雅歌講道 第 1 章 第 2/20 段

For white or pale or black or red or dark blue or some other color — such are these words according to their ready appearances: mouth and kiss and myrrh and wine and the names of the limbs, and bed and maidens and such things.

But the form brought to completion through these is blessedness, and passionlessness, and union with the divine, and estrangement from evils, and assimilation to that which is truly beautiful and good.

These are the thoughts that testify to Solomon that wisdom which surpasses the bounds of human wisdom.

For what could be more paradoxical than this: that nature itself made a purification of its own passions, both legislating and teaching passionlessness through words reckoned to be passionate? For he does not say that one must come outside the movements of the flesh, and mortify the members that are upon the earth, and keep the mouth pure from passionate words; rather he so disposed the soul that, through the things that seem discordant, it looks toward purity, interpreting through the passionate expressions the undefiled meaning.

Let the word, then, through its prologue, teach us this one thing: that those who are led into the inner sanctuaries of the mysteries of this book are no longer men, but are transformed in their nature, through the discipleship of the Lord, toward what is more divine — even as the word testifies concerning His own disciples that they were better than after the manner of man, whom the distinction the Lord drew toward them separated from other men, when He says:

'Whom do men say that I am? But whom do you say that I am?' For truly the one who, through such words — whose ready appearance indicates fleshly pleasures — does not slip down into the filthy meaning, but is led by the hand through these words toward the philosophy of divine things, toward pure conceptions, shows that he is no longer a man, nor has a nature mingled with flesh and blood, but exhibits the life hoped for in the resurrection of the saints, having become equal to the angels through passionlessness.

[We must not] turn toward it with our thoughts, but look only to the soul, and dedicate the loving significations of the words, pure and undefiled, to the Good that surpasses all mind — which alone is truly sweet and desirable and lovely, whose enjoyment, ever occurring, becomes an occasion of greater desire, intensifying the longing along with the participation in the good things.

Thus Moses, the bride, loved the bridegroom, after the manner of the virgin in the Song who says, 'Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth' — he who, through the converse that came to him mouth to mouth from God, as the Scripture testifies, was still, even after so many theophanies, seized with a greater desire for such kisses, deeming it right to see the one he longed for as though he had not yet beheld him; and thus all the rest, in whom the divine longing lay deep, nowhere stood still in their desire, making everything that came to them from God for the enjoyment of the one longed for into matter and fuel for a still more vehement desire.

Just as also now the soul joined to God has an insatiable enjoyment: the more abundantly it is filled with the beauty, the more vehemently it flourishes in its longings.

For since the words of the bridegroom are spirit and are life, and everyone who cleaves to the spirit becomes spirit, and the one joined to the life passes from death into life according to the voice of the Lord — for this reason the virgin soul longs to draw near to the fountain of spiritual life.

And the fountain is the mouth of the bridegroom, whence the words of eternal life, gushing up, fill the mouth that draws them, even as the prophet did, drawing in the spirit through his mouth.

Since, therefore, the one who draws the drink from the fountain must set mouth to mouth, and the fountain is the Lord, who said, 'If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink,' for this reason the thirsting soul wishes to bring its own mouth to the mouth that pours forth life, saying, 'Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.'

And He who gushes forth life to all, and wills all to be saved, wills that none of those being saved should be without a share in such a kiss;

for this kiss is a purification of every defilement.

Wherefore it seems to me that the Lord brought this reproachfully against Simon the leper, that 'You gave me no kiss.'

For surely you would have been cleansed of your passion, had you drawn purity into yourself through the mouth.

But that man was, fittingly, incapable of love, having become overly carnal through his disease and remaining, because of his passion, unmoved toward the divine desire; whereas the soul that has been purified, with no leprosy of the flesh standing in the way, beholds the treasure of good things.

Now the name of this treasure is the heart, from which, through the breasts, comes the supply of divine milk, whereby the soul is nourished, drawing grace in proportion to its faith.

For this reason she says, 'Your breasts are better than wine,' indicating the heart by means of the breasts through their bodily location.

And one will assuredly not err who understands by 'heart' the hidden and ineffable power of the Godhead.

And by 'breasts' one might fittingly suppose the good workings of the divine power on our behalf, by which God nurtures the life of each, bestowing on each of those who receive it the nourishment suited to him.

In passing we also learn another teaching through the philosophy of this book: that there is in us a twofold perception, the one bodily, the other more divine, even as the word of Proverbs somewhere says, 'You shall find a divine perception.'

