Cornelius a Lapide

The Voice of the Bridegroom and His Companions.

Verse 7. If you do not know yourself, O most beautiful among women, go forth, and go your way after the footsteps (in Hebrew, after the heels) of your flocks, and feed your kids beside the shepherds' tents.

Vatablus and other Hebraists hold that the word te ["thee"] — when it stands in the accusative, as in "si ignoras te" — is redundant by Hebrew pleonasm, and is put only for the sake of elegance. Hence they themselves render it from the Hebrew as "si ignoras tibi" [if you do not know for yourself], that is, "si ignoras" [if you do not know], just as presently in the Hebrew it says צְאִי לָךְ tsei lach, that is, "egredere tibi" [go forth for yourself], that is, "egredere" [go forth], and often elsewhere. Thus te or tibi is often redundant among the Latins, as in "tu te hoc fecisti" [you did this yourself], "vade tibi" [go your way], "vive tibi" [live for yourself], "ecce tibi" [behold], that is, ecce [behold]. Thus the sense will be, as if to say: If you do not know, O bride, where I, your bridegroom, lie down at midday, go and follow the footsteps of the flocks and the shepherds: for among them you will find me as it were the shepherd and prince of shepherds. Hence the sense is very easy and plain, and it unravels a sentence otherwise obscure, and renders it clear. So hold Titelmannus, Hortolanus, Sanchez, Soto Major, and others skilled in Hebrew.

But the Greek and Latin Fathers press and weigh the word te, just as the Septuagint too, rendering σεαυτήν, that is, "teipsam" [thyself]. Thus the sense can be, first, as if to say: If you do not know yourself, that is, your beauty, and the beautiful tabernacle in which I feed and lie down at midday — because your tabernacle is likewise mine, just as your beauty is likewise mine: for where the bride is, there too is the bridegroom; where the Church is, there too is Christ. Wherefore if you do not know this very thing, go forth and go after the footsteps of your flocks and your faithful: for your flocks are mine also; and where my flocks are, there I too am their faithful and inseparable shepherd. "And feed your kids beside the shepherds' tents," namely the tents of the apostles and the doctors: for I have set those men over you as overseers, and appointed them teachers, and I dwell and abide in the midst of them, just as, while I lived, I was found by my parents in the midst of them in the temple, Luke ii, 46, according to that: "Behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world," Matt. xxviii, 20. Wherefore through these shepherds I will feed you with true doctrine, and in every heat of the sun, that is, of persecution, I will console and protect you: if you follow this, you will not begin to wander, nor fall among my rivals, that is, the emulators and rival heretics, and the teachers of other errors. So hold St. Athanasius in the Synopsis, and Justus of Urgel, who rightly note that the cause of the bride's ignorance — namely, why she does not know where the bridegroom lies down at midday — is that she does not know herself and her own beauty; wherefore let her look within herself, and in it she will find the bridegroom.

Second, Gregory of Nyssa judges these words to be not the bridegroom's, but the young maidens' to the bride, who is seeking him, discolored by the heat of the sun, as if to say: Granted that you appear discolored to yourself, in truth nevertheless you are beautiful by excellence, that is, you are the most beautiful of women; but if because of persecutions and hardships you do not know this, go after your flocks and your shepherds — from them you will hear yourself praised, and your beauty proclaimed with full mouths. But this sense seems irrelevant; for it does not answer the question of the bride who is asking, not whether she herself is beautiful, but where the bridegroom feeds and lies down at midday.

Third, Titelmannus and others judge these words to be said by irony: for the bride had pricked the bridegroom with the goad of jealousy, saying, "Lest I begin to wander"; wherefore the bridegroom turns this goad back upon her in jest, as if some lover, wishing to persuade his bride that nowhere else could she be treated so comfortably and honorably as with himself, should address her thus: If you do not know yourself, O my bride! if your condition, in which you live with me, is not yet sufficiently known to you; go forth, and go after other lovers, and there devote yourself to satisfying your pleasures and desires, that you may see, and by experience itself at last learn, how unlike your condition is to that of those who cling to other lovers. To this join Cassiodorus and Bede, who expound it by way of a threat, as if to say: If you do not know, O bride, that you have been made beautiful through baptism, and will become more beautiful through the endurance of the tribulations which I have therefore decreed to send upon you, go forth from my fellowship, and imitate the deeds of those who wander. And St. Gregory here: "Whoever," he says, "does not know that he is set in this place to conquer temptations through endurance, withdraws from familiarity with Christ, because, being placed in the battle, he refuses to fight with his Lord."

