Gregory of Nyssa, Homily 13 on the Song of Songs: Song 5:8–12

Gregory of Nyssa, Homily 13 on the Song of Songs: Song 5:8–12

Source: Norris, Richard a Jr. 2013. Gregory of Nyssa: Homilies on the Song of Songs, p. 391-399. Society of Biblical Literature.

Written c. 394 CE.

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He who on the one hand laid down the mysteries of the law through Moses, who on the other hand did himself fulfill the entire law and the prophets (as he says in the Gospel: “I did not come to destroy the law but to fulfill it” [Matt 5:17]), who by removing wrath abolished murder (cf. Matt 5:21–26), who by destroying lust removed the stain of adultery with it (cf. Matt 5:27–32)—this one, I say, also cast out the curse attached to false swearing by his prohibition of the oath and bound the sickle4 up in idleness, for it is not possible for an oath to be violated when there is no oath. Hence he says, | “You have heard that it was said to the folk of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ But I say to you, ‘Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply “yes” or “no”; anything more than this comes from evil’ ” (cf. Matt 5:33–37).

But the soul that the Song of Songs attests as perfect, the soul that removed the curtain of her heart by putting off her old garment and threw off the veil from before her face—by which we understand every hesitant and timorous thought—so as to gaze purely and without uncertainty toward the truth, this soul does not adjure the daughters of Jerusalem by the divine throne, which the Gospel text calls “heaven,” nor by God’s kingdom, whose name is “Jerusalem,” nor yet by the worshipful | head whose hairs are incapable of being either white or black.5 No, she transfers the oath to the field and administers her oath to the young women by the powers that are in it. She says: I have adjured you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the powers and virtues of the field.

Now she who is everywhere attested as beautiful and cleansed of every blemish does not utter anything of the “more”6 that is the devil’s portion. Rather does she speak from God, from whom there comes whatever is good and beautiful, and nothing more, as Micah says.7 This is plain enough to anyone who has, from the Lord’s testimony, learned of the excellences that belong to the Bride.

Is it indeed so? Has she put away all the forbidden kinds of oath, and made the young women swear neither by the royal city nor by the throne of the great King (for we learn how true it is that we must not presume upon God in swearing from the very fact that we are not suffered to name either the throne or the city in an oath), and has she ref rained in addition from naming the treasured head, which she describes in the next bit of her discourse as being golden, whose hair is neither white nor black (for how could gold be darkened or be changed to the color of white?)? Yes indeed! For the | oath she proposes to the virgins is such as does not contradict the law of the Gospel and at the same time becomes a reason to praise those who have sworn it, even as the prophet says: “Everyone who swears by it shall be praised” (Ps 62:12). Consequently, the sense of the [Bride’s] words does not transgress the limits of the “yes” or “no,” by which the Gospel law wants the truth to be guaranteed when it says: “Let your word be ‘yes yes’ and ‘no no.’ ”

If, then, it is forbidden in swearing to invoke the King’s throne, and the city that contains the royal dwellings is also forbidden for invocation in an oath, as likewise is the true head, and only “yes” and “no” are allowed, seeing as the truth in the “yes” is equally discerned through both,8 it should be obvious that here too the oath administered to the young women by the Bride turns on the meaning of the “yes,” and upon that the assent of our soul must be based. The text is as follows: I have adjured you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the powers and virtues of the field: If you should find my kinsman, tell him that I am wounded by love.

| In previous homilies we have already treated these matters as the sequence of ideas prompted us, but now we will summarize our findings briefly. The apostle says that an oath is something “unalterable” (Heb 6:17) that in and of itself guarantees the truth, and he lays it down that it “sets a limit to all … dispute so as to guarantee” (Heb 6:16) what is known. The Bride, therefore, administers her oath to the virgins so that what she says may be kept by them as inviolable. But since every oath, as the apostle says (Heb 6:16), is “by a greater thing” (for none would swear by something less noble than himself), we ought to inquire what “greater thing” it is that the Bride proposes to the young women in the oath. Now her words are: I have adjured you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the powers and virtues of the field.9 So, then, what is there here that is superior to us? There is no doubt that the figurative reference of “field” is the cosmos, since the Lord named and rendered the cosmos in just this fashion (cf. Matt 13:24, 38). What, then, are the many powers and virtues of the cosmos, set out in the oath, which are to be reckoned greater than we in order that the oath, sworn by greater things, may be strong enough to guarantee the truth?

| One must, therefore, for the clarification of this text, set alongside it another version10 that makes sense of the words. It runs as follows: “I have adjured you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles and the deer of the field.” By these names we are taught in what lies the “virtue” of this cosmos and in what its “power,” which are invoked by the oath to guarantee the truth.

There are two things that bring humanity into close affinity with God. One of these is the truthfulness of one’s idea of that which authentically is, so that one is not carried off by erroneous notions into heretical and Gentile opinions about the Divine; and this is in truth the “yes.” The other is pure thinking that banishes every chronic disorder of the soul; and this is consistent with the “yes.”11 The power of these two modes of possessing what is good—one of which makes us look toward what genuinely is, while the other sets to flight the passions that damage the soul—is symbolically made known to us by the mention of “gazelles” and “deer.” For of these two, the one sees with perfect clarity, while the other possesses a capacity to eat and finish off wild beasts.12

This then is the “yes” that the Bride proposes to the virgins: the necessity both of looking toward the Divine with religious affection | and of making one’s way through life in purity and in freedom from the disturbance of passion. If these be carried through, the “something ‘unalterable,’ ” the “yes,” is confirmed, for this is the oath that gives substance to the truth, such that “everyone who swears” it “by it shall be praised” (Ps 62:12), as the prophet says. For truly the person who in these two ways cultivates stability within—by the word of faith, in looking toward the truth without erring, and by manner of life, in being cleansed of any taint of wickedness—this person swears to the Lord not to climb into bed nor to give sleep to his eyes or slumber to his eyelids until he has found within himself “a place for the Lord” and become a dwelling place of the One who resides within him (cf. Ps 131:3–5). If, then, we too are children of “the Jerusalem above” (cf. Gal 4:26), let us attend to our teacher to learn how it is possible to see the one we desire. What does she say? If we bind ourselves by this oath, taken by the powers of the clear-sighted gazelles and by the virtues of the vice-destroying deer, it is possible by their means to see the pure Bridegroom, love’s archer,13 and for each person’s soul to say to him I am wounded by love.