For there is a certain correspondence in the workings of the soul to the sense organs of the body.

And this too we learn from the present words.

For wine and milk are judged by the sense of taste; but since those things are objects of the mind, the soul's faculty that apprehends them is likewise wholly of the mind.

But the kiss is effected through the sense of touch;

for in the kiss the lips touch one another.

There is also a certain touch of the soul, which lays hold of the Word, being effected through a bodiless and intelligible contact, even as he said who declared, 'Our hands have handled concerning the Word of life.'

with power drawing along the fragrance of Christ by the attraction of the Spirit.

For thus the sequence of the virgin's prayer runs in its opening words: 'For your breasts are better than wine, and the scent of your ointments is above all spices.'

And through these words there is disclosed, as we have understood it, no small nor contemptible thought;

for perhaps in setting the milk from the divine breasts above, by comparison, the gladness that comes to us from wine, we learn through what has been said that all human wisdom and knowledge of things that are, and every contemplative power and comprehending imagination, is incapable of being set on a par, by comparison, with the simpler nourishment of the divine teachings.

For milk is borne from the breasts;

and milk is the nourishment of infants.

But wine, by reason of its strength and heat, becomes the enjoyment of the more mature.

Nevertheless, that which is perfect in the wisdom that is without is less than the infant-like teaching of the divine Word.

For this reason the divine breasts are better than human wine.

And the scent of the divine ointments is fairer than all the fragrance found in spices;

which seems to me to indicate some such meaning as this:

we understand by 'spices' the virtues, such as wisdom, temperance, righteousness, courage, prudence, and the like, by tinting ourselves with which, each according to his own power and choice, we become in a fragrance, one in one way and another in another;

the one from temperance or wisdom, another from righteousness or courage or some other of the things conceived according to virtue, and perhaps another has within himself the fragrance blended together out of all such spices.

But nevertheless all these could not come into comparison with that all-perfect virtue which the prophet Habakkuk says has filled the heavens, saying, 'His virtue has covered the heavens'—which is very Wisdom itself and very Righteousness and very Truth and all things individually.

'Therefore,' she says, 'the scent of your ointments has a grace beyond comparison with these spices that are known among us.'

Again in what follows the soul, the bride, lays hold of a loftier philosophy, showing forth the inaccessible and incomprehensible-to-human-reasonings nature of the divine power, in the words in which she says, 'Your name is ointment poured out';

for something like this seems to me to be signified through this saying: that the boundless nature cannot be precisely comprehended within the signification of a name;

but every power of thoughts, and every impression conveyed by words and names, even if it seem to possess something great and befitting God, cannot lay hold of the nature of Being itself;

but as if from certain traces and kindling-sparks, our reason makes its conjecture about the unseen, guessing at the incomprehensible from things comprehended by means of some analogy.

'For whatever name we may devise,' she says, 'as making known the ointment of the Godhead, we do not by the impression of what is said signify the ointment itself, but by our theological names we point to some scant remnant of the vapor of the divine fragrance.'

As in the case of vessels from which the ointment has been poured out: the ointment itself, in its own nature, that has been poured out from the vessels, is unknown as to what it is;

but from a certain faint quality of the vapors that has been left behind in the vessel, we make some conjecture about the ointment that has been poured out.

This, then, is what we learn through what has been said: that the very ointment of the Godhead, whatever it may be according to its essence, is above every name and every thought;

but the wonders beheld in the universe furnish the matter for the theological names, by which we name Him wise, powerful, good, holy, blessed, eternal, judge, savior, and the like;

all which point to some scant quality of the divine ointment, which all creation, through the wonders beheld in it, has impressed within itself after the manner of a certain vessel that has held ointment.

She has stated the cause of the praiseworthy desire and of the loving disposition.

Material love does not lay hold of those who are still infants (for infancy has no room for the passion), nor again is it possible to see such things among those worn out in extreme old age; so likewise, with regard to the divine beauty, both he who is still an infant, tossed about and carried about by every wind of teaching, and the old man, aged and drawn near to dissolution, are found unmoved toward this desire;

for the invisible beauty does not lay hold of such persons; only such a soul as this—one that has passed beyond the infant state and reached its prime through spiritual maturity, yet has taken on no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, one that neither is insensible through infancy nor grown feeble through age, whom the Word names a maiden—this soul obeys the great and first commandment of the law, loving with the whole heart and strength that beauty of which the human mind finds no outline, no representation, and no interpretation.

