient and unbelieving; so now, since you have become unbelieving and disobedient, I hope to be looked upon by the Sun of righteousness and to obtain mercy. And that this looking askance of the sun is mutual between us, and that I was first looked askance at for my disobedience while you were looked upon, but now to you there has come not only the sun's looking askance but even a certain blindness, though in part, I will produce for you a magnificent witness, one who shared the heavenly secret, Paul, who says: "For just as you (no doubt speaking of the gentiles) once did not believe God but now have obtained mercy because of their unbelief, so these too have now not believed in the mercy shown to you, so that they too may obtain mercy." And again elsewhere he says: "For a blindness has come in part upon Israel, until the fullness of the gentiles came in."

This, then, is the source of this blackness in me which you reproach, that the sun looked askance at me because of my unbelief and disobedience. But when I stand upright before him and am not crooked in anything, nor turn aside to the right or to the left, but make straight paths for my feet, walking toward the Sun of righteousness in all his ordinances blamelessly, then he too will look on me straight, and there will be no crookedness, nor any cause for looking askance; and then my light and my splendour will be restored to me, and this blackness which you now reproach will be driven so far from me that I shall even be found worthy to be called the light of the world. So this visible sun darkens and burns those bodies over which it stands at the highest point, but those that are far away and placed further from this alignment it keeps in their whiteness, and does not burn them at all but lights them. But the spiritual sun, who is the Sun of righteousness, in whose wings healing is said to be, on the contrary lights up those whom he finds upright in heart and standing in line with his splendour, and surrounds them with all brightness; but those who walk crookedly with him he too necessarily does not so much look upon as look askance at, crookedly, their own inconstancy and instability bringing this about. For how can those who are perverse receive what is straight? It is as if you applied a perfectly straight rule to a crooked piece of wood: the crookedness of the material will indeed seem to be shown up by the rule, yet it is not the rule that gave the wood the cause of its crookedness. And therefore we must hasten to the straight ways and stand in the paths of the virtues, lest the Sun of righteousness, walking straight, should find us standing crooked and perverse, look askance at us, and we be made black. For as far as we are incapable of his light, so far shall we give place to darkness and blackness. For this is the very sun who is also the true light, enlightening every man coming into this world, who was in this world, and the world was made through him. For the world was not made through this visible light, since it too is a part of the world, but through that true light; and if we walk perversely toward that light, we are said to be looked at askance. For it too walks perversely with us when we walk perversely, as is written in the curses of Leviticus: "And if you walk perversely with me," it says, "and will not obey me, I will add seven plagues to you." And shortly after: "And if," it says, "you are not corrected, but walk perversely with me, I too will walk perversely with you"; or, as we read in other copies: "If you walk crookedly with me, I too will walk crookedly with you."

And a little later he says again at the end: "And since they walked crookedly before me, I too will walk crookedly with them in fury." We have taken up these passages to prove from them how the sun is said to look askance, that is, to look crookedly. And it has become plain that he says those are looked at askance, and that he walks crookedly and perversely with those, who walk crookedly with him. But let us not leave undiscussed what the present passage also points out, that the sun seems to have a twofold power, one by which it lights, another by which it burns; but according to the things or materials subject to it, it either lights something with its light, or darkens and hardens something with its heat. According to this, then, perhaps God is also said to have hardened Pharaoh's heart, because the material of his heart was such that it received the presence of the Sun of righteousness not in the part by which he lights, but in that by which he burns and hardens; no doubt because he himself afflicted the life of the Hebrews with hard labours and wore them out with mud and brick. And his heart, according to what he was thinking, was surely muddy and slimy. And just as this visible sun dries and hardens the material of mud, so the Sun of righteousness, with these same rays by which he lit the people of Israel,

hardened the heart of Pharaoh, in which there were muddy thoughts, according to the very qualities of its movements. That these things are so, and that the servant of God is not writing an ordinary history, as it seems to men, but writes through the Holy Spirit, is shown also by this: where he relates that the children of Israel groaned, he does not say that they groaned from the mud, or from the brick, or from the straw, but from their works, he says. And again: "And their cry went up," he says, "to God." He did not say from the mud and brick, but again, from their works. For this reason he adds: "For the Lord heard their groaning," since he surely does not hear the groaning of those who do not cry to the Lord from their works. Although these things may seem said by way of digression, yet, prompted by the occasion of the passages, we judged that they should by no means be left out, especially since they bear some likeness to what this one says who has been darkened because the sun looked askance at her; for it is shown there that this happens where the cause of sins goes before, and that one is darkened or burned by the sun where the material of sin is present. But where there is no sin, the sun is said neither to burn nor to darken, as is said of the righteous man in the Psalms: "The sun shall not burn you by day, nor the moon by night." You see, then, that the sun never burns the saints, in whom there is no cause of sins. For, as we said, the sun has a twofold power: it lights the righteous, but sinners it does not light but burns, since they too hate the light because they do evil. For this reason our God is said to be a consuming fire, and also light in whom there is no darkness: light, no doubt, for the righteous, and he becomes fire for sinners, to consume in them whatever of corruptibility or frailty he finds in their soul.

That in many places of scripture both the sun and fire are spoken of, not this visible but that invisible and spiritual one, you yourself will find abundantly if you go through them. "My mother's sons fought in me; they set me as keeper in the vineyards; my own vineyard I did not keep." She who is dark because of her former sins but beautiful because of faith and her way of life still speaks, asserting that her mother's sons fought not against her but in her; and after this war which they waged in her, they appointed her keeper of vineyards, not of one vineyard but of many. She also declares that besides those vineyards which she was set to keep by her mother's sons, she had another vineyard of her own which she did not keep. This is the story of the drama set before us. But now let us inquire who is the mother of this bride whom she mentions, and who are her sons who fought in her and, the war being finished, handed over to her vineyards to keep, as though she could not have kept them unless they had fought; and why, having received the keeping of the other vineyards, she was unwilling or unable to keep her own vineyard. Paul, writing to the Galatians, says: "Tell me, you who want to be under the law, have you not heard the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and one by the free woman. But the son of the slave woman was born according to the flesh, the son of the free woman through the promise. These things are allegorical. For these are the two covenants, one from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery, which is Hagar. For Sinai is a mountain in Arabia, which corresponds to the present Jerusalem, and she is in slavery with her children.

But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is the mother of us all." Paul says, then, that this is the heavenly Jerusalem and the mother of all of us who believe. Then he adds later and says: "Therefore, brothers, we are not children of the slave woman but of the free, with the freedom with which Christ has set us free." Paul plainly declares, then, that everyone who obtains freedom from Christ through faith is a child of the free woman; and he says that she is the Jerusalem above, which is free, which is the mother of us all. This bride too, then, is understood to be the daughter of this mother, in those who fought in her and appointed her keeper of the vineyards. Hence those who had such power as both to wage war in her and to appoint her keeper of vineyards seem to have been of no humble or contemptible rank. So we can take the apostles of Christ as the sons of the bride's mother, that is, sons of the heavenly Jerusalem, who first fought in this one who is gathered from the gentiles. And they fought in order to conquer in her the thoughts of unbelief and disobedience which she had before, and every height raising itself against the knowledge of Christ, as Paul says: "Destroying thoughts and every height raising itself against the knowledge of Christ." They fought, then, not against her but in her, that is, in her thoughts and heart, to destroy and drive out all unbelief, every vice, and all the doctrines which had grown into her while she was among the gentiles, through the false assertions of sophists. So the apostles of Christ had a great war, until they overthrew in her all the towers of falsehood and the walls of perverse doctrine, until they laid low the arguments of iniquity, and defeated the demons working and kindling these things in her heart.

So when they have driven from her all the thoughts of her former unbelief, they do not leave her idle, lest perhaps through idleness the old things creep back and what was driven out return; but they give her work to do and entrust to her the keeping of the vineyards. Let us take the vineyards to be each of the volumes of the law and the prophets. For each of them was like a full field which the Lord has blessed. These, then, these brave men entrust to her after the victory of the war to keep and guard; for they do not leave her idle, as we said. We can also take the writings of the evangelists and the letters of the apostles themselves likewise as vineyards, which they handed over to her who is gathered from the gentiles, for whom they also fought, to be kept and cultivated. As for her saying that she did not keep her own vineyard, we can call that the learning in which each was trained before faith; which, no doubt, on believing in Christ, one leaves and abandons, and counts as loss for Christ's sake the things that seemed gain to him. So Paul too glories that the observances of the law and all the glory of the Jewish way of life were to him as dung, so that he might be found in Christ not having his own righteousness, which is from the law, but the righteousness which is from God. Just as Paul, then, having received faith in Christ, did not keep his own vineyard, namely the observances of Jewish tradition; and perhaps he did not keep it because, though it had been planted by God as a true vine, it was turned into bitterness as a foreign vine, and their vineyard was now the vine of Sodom, their branch from Gomorrah, the cluster of bitterness in them, the fury of dragons their wine, and the incurable fury of asps; so too among the gentiles there were very many doctrines of this kind, which she says were overcome after those wars that were fought by the teachers for faith and the knowledge of Christ. I think it would certainly be counted as a fault if anyone kept vineyards of this kind and went on cultivating a field planted with poisonous and harmful teachings. And do not be surprised if she who is gathered from the dispersion of the nations, and is now being prepared as a bride for Christ, seems once to have been liable to these faults.

Remember how the first woman was deceived and fell into transgression, and is said to be saved in no other way than through the bearing of children, at least of those who continue in faith and charity with holiness. Now what is written of Adam and Eve the Apostle declares thus: "This is a great mystery in Christ and in the church"; who so loved her that he gave himself for her when she herself was still ungodly, as he himself said: "For while we were still ungodly, at the right time Christ died for us." And again: "For while we were still unbelievers, Christ died for us." It is no wonder, then, if she who was deceived and fell into transgression, who was ungodly at that time and a sinner, is said to have cultivated at the time when she was still ungodly such a vineyard as she ought to leave and by no means keep at all. And if it pleases us to follow the third place of explanation as well, let us refer these things to each soul which, turned to God and coming to faith, no doubt suffers battles of thoughts and the struggles of demons trying to call it back to the allurements of its former life or to the error of unbelief. But so that this may not happen, and so that the demons may not again have such power against it, divine Providence has seen to it that to all little ones, and to those who cannot fight for themselves against the wiles of the devil and the battles of the demons, being still infants and nurslings in Christ, angels are given as champions and defenders, who have been appointed by God as guardians and stewards of those who, being of weak age, cannot fight for themselves, as we said. And so that they may do this with greater confidence, it is granted them always to see the face of the Father who is in heaven. And I think these are the little ones whom Christ commanded to come to him and would not let be hindered, and of whom he said that they always see the face of the Father. Nor should it seem contradictory to you if this soul that strives toward God calls them her mother's sons. For if the mother of souls is the heavenly Jerusalem, and the angels are likewise called heavenly, it will seem in no way discordant if those who, like herself, are heavenly are called by her her mother's sons. Above all, it will seem fitting and appropriate that those who have one Father, God, should also have one Jerusalem as mother of all.

As for her saying, "My own vineyard I did not keep," she seems to judge that those institutions and habits and purpose in which she was trained while living according to the old man were praiseworthily not kept by her, from the time when with the help of the angels she fought and conquered, and drove the old man with his deeds entirely away from her, and was appointed by them keeper of the vineyards, that is, of the divine meanings and doctrines, from which she can drink wine that gladdens her heart. "Tell me, you whom my soul has loved, where you pasture, where you lie at noon, lest perhaps I become as one veiled over the flocks of your companions." The bride still speaks these words too, but to the bridegroom, no longer to the daughters of Jerusalem. So from the beginning, where she says, "Let him kiss me," up to this point, "over the flocks of your companions," all that has been said are the words of the bride. But first her speech was addressed to God, secondly to the bridegroom, thirdly to the young maidens; standing between them and the bridegroom, and, as the form of this drama has it, having become a kind of chorus leader, she directs her words now to him, now also in reply to the daughters of Jerusalem. So now she makes these last speeches of hers to the bridegroom, asking him where he pastures at noon and where he settles his flock, fearing that while she seeks him she may stumble into those places where the bridegroom's companions keep their flocks settled at noon. It is shown by this that this bridegroom is also a shepherd. Above we had learned that he is also a king, no doubt because he rules men; a shepherd because he pastures sheep; and a bridegroom because he has a bride who reigns with him, according to what is written: "The queen stood at your right hand in gilded clothing." This, for the present, is what the order of the drama itself contains, which is as it were the historical one. But now let us seek the mystical understanding; and if we must anticipate a little what is to be related later, so that it may be clear what kind of disposition these companions have, let us recall what is written: that there are sixty queens, but of all these one is the dove and one the perfect one, and the sharer of the kingdom; the rest, who are called the eighty concubines, are lower; and the young maidens, of whom there is no number, are placed after the rank of the concubines.

All these are the differences among those who, believing in Christ, are united to him with different dispositions. For example, the Apostle says that the whole church is, by a certain figure, the body of Christ; and in this body he declares there are different members, some eyes, some hands, others feet, and that each is fitted into the members of this body according to the merits of his works and pursuits. In keeping with this pattern these things too are to be understood: we must think that some souls in this bridal drama, which are united to the bridegroom with a more magnificent and more illustrious disposition, are held by him in the place and affection of queens; others, whose honour in progress and virtues is no doubt lower, are counted in the place of concubines; and others again in the place of young maidens, who seem to be placed outside the court indeed, yet not outside the royal city; and after all these mentioned above, those souls which are called sheep. But if we look more attentively, perhaps we shall find still others lower than all these and the last of all: namely those who are counted in the flocks of his companions. For they too are said to have certain flocks, into which the bride does not wish to stumble; and for this reason she asks the bridegroom to tell her where he pastures, where he rests at noon, lest, she says, I become as one veiled over the flocks of your companions. It is asked, then, whether these companions who are said to have certain flocks do this serving the bridegroom and acting under him as under a chief shepherd, since they are called his companions; or whether they have something of their own and set apart, not in accord with the bridegroom's mind, since the bride shrinks from them and fears lest she stumble into the companions' flocks while she seeks her bridegroom. And as for her saying, "Lest I become," not "veiled" but "as one veiled," consider whether she hints by this that there is some woman or women among the companions who are like brides, themselves having bridal dress, and are veiled, and, as the Apostle says, have a veil and authority over their heads. And to make the explanation of this saying clearer, let us again follow what is said in the order of the drama.