Fourth, and most genuinely, these words seem to be not the bridegroom's alone, but also his companions': whence presently the companions there say, "We will make thee golden chains," in the plural, not "I will make" in the singular, as Justus, Rupert, Anselm, and St. Bernard note in the same place. The bridegroom therefore answers the bride not by himself, but through his companions: "If you do not know yourself," that is, your ways, your steps, by which you tend toward me, as if to say: If you do not know the road and the way which you ought to keep, so as to arrive at the place where I feed and lie down at midday. "Go after the footsteps of your flocks"; the Hebrew is, "be to you in the heels of the sheep"; the Septuagint, "go forth thou in the footsteps of the flocks" (for the word "your" is not in the Hebrew, nor in the Greek); Symmachus, "having gone forth thou goest according to the footsteps of the flocks," that is, follow the faith, life, and manners of the ancient faithful who pleased God, namely the patriarchs and prophets. For these are yours, that is, they belong not so much to the old law as to the new, and to the Church of Christ, as St. Augustine bears witness. "Feed your kids beside the shepherds' tents," that is, your weak faithful and sinners, who stink like he-goats and kids on account of putrid concupiscence — feed them beside the shepherds' tents, that is, beside the churches of the apostles, and of those who succeeded the apostles: for by these they will be strengthened in faith and virtue, and healed of their concupiscences; wherefore there they will find the bridegroom of their soul, Christ, at midday, that is, reclining in the brightness of doctrine and the fervor of charity, and feeding his faithful through the apostles and apostolic men. He alludes, grammatically, to the kids, which by natural instinct recognize their mothers, and, recognizing them by scent, at once flee to them. For here the bride is imagined to feed and suckle the small and weak kids beside the shepherds' tents, who feed the he-goats and the grown she-goats; wherefore, from the kids, which recognize by scent and fly to the nearby she-goats as though to their own mothers, the shepherdess bride recognizes where the shepherd bridegroom of the sheep and she-goats is.

To this joins the Chaldean, who, applying these things according to the custom of the Jews, renders thus: "The Holy and Blessed One said to Moses the prophet: Thou dost ask that their exile be blotted out — the Synagogue, which is likened to a most beautiful girl, and which my soul loves — let her walk in the ways of the just, and let her order her prayer in the mouth of her leaders, and let her lead forth her generations, and teach her sons, who are likened to the kids of the she-goats, that they may walk into the house of the assembly and into the house of doctrine: and on account of that merit they will be sustained in captivity, until I send them the king Messiah, who will lead them into rest at their tabernacle, which is the house of the Sanctuary, which David and Solomon, shepherds of Israel, will build for him."

Less fittingly, some here take the shepherds to be not true, but false ones, as if to say: Follow the footsteps of the flock, that is, the faith and manners of the ancient just; thus it will come about that you may also, with impunity, lead your kids, that is, your imperfect faithful, around the tents of the shepherds — those faithless companions, I say, whom you used to fear; and therefore I have decreed to make you like my cavalry, in the strength and power which I showed in the chariots of Pharaoh, namely in overthrowing and sinking them in the Red Sea.

Finally the bridegroom consoles and encourages the bride, addressing her, "O most beautiful of women," as if to say: You appear to yourself, O bride, discolored and darkened by the sun of persecutions, but know that by the gift and grace of God you are the most beautiful of women. This he explains and confirms, when he adds: "Thy cheeks are beautiful as the turtledove's, thy neck as chains of jewels," etc.

