Fathers

Song of Solomon 4

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Behold, you are beautiful, my love. Behold, you are beautiful. Your eyes are like doves behind your veil. Your hair is as a flock of goats, that descend from Mount Gilead. Your teeth are like a newly shorn flock, which have come up from the washing, where every one of them has twins. None is bereaved among them. Your lips are like scarlet thread. Your mouth is lovely. Your temples are like a piece of a pomegranate behind your veil. Your neck is like David’s tower built for an armory, on which a thousand shields hang, all the shields of the mighty men. Your two breasts are like two fawns that are twins of a roe, which feed among the lilies. Until the day is cool, and the shadows flee away, I will go to the mountain of myrrh, to the hill of frankincense. You are all beautiful, my love. There is no spot in you. Come with me from Lebanon, my bride, with me from Lebanon. Look from the top of Amana, from the top of Senir and Hermon, from the lions’ dens, from the mountains of the leopards. You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride. You have ravished my heart with one of your eyes, with one chain of your neck. How beautiful is your love, my sister, my bride! How much better is your love than wine, the fragrance of your perfumes than all kinds of spices! Your lips, my bride, drip like the honeycomb. Honey and milk are under your tongue. The smell of your garments is like the smell of Lebanon. My sister, my bride, is a locked up garden; a locked up spring, a sealed fountain. Your shoots are an orchard of pomegranates, with precious fruits, henna with spikenard plants, spikenard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with every kind of incense tree; myrrh and aloes, with all the best spices, a fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, flowing streams from Lebanon. Awake, north wind, and come, you south! Blow on my garden, that its spices may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and taste his precious fruits.

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What the Fathers say

Song of Solomon 4:9

Western Saints

Jerome

Flee, he says, from the lions' dens, flee from the pride of devils, that when you have been consecrated to me, I may be able to say unto you, "You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride, you have ravished my heart with one of your eyes, with one chain of your neck." What he says is something like this—I do not reject marriage: you have a second eye, the left, which I have given to you on account of the weakness of those who cannot see the right. …

Against Jovinianus 1.30 ↗

Bede

In one of your eyes, etc. We have already said that in the eyes of the Church, either her spiritual senses or those who are able to see and demonstrate her spiritualities, the teachers are understood: furthermore, in the hair, the multitude of people, who, although they cannot reach the height of that discourse in which the Lord says: If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come, follow me (Matthew 19), nonetheless they tend towards heavenly things by the way …

Commentary on the Song of Songs ↗

Bonaventure

It is not the intellect that can go in there, but the heart. Hence again in the Canticle: "You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride; you have ravished my heart with one glance of your eyes"—for the heart reaches down into the depths of Christ—"with one hair of thy neck"—for the hair refers to the height of mental thoughts. And he affirms that this ascent comes about through the power and the strongest motion of the Holy Spirit.

Collations on the Hexaemeron, Collation 2 ↗