The bride asks her bridegroom himself to show her the place of his retreat and rest, since, impatient with love, she longs to hear the bridegroom even at noon, especially at that time when the light is brighter and the splendour of the day full and pure, so that she may stand by him as he pastures or refreshes his sheep. And she earnestly wishes to learn the way by which she should go to him, lest, if she is not taught the windings of this road, she stumble into the flocks of the companions and seem like one of those women who come veiled to his companions, who have no care for modesty and are not afraid to run about everywhere and be seen by many. "But I," she says, "who wish to be seen by no one else but you alone, long to know by what road I may come to you, so that it may be secret, so that no one may be between us, so that no stranger or alien witness may meet me." And perhaps for this reason she asks about those places in which the bridegroom pastures his sheep, and shows him her modesty, because of which she does not wish to stumble into the companions' flocks; so that he may separate his sheep from the companions and pasture them apart; so that the bride may not only not be seen by others, but may enjoy more secretly the hidden and ineffable mysteries of the bridegroom. Now let us look at each point. And first see whether we can say that the Lord, whose portion was Jacob and the lot of his inheritance Israel, is to be understood as the bridegroom, and his companions as those angels according to whose number, when the Most High divided the nations and scattered the sons of Adam, he set the boundaries of the nations according to the number, as it says, of the angels of God; and these perhaps are the flocks of the bridegroom's companions, namely all the nations, which are set like flocks under angel shepherds; while the bridegroom's flock are said to be those of whom he himself said in the Gospel: "My sheep hear my voice."

For see and attend carefully: he said "my sheep," as if there were other sheep that are not his, just as he said elsewhere: "For you are not of my sheep." Each of these things will seem fittingly applicable to this hidden mystery. If these things are so, the bride fittingly wanted the flock of each of the companions to be understood as his bride, whom she called veiled. But since she was certain that she was above all of them, she does not wish to seem like any of them, knowing that she ought to surpass those brides of the companions, whom the bride calls as it were veiled, by as much as her bridegroom excelled the companions. She will also seem to have had reason for asking for this further cause: since she knows that it is the care of the good shepherd to seek the best pastures for the sheep and to find green and shady groves for rest in the noonday heat. This the bridegroom's companions do not know how to do, nor do they have so much knowledge or concern in choosing pastures; and therefore she says: "Tell me where you pasture, where you lie at noon," desiring, namely, that time when light is poured more abundantly on the world, when the day is purer and the light clearer and more brilliant. Then, she says, tell me, you whom my soul has loved, where you pasture, where you lie at noon, lest I become as one veiled over the flocks of your companions. The bride has now called the bridegroom by a new name. For knowing that he is the son of charity, or rather that he is himself the charity that is from God, she gave him this name as it were: "you whom my soul has loved." And yet she did not say "whom I have loved" but "whom my soul has loved," knowing that the bridegroom is to be loved not with just any love but with all the soul, all the strength and all the heart.

"Where you pasture," she says, "and where you lie." I think that the prophet too, placed under the same shepherd, speaks of this place which the bride now longs to learn and hear from the bridegroom himself, when he says: "The Lord rules me," or, as we read in other copies, "The Lord pastures me, and I shall lack nothing." And since he knew that other shepherds, through sloth or unskilfulness, settle their flocks in drier places, he said of this best shepherd, the Lord: "In a green place, there he has settled me; beside the water of refreshment he has brought me up," showing that this shepherd provides his sheep not only with abundant water but with water that is wholesome, pure, and refreshing in every way. But since from this state, in which he lived as a sheep under a shepherd, he turned to rational and higher things and advanced, and obtained this through conversion, he adds and says: "He has converted my soul; he has led me on the paths of righteousness for his name's sake." Then, since he had advanced so far as to walk in the ways of righteousness, and righteousness no doubt has unrighteousness fighting against it, and whoever walks the path of righteousness must have battles with adversaries, turning to faith and hope he says of them: "For even if I walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me." After this, as if giving thanks to the one who had trained him in the pastoral disciplines, he says: "Your rod and your staff," by which I seem to have been trained for the office of a shepherd, "they have comforted me." Then, when he sees himself carried from the pastoral pastures to rational food and mystical secrets, he adds and continues: "You have prepared a table before me against those who afflict me. You have anointed my head with oil, and your cup that inebriates, how excellent it is! And your mercy will follow me all the days of my life, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord for length of days." That first, then, namely the pastoral instruction, was for those at the beginning, that being settled in a green place he might be brought up beside the water of refreshment. But the things that follow are sought by those advancing to perfection. And since we have set out to speak of pastures and greenness, it seems fitting also to confirm what we have said from the Gospels.

I have found there too this good shepherd discoursing about the pastures of the sheep, where, besides professing himself the shepherd, he also says that he is the door, and says: "I am the door; if anyone enters through me, he will be saved, and will go in and go out and find pasture." Him too the bride now questions, to hear and learn from him in what pastures he drives his sheep, or in what pleasant places he spends the noonday heat; calling "noon" those secret places of the heart in which the soul obtains from the Word of God a clearer light of knowledge. For this is the time when the sun holds the highest point of its circuit. Whenever, then, Christ, the Sun of righteousness, reveals to his church the lofty and sublime secrets of his powers, he will seem to teach her the pleasant pastures and noonday resting places. For when she still has the beginnings of learning and receives from him, so to speak, the first rudiments of knowledge, then the prophet says: "And he will help her early in the morning." But now, since she is already seeking more perfect things and longs for higher things, she asks for the noonday light of knowledge. Hence I think that also of Abraham, after many instructions in which God, appearing to him, trained him in each matter and taught him, it is afterwards related that God was seen by him at the oak of Mamre as he sat at the door of his tent at noon. "And looking up with his eyes," it says, "he saw, and behold, three men stood over him." If we believe that these things were written by the Holy Spirit, I do not think it pleased the divine Spirit for nothing that even the time and hour of the vision should be committed to the pages of scripture, unless the reason of that hour and time contributed something to the knowledge of the children of Abraham, by whom, just as the works of Abraham are to be done, so too these visitations are to be hoped for. For whoever can say, "The night is far gone, the day is at hand; let us walk honestly as in the day, not in revelling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in strife and jealousy," and has passed beyond all these things, will seem to have gone beyond this time in which the night is far gone and the day at hand, and to hasten not to the beginning of the day but to noon, so that he too may come to the grace of Abraham.

For if the light of the mind that is in him and the purity of his heart are clear and bright, he will seem to have the noonday time in himself; and through this purity of heart, as if placed at noon, he will see God, sitting at the oak of Mamre, which is interpreted 'at the vision'. He, then, sits at the vision at noon, who calls one to see God. Hence he is said to sit not inside the tent but outside, at the door of the tent. For the mind of one who is far from bodily thoughts and far from carnal desires is outside, placed outside the body; and therefore God visits the one placed outside all these things. Of the same mystery is the fact that Joseph, when he had received his brothers in Egypt, feeds them at noon, and at noon they bow down to him with gifts. For this reason, I think, of the things which the Jews committed against the Saviour, none of the evangelists was willing to write "noon", because these things were done at noon; though the sixth hour surely indicates nothing other than noonday, yet no one named noon. But Matthew said thus: "From the sixth hour darkness came over all the land until the ninth hour." And Luke: "It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over all the land until the ninth hour, the sun failing." And Mark: "And when the sixth hour had come, darkness came over all the land until the ninth hour." Hence it appears that in the visitation of Abraham and in the patriarchs' banquet with Joseph there was no need for this time to be indicated by the name of the sixth number, but that it be called noon. For the bride, who was already foreshadowed in them, wanted to learn where the bridegroom pastures and where he lies, and therefore she names noon. But the evangelists in what they narrated sought not the noonday time but the number of the sixth hour, namely to narrate the sacrifice of his offering, which was offered on the day of the Passover for the redemption of man, who was formed by God on the sixth day, after the earth had brought forth the living creature according to its kind, four-footed beasts and creeping things and beasts of the earth.

For this reason, then, in the present passage the bride desires to be enlightened with the full light of knowledge, lest, wandering through ignorance, she become in any way like those schools of teachers which are conducted not through the very wisdom of God but through that of the philosophers and the rulers of this world. For the Apostle too seems to say this where he says that "we speak the wisdom of God hidden in a mystery, which none of the rulers of this world knew." And again he signifies the same when he says: "For we have not received the spirit of this world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given us by God." For this reason, then, the bride of Christ seeks the noonday resting places and asks God for the fullness of knowledge, lest she seem to be like one of the schools of philosophers, which is called veiled, because the fullness of truth is covered and veiled with them. But the bride of Christ says: "But we with unveiled face behold the glory of God." "Unless you know yourself, O good (or beautiful) one among women, go out in the footsteps of the flocks, and pasture your kids by the tents of the shepherds." Among the other sayings of Chilon, one of the seven whom fame celebrates among the Greeks as outstanding in wisdom, this is reported to be admirable, in which he said: "Know yourself," or "Recognize yourself." Yet Solomon, who, as we showed in our preface, preceded all these in time and in wisdom and knowledge of things, speaking to the soul as to a woman, with a kind of threat, says: Unless you know yourself, O beautiful one among women, and recognize that the causes of your beauty come from this, that you were made in the image of God, through which very much natural beauty is in you; and unless you know how beautiful you were from the beginning; although even now you surpass other women and are called alone beautiful among them, yet unless you know who you are (for I do not want your beauty to seem good by comparison with inferiors, but that you should match yourself, compared and made equal to yourself and your own beauty): if you do not do this, I command you to go out and be placed in the last footsteps of the flocks, and to pasture no longer sheep or lambs but kids, namely those who for their wickedness and wantonness will stand on the left of the king presiding at the judgment.

And when I have shown you, brought into the royal chamber, the things that are the highest goods, if you do not know yourself, I will show you also the things that are the worst evils, so that you may profit from both, as much from fear of evils as from desire of goods. For if you do not know yourself, and live in ignorance of yourself, and pursue no study of knowledge, you will without doubt not even have a tent of your own, but will run about through the tents of the shepherds, and pasture kids now in the tents of this shepherd, now of that, a restless and wandering animal, assigned to sins. And you will suffer these things until you understand by the facts themselves and by experience how great an evil it is for a soul not to know itself, nor its beauty, by which it surpasses the others, not virgins but women, namely those who have suffered corruption and have not remained in the integrity of virginity. These are the things which the bridegroom says, following the order of the drama set before us, after all that the bride had spoken, rousing the bride's mind with a stern threat to care for knowledge of herself. But now let us refer these things, as the rest, to Christ and the church; for he, speaking to his bride, that is, to the souls of believers, has placed the sum of salvation and blessedness in knowledge of oneself. How, then, the soul may know itself, I think cannot be explained either easily or briefly; yet we shall try, as far as we can, to open a few things out of many.

It seems to me, then, that the soul ought to gain knowledge of itself in two ways: what it is, and how it is moved; that is, what it has in its substance and what in its dispositions. For instance, it should understand whether it is of good disposition or not good, of right purpose or not right; and if right, whether it keeps the same course toward all the virtues, as much in understanding as in acting, or only toward the necessary ones and those close at hand. And whether in its state it admits progress, so as to grow in the understanding of things and in the increase of virtues, or stands and rests in what it has been able to reach; and whether it is occupied only with cultivating itself, or is eager to benefit others and contribute something useful, whether by the word of teaching or by the example of deeds. But if it knows that it is not of good disposition or of right purpose, it should understand this very point: whether it is very far off and distant from the way of the virtues, or already set on the road and trying to walk it, desiring to lay hold of what lies ahead and forget what lies behind, but has not yet drawn near; or is near indeed, but has not yet come to perfection. It also seems to be the task of the soul that knows itself to know whether the evils it does it does from disposition and eagerness, or from some frailty, and, as that man says, doing as it were what it does not will and doing what it hates; and again, whether it seems to do good things from its dispositions and right purpose. For example, whether it restrains anger with some people but lets it out with others, or always restrains it and shows it to no one at all. Likewise with sadness: whether in some matters it rejects it but in some admits it, or in all things admits it not at all. So too with fear and the other things that seem contrary to the virtues.

It is also the task of the soul that knows itself to see whether it is very eager for glory, or a little, or not at all. It gathers this from whether it delights in praise much, or moderately, or not at all; and whether it is saddened by reproaches a good deal, or a little, or not at all. In giving and receiving too there are certain signs for the soul that knows itself: whether what it gives and bestows it gives with a disposition to share, as one who is pleased that there should be fairness among men; or, as that man says, out of sadness or necessity, or at least seeking thanks, whether from those who receive or from those who hear. And in receiving, the soul that knows itself will observe whether it regards what it receives with indifference, or rejoices as if over some good. Such a soul will also weigh itself in understanding, to know whether the hearing of any plausible argument easily moves it, and whether it is stolen upon by the art or sweetness or cunning of words, or whether this happens to it rarely or never at all. But let what we have said in this kind of knowledge suffice. For it is possible for one who wishes to gather countless other things like these, by which the soul can know itself, and, if it has been able to repair and restore the beauty which it received at its creation in the image of God, contemplate it. This, then, is what the present saying teaches the soul under the figure of a woman, that it should recognize itself, and it says: "Unless you know yourself"; that is, unless you lead your perceptions through each of the things we have mentioned above, and hold the discernment of each: what is to be done, what avoided, what you lack and what you have in abundance, what must be corrected and what kept; but if you choose to live indifferently among the other souls of men of common life, whom here he calls women, among whom you are beautiful, as one who has already received the kisses of the Word of God and beheld the secrets of his chamber; if, I say, you do not know yourself, but choose to live indifferently like the common crowd, go out in the footsteps of the flocks, that is, be in the rest of the flock; if after all the things that have been conferred on you, you do nothing outstanding, and do not, knowing yourself, set yourself apart from the life of the herd.