Such maidens, then, having grown through the virtues and having already come, in due season, to the mysteries of the divine bridal chamber, love the beauty of the Bridegroom and, through love, turn Him toward themselves.

For such is the Bridegroom, as to give back longing in return to those who love Him—He who thus spoke in the person of Wisdom: 'I love those who love me';

and: 'I will apportion substance to those who love me' (and He Himself is the Substance), 'and I will fill their treasuries with good things.'

The souls, therefore, draw after themselves the longing for the incorruptible Bridegroom, walking, as it is written, after the Lord their God.

And the cause of their love becomes the fragrance of the ointment, toward which, ever running, they stretch forward to the things before, making forgetfulness of the things behind.

'For after you,' she says, 'toward the scent of your ointments will we run.'

But those who do not yet possess the perfection of virtue and are still young in age promise that they will run toward the goal which the scent of the ointments points out (for they say, 'Toward the scent of your ointments will we run'); whereas the more perfect soul, having stretched forward more vehemently to the things before, already attains the goal for which the race is run, and is deemed worthy of the treasures in the storerooms.

For she says, 'The King has brought me into his storeroom.'

For she who longed to touch the good with the very tips of her lips, and touched of the beauty only so much as the power of her prayer signifies (for she prayed to be deemed worthy of a kind of kiss through the illumination of the Word), this soul, by the very means she had obtained, having slipped by reasoning even into the innermost of the ineffable things, cries out that her race is not only at the vestibule of good things, but that, by the firstfruits of the Spirit—of which through the first grace, as through a kind of kiss, she was deemed worthy—she searches the depths of God, and, having come to be in the inmost sanctuaries of paradise, like the great Paul she says she both sees things unseen and hearkens to unspeakable words.

The saying that follows uncovers to the word the economy of the Church.

For those who were first made disciples by grace and became eyewitnesses of the Word did not confine the good within themselves, but by transmission wrought the same grace also in those who came after them.

For this reason the maidens say to the bride, the first, who through mouth-to-mouth contact with the Word was filled with good things and deemed worthy of the hidden mysteries: 'Let us rejoice and be glad in you' (for your exultation is our common joy), and: 'As you love the breasts of the Word above wine, so let us also imitate you and love your breasts—through which you give the infants in Christ milk to drink—above human wine.'

And, if one were to bring the thought forward to greater clarity, what is said is something like this:

John, who reclined upon the breast of the Lord, loved the breasts of the Word; and setting his own heart, like a kind of sponge, against the fountain of life, and having become full, through a certain ineffable transmission, of the mysteries lying within the heart of the Lord, he holds out to us also the nipple that has been filled by the Word, and makes us full of the good things placed within it from the fountain, proclaiming with a great voice the ever-existing Word.

We shall say to him: 'Let us love your breasts above wine,' if indeed we have become such as to be maidens, and neither to be childish in mind through the youth that is yoked to vanity, nor to be wrinkled through sin in an old age that ends in dissolution;

and we love the outpouring of your teachings for this reason: because 'Uprightness has loved you.'

For this is the disciple whom Jesus loved.

And Jesus is Uprightness.

For the one says, 'Upright is the Lord God,' and this one names Him Uprightness, by whom everything crooked is made straight toward the right; but may it come to pass for us also that everything crooked be made into a straight path, and the rough places into smooth ways, by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ;

to whom be glory unto the ages of ages.

Homily 2. 'I am black and beautiful, O daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.'

'Do not look upon me because I am darkened, because the sun has looked askance at me;

the sons of my mother strove against me, they set me as a keeper in the vineyards;

my own vineyard I did not keep.'

'Tell me, you whom my soul has loved, where you shepherd, where you make your flock lie down at noon, lest I become as one veiled beside the flocks of your companions.'

'If you do not know yourself, O fair one among women, go forth in the tracks of the flocks and shepherd your kids by the tents of the shepherds.'

Of the sacred tabernacle of the testimony, that which appeared outwardly was not of equal honor with the beauty hidden within;

for the hangings of linen weavings, and the curtains made of goats' hair, and the coverings of red skins made up the outer adornment of the tabernacle, and there was nothing great or precious appearing to those who looked at the outward things beyond these; but within, the whole tabernacle of the testimony was ablaze with gold and silver and precious stones;

the pillars, the bases, the capitals, the altar of incense, the altar of sacrifice, the ark, the lampstand, the mercy seat, the lavers, the veils of the entrances—in which the beauty was blended from every kind of well-colored dye, a golden thread being gracefully interwoven with hyacinth and purple and fine linen and scarlet through a certain skillful fine-working, a blend from them all, causing the gleam of the fabric to glisten as in the rays of a rainbow.

