Commentary on Zechariah 1 part 24/24

'My beloved has gone down into his garden, to the bowls of spice, to feed in the gardens and to gather lilies.' And what are the bowls of spice into which the beloved of her who says these things has gone down, but the God-inspired Scriptures—or rather the divine meanings within them, in which he who has gone down feeds in the gardens and gathers lilies, the flowers that bear an intelligible fragrance and are called lilies?

When the cauldrons before the face of the spiritual altar become bowls of spice, then at that time every cauldron in the holy Jerusalem and in Judah shall be holy.

By Jerusalem here too one must understand the glorious Church, and by Judah the one whom his brethren praise and the sons of his father worship.

And who this is has been stated in the passages of the prophet previously read.

'And all who sacrifice shall come and take of them and boil in them.'

'And there shall be no more a Canaanite in the house of the Lord Almighty in that day.'

All who bring the sacrifice of righteousness and the sacrifice of praise, performing their sacred service, shall come to him who is worshipped and whom they serve, that they may glorify him, since he himself urges them to this.

'The sacrifice of praise shall glorify me.' And they shall come to one another with a harmonious purpose, that together they may fulfil the things of the priesthood, taking from the sanctified cauldrons set around the altar, so as to boil in them the flesh of the sacrifices, as has already been said.

And since the things of the cauldrons set forth are fulfilled with reason and with scientific contemplation, they are fittingly called bowls.

For that this figure signifies word (reason) is proclaimed in the Song of Songs.

The bride, then, making manifest in her soul the beauty and comeliness of the beloved whom she loved, says:

'His cheeks are as bowls of spice pouring forth perfumes.' And the cheek denotes the word, which, after the manner of a spring...

...flows and pours forth perfumes.

When this mystical, intelligible worship is being performed by those who have come to serve spiritually as priests, boiling in the holy cauldrons the flesh taken—by way of anagogical interpretation—from calves and rams, there shall no longer be a Canaanite in the house of the Lord Almighty in the day when the restoration of the... has come to pass.

Now a Canaanite is one who is a stranger from the womb, as being outside of godliness;

but he shall not be there—either because he changes into the true Israel that has no guile, or because he is cast out from the house of the Lord Almighty.

One must understand the Canaanite allegorically also as him who has come to be outside the Israelite condition.

Such was the other of the two elders who raged madly against Susanna, to whom the most wise Daniel says:

'O seed of Canaan and not of Judah, beauty has deceived you, and desire has perverted your heart;

the daughters of Israel would consort with you out of fear, but a daughter of Judah did not endure your lawlessness.' In agreement is also that which is in Hosea concerning the licentious as being Canaanites, running thus:

'Ephraim, a partaker of idols, has set a stumbling-block for himself;

committing fornication, they have utterly fornicated.' And since the licentious man is, by way of tropology, a Canaanite, he is cast out of the holy house of the Lord Almighty, that he may no longer be in it.

Fulfilling this, the divine apostle Paul writes to the Church of the Corinthians:

'It is reported that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not even among the Gentiles, that a man should have his father's wife.'

'And you are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he who has done this deed might be taken away from among you.' And indeed he has been cast out from the assembly of the faithful, so that, perceiving into what an evil he has come by his own choice, he might receive the wages of his fault—which also came to pass, so that... to him who had repented exceedingly.

For thus he who cast off the fornicating manner was brought into the house of God, the Church.

And that, since nothing is evil by nature—as some of the heterodox opine—a change according to choice takes place, is established from the Gospel, when the Canaanite woman was changed from a dog into a woman, being called a daughter by him who saved her, who said thus:

'Daughter, your faith has saved you.' For perhaps for this reason she was a dog before faith, because she was a licentious woman;

...for prone to mating and shameful in passion, by flattery...

at once, then, together with a harlot's hire it is forbidden, the law saying:

'You shall not bring the dog nor the hire of a harlot into the house of the Lord your God.' For when this is kept, there is no Canaanite in the house of the Lord Almighty in the day illumined by the Sun of righteousness, the true Light, the Only-begotten Son of God.

The prophet Zechariah, set forth for elucidation, having reached his end, we also bring to rest the composition of the commentaries upon him.