And you will be not only in the flock but in the footsteps of the flocks. For whoever has not understood his own pre-eminence will become last and least. And for this reason, when it has neglected knowledge, it must be carried about by every wind of doctrine, to the deception of errors, so that now it pitches its tent with this shepherd, that is, a teacher of the word, now with another; and so it is carried about everywhere, pasturing not sheep, which is a simple animal, but kids, wanton and restless thoughts assigned to sin, cultivating them with various teachers sought out for this very purpose. And this will be the punishment of the fault of that soul which has not been eager to know itself and to follow that one shepherd alone who laid down his life for his sheep. This is one kind in which the soul should understand itself, in its dispositions and acts. But that other part is deeper and more difficult, in which the soul that is already beautiful among women is commanded to know itself. If it can attain this, let it hope for all good things; if not, let it know that it must go out after the footsteps of the flocks and pasture in the tents of shepherds who are strangers to it. Let us see, then, and begin, as far as we can, to discuss the knowledge of this part too.

The divine word says through the prophet: "Light for yourselves the light of knowledge." And among the spiritual gifts one very great gift, which is ministered through the Holy Spirit, is the word of knowledge; and the chief work of this knowledge is that of which it says in the Gospel according to Matthew: "No one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal him." In Luke it says thus: "No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal him." And according to John it is written thus: "As the Father knows me, I also know the Father." And in the forty-fifth psalm it says: "Be still, and know that I am God." So the chief gift of knowledge is to know the Trinity; and in the second place, to know his creation, according to him who said: "For he has given me true knowledge of the things that are, the constitution of the world and the power of the elements, the beginning and end and middle of times," and so on. Among these things, then, there will also be a certain knowledge of itself for the soul, by which it ought to know what its substance is: whether bodily or incorporeal, and whether simple, or composed of two, or three, or more parts. And also, according to the questions of some, whether it was made, or not made by anyone at all; and if it was made, how it was made; whether, as some think, its substance too is contained in the bodily seed, and its origin is passed down together with the origin of the body; or whether it comes perfect from outside and puts on a body already prepared and formed in the woman's womb.

And if so, whether it comes newly created and is made for the first time when the body is seen to be formed, so that the need to animate a body is believed to have been the cause of its making; or whether, made earlier and long ago, it is thought to come for some reason to take a body; and if it is believed to be brought into this by some cause, what that cause is, so that it may be known, is the work of knowledge. And this too is asked: whether it puts on a body only once, and having laid it aside afterwards does not seek it again; or whether, when it has laid aside the body once taken, it takes it up again; and if it takes it a second time, whether it keeps it always, or at some time casts it off again. And if, according to the authority of the scriptures, the consummation of the world is at hand, and this corruptible state will be changed into incorruption, it does not seem doubtful that it cannot come into a body a second or third time in the state of the present life. For if this were accepted, it would necessarily follow that by such successions following one another the world would know no end. And further, the soul should seek knowledge of itself: whether there is some order, or there are some spirits of the same substance as itself, and others not of the same but different from it; that is, whether there are other rational spirits as it is, and others lacking reason; and whether its substance is the same as that of the angels, since the rational is believed in no way to differ from the rational. Or if it is not such by substance, whether it will be such by grace, if it is found worthy; or whether it cannot become wholly like the angels unless the quality or likeness of its nature admits it. For it will seem possible to restore what has been lost, but not to confer what the Creator did not give from the beginning.

And let the soul also ask this, in order to know itself: whether the virtue of its soul can come and go, or is unchangeable, or once acquired never flows away again. But why need I mention more of the reasons for which the soul should know itself, lest perhaps, if it neglects to know itself perfectly, it be commanded to go out in the footsteps of the flocks and pasture kids, and that not in its own tent but in the tents of shepherds; since one who wishes to pursue these things has at hand the fullest opportunities to take from what we have mentioned above, in which he can exercise himself in the word of knowledge as far as he is able? Let these things be said by the Word of God also to the soul that is set in progress but has not yet risen to the height of perfection. It is called beautiful because it is advancing; but so that it may also come to perfection, a necessary threat is made to it: that unless it knows itself through each of the things we have said above, and exercises itself watchfully in the word of God and the divine law, it will happen to it to gather the opinions of different people on each of these things, and to follow men who have said nothing outstanding, nothing from the Holy Spirit. For this is to go out in the footsteps of the flocks and to follow the teaching of those who have themselves remained sinners and could provide no remedy for sinners. Whoever follows them will seem to pasture kids, which signify sins, going round the tents of the shepherds, that is, the various sects of the philosophers. Consider, then, more fully how terrible is what is foreshadowed under this figure. "Go out," he says, "in the footsteps of the flocks." He speaks as if to a soul already inside and placed within the mysteries; yet because it neglects to know itself and to ask what it is, and what or how it ought to do and not do, it is told: "Go out," as one who is sent outside by the one in charge for the fault of this sloth. So great is the danger to the soul in neglecting knowledge and recognition of itself.

But perhaps, since we have given a twofold exposition of the soul's knowledge of itself, it will seem to someone that, according to the one, concerning the soul that neglects to examine its conduct and actions, to inquire into its progress, or to search out its vices, it is rightly told, "Go out," by which it seems to be driven as it were from the inner places outside. But according to the other exposition, in which we said that it ought to know its nature and substance, and the state in which it was or in which it will be, it will be thought hard. For what soul will easily be found so perfect, so powerful, that the reason and understanding of all these things lie open to it? To this we shall reply that the saying we have in hand is addressed not to all souls, nor to the young maidens to whom the bridegroom speaks here, nor to the other women, nor to the eighty concubines or the sixty queens, but to her who among all women is called alone beautiful and perfect. Hence it appears that these things are said to such beloved souls as, though much grace of perception and understanding has been given them by God, yet neglect the parts of knowledge and apply no effort to knowing themselves. To these, then, the divine word utters a threat: because from those to whom much is given, much is required. "The lowly will be worthy of pardon and mercy, but the mighty will be mightily tormented." If, then, you too, soul, who are more beautiful and more eminent among the others, for example in teaching, neglect yourself and remain in ignorance of yourself, how will those who wish to be built up be instructed, or those who contradict be refuted and rebuked? Fittingly, then, it is said to her with a kind of threat: "Go out in the footsteps of the flocks, and pasture your kids by the tents of the shepherds." What Moses writes can also be drawn to this: that if an Israelite woman commits adultery she is to be stoned, but if it is a priest's daughter she is to be burned with fire. So the threat will seem just against those who can be capable of recognition and knowledge, but neglect it through sloth; against them the bridegroom's indignation is most just, because he knows that the negligence of one turns to the loss of many. For such a soul will seem like him who hid the denarius he had received in the earth, so that the master might gain no profit of money from it; or like the one whom God is said to have slain because he was wicked, namely Onan or Er, who, receiving the seeds of natural knowledge and grudging posterity, spilled them on the ground.

The shepherds too, as we have already said before, if this threatening word is addressed to the church, are to be taken as the rulers of this world, or those angels under whose care the other nations are held, assigned to this either by lot or for certain more secret causes. But if this threat is referred to each soul that neglects to know itself, the wise men and teachers of this world are to be understood, who teach the wisdom of this world; so that in sum this may be understood: that it is necessary for a soul, especially one that is good and beautiful in perception and alert in mind, to know itself and to give attention to knowledge of itself through the exercises of teaching and divine studies, and through this to be led by the Spirit of God and the Spirit of adoption. Or if such a soul neglects itself and turns away from divine studies, it must give its attention to worldly studies and the wisdom of the world, and be led by the spirit of this world, again in fear. This is what the Apostle indicates when he says: "But we have not received the spirit of this world, but the Spirit who is from God." And again: "For you did not receive the spirit of slavery again in fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption, in whom we cry: Abba, Father." This is what could occur to us for the present on this passage; now let us turn to what follows. "To my horsemen among Pharaoh's chariots I have likened you, my close one." The historical sense seems to show this: as then in Egypt, when Pharaoh pursued the people of Israel and went out with chariots and horsemen, my horsemen, that is, those of my Lord the bridegroom, far surpassed the chariots of Pharaoh and were more excellent, since they overcame them and sank them in the sea; so you too, my close one, my bride, surpass all women, having been made like my horsemen, which, compared with Pharaoh's chariots, are surely mightier and more magnificent.

This, for the present, seems to me to be the order and direction of the words themselves. But let us see whether, according to the mystical understanding, he calls the chariots and four-horse teams of Pharaoh those souls which are under that spiritual Pharaoh and placed under the spiritual hosts of wickedness, which he himself drives and leads to pursue the people of God and to oppress Israel. For it is certain that the temptations and tribulations which the demons stir up against the saints they stir up through certain souls fitted and suited for this very purpose. Mounting them as chariots, they harass and assail either the church of God or individual believers. As for the Lord's horsemen, what they are, in Exodus, where Pharaoh's chariots are overcome and sunk in the sea, we read nothing written, except only that the Lord cast Pharaoh's chariots and his army into the Red Sea. Yet we find in the fourth book of Kingdoms that Elisha says to his servant, who was afraid at the coming of the enemy who had come with horsemen and chariots: "Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those with them." "And Elisha prayed," it says, "and said: Lord, open the eyes of this servant, that he may see. And the Lord opened his eyes and he saw; and behold, the mountain was full of horsemen, and chariots of fire round about Elisha, which had come down to him." And in the prophet Habakkuk we read clearly and plainly of the Lord's horsemen, and that he mounts his horses. These are the words of scripture: "Are you angry with the rivers, Lord, or is your fury against the rivers, or your onset against the Red Sea? You who mount your horses, and your horsemanship is salvation." So there are horses of the Lord, which he mounts, and his horsemen. These I think are none other than those souls which accept the bridle of his discipline and bear the yoke of his gentleness, and which are led by the Spirit of God; and in this is their salvation. In the Revelation of John we read that a horse appeared to him, and one seated on it, faithful and true, and judging with justice, whose name is the Word of God. For it says: "And I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it was called faithful and true, and judging and fighting with justice;

and his eyes were like a flame of fire, and on his head were many diadems, having a name written which no one knows but himself; and he was clothed in a garment sprinkled with blood, and his name was called the Word of God. And his army was in heaven, and they followed him on white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and pure." But we need the grace of God to open to us the understanding of these things, so that we may see what these visions signify, what the white horse is, and who is the one sitting on it, whose name is the Word of God. Perhaps someone will say that the white horse is the body which the Lord took, in which he who in the beginning was with God, God the Word, was clothed or carried. Another will say it is the soul which the firstborn of all creation took, of which he said: "I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again." Another will think that both together, body and soul, are called a white horse, since there was no sin there. Another, in the fourth place, will say that the church, which is also called his body, is seen as the white horse, as having no spot or wrinkle, which he sanctified for himself by the washing of water. And according to these things he will also take the details that follow: the army of heaven and the host of the Word of God, and how each of those following the Word of God sits on white horses and is clothed in white and clean linen. To this white horse, then, on which he who is called the Word of God rides, or to this heavenly cavalry which follows him likewise on white horses, Christ compares his church and makes her like. As for "among Pharaoh's chariots", we can take it in this way: that as far as this cavalry of the Lord overcomes and surpasses the cavalry and chariots of Pharaoh, so far do you, who are beautiful among women, surpass and overcome all the other souls which still bear Pharaoh's yoke and endure his riders; or else that this cavalry of mine, which has been cleansed by the washing of water, made pure and white, and has been found worthy to have the Word of God as its rider, was taken from among Pharaoh's chariots.

For from there all believers come, since Christ came into this world to save sinners. In this way, then, the sense of this verse can be explained: "To my cavalry, which was formerly among Pharaoh's chariots and now follows me on white horses, purified in the washing of water, I liken you, my close one." Blessed, then, are those souls which have bent their backs to receive the Word of God as rider upon them, and bear his bridle, the reins of his commandments; for they no longer go by their own will, but are led and led back in everything by the will of the rider. And perhaps, according to the fact that the church has been gathered from many souls and has received the example of life from Christ, it will seem that she received it not so much from the very Godhead of the Word of God, which surely surpasses those acts or dispositions that ought to be given to men as an example; but that the soul which was taken up by him, in which was the highest perfection, was set as the example, and that it is this which is called here "my close one", whose likeness the church too ought to have, gathered as she is from many souls, namely those which formerly were under the yoke and chariots of Pharaoh and are called the Lord's cavalry. Which of the two expositions seems to fit the verse before us better, you who read will judge. "How beautiful your cheeks have become, like a turtledove's; your neck like necklaces." The order of the drama seems to have this sequence: after the bridegroom had used a rather stern threat to the bride, protesting to her that unless she knew herself she would go out in the footsteps of the flocks and pasture not sheep but kids, she blushed at the sternness of the command, and the blush of modesty spread over her face made her cheeks beautiful and far lovelier than they had been; and not only her cheeks but her neck too became so comely as if adorned with the ornaments of necklaces.

The beauty of her cheeks, then, is compared to turtledoves, because by such birds both the modesty of the face and its liveliness are indicated. This is the explanation of the historical drama. But let us come to the matter itself. The apostle Paul, writing to the church of the Corinthians, says: "But the body is not one member but many. And if the foot should say, Because I am not a hand, I am not of the body, it is not for that reason not of the body. And if the ear should say, Because I am not an eye, I am not of the body, it is not for that reason not of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole were hearing, where would the smell be? But now God has set each member in the body as he willed." And after discussing this at length, he finally says: "Now you are the body of Christ and members in part." And again, writing to the Ephesians, he says: "Be subject to one another in the fear of Christ. Let wives be subject to their husbands as to the Lord; for the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church, himself the Saviour of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved his church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her by the washing of water in the word, that he might present to himself a glorious church, having no spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind, but that she might be holy and spotless." And shortly after: "For no one," he says, "ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body," and so on. By these things, then, we are taught how the bride of Christ, who is the church, is also his body and members. So if you hear the members of the bride named, understand that the members of the church are meant. And just as among them there are some who are called eyes, no doubt because of understanding and the light of knowledge, and others ears for hearing the word of teaching, others hands for good works and religious ministries, so there are others too who are called her cheeks.

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.