What I have in view in prefacing my discourse from this point will become entirely clear to you from what is about to be said.

Once again the Song of Songs is set before us as a guide unto all philosophy and knowledge of God.

This is the true tabernacle of testimony, whose outer coverings and hides and the enclosing curtain are, as it were, certain words of love and sayings that display the relation toward the Beloved, and a sketching of beauty and a mention of bodily members, both those that appear openly in the face and those hidden beneath the covering of the garment.

But the things within are truly a lampstand full of many lights, and an ark full of mysteries.

Let us take care lest, having touched the outer things, we be shut out, unable to behold the wonders within the tabernacle.

For the law of the Spirit does not admit the entrance of such persons, unless one wash the garment of his own conscience—according to the commandment of Moses—if he has touched some dead and abominable thought.

The sequence of what has already been examined leads our discourse to the contemplation of the words spoken by the bride to the maidens.

'I am black and beautiful, O daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.'

Well does the teacher begin to make her guidance in good things start from those very points from which the souls being instructed ought to begin.

For the maidens are eager, in what they profess, to esteem more highly than any human speech—which they figuratively call wine—the grace that flows from her rational breasts, speaking thus in their utterance: 'Let us love your breasts more than wine, for uprightness has loved you'; while she, for her part, adds to what her disciples know of the wonder concerning herself, so that we may the more learn the immeasurable love for mankind of the Bridegroom, who through love bestows beauty upon the one beloved.

'For do not marvel,' she says, 'that uprightness has loved me, but that, being black from sin and made akin to darkness through my works, He made me beautiful through love, exchanging His own beauty for my shame.'

For having transferred to Himself the filth of my sins, He imparted to me His own purity, making me a partaker of His own beauty—He who first made the loathsome one lovely, and so loved her.

After this she exhorts the maidens themselves also to become beautiful, showing forth the beauty that is her own, after the likeness of the great Paul, who says, 'Become as I am, for I also have become as you are.'

And, 'Be imitators of me, as I also am of Christ.'

For on this account she does not permit the souls being taught by her, looking to the past of their life, to despair of becoming beautiful; but rather, looking to her, to learn this through the example: that the present becomes a covering for the past, if it be without blemish.

For she says: 'Even if now beauty shines upon me—that beauty which was formed upon me through being loved by uprightness—yet I know myself to have been not radiant at the beginning, but black.'

Such a form about me—the dark and gloomy one—my former life produced.

But nevertheless, having been that, I am now this.

For the likeness of darkness was transformed into the form of beauty.

'And you therefore also, O daughters of Jerusalem, look up toward your mother Jerusalem.'

Even if you were tents of Kedar—through the ruler of the authority of darkness dwelling within you (for the word 'Kedar' is interpreted as 'darkening')—you shall become curtains of Solomon; that is, you shall be a temple of the King, when King Solomon has taken up His dwelling within you.

And Solomon is the peaceable one, he who is named after peace.

For by 'curtains of Solomon' she named, by way of a part, the whole royal tabernacle.

It seems to me that the great Paul dwelt more closely upon these very thoughts in his Epistle to the Romans, in those passages where he commends God's love toward us: that, while we were sinners and black, He made us light-like and lovely through the shining forth of His grace.

For just as in the night all things are darkened together with the prevailing gloom, even though by nature they happen to be bright, but when light takes hold, the likeness to darkness no longer remains for those who were darkened in the gloom—so, when the soul has been transferred from error to truth, the dark form of its life is likewise changed together into radiant grace.

He made their gloomy form bright, having washed it away with water.

'Was a man born in her?' For there also the aliens become fellow-citizens of the city, and the Babylonians become Jerusalemites, and the harlot a virgin, and the Ethiopians radiant, and Tyre the city above.

So also here the bride rouses to eagerness the daughters of Jerusalem, commending the goodness of the Bridegroom: that even if He should take some black soul, by fellowship with Himself He makes it beautiful; and if any be a tent of Kedar, it becomes a dwelling-place of the light of the true Solomon—that is, of the peaceable King—when He has taken up His abode within her.

For this reason she says, 'I am black and beautiful, O daughters of Jerusalem,' so that you also, looking to me, may become curtains of Solomon, even if you were tents of Kedar.

