Commentary on the Song of Songs 0.74–0.86

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.