When she says, then, "A bundle of the drop is my kinsman to me," it indicates the mystery of his bodily birth. For the body seems in a way to be a bundle and a kind of bond of the soul, a bundle which in Christ binds the drop of divine power and sweetness. But if what has been said is referred to each soul, the bundle of the drop is understood as the binding together of the contents of doctrines and the knottedness of divine sentences. For the reasons of faith are interwoven with one another and bound by the bonds of truth. Indeed the law also says that every vessel that is bound up is clean, but what is loosed and not bound is unclean. This was a figure of the fact that Christ, in whom there was never any uncleanness of sin, is called a bundle of the drop. And therefore the soul must not touch anything loose, which is not supported by reason and bound by the truth of doctrines, lest it become unclean. For whoever touches the unclean will be unclean according to the law. For an irrational sense, foreign to the wisdom of God, will touch him and make him unclean. See also whether we can take it that the Son of God in the flesh is called a drop, and named as something small and slight; just as Daniel too says of him: "A small stone cut from the mountain without hands, and afterwards it became a great mountain." Or as in the book of the twelve prophets likewise a drop is said to be coming which will gather the people. For it is written thus in the prophets: "And it shall be, from the drop of this people Jacob shall surely be gathered." For it was fitting that he who came to gather not only Jacob but all the nations, which, as the prophet says, are counted as a drop from a bucket, emptying himself of the form of the Godhead, should himself become as a drop, and so come to gather the drop of the nations and likewise the drop of the remnant of Jacob. And in the forty-fourth psalm it is said to the beloved, to whom the psalm itself is ascribed: "Myrrh and drop and cassia from your garments."

From the garments of the Word of God, then, which are the teaching of wisdom, proceeds myrrh, the sign, namely, of the death undergone for the human race. The drop, as we said above, is his condescension in emptying himself of the form of the Godhead and taking the form of a servant. The cassia too, since this kind of plant is said to be nourished and to grow by unceasing waters, indicates the redemption of the human race given through the waters of baptism. So the bride, speaking as in a wedding drama, says that her kinsman, the bundle of the drop, dwells between her breasts. By the breasts, as we have already said above, understand the ruling part of the heart, in which the church holds Christ, or the soul the Word of God, bound and held fast by the bonds of its desire. For if anyone binds the Word of God in his heart with all his disposition and all his love, he alone will be able to receive the scent of his fragrance and sweetness. "A cluster of henna is my kinsman to me, in the vineyards of Engedi." As for the explanation of the letter itself, the words "a cluster of henna is my kinsman to me" have some ambiguity, because the flowering grape too is called cyprus, itself bearing a kind of flowering fruit produced in the manner of a flowering grape. But the saying seems rather to look to the fruit of the vine, since mention is made of the vineyards of Engedi. Engedi is a district of the land of Judea, flourishing not so much in vineyards as in balsam. This, then, will be the historical sense of the bride speaking to the young maidens, to be understood as saying, first: My nard gives back to me the fragrance of my bridegroom; second: My kinsman has become to me a bundle of the drop dwelling between my breasts; third: a cluster of henna from the vineyards of Engedi, surpassing all that is sweet in scents and flowers; so that the young maidens, hearing these things, may be stirred more and more to the love and desire of the bridegroom.

And she names one by one and in order first her nard, then the drop, after that the cluster of henna, so as to teach through them certain steps of progress in charity. But let us now see what the spiritual understanding holds. If this which is called a cluster is to be referred to the fruit of the vine, we take it that the Word of God, just as he is called wisdom and power and the treasure of knowledge and many other things, is also called the true vine. Just as, then, for those to whom he becomes wisdom and knowledge he makes them wise and knowing and strong in virtues not all at once, but through certain advances and steps, according to the zeal, effort and faith of those who share in him as wisdom, or knowledge, or power; so too in those in whom he becomes the true vine he does not produce ripe and sweet clusters for them all at once, nor does sweet wine that gladdens the heart of man come to them suddenly; but first he produces for them only the sweetness of scent in the flower. This cluster is said to be flowering in the vineyards of Engedi, so that the grace of its fragrance may be poured into the soul at its beginnings, so that afterwards it may be able to bear the bitterness of tribulations and temptations which are stirred up against believers for the sake of the Word of God; and so at last he gives the sweetness of his ripeness, until he brings them to the winepresses where the blood of the grape is poured out, the blood of the new covenant, which is drunk on the feast day in the upper room, where a large room has been prepared. So by each of these steps of progress those must advance who, initiated through the mystery of the vine and the cluster of henna, are borne on to perfection and strive to drink the cup of the new covenant received from Jesus. But if cyprus is to be taken as a tree of its own kind, whose fruit and flower are said to possess not only sweetness of scent but also the power of warming and cherishing, then without doubt the bridegroom's power is meant, by which souls grow warm toward his faith and charity, the power that touched those who said: "Did not our heart burn within us while he opened the scriptures to us?"

Or else, since this flowering cluster is said to be from the vineyards of Engedi, and Engedi is interpreted 'eye of my temptation': if there is anyone who can understand how the life of man on earth is temptation, and understands how one is delivered from temptation in God, and who recognizes the nature of his temptation, so that it can be said of him that in all these things he did not sin with his lips before God, for him the Word of God becomes a cluster of henna from the vineyards of Engedi. We must observe, however, that the bride's words are so related that the nard, the bundle of the drop and the cluster of henna belong to her alone, as one who has already risen to these advances. For only the perfect soul has the scent of its perception so pure and cleansed that it can catch the fragrance of the nard, the drop and the henna proceeding from the Word of God, and draw in the grace of the divine fragrance.

“Behold, you are fair, my near one; behold, you are fair; your eyes are doves.” Now for the second time the Bridegroom joins with the Bride in word and conversation. In his first speech he invited her to know herself, telling her that she was indeed fair among women, but that unless she knew herself she would suffer certain things. And as if because she had run swiftly, in sense and understanding, to the knowledge of herself, he compares her to his horses or cavalry, by which he overcame the chariots of Pharaoh. At the same time he compares her cheeks to turtledoves, for her remarkable modesty and the swiftness of her conduct, and her neck to strands of ornaments. But now he declares her fair, and fair not, as before, only among women, but as one near to him; and he raises her still higher in the title of praise and affirms that she is fair not only when she is near him, but that even if it should happen that she is absent from him, even so she is fair. For this is indicated in that, after he had said, “Behold, you are fair, my near one,” he adds afterwards absolutely and without any addition, “Behold, you are fair.” But in the earlier verses he had not praised her sight, I believe because her spiritual understanding had not yet advanced to insight;

now therefore he says, “Your eyes are doves.” Great progress of hers is shown in this: that she who was earlier called fair only among women is now called fair as one near, receiving without doubt the splendour of her beauty from the Bridegroom himself, so that, having once received beauty from him, even if it happens that she suffers the Bridegroom's absence for a little while, she remains beautiful nonetheless. That her eyes are compared to doves happens surely for this reason: because she understands the divine Scriptures no longer according to the letter but according to the spirit, and beholds spiritual mysteries in them. For the dove is a sign of the Holy Spirit. To understand the law and the prophets in a spiritual sense, then, is to have the eyes of a dove. And here her eyes are called doves; but in the Psalms such a soul longs for the wings of a dove to be given her, that she may fly into the understanding of spiritual mysteries and rest in the courts of wisdom. And if anyone can sleep, that is, be placed and rest, “in the midst of the lots,” and understand the reason of the lots and know the causes of divine judgement, not only are the wings of a dove promised to him, with which to fly among spiritual understandings, but also “silvered wings,” that is, wings adorned with the ornament of word and reason. Her shoulders too are said to be “in the appearance of gold,” by which the constancy of faith and the stability of doctrines of the perfect are indicated. If, then, Christ is said to be the head, I think it will seem nothing absurd if the eyes of those who understand spiritually according to the inner man, and judge spiritually, are said to be the Holy Spirit. And for this reason perhaps, just as in the law a lamb was appointed, by whose sacrifice the people were purified at the Passover, so doves too were appointed, by which a man who enters this world is purified.

But to speak of this now, and to discuss the kinds of sacrifices, seems too long a digression and not at all suited to the work in hand. Let it suffice to have mentioned these things on account of what the present text contains: “Your eyes are doves.” As if he said: your eyes are spiritual, seeing spiritually, understanding spiritually. Further, by a perhaps deeper mystery, his words “Behold, you are fair, my near one” can be understood as said of the present age, since the Church is fair even here when she is near to Christ and when she imitates Christ. But his repeating it and saying “Behold, you are fair” can refer to the age to come, where she is now beautiful and fair not only by imitation but by her own perfection; so that there he says her eyes are doves, in order that the two doves of the two eyes may be understood to be the Son of God and the Holy Spirit. And do not wonder that both together are called doves, since both alike are called Advocate, as John the evangelist declares, calling the Holy Spirit the Paraclete, that is, the Advocate; and of Jesus Christ likewise he says in his Epistle that he is the Advocate with the Father for our sins. And in the prophet Zechariah too the two olive trees placed at the right and the left of the lampstand are believed to signify the Only-begotten and the Holy Spirit as well. Verse 16: “Behold, you are good, my kinsman, and indeed, behold, you are fair; our bed is shady.” Now for the first time the Bride seems to have looked more attentively at the beauty of her Bridegroom, and to have considered with those eyes which were called doves the grace and beauty of the Word of God. For truly one cannot first perceive or recognize how great a magnificence is in the Word unless one first receives eyes like a dove's, that is, spiritual understanding. And the bed which she says she has in common with the Bridegroom seems to me to indicate this body of the soul, in which, while still placed in it, she has been found worthy to be taken into fellowship with the Word of God.

and she calls it shady, as being not dry but fruitful and, as it were, wooded with a thickness of good works. But these things the Bride says: the soul, that is, which already has the eyes of a dove. But those who only believe in the Bridegroom, yet have not been able to perceive how great is the beauty in the Word of God, say: “And we saw him, and he had no form nor comeliness, but his form was without honour and failing beyond the sons of men.” But the soul that has made good progress and passed beyond the rank of the maidens, and of the eighty concubines and sixty queens, this soul can say: “Behold, you are comely, my kinsman, and indeed fair.” And if, while still placed in the body, I understand the thickness of spiritual senses and the understanding of the divine Scriptures to be woven with so dense a shade that the fiercer heat, which commonly scorches and withers the fruits of many, still cannot darken me, nor any force of temptations wither the shoot of faith in me, then I can say that “our bed is shady.” And her saying “our bed,” as though indicating that the place of her body is common to her and the Bridegroom, understand as said after the likeness in which Paul too said that our bodies are members of Christ. For when he says “our bodies,” he shows as it were that this body is the Bride's; but when he speaks of the members of Christ, he indicates that the same bodies are also the body of the Bridegroom.

These bodies, then, if they are shady, as we said above, filled that is with good works and heaped with a thickness of spiritual senses, of such as these it can be said: “By day the sun shall not burn you, nor the moon by night.” For the sun of temptation does not scorch the righteous man resting under the shade of the Word of God. For that sun which scorches the righteous is not praiseworthy, but rather he who transforms himself into an angel of light. The kinsman, then, is called good and comely; and the more he can be looked upon with spiritual eyes, the fairer and more beautiful he is found; for not only will his form and beauty appear wonderful, but in the one who looks upon him and gazes at him a great grace and a new and wonderful beauty of form will arise, according to what the Apostle says as he gazes on the beauty of the Word of God: “For though our outer man is corrupted, yet the inner is renewed day by day.” Rightly, then, such a soul has her body as a bed in common with the Word. For the divine power reaches even to the grace of the body, when it places in it the gift of chastity or of continence and the grace of other good works. Consider too whether perhaps that body which Jesus assumed can also be called the bed he shares with the Bride, since through it the Church seems to have been joined to Christ and to have been able to receive a share in the Word of God, according as he is called the mediator of God and men, and according as the Apostle says: “Since in him we have access through faith in hope of the glory of God.” Verse 17: “The timbers of our houses are cedars, our beams cypresses.” The Bridegroom seems to reply to the kindness of what was said earlier by the Bride, teaching her what sort these roofs and walls are, and what material of framing they have. This the literal account contains. But the Church seems to be described by Christ: she is the spiritual house and the house of God, as Paul teaches, saying: “But if I come later, that you may know how you ought to behave in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth.”

If, then, the church is the house of God, since all that the Father has is the Son's, the church is the house of the Son of God. And churches are often named in the plural as well, as he says there: “We have no such custom, nor do the churches of God.” And again Paul writes “to the churches of Galatia,” and John “to the seven churches.” Whether, then, the church or the churches are the house of the Bridegroom and the Bride, or souls are the house of the Word, in them the timbers are of cedar. We read that there are certain “cedars of God,” over which the vine that “was brought out of Egypt” is said to have stretched its shoots or branches, as he says in the Psalms: “Its shade covered the mountains, and its branches the cedars of God.” Plainly, then, by these words certain persons in the church are called cedars of God. When, therefore, the Bridegroom says, “The timbers of our houses are cedars,” we must understand that the cedars of God are those who roof over the Church, and that some of them are stronger, and these are called beams. And I think that those who administer the episcopate well in the Church can fittingly be called beams, by whom the whole building is held up and covered, whether from the damage of rains or from the heat of the sun. In the second place after them, I think, the presbyters are called timbers. And the beams are said to be cypresses, which have both a sturdier strength and a sweet fragrance; by this he would signify that they ought to be solid in works, fragrant in the grace of doctrine, and full of the fragrance of the knowledge of Christ. Chapter 2, verses 1–2: “I am the flower of the field and the lily of the valleys; as a lily among thorns, so is my near one among the daughters.” He who is Bridegroom and Word and Wisdom seems to say these things about himself and the Bride to his friends and companions. But according to the order of exposition we proposed, Christ must be understood to say this about the Church, and to say of himself that he is the flower of the field and the lily of the valleys. A field is the name for a level stretch of ground to which cultivation is applied and which is tilled by farmers; valleys rather indicate rocky and uncultivated places. We can understand that field as the people which was cultivated through the prophets and the law, and the valley as the rocky and uncultivated place of the Gentiles.