Then she adds to what has been said the words that follow, by which she necessarily secures the understanding of her disciples against ascribing the cause of the dark form to the Creator, but rather that each one's own free choice lays down the beginnings of such a form.

'For do not look upon me,' she says, 'because I am blackened.'

'I did not become such at the first.'

For it was not likely that one fashioned by the luminous hands of God should be tinged all over with some dark and black form.

'I was not, then, such,' she says, 'but I have become so.'

For I am not blackened by nature, but this shame came upon me as something imported from without, the sun having changed my form from bright to black.

'For the sun,' she says, 'has looked askance upon me.'

What, then, is it that we learn through these words? The Lord says by way of parable to the crowds that the sower of the word does not sow only upon the good heart, but even if one be stony, or overgrown with thorns, or a wayside trodden underfoot, out of love for mankind He casts the seeds of the word upon all.

And, interpreting the peculiar properties of each in his discourse, He says this happens in the case of the stony soul: that what is sown is not rooted in depth, but at once, by a superficial sprouting, it promises the ear; yet when the sun has warmed the underlying ground too hotly, because no moisture is stored up for the roots, it is dried up.

And by 'sun,' in His interpretation, He names temptation.

Therefore we learn this doctrine from our teacher: that human nature came into being as an image of the true light, far from dark characters, gleaming with the likeness of the archetypal beauty; but temptation, casting through deceit its fiery scorching heat, seized the first sprout while it was still tender and rootless, and—before it could acquire any settled habit of the good and, through the husbandry of reasonings, give the roots room to reach into the depths—straightway, through disobedience, drying up the green and flourishing form, made it black by the burning.

But if the hostile assault of temptation is named 'sun,' let none of the hearers be astonished, being taught such a thing by the God-inspired Scripture in many places.

For in the second song of the Steps He pronounces this blessing upon him who has his help from the Lord, who made heaven and earth: that he is not scorched by the sun through the day.

And the prophet Isaiah, prophesying the establishment of the Church, sketches its polity as a kind of procession, brightening his discourse with the narrative.

For he speaks of daughters carried upon shoulders and children conveyed in litters and warding off the burning heat with sunshades.

Through these things we learn that the soul being adorned as a bride for God ought to be carried upon shoulders, not trodden underfoot by the flesh, but seated above the mass of the body.

And hearing 'litter,' we learn the grace of illumination that shines forth, through which we become children no longer planting our footstep upon the earth, but conveyed from it toward the heavenly life.

And our life becomes shady and dewy for us through the sunshades of virtue, the scorching heat being quenched.

This, then, is the sun that harms, whenever the scorching heat from it is not walled off by the cloud of the Spirit, which the Lord has spread out over such persons for a shelter to them.

For this is the sun that scorches the bright appearance of the body by the assault of temptations and blackens the form into deformity.

Then she relates from what source the changing of our fair complexion toward blackness took its beginning.

'The sons of my mother,' she says, 'fought against me; they set me as a keeper in the vineyards.'

'My own vineyard I did not keep.'

And let the hearing grant me this: not to be over-scrupulous concerning the construction of the phrasing, but to look to the connected sequence of the thought.

And if anything is not precisely joined together in the phrasing, let it be reckoned to the weakness of those who translated the Hebrew tongue into the Greek speech.

For to those who have taken pains to be instructed in the Hebrew dialect, nothing of the sort is found that would seem to be disjointed.

But the configuration of our tongue, not agreeing with the shape of the Hebrew eloquence, produces a certain confusion for those who follow the meaning of the phrasing too superficially.

Now the sense of the words set before us is this, as far as we have grasped, namely that:

Man came into being at the first in need of none of the divine good things, whose task was only to guard the good things, not to acquire them.

But the plotting of the enemies stripped him of the things he possessed, since he did not guard the good fortune given him by God according to his nature.

This, then, is the sense of the words; but the handing down of this thought through the enigmatic sayings has this manner:

'The sons of my mother,' she says, 'fought against me; they set me as a keeper in the vineyards.'

'My own vineyard I did not keep.'

In few words the discourse instructs us doctrinally in many things.

First, that very thing which the great Paul also declares: that all things are from God, and 'One God the Father, from whom are all things,' and that there is nothing among existing things which does not have its being both through Him and from Him. ('For all things,' he says, 'came into being through Him, and without Him nothing came into being.')

But since God made all things, they are very good.