The Bridegroom, then, was a flower here among the people of the Jews; but since the law brought no one to perfection, the Word of God could not therefore advance to flower in that people and attain to the perfection of fruit. But in this valley of the Gentiles he became a lily. And what kind of lily? Such, without doubt, as he himself says in the Gospels the heavenly Father clothes, and that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed like one of these. The Bridegroom, then, becomes a lily in this valley of the Gentiles in that the heavenly Father clothed him with such a garment of flesh as not even Solomon in all his glory could have. For Solomon did not have a flesh that was without the desire of a man and intercourse with a woman, spotless and subject to no sin at all. He also seems to show the reason why he who had been a flower in the field chose to be a lily in the valleys. For though he had been a flower in the field for a long time, he says that no flower came forth from that field in imitation and likeness of him. But when he became a lily in the valleys, at once his near one too is made a lily by imitating him; so that it was worthwhile for him to become a lily, in order that his near one also, that is, every soul that draws near to him and follows his example and imitation, might become a lily. When he says, then, “As a lily among thorns, so is my near one among the daughters,” we shall take it as said of the Church of the Gentiles: either because she emerged from the midst of the unbelieving and those who do not believe, as from thorns; or she may be said to be placed among thorns because of the bites of the heretics clamouring around her.

This will seem the more likely because he says, “So is my near one among the daughters.” For he would not have called those souls daughters which never came to believe at all. All heretics, then, first come to belief, and afterwards turn aside from the road of faith and from the truth of God's doctrines; as John the apostle too says in his Epistle: “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would surely have remained with us.” We can also refer it to each individual soul: to the soul which, for its simplicity and plainness, can be called a field, the Word of God becomes a flower and teaches the beginnings of good works; but for those who are already seeking deeper things and searching out what lies further down, as in the valleys, he becomes a lily, whether for the brightness of chastity or for the brilliance of wisdom, so that they too may become lilies bursting forth from the midst of thorns, that is, fleeing the worldly thoughts and cares which in the Gospel are compared to thorns. Verse 3: “As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my kinsman in the midst of the sons. In his shade I longed for and sat down, and his fruit was sweet in my throat.” It was fitting for the Bridegroom to speak of himself, what he was in the field and what in the valleys, and of the Bride, who she was and how she was regarded among the other daughters. But it was not fitting for the Bride, replying to this, to say anything about herself, but to be drawn wholly to admiration of the Bridegroom and to cling to his praises.

She compares him, then, to an apple tree. But lest from the likeness of the word some of the simpler should think the malus (apple tree) a bad tree and named from malice, let us say “melum tree,” using indeed a Greek name, but one better known to the simpler among Latin readers than malus. For it is better to offend the grammarians than to put any stumbling block before readers in the explanation of the truth. She compares him, then, to the melum tree, and his companions to the other trees of the wood. But she says the Bridegroom is so like this melum tree that she even says she longed to sit in its shade, and asserts that its fruit became sweet in her throat. And she seems to speak this to the maidens, as the Bridegroom too spoke earlier to his companions. But now let us see, according to the mystery, who are the sons among whom the Bride asserts that the Bridegroom excels like the melum tree among the other trees of the wood; and see whether, in the same way as we expounded the daughters and the thorns in two ways above, we can understand the sons here also to be so called, either those who once were and are not, or the multitude of heavenly ministers. For to all, in the beginning, belongs what is written: “I said, You are gods, and all sons of the Most High.” But a difference came in through his saying: “But you shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.” And this too looks to the same point: “For who in the clouds shall be equal to the Lord? Or who shall be likened to him among the sons of God?” As, then, the melum tree among the other trees of the wood, so is the Bridegroom among the sons, having fruit which surpasses all not only in taste but also in fragrance, and refreshes two senses of the soul, that is, taste and smell. For with varied abundance Wisdom prepares her table for us, on which she not only sets the bread of life but also sacrifices the flesh of the Word; and she not only mixes her wine in her bowl but also furnishes fragrant and sweet apples, which not only yield sweetness in the mouth and lips but, passed into the inner throat, keep their sweetness.

We can also take the trees of the wood to be those angels who appear to have been the authors and promoters of each heresy; so that the Church, comparing the sweetness of Christ's teaching with the harshness of the heretics' doctrines and their barren and fruitless teaching, seems to say that the church's doctrines, which are preached in the Church of Christ, are sweet and pleasant apples, but that the things asserted by the various heretics are trees of the wood. And of these fruitless trees of the wood will seem to be said what is written in the Gospels: “Behold, the axe is already laid to the root of the tree; every tree, then, that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and cast into the fire.” The kinsman of the Bride, then, is like the melum tree in the Bridegroom's Church; but the other heresiarchs are like fruitless trees of the wood, to be cut down by divine judgement as by an axe and cast into the fire. In the shade of this melum tree, then, the Bride longs to sit: either the Church, as we said, under the protection of the Son of God; or the soul that flees all other teachings and clings to the one Word of God alone, whose fruit too she has sweet in her throat, by meditating unceasingly, that is, on the law of God and always chewing it over like a clean animal. But concerning the name of this shade under which the Church says she longed to sit, I think it not absurd to bring forward what we can find in the divine Scriptures, so that what the shade of this apple tree is may be recognized more worthily and more divinely.

Jeremiah says in Lamentations: “The spirit of our face, Christ the Lord, was taken in our corruptions, of whom we said: In his shadow we shall live among the nations.” You see, then, how the prophet, moved by the Holy Spirit, says that life is given to the nations from the shadow of Christ; and how should his shadow not give us life, when even at the conception of his body it is said to Mary, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you”? If, then, there was an overshadowing by the Most High at the conception of his body, rightly will his shadow give life to the nations. And rightly does his Bride the Church long to sit under the shade of the apple tree: doubtless that she may become a partaker of the life that is in his shade. But the shade of the other trees of the wood is such that whoever sits under it seems to be sitting in the region of the shadow of death. But to make the passage before us plainer and plainer still, let us inquire how the Apostle says that the law has a shadow of good things to come, and says that all that was written about feast days or sabbaths or new moons is a shadow of good things to come, namely in those things which were performed according to the letter; and how he declares that all the worship of the ancients is a copy and shadow of heavenly things. If this is so, all who were under the law are shown to have sat under the shadow of the law, and to have had the shadow rather than the true law. But we are strangers to their shadow, since we are not under law but under grace. Yet although we are not under that shadow which the letter of the law made, we are nevertheless under a better shadow. For we live in the shadow of Christ among the nations. And it is a kind of progress to come from the shadow of the law to the shadow of Christ: so that, since Christ is the life and the truth and the way, we may first come to be in the shadow of the way, and in the shadow of the life, and in the shadow of the truth, and may comprehend in part, and in a mirror and in an enigma; so that afterwards, if we walk along this way which is Christ, we may be able to attain to comprehending face to face the things we had earlier seen as in a shadow and in an enigma. For no one will be able to come to the things that are true and perfect unless he has first desired and longed to sit in this shade.

Job too says that the whole life of men is a shadow upon the earth: I believe because the soul in this life is overshadowed by the veil of this gross body. All, then, who are in this life must be in some shadow. But some are sitting in the region of the shadow of death, namely those who do not believe in Christ; whereas the Church says with confidence, “In the shade of the Bridegroom I longed for and sat down,” although there was certainly a time when one sitting under the shadow of the law could be protected from the harshness of the burning heat. But that time has passed; now one must come to the shade of the apple tree. And though one may use different shades, every soul nevertheless, so long as it is in the present life, seems to need shade, on account, I believe, of that heat of the sun which, when it has risen, at once withers and destroys the seed that has not sunk deep roots. This heat the shadow of the law wards off thinly; but the shadow of Christ, in which we now live among the nations, that is, faith in his incarnation, will turn it away completely and extinguish it. For he who scorched those walking under the shadow of the law was seen at the time of Christ's passion to fall from heaven like lightning; though the time even of his shade will be fulfilled at the end of the age, since, as we said, after the consummation of the age we shall see the truth no longer through a mirror nor in an enigma, but face to face.

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.

This left hand, then, the Church, whose head is Christ, desires to have under her head, and her head to be fortified by faith in his incarnation; and to be embraced by his right hand, that is, to recognize and be instructed in those things which, even before the time of this dispensation carried out through the incarnation, are held in secret and hidden places. For all those things must be thought of as on the right where nothing of the miseries of sins, nothing of the fall of frailty, is contained. But here is the left, where he healed our wounds and bore our sins, becoming himself sin and a curse for us. All these, although they sustain the head and the faith of the Church, will nevertheless rightly be called the left hand of the Word of God; for in them he is recorded to have endured some things even beyond that nature which is wholly right hand, and wholly light and splendour and glory. Verse 7: “I have adjured you, daughters of Jerusalem, by the powers and by the strengths of the field, if you lift up and rouse love until it please.” The Bride is still speaking to the maidens, challenging and exhorting them, indeed adjuring them by the things she knows are dear and lovable to them, that if perhaps they begin to lift up love, which is lying in them, and to rouse it, as being still asleep among them, they should lift it up and rouse it so far as the Bridegroom wishes, and do nothing less in it than his will allows. For this is the perfection of the loving Bride, that she wishes nothing to be done by anyone against the mind and will of him whom she loves. And that they may not do this carelessly or sluggishly, they are adjured by the powers of the field, that is, by the plantations and shrubs that are in the field, and by its strengths, doubtless by the things sown in it. With such an order and such a composition of words the text of the literal drama is directed. Now let us inquire what mystery it hides within. Every soul, especially one that is a daughter of Jerusalem, has a field of its own, which has been assigned to it through Jesus by a certain secret allotment of merits; as there was also that field of Jacob, moved by whose sweetness the patriarch Isaac said in mystical words: “Behold, the smell of my son is as the smell of a full field which the Lord has blessed.”

Every soul, then, as we said, has its own field; for its manner of life is its field. In this field the soul that is diligent and studious takes pains and is eager to plant good thoughts and to cultivate all the virtues of the mind; and not only the virtues of the mind, but also the strengths of works, by which, that is, the services of the commandments can be fulfilled. Each one's mind, then, as we said, is his field, which he cultivates and plants and sows according to what we have said. But there is also one common field of all the daughters of Jerusalem together, of which Paul says: “You are God's husbandry.” This field let us take to be the common exercise of the church's faith and manner of life, in which it is certain that heavenly powers and the strengths of spiritual graces are present. For every soul that is here called a daughter of Jerusalem, knowing that it has the heavenly Jerusalem as its mother, must contribute something to the cultivation of this field, and long for it to be made worthy of a heavenly possession. By the powers of this field, then, the Church solemnly charges the maidens and those who have the beginnings of faith that the love of Christ be lifted up and roused, and says to them, “If you lift up and rouse love until it please”: that is, if you have now come to the point of beginning to be led not by the spirit of fear but of adoption, and have advanced in this so that perfect love in you casts out fear, and you lift up and exalt love in you and rouse it, lift it up so long and extol it so long as he wills whose love it is, indeed he who is himself Love from God; lest perhaps, thinking human measures of love enough, you do something in the love of God less than is worthy of God. For the measure of love is this alone, that he be loved as much as he himself wills; and the will of God is always the same and never changes. Never, then, is any change or any end admitted in the love of God. We must note, of course, that she did not say, “if you receive love,” but “if you lift it up,” as though it is in you but lies down and has not yet been raised. And again she did not say, “if you find love,” but “if you rouse” it, as though it is within, but lies and sleeps in them until it finds someone to rouse it.

This love, I believe, Paul too was rousing when it was still asleep in his disciples, when he said: “Arise, you who sleep, and you will touch Christ.” Verse 8: “The voice of my kinsman.” We should often remind ourselves that this little book is woven in the manner of a drama. For the present verse which we have set out indicates something like this: that while the Bride was speaking to the maidens, the daughters of Jerusalem, she suddenly perceived, as from afar, the voice of the Bridegroom, as though he were speaking with some others; and breaking off the speech she was making to the maidens, the Bride turned her ear to the sound that had reached her and said, “The voice of my kinsman.” Understand that the Bridegroom was at first, before he appeared to the Bride's eyes, recognized by her by his voice alone; but that afterwards he appeared also to her sight, leaping upon certain mountains near the place where the Bride was staying, and crossing the hills and mountains with great bounds rather than steps, like a stag or a roe, and so coming to his Bride in all haste. But when he came to the house in which the Bride was staying, understand that he stood a little while behind the house, so that his presence was felt, yet he did not yet wish to enter the house openly and plainly, but wished first, as if in the guise of a lover, to look at the Bride through the windows. And understand that certain nets or snares had been set near the Bride's house, so that if perhaps she herself, or one of her companions from among the daughters of Jerusalem, should ever come out, she would be caught. To these nets, it is certain, the Bridegroom came; and since he could not be caught by them, but proved stronger than they, he broke the nets themselves, and having broken them and walking over them, he even looked through them. And after he has done this deed, he says to the Bride, “Arise, come, my near one, my bride, my dove”; and he says this in order to show her by the deed itself how she ought now confidently to despise the nets which the enemy had stretched for her, and not to fear the snares which she had now seen broken by him. And to urge the Bride still more to hasten to him, he says to her: since all the time that seemed heavy has passed, and the winter which seemed to have arisen on her account has gone, and the useless rains have departed, and the flowering time has now come, do not delay to set out on the way to come to me. For behold, the farmers too, since the time of spring has already smiled, are tending the vineyards; for the voice both of other birds and also the sonorous and pleasing voice of the turtledove in spring is heard.

And the fig tree too, at the settled mildness of spring, has put forth its shoot; and the vines are so far from doubting the calm of the season that they now dare to bring forth their flowers. These things he indicates to the Bride about the calm of the season, so that she may dare with greater confidence to take up the journey of going to the Bridegroom. He also describes to her the place in which he wishes her to rest with him; and he says that by the covering of a certain rock, which adjoins the wall itself or the outwork before the wall, a very shady place is made. To this he wishes her to come, and there, the veil removed, to behold her uncovered face, so that face to face she may become known to her Bridegroom; and that the Bridegroom may not only see her face uncovered and free but also hear her voice there, being now sure both that her face is beautiful and that her voice is sweet and delightful.

These things we have joined together in anticipation, lest we should seem to interrupt the order of the drama and the thread of the story. But, anticipating a little, we have followed the order of the story up to the place where he says, “For your voice is sweet, your face is fair.” Now, then, going back, let us first see what is meant by “The voice of my kinsman.” By his voice alone was Christ first recognized by his Church. For first he sent his voice ahead through the prophets, and though he was not seen, he was nevertheless heard. And he was heard through the things that were announced about him; and for so long the Bride, that is, the Church which was being gathered from the beginning of the world, heard only his voice, until she saw him with her own eyes and said, Verse 8: “Behold, he comes leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills.” For he leapt upon the prophetic mountains and the holy hills, namely those who in this world bore his image and form. And if you place him in the apostles, as leaping upon mountains and towering above all, and on the hills, namely those who were chosen and sent by him in the second place, it will not be unfitting. For in them he is made like a roe and a young stag: a roe, because his sight surpasses all sight; and a stag, because he comes to destroy the serpent. But also every soul, if there is any that is bound by the love of the Word of God: whenever it is set in a debate (as everyone knows who has experienced how one comes into a tight place and is hemmed in by the straits of propositions and questions), whenever riddles or any obscure sayings of the law and the prophets hem it in, if perchance the soul feels him to be present and catches from afar the sound of his voice, it is at once lifted up; and when he begins to draw nearer and nearer to its senses and to illuminate what is obscure, then it sees him leaping upon the mountains and hills, suggesting to it high and lofty meanings of understanding; so that this soul may rightly say, “Behold, he comes leaping on the mountains, bounding over the hills.”

We say these things not forgetting that already in the earlier passages he had spoken with the Bride face to face, present with her present; but since, as we have often said, this little book has the form of a drama, now some things are said to one present, now to one absent; and so the change of persons is carried out in such a way that each order seems fittingly directed. For although the Bridegroom promises, and says to his Bride, who are his chosen disciples, “Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the age,” yet again he says through parables that the householder called his servants and distributed money to each for trading and set out on a journey; and again he says that he went away to seek a kingdom for himself; and again, as of an absent Bridegroom, it is said that at midnight a cry arose of those saying that the Bridegroom is coming. So, then, now the Bridegroom is present and teaches, now he is said to be absent and is longed for; and both will suit either the Church or the studious soul. For when the Church is permitted to suffer persecutions and tribulations, he seems absent from her; and again, when she advances in peace and flourishes in faith and good works, he is understood to be present to her. So too with the soul: when it seeks some meaning and longs to know whatever is obscure and secret, so long as it cannot find it, the Word of God is without doubt absent from it. But when what is sought has come to meet it and has appeared, who doubts that the Word of God is present and enlightens the mind and furnishes it with the light of knowledge?

And again we feel him withdrawn from us, and again present, in each of the things that are either opened or closed in our understanding. And we undergo this until we become such that he deigns not only to revisit us often but also to abide with us; as when he was asked by a certain disciple, “Lord, what has happened, that you begin to manifest yourself to us and not to this world?”, the Saviour answered: “If anyone loves me, he keeps my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him.” If, then, we too wish to see the Word of God and the Bridegroom of the soul leaping upon the mountains and springing over the hills, let us first hear his voice; and when we have heard him in all things, then we shall also be able to see him, in accordance with what the Bride is described as having seen in the present passage. For she herself, although she had seen him before, had not seen him as now, leaping upon the mountains and springing over the hills, nor leaning through her windows, nor looking through the nets; but rather it seems that earlier she had seen him in the time of winter. For now for the first time he says to her, “For the winter is past.” Therefore, as the matter shows, he appears to his Bride even through the winter, that is, in the time of tribulations and temptations. But that is another visitation, in which she is visited a little and again left, that she may be tested, and again sought, that her head may be supported and she may be embraced whole, lest perhaps she waver in faith or her body be weighed down by the burden of temptations. And therefore that time seems to me to have been winter, when she asked that her head, namely the summit of faith, be held by the Bridegroom's left hand, and that his right hand embrace her whole body. But now this vision, which appears from mountains and hills, signifies, I think, the heights and powers of spiritual graces. And his being said to look through the windows seems to me to give light to the senses of the soul. And the nets which he breaks and crushes indicate, I think, the snares of the devil, the time of temptations being now over, like winter.

The signs of spring and summer are also shown, as is said in the Psalms: “Summer and spring, you made them.” Accordingly, the Church then brought forth the flowers of progress, the temptations having been overcome and the dispensation of pruning completed, as will be shown in its proper place when we come to discuss these things. “Behold, he comes leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills.” We have already followed the literal order above; but now we must see how Christ, coming to the Church, leaps upon the mountains and springs over the hills; for “springing over,” rather than “passing over,” is the proper sense of the text before us. For Isaac, walking and going forward, grew greater, until he became very great. Paul made progress no longer by walking but by running, when he says, “I have finished the course.” But our Saviour, the Bridegroom of the Church, is said neither to walk nor to run, but beyond these to leap and to spring. For if you consider how in a short space of time the word of God ran through the world that was held by false superstitions and called it back to the knowledge of the true faith, you will understand how he leaps upon the mountains, surmounting with his bounds all the great kingdoms and inclining them to receive the knowledge of the divine religion; and springs over the hills, when he swiftly subdues the lesser kingdoms too and brings them to the piety of true worship. And so, bounding from place to place, from kingdom to kingdom, from province to province by the light of preaching, through him who said that from Jerusalem and round about as far as Illyricum he had fulfilled the Gospel of God, you will understand how he comes leaping upon the mountains and springing upon the hills. But it can also be understood in another way, as we said above: since Moses wrote of him, and the prophets likewise announced him. But this announcement has a veil laid over it in the reading of the Old Testament; but when the veil is taken away from the Bride, that is, from the Church turned to him, she suddenly sees him leaping on these mountains, that is, the books of the law, and on the hills of the Scripture of prophecy, not so much appearing as springing forth in evident manifestation: as if, for example, turning over each page of the prophetic reading, she should find Christ springing out of them, and through each passage of the readings, the veil with which he was formerly covered now at last removed, should see him bubbling up and emerging and bursting forth now in evident manifestation. For this reason, I believe, Jesus himself too, when he came to be transfigured, was not on some plain or in a valley, but climbed a mountain, where he was transfigured: so that you may know that he always appears on the mountains or on the hills, and that he may teach you never to look for him anywhere except on the mountains of the law and the prophets.

That all the saints are called mountains you will find indicated in many places of Scripture, as it says in the Psalms: “Its foundations are in the holy mountains.” And again: “I lifted up my eyes to the mountains, from where help will come to me.” For we take help in tribulations from the meanings of the divine Scriptures. We can further take the mountains on which the Word of God is said to leap, and as it were to be carried more freely, as the New Testament, and understand the hills as the books of the Old Testament. And in Jeremiah too the hunters and fishers who are sent to catch men for salvation are said to catch them on mountains and hills; for so he says: “Behold, I send many fishers and many hunters, and they will catch them upon every mountain and upon every hill.” This I think is rather to be fulfilled in the future time at the consummation of the age: so that when the angels are sent, according to the Gospel parable, at harvest time to separate the wheat from the tares, whoever has been of a loftier life and a more eminent manner of living may be found on the mountains or on the hills. He will not be found in low and cast-down places, lest he seem there to be mixed with the tares, but set in loftier understandings and in the eminence of faith, always cleaving to the Word of God leaping on the mountains and springing on the hills. This is said by another parable too, but with the same meaning, in the Gospel: “Let him who is on the housetop not come down to take anything from his house.”

This very rich text of the present verse can suggest yet another meaning to us. For it is possible for everyone who believes in God with full faith to be called a mountain or a hill, according, that is, to the quality of his life and the greatness of his understanding; even if he was once a valley, as Jesus advances in him in age and wisdom and grace, every valley shall be filled. But all the proud and lifted up, like mountains and hills, shall be brought low; since he who exalts himself shall be humbled, and he who humbles himself shall be exalted. For of such it is said, “Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion”; and of Jerusalem it is said, “Mountains are round about her.” Hence I think that our Saviour too, since he is called the stone cut from the mountain without hands that became a great mountain, may rightly also be called the mountain of mountains, as he is King of kings and High Priest of high priests. But that a third exposition too may have its place, let the word be directed to each soul. If there are any more capable of the word of God, who have drunk the water given them by Jesus, and it has become in them a fountain of living water springing up to eternal life, namely those in whom the word of God bubbles up with frequent and abundant meanings as with perennial streams: in these, made mountains and hills by the merit of life and knowledge and doctrine, the word of God is most worthily said to leap and spring, having become in them, through the abundance of doctrine, a fountain of living water springing up to eternal life. Verse 9: “My kinsman is like a roe or a young stag on the mountains of Bethel.” That the roe and the stag are counted among the clean animals is plainly shown by what is written in Deuteronomy; for it is written thus: “These are the animals which you shall eat: the calf and the lamb of the sheep, and the kid of the goats, the stag, and the cametus, and the pard.” And that the holy man is compared to a stag is found in many places of divine Scripture, as in the Psalm where it says, “As the stag longs for the springs of waters, so my soul longs for you, O God.”

Yet in the words we have taken from Deuteronomy this too seems worth considering, not carelessly: what a fitting order he kept in listing the clean animals, writing first the calf, second the lamb, third the kid. But among those which, according to the same Moses, are not offered at the altar, he names first the stag, second the roe; and so afterwards he describes the remaining animals in order. The reason of these things will become plain and evident to those to whom a more abundant spiritual grace has been granted by the Holy Spirit in the gift of knowledge. For us meanwhile, since it now falls to us, in expounding the present verse, to speak of the stag and the roe, it seems fitting to gather from the divine Scriptures, as far as we can, what is related of these animals; of which the same Moses, speaking of meats that might be eaten at every desire of the soul without being offered at the altar, says, “as the roe and the stag.” And the twenty-eighth psalm, where it writes in order of the powers and efficacy of the voice of God, says something remarkable of the stag, thus: “The voice of the Lord perfecting stags,” that is, of one making stags perfect, “and he will uncover the thickets.” For just as the voice of the Lord is said to cut through the flame of fire and to shake the desert, so it is said to perfect stags and to uncover the thickets. In Job too we find it related of the stag thus, where the Lord, speaking to Job through the whirlwind and the cloud, says: “Have you then observed the calving of the stags, or numbered their months full for bearing, and loosed their pangs, or nourished their young, or will you send forth their offspring without pains? Their young will break away and be multiplied in their birth; they will go forth and not return.” To these must be added what we read in Proverbs thus: “The stag of friendships and the foal of graces speaks to you.” These, meanwhile, are the passages about the stag that have come to mind for the present. We have taken them up so that we may speak not in the teaching of human wisdom but in the teaching of the Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

And therefore let us call upon God, the Father of the Word, to manifest to us the secrets of his Word, to remove our understanding from the teaching of human wisdom and to exalt and raise it to the teaching of the Spirit, so that we may speak not what the fleshly hearing perceives, but what the will of the Holy Spirit contains. The apostle Paul teaches us that the invisible things of God are understood from visible things, and that the things that are not seen are contemplated by the reason and likeness of the things that are seen; showing by this that this visible world teaches about the invisible, and that this earthly arrangement contains certain patterns of heavenly things, so that we may be able to ascend from the things below to the things above, and from what we see on earth to perceive and understand the things that are in the heavens. After a certain likeness of these, the Creator gave a likeness to the creatures that are on earth, so that through them the differences might more easily be gathered and perceived. And perhaps, as God made man in his own image and likeness, so too he made the other creatures after certain other heavenly images by likeness; and perhaps each and every thing on earth has something of image and likeness in the heavenly things to such an extent that even the grain of mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds, has something of image and likeness in the heavens; and the fact that such an alternation of nature has been given it that, though it is the smallest of all seeds, it becomes greater than all herbs, so that the birds of heaven can come and dwell in its branches, bears the likeness not only of some heavenly image but of the kingdom of heaven itself. So, then, it is possible that the other seeds on earth also have something of likeness and correspondence in heavenly things. And if seeds, then without doubt shrubs too; and if shrubs, then without doubt animals too, whether birds or reptiles or four-footed creatures. And this too can be understood: that just as the grain of mustard seed holds not one likeness only, of the kingdom of heaven, namely of the birds' dwelling in its branches, but has also another likeness or image, namely of perfection of faith, so that if anyone has faith like a grain of mustard seed, he may say to a mountain to remove itself, and it will remove; so it is possible that other things too bear the form and image of heavenly things not in one respect but in several. And since there are, for example, many virtues in the grain of mustard seed which hold images of heavenly things, its last and lowest use is the one it has among men in bodily service. So too it can be understood in the other things, whether seeds or shrubs or roots of herbs or even animals: that they furnish men with bodily use and service, but have forms and images of incorporeal things by which the soul can be taught and instructed to contemplate even the things that are invisible and heavenly.

And this perhaps is what that writer of divine wisdom says: “For he himself gave me true knowledge of the things that are, to know the constitution of the world and the powers of the elements, the beginning and end and middle of times, the alternations of the solstices and the changes of the seasons, the cycles of the year and the positions of the stars, the natures of animals and the tempers of beasts, the violent forces of spirits and the thoughts of men, the varieties of plants and the virtues of roots; and all things that are hidden and manifest I have known.” See, then, whether from these words of Scripture we can gather more easily and plainly the things we have proposed to discuss. For this writer of divine wisdom, after enumerating each thing, said at the end that he had received knowledge of things hidden and manifest: showing without doubt that each of the things that are manifest is related to something among the things that are hidden; that is, that every visible thing has some likeness and correspondence to invisible things. Since, then, it is impossible for a man living in the flesh to know anything of hidden and invisible things unless he has conceived some image and likeness from visible things, I think that for this reason he who made all things in wisdom so created each species of visible things on earth as to place in them a certain teaching and knowledge of invisible and heavenly things; so that through them the human mind might ascend to spiritual understanding and seek the causes of things in the heavens, and so that, led on by the Wisdom of God, it too might be able to say, “The things that are hidden and the things that are manifest I have known.”

According to this he also knows the constitution of the world, not only this visible and bodily one which is open, but also that incorporeal and invisible one which is hidden. He knows also the elements of the world, not only the visible but also the invisible, and the powers of both. And as to what he says of the beginning and end and middle of times: of the visible world he means the beginning which Moses marks as a beginning less than six thousand years ago; the middle, according to the reckoning of times; and that end which is hoped for when heaven and earth shall pass away. But according to the knowledge of hidden things, the beginning is that which he understands whom the Wisdom of God has taught, which no times and no ages can comprehend; the middle, these things that now are; and the end, the things to come, that is, the perfection and consummation of the universe, which nevertheless can be conjectured and understood from these visible things. And the alternations of the solstices, the changes of the seasons and the cycles of the year he refers from the things that are seen to invisible changes and alternations of bodily things. The cycles too of temporal and present years he refers to certain more ancient and everlasting years, after him who said, “And I had the eternal years in mind.” And the positions of the stars, too, he who merited the knowledge of hidden and manifest things did not hesitate to refer from what is openly seen to what is hidden; and he says that there is a certain race of saints, descended especially from the stock of Abraham, like the stars of heaven. And he declared the glory of the future resurrection to be stars, according to the knowledge of hidden things, following him who said: “One is the glory of the sun, and another the glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory; so also is the resurrection of the dead.” Unless

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.

For I think that just as those who receive the death of Christ and mortify their members upon earth become partakers of the likeness of his death, so too those who receive the power of the Holy Spirit, are sanctified by him and filled with his gifts become doves themselves, because he appeared in the form of a dove, so that, raised up on the wings of the Holy Spirit, they may fly from earthly and bodily places to heavenly ones. And next he inserted the opportune time at which these things can happen: “For behold the winter,” he says, “has passed, the rain has gone.” For the soul is not joined and united to the Word of God unless every winter of disturbances and storm of vices has departed from it, and it no longer wavers and is carried about by every wind of doctrine. When, then, all these have departed from the soul, and the tempest of desires has fled from it, then the flowers of virtues will begin to bloom in it, then the time of pruning too will come to its mind, and whatever is superfluous and less useful in its senses or understandings will be cut away and called back to the buds of spiritual understanding. Then too it will hear the voice of the turtledove, without doubt that wisdom which the steward of the word speaks among the perfect, the higher wisdom of God which is hidden in a mystery. For this is what the name of the turtledove indicates: this bird spends its life in more secret places remote from the crowd, loving either the deserts of the mountains or the recesses of the woods, always far from the multitude and a stranger to crowds. And what else is there that suits the fitness and pleasantness of this season? “The fig tree,” he says, “has put forth its shoots.” Not yet indeed the fruits of the Spirit himself, which are joy, love, peace and the rest; but now the spirit of man, which in man is in particular called a fig tree, begins to put forth their shoots. For just as in the Church generally each of the souls of believers is understood as different trees, of which it is said, “Every tree which my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up”; and again Paul, who calls himself God's helper in God's husbandry, himself also says, “I planted, Apollos watered”; and the Lord in the Gospels, “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or the tree bad and its fruit bad”: just as, then, in the Church generally each of the believers is understood as different trees, so too in each soul its different virtues and powers are understood as different trees.

There is, then, in the soul too a certain fig tree which puts forth its shoot; there is also a vine which flowers and gives its fragrance. The branches of this vine the heavenly Father, the husbandman, prunes, that they may bear much fruit. But this vine first, by the sweetness of fragrance given off from its flower, gladdens the sense of smell, after him who said, “For we are the good fragrance of Christ in every place.” Seeing, then, these beginnings of virtues in the soul, the Word of God calls it to himself, that it may hasten and come out and, casting off all bodily things, come to him, that it may become a partaker of his perfection. For this reason, then, he first says to it, as to one still lying down and leaning on bodily things, “Arise”; and as one that has at once obeyed and followed him who calls, it is praised by him and hears, “My near one, and my dove.” And after this, lest it tremble at the whirlwinds of temptations, he announces to it that the winter has departed and the rain has passed and gone away to itself. And well has he signified the nature of vices and sins in one wonderful expression, saying that such winter and rain, which descends from the fault and tempest of vices, has gone away to itself, indicating by this that sins have no substance. For vices falling away from a man are not gathered into some other substance of sins, but go away to themselves, and dissolved in themselves they vanish and are reduced to nothing. And therefore he said, “It has gone away to itself.” There comes, then, a calm to the soul when the Word of God appears to it and sin ceases; and so at last, when the vineyard flowers, the virtues and the shrubs of good works will begin to sprout fruit.

But now again Christ says these things to the Church, and sets the whole span of the present age as the circle of a year. By winter he indicates that time in which hail and whirlwinds and the other blows of the ten plagues scourged the Egyptians; or when Israel endured various wars; or also when it resisted the Saviour himself and, caught by the whirlwind of unbelief, was sunk in a shipwreck of faith. When, then, through their transgression salvation came to the Gentiles, he now calls the Church to himself and says to her: Arise and come to me, for now the winter which sank the unbelieving and held you down in ignorance has departed. And the rain too has passed; that is, I will no longer command the clouds, namely the prophets, to rain the rain of the Word upon the earth; but the voice of the turtledove itself, that is, the Wisdom of God herself, will speak on earth and say, “I who spoke am here.” The flowers, then, of the believing peoples and of the rising Churches have appeared in the land. And the time of pruning has come through faith in my passion and resurrection. For sins are pruned and cut away from men when remission of sins is given in baptism. The voice of the turtledove, as we said, is heard on earth no longer through various prophets but through the mouth of the Wisdom of God herself. And the fig tree buds, which can be taken as the fruits of the Holy Spirit, which are now for the first time opened and shown to the Church; or also as the letter of the law, which before Christ's coming was closed and bound and covered with a garment of fleshly understanding. But from his presence and coming the shoot of spiritual understanding has been brought forth from it, and the green and living sense that was hidden in it has appeared; so that the Church, which was hidden by Christ in the fig tree, that is, in the law, may not appear dry nor follow the letter that kills, but the spirit that flowers and gives life. And the vines too are said to flower and to have given their fragrance.

The various Churches throughout the world can also be called flowering vines, or vineyards. For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the house of Judah his beloved young plant. These vineyards, then, when they first come to faith, are said to flower; but when through religion they are adorned with the sweetness of their works, they are said to have given their fragrance. Not without cause, I think, did he say not “they gave fragrance” but “their own fragrance”: to show that in each soul there is a power of capacity and a freedom of choice by which it can do everything that is good. But since this good of nature, plucked away by the occasion of transgression, had been bent either to disgrace or to wantonness, when it is restored through grace and renewed through the teaching of the Word of God, it gives back without doubt that fragrance which God the first creator had placed in it, but which the guilt of sin had taken away. The vines or vineyards can also be understood as the heavenly and angelic powers, which bestow their fragrance on men, that is, the good of teaching and instruction, with which they instruct and imbue souls until they come to perfection and begin to become capable of God. As the Apostle too, writing to the Hebrews, says: “Are they not all ministering spirits, sent to serve for the sake of those who will inherit salvation?” And therefore men are said to receive from them as it were the first flower and fragrance of good works, but to hope for the very fruits of the vine from him who said, “I will not drink of the fruit of this vine until I drink it new with you in the kingdom of my Father.” The perfect flowers and fruits, then, are to be hoped for from him; but the beginnings and, so to speak, the sweetness of progress can be ministered by the heavenly powers, or certainly by those who said, as we said above, “For we are the good fragrance of Christ to God in every place.” But we can also understand what we have in hand in yet another way, so as to say that it appears to be a kind of prophecy made to the Church, by which she is called to the future promises; so that, as it were after the consummation of the age, when the time of resurrection has come, it is said to her, “Arise.” And since this word at once signifies the work of resurrection, she, made brighter and more splendid as it were by the resurrection, is invited to the kingdom, and it is said to her, “Come, my near one, my fair one, my dove, for the winter has passed”: naming as winter without doubt the storms and whirlwinds of this present life, by which human life is tossed by the tempests of temptations.

That winter, then, has passed with its rains, and has gone away to itself; for each one has done to himself, in this life, everything he has done. And let the flowers that have appeared in the land be understood as the beginning of the future promises. The axe too, laid at the root of the tree at the consummation of the age to cut down every tree that does not bear good fruit, understand as the time of pruning. And the voice of the turtledove, which is heard in that land of promise which the meek will receive as an inheritance, take as the person of Christ teaching face to face and no longer through a mirror and in an enigma. And let the fig tree that puts forth its shoot be held to be the fruit of the whole congregation of the righteous. And those holy and blessed angelic powers, with whom all the elect and blessed will be associated after the resurrection, who will be like the angels of God: these are the flowering vines and the vineyards, which impart to each soul their fragrance, and the grace which it first received from the Creator and has now recovered after losing it; and with the sweetness of heavenly fragrance they drive away the stench of mortality and corruption, now at last cast off from them. Verses 13–14: “Arise and come, my near one, my fair one, my dove, in the coverings of the rock beside the outer wall. Show me your face, and let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet and your face is fair.” According to the order of the drama set before us, the Bridegroom, who had come to the Bride leaping upon the mountains and springing over the hills, looking at her and gazing through the windows, says to her now for the second time, “Arise, come, my near one, my fair one, my dove.” But now he adds this too, to show her the place to which she must come, a place set under the covering and shelter of a rock.

And let the same place be not so much beside the wall as beside a certain outer wall. An outer wall is so called when, outside the walls that surround a city, another wall is built, and it is a wall before the wall. Then, as if the Bride herself were covered and veiled out of reverence, the Bridegroom himself asks that, coming to that place which he showed above, as being more secret, she should there, as it were throwing back the veil, show him her face. And since the Bride kept silent out of great reverence, the Bridegroom desires at some point also to hear her voice and to delight in her words, and he says that she should let him hear her voice. It seems, however, that her face is not wholly unknown to him, nor is he ignorant of her voice; but something has come between, in which he has neither seen her face nor heard her voice. Let this be the text of the drama before us. To which this too is added: that it seems to be springtime, since the flowers are said to have appeared in the land, and the voice of the turtledove to sound, and the trees to have put forth their shoots. For this reason, as at the opportune time, he challenges the Bride to go forth, who without doubt had stayed the whole winter within the confines of the house. But these things seem to me (so far as concerns the literal narrative) to confer no benefit on readers, nor even to keep any coherence of the narrative itself, as we find in the other narratives of Scripture. Hence it is necessary to transfer everything to spiritual understanding. First, then, understand with me as the soul's winter the time when it is still tossed by the waves of passions and beaten by the storms of vices and the harsh blasts of evil spirits. When it is set in these, the word of God does not exhort it to go outside, but to gather itself within, to be united on every side and covered against the destructive blasts of evil spirits. At that time no flowers of studies in the divine writings are found with it, nor do the secrets of deeper wisdom and hidden mysteries sound as through the voice of the turtledove. Nor does its smell receive anything of grace as from the flowers of the vine, nor does its sight delight as in the shoot of the fig tree; but it is enough that in the tempests of temptations it remain safe and protected from the fall of sin. And if it succeeds in remaining unharmed, the winter passes for it and spring comes to it. For it is spring for it when rest is given to the mind and calm to the spirit.

Then the Word of God comes to it, then he calls it to himself and exhorts it to go out, not only outside the house but outside the city: that is, that it should be not only outside the vices of the flesh, but outside everything bodily and visible that is contained in the world. For we have already shown clearly above that the world is figuratively understood as the city. The soul, then, is called out beyond the wall and led as far as the outer wall when, casting off and leaving the things that are seen and are temporal, it strives toward the things that are not seen and are eternal. It is shown, then, that this journey must be made under the covering of the rock, not under the open sky, nor so as to suffer the heat of the sun, lest it become dark again, lest it say again, “The sun has looked down on me”: for this reason it makes this journey under the covering of the rock. And he does not want this covering to be of leaves, or linen, or skins, but wants the rock to be its covering, that is, the firm and solid doctrines of Christ. For Paul declares that he is the rock, saying, “And the rock was Christ.” If, then, the soul is covered and veiled with the teaching and faith of Christ, it can safely come to that secret place where with unveiled face it may contemplate the glory of the Lord. And rightly is this covering of the rock believed safe, since Solomon too says of it in Proverbs that the tracks of the serpent cannot be found upon a rock. For so he says: “There are three things which are impossible for me to understand, and a fourth which I do not know: the tracks of an eagle flying, and the way of a serpent upon a rock, and the paths of a ship in the sea, and the ways of a man in his youth.” Of the serpent, then, that is, any signs of sin, none can be found on this rock which is Christ, since he alone did no sin. Under the covering of this true rock, then, the soul safely comes to the place of the outer wall, that is, to contemplating incorporeal and eternal things.

Of this same rock David says, under another figure of speech, in the thirty-ninth psalm: “And he set my feet upon a rock and directed my steps.” And do not wonder if in David this rock is as it were the foundation and footing of the soul, by which it goes on to God, and in Solomon the covering of the soul that tends to the mystical secrets of wisdom; since Christ himself too is now called the way by which believers walk, now also the forerunner, as Paul says: “Where Jesus entered as forerunner for us.” Like this too is what is said by God through Moses: “Behold, I have placed you in the cleft of the rock, and you will see my back parts.” This rock, then, which is Christ, is not closed on every side, but has a cleft. And the cleft of the rock is he who reveals God and makes him known to men; for no one knows the Father except the Son. No one, then, sees the back parts of God, that is, the things that come to pass in the last times, unless he is placed in the cleft of the rock, that is, when he has learned them by Christ's revealing. And here, then, the Word of God invites the soul, made near to him under the covering of the rock, to the place of the outer wall, as we said above, to contemplate the things that are not seen and are eternal; and there he says to her, “Show me your face,” surely to see whether anything of the old veil is still found on her face, or whether she can with unafraid gaze behold the glory of the Lord, so that she too may say, “And we beheld his glory, glory as of the only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” And when she has become worthy that it be said of her, as it was said of Moses, that “Moses spoke and God answered him,” then is fulfilled in her what he says, “Let me hear your voice.”

And a great praise of her is shown in what is said, “Your voice is sweet.” For so the most wise prophet David said, “Let my discourse be sweet to him.” The voice of the soul is sweet when it speaks the word of God, when it expounds concerning the faith and the doctrines of truth, when it explains the dispensations of God and his judgements. But if foolish talk, or coarse jesting, or vanity proceeds from its mouth, or an idle word, of which account must be rendered on the day of judgement, that voice is unsweet and unpleasant. From this voice Christ turns away his hearing. And therefore every perfect soul sets a guard on its mouth and a door round about its lips, so that it may always bring forth such speech as, seasoned with salt, gives grace to those who hear, and the Word of God may say of it, “Your voice is sweet.” “And your face,” he says, “is fair.” If you understand that face of which Paul says, “But we all with unveiled face,” and again when he says, “But then face to face,” then you will see what is the face of the soul that is praised by the Word of God and said to be fair: without doubt that which is daily renewed after the image of him who created it, which has in itself no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but is holy and spotless; such a Church as Christ himself presented to himself, namely the souls that have come to perfection, which all together make up the body of the Church. And that body will surely appear beautiful and comely if the souls of which that body is made remain in all the comeliness of perfection. For just as, when the soul is in anger, it makes the face of the body troubled and fierce, but when it continues in gentleness and calm, it makes the look peaceful and mild: so the face of the Church is declared comely or ugly according to the virtues and conduct of believers; according to what we also read written: “The trace of a heart in good things is a cheerful face.” And again elsewhere: “The face of a glad heart is blooming, but the face of one in sorrows is sad.” The heart, then, is glad when it has in itself the Spirit of God, whose first fruit is love, the second joy. From these, I think, certain wise men of the world took that saying which states that the wise man alone is beautiful, but every wicked man is ugly.

It remains for us to say something more clearly about the name “outer wall.” This, as we said above, indicates a wall before a wall, which is also said in Isaiah thus: “Set a wall and around the wall.” A wall is the defence of a city; but another wall before the wall, or around the wall, signifies greater and stronger defences. By this it is shown that the Word of God, calling the soul and leading it away from bodily business and the bodily senses, wishes to teach it about the mysteries of the age to come and from there to procure defences for it, so that, fortified and surrounded by the hope of things to come, it can in no way be either conquered by allurements or wearied by tribulations. Now let us also see how this is said by Christ to the Church, who is near to him and fair; and fair to no other but to him alone, for this is what he signifies when he says “my fair one.” This one, then, Christ raises up, and announces to her the Gospel of the resurrection; and therefore he says, “Arise, come, my near one, my fair one.” And because he has given her the wings of a dove, after she slept in the midst of the lots: now the Church was called in the middle, between two callings of Israel; for first Israel was called, and after this, when Israel stumbled and fell, the Church of the Gentiles was called; but when the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, then again all Israel, called, will be saved. In the midst, then, of these two lots the Church sleeps. And for this reason he gave her the silvered wings of a dove, which signifies rational wings in the gifts of the Holy Spirit; and the hinder parts of her back, either in the greenness of gold, as some read, or, as others have it written, in the paleness of gold.

This can show that that later calling which the Apostle says will come from Israel will not be in the observance of the law but in the preciousness of faith. For faith flowering with virtues bears the appearance of the greenness of gold. It can also be said that the Church sleeps or rests in the midst of those lots, in the midst of the two Testaments; and her wings are silvered from the meanings of the law, while the gold in the hinder parts of her back can be understood as the gift of the Gospel. To this Church, then, Christ says, “Come, you my dove, and come, in the covering of the rock,” teaching her to come covered, so that she may suffer nothing from the temptations that assail her, but may walk covered under the shadow of the rock, saying, “The spirit of our face, Christ the Lord, of whom we said: In his shadow we shall live among the nations.” And she walks covered and veiled because she ought to have authority on her head because of the angels. But when she has come to the place of the outer wall, that is, to the state of the age to come, there he says to her, “Show me your face, and let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet.” He wants the voice of his Church to be heard, because whoever confesses him before men, he too will confess him before his Father who is in heaven. “For your voice is sweet.” And who does not admit that the voice of the Catholic Church confessing the true faith is sweet, but that the voice of the heretics is unsweet and unpleasant, who speak not the doctrines of truth but blasphemies against God and iniquity against the Most High? So too the face of the Church is fair, but that of the heretics ugly and foul: if there is anyone, that is, who knows well how to judge the beauty of a face, that is, if anyone is spiritual, who knows how to examine all things. For with the unskilled and natural men the sophisms of falsehood seem more beautiful than the doctrines of truth.

We can still add this about the place of the outer wall: that the outer wall is the bosom of the Father, in which the only-begotten Son is placed and declares all things and announces to his Church whatever is contained in the secret and hidden recesses of the Father. Hence one taught by him said: “No one has ever seen God; the only-begotten Son of God, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him.” There, then, Christ calls out his Bride, to teach her about all that is with the Father and to say, “For I have made known to you all that I heard from my Father”; and again to say, “Father, I will that where I am, there my servant also may be.” Verse 15: “Catch us the little foxes that destroy the vineyards, and our vineyards will flower.” According to the order of the drama the person has changed: for the Bridegroom speaks no longer to the Bride but to his companions, and tells them to catch the little foxes which lie in wait for the vineyards when they first show their shoot, and do not let them come to flower. He commands them to be caught, then, looking to the safety and benefit of the vineyards. But these things, as we have begun, must be discussed by spiritual exposition. And I think that if you consider them as said of the soul that joins itself to the Word of God, the foxes must be understood as the opposing powers and the wickedness of demons, which through evil thoughts and perverse understanding destroy the flower of virtues in the soul and kill the fruit of faith. The providence of the Word of God, then, commands his angels, who are sent to minister for the sake of those who will inherit salvation, to catch out of each soul such thoughts sent in by the demons, so that, these being cast out, they may bear the flower of virtue.

And they catch the evil thoughts in this way: when they suggest to the mind that these are not from God but from the evil spirit, and give the soul discernment of spirits, so that it understands which thought is according to God and which is from the devil. And that you may know that there are thoughts which the devil puts into the hearts of men, see what is written in the Gospel: “When the devil,” it says, “had put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot to betray him.” There are, then, thoughts of this kind which are cast into men's hearts by demons. But since divine providence is not lacking, lest perhaps through such importunity freedom of choice should be disturbed and there be no just cause for judgement, therefore the care of men is entrusted to kindly angels and friendly powers, so that when the deceivers, like foxes, begin to assail a man, they may lift him up with helping right hands. And therefore it is said, “Catch us the little foxes.” Fittingly indeed he commands them to be caught and seized while they are still little. For while an evil thought is at its beginnings, it can easily be cast out of the heart. For if it is often repeated and remains long, it leads the soul without doubt to consent; and after consent has been confirmed within its heart, it is certain that it tends toward the affection of sin. While it is at its beginnings, then, and is little, it must be caught and cast out, lest, if it grows up and becomes inveterate, it can no longer be expelled. So Judas too had the beginning of evil in the love of money, and this was his little fox. And when the Lord saw that Judas's soul, like a flowering vineyard, was being harmed by it, wishing to catch it and cast it out of him, he entrusted to him the money bag, so that, possessing what he loved, he might cease from covetousness. But he, as one having freedom of his own choice, did not embrace the wisdom of the physician, but gave himself rather to the counsel by which his soul was being destroyed than to that by which it was being healed. But if we understand these things of Christ and the Church, the word will seem to be directed to the teachers of the Church, and they to be commanded about catching the foxes that destroy the vineyards. And by foxes we can understand the perverse teachers of heretical doctrines, who by the cunning of their arguments seduce the hearts of the innocent and destroy the vineyard of the Lord, so that it may not flower in the right faith. The command is given, then, to Catholic teachers that while these foxes are still little and have not yet deceived many souls, but the depraved doctrine is only beginning, they should hasten to refute and curb them, to overcome the gainsayers with the word of truth, and to catch them by true assertions.

For if they allow them at the beginning and indulge them, their speech spreads like a cancer and becomes incurable; so that many are found who, deceived by them, begin to fight for them and to defend the authors of the error they have taken up. So, then, it is right to catch the little foxes and to refute the deceitful sophisms of the heretics at their very beginnings with true assertions. But that the assertion of both our expositions may shine out more clearly, let us gather from the divine books wherever mention of this animal has been made. We find, then, in the sixty-second psalm it said of the ungodly thus: “But they sought my soul in vain; they will go into the lower parts of the earth; they will be given into the hands of the sword; they will be portions for foxes.” And in the Gospel according to Matthew the Saviour answered the scribe who said to him, “Master, I will follow you wherever you go”: “Foxes have holes and the birds of heaven nests where they may rest, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Likewise in the Gospel according to Luke, to those who said to the Lord, “Go out and depart from here, for Herod wants to kill you,” Jesus answered: “Go and tell that fox: Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I shall be finished.” In the book of Judges too, Samson, when the wife who was of the race of the Philistines had been taken from him, said to her father: “I am innocent this time with respect to the Philistines, for I will do you harm.” And Samson went and took three hundred foxes, and took torches, and tied tail to tail, and put one torch between two tails of the foxes,

and lit fire in the torches, and sent them out through the crops of the Philistines, and burned all their crops and their stubble, and their vineyards and their olive groves. Further, in the second book of Ezra, where Tobiah the Ammonite hindered the building by those who had returned from captivity, as they were building the temple and the wall, he says to the foreigners: “Will these sacrifice or eat sacrificial meat in this place? Will not foxes go up and destroy their wall which they are building of stones?” These, meanwhile, are the passages of the divine Scriptures mentioning this animal that could occur to us for the present, so that from them every wise reader may prudently judge whether we have used a fitting exposition, in what is set before us, to explain the words, “Catch us the little foxes.” And though it is laborious to explain each of the passages we have taken as examples, yet we will touch briefly on what we can. And first let us look at the sixty-second psalm, where, when the ungodly were persecuting the soul of the righteous man, he sang, saying: “But they sought my soul in vain; they will go into the lower parts of the earth; they will be given into the hands of the sword; they will be portions for foxes.” In this surely it is shown that the depraved teachers, wishing to deceive the soul of the righteous with vain and empty words, are said to go into the lower parts of the earth, as minding the earth and speaking of the earth, and descending into its lower parts, that is, into the depth of folly. For I think that those who live carnally, since they harm only themselves, are said to be earth and to dwell on earth. But those who understand the Scriptures with earthly and carnal meanings, and deceive others by teaching so, because they put together certain subtleties and arguments of carnal and earthly wisdom, are said to enter the lower parts of the earth; or certainly, because those who teach earthly things sin more gravely than those who live so, an even heavier future punishment threatens them. And these same are prophesied to be given into the hands of the sword, perhaps that flaming and turning one. And let us see how they become portions of foxes. Every soul is either the portion of God or the portion of someone who has received power over men. For when the Most High divided the nations and dispersed the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the nations according to the number of the angels of God, and Jacob became the portion of the Lord. Since, then, it is agreed that every soul is either in the portion of God or in the portion of some other (since through freedom of choice it is possible for anyone to pass from the portion of another, either to the portion of God, if he has chosen the better with God's help, or, if the worse, to the share of the demons), hence mention of them is made in the psalm: those who sought the soul of the righteous in vain will be portions of foxes; as if he said, they will be portions of the worst and most wicked demons; so that every malign and deceitful power, through which the deceptions and frauds of false knowledge have been introduced, is figuratively called a fox;

and those who are led into this error and will not assent to the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and to the teaching that is according to godliness, but let themselves be deceived by such, these become portions of such foxes and will go with them into the lower parts of the earth. They too are those in whom, according to the Gospel, those foxes we mentioned above are said to have holes, in whom the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. Herod too must be believed to have been named a fox for his deceitful cunning. But as for Samson, who is recorded to have caught three hundred foxes and tied them together by their tails, put burning torches between the tails, sent them into the crops of the Philistines, and burned these together with the stubble and the olive groves and vineyards, the explanation of this form or figure seems to me very difficult. Yet let us try to knock at some of it as far as we can, and let us suppose, as our exposition above holds, that the foxes are deceitful and perverse teachers. These Samson, who bears the image of the true and faithful teacher, catching them with the word of truth, ties tail to tail; that is, he refutes those who oppose him and who think and teach things differing from one another, and taking propositions and inferences from their own words, he sends the fire of conclusion into the crop of the Philistines, and from their own arguments burns all their fruits and the vineyards and olive groves of a most wicked generation. And the very number of three hundred foxes, because they were different from and discordant with one another, indicates the threefold form of sins. For every sin is committed either in deed or in word or in mind.

Nor must what we said is written in the second book of Ezra be wholly passed over: where, when the Holy of Holies was being built, that is, when the faith of Christ and the mysteries of his saints were being founded, the enemies of truth and opponents of faith, who are the wise of this world, seeing the walls of the Gospel rising without grammatical art and philosophical skill, say as it were with a certain mockery that this can very easily be destroyed by the cunning of words, through crafty fallacies and dialectical arguments. Let these things suffice for now, so far as brevity allowed, concerning the examples taken. Now let us return to our subject. It seems, then, that in the Song of Songs a command is given by the Bridegroom to the powers that are his friends, to catch and convict the opposing powers that lie in wait for the souls of men, lest they destroy their beginnings of faith and the flower of virtues under the appearance of some secret and hidden wisdom; and these powers lurk, like foxes in holes, in those men who have given themselves to follow such things. And that they may more easily be refuted and convicted, they are commanded to be caught while the foxes themselves are small and have only the beginnings of a most wicked persuasion. For if perhaps they have grown and become bigger foxes, they could no longer be caught by the friends of the Bridegroom, but perhaps by the Bridegroom himself alone. But all the holy teachers and masters of the Church too, as they received power to tread upon serpents and scorpions, so they receive power also to catch foxes. For so power was given them over all the power of the enemy. One without doubt among the other powers of the enemy is the fox, which destroys the flowering vineyards, and which, while it is still small, is commanded to be caught; as in the hundred and thirty-seventh psalm he is called blessed who takes and dashes the little ones of Babylon against the rock, and does not allow the Babylonian sense to grow and increase in himself, but dashes it while it is at its beginnings and holds it to the rock: for then it is easily destroyed.

Let the order of the explanation run thus, then: “Catch us the little foxes, which foxes destroy the flowering vineyards.” And his saying “us” means: me the Bridegroom and the Bride; or certainly me and you who are my companions. But it can also be taken thus: “Catch us the foxes,” and, after a pause, “that destroy the little vineyards,” so that we refer “little” not so much to the foxes as to the vineyards; so that it is the little vineyards that seem able to be destroyed: that is, all small souls, and those that have only beginnings, not firm and strong ones, can be harmed by the opposing powers. As it is said in the Gospel, “If anyone causes one of these little ones to stumble.” In this it is shown that a great and perfect soul cannot be caused to stumble, but a little and untrained one; as is said in the psalm: “Great peace have those who love your name, and there is no stumbling for them.” By a similar example, then, it can be seen that every little vineyard, that is, a beginning soul, can be harmed by the foxes, that is, by evil thoughts or by depraved teachers, but a perfect and strong one cannot. But if these foxes are caught by good teachers and cast out of the soul, then it will advance in virtues and flower in faith. Amen.