Tropologically, first, "if you do not know yourself, go forth," etc., as if to say: The knowledge of oneself is the way to the knowledge of God, just as ignorance of self is ignorance of God: for one who knows his own weakness is compelled to acknowledge the grace and omnipotence of God, and to invoke it as a suppliant. Whence Agapetus the Deacon, in his Admonition to the Emperor Justinian: "He who knows himself," he says, "will know God. Knowing God, he will be made like God. He will be made like God who will be worthy of God, who admits nothing unworthy of God, but thinks the things that are God's; and what he thinks, he speaks, and what he speaks, he does." See St. Bernard, Book II, On Consideration, to Eugenius, chap. iii, and St. Ambrose, Sermon 2 on Psalm cxviii, and Origen here, Homily 2 of the four. Whence St. Jerome, Epistle 23 to Eustochium: "Though you may be beautiful," he says, "and though your beauty be loved by me, your bridegroom, above all women, unless you know yourself, and keep your heart with all watchfulness, unless you flee the eyes of young men, you will go forth from my bridal chamber, and will feed the kids, which are to stand on the left." And St. Augustine, Sermon 50 On the Words of the Lord according to John: "Unless," he says, "you know yourself, that you are one, that you are throughout all nations, that you are chaste, that you ought not to be corrupted by the perverse converse of evil companions; unless you know yourself, that he has rightly betrothed to me a chaste virgin to present to Christ, and rightly to me

The sense, then, is, as Hortolanus says: If ever, O Church, my most beautiful bride, you shall be perplexed amid the greatest persecutions and the difficulties of all things, and shall be at a loss for counsel, observe the faith of your forebears, and their unbroken spirit in enduring evils, and the footprints which they left imprinted, as it were with their own feet, upon the difficult ways they entered, their heroic deeds, examples of rare fortitude and constancy for you and your flock to imitate. Enter you too upon those same feet, tread the same footsteps, and hold, you and your flock, that same straight and perpetual way: it will, beyond doubt, lead you to the folds of me, the Prince of shepherds, and of the other renowned shepherds, fixed in the green, well-watered, and shaded places of Israelite minds. There you will meet no pseudo-Christ, no false prophet, to corrupt or entice you when deceived; but me myself, who am to keep you forever incorrupt and undefiled, the true Christ and your lawful bridegroom, and mine — faithful shepherds who feed my flock according to the judgment of my mind, with sound doctrine and knowledge. There I command that you feed your kids — your sons, I say, newly born to you, and even the grown ones, but still neophytes in manners and judgment, wanton, itching in their ears, desirous of novelties, and lovers of pleasures (whose poison they smell of) more than lovers of me. There, keep your kids safe from the discomforts of the midday sun, by preaching the word in season and out of season, entreating, rebuking, with all patience and doctrine.

...yourself, lest, by evil conversations, just as the serpent seduced Eve by cunning, so too your senses be corrupted away from my chastity: unless, then, you know yourself to be such, go forth. You, go forth — for to others I am going to say: Enter into the joy of your Lord. To you I will not say: Enter, but: Go forth, that you may be among those who went out from us — go forth, you: but unless you know yourself, then go forth; but if you know yourself, enter: but if you do not know yourself, go forth in the footsteps of the flocks, and feed your kids in the tents of the shepherds. Go forth in the footsteps, not of the flock, but of the flocks, and feed, not like Peter, my sheep, but your kids in the tents, not of the Shepherd, but of shepherds — not of unity, but of dissension."

Second, that man may come to God, the bridegroom of the soul, it is necessary that he go forth from his own inordinate affections and loves, and as it were from himself, namely that he put off the old man; for thus he will put on the new man, that is, Christ. Whence St. Ambrose, in On the Soul and Isaac, chap. iv, teaches that the soul reconciles to itself the presence of God through self-knowledge and mortification: "Know yourself, then," he says, "and the beauty of your nature, and go forth as though freed from the bonds of your feet, and with bare foot exposed, so that you may not feel the carnal coverings, so that bodily bonds may not entangle the footstep of your mind, so that your foot may appear beautiful, etc. This, then, is what he says: Go forth in the heels of the flocks, and feed your kids in the tents of the shepherds; because by "flocks" we understand the kingdom, in that it belongs to power to preside over flocks; but each one presides over himself by a certain royal power, if he restrains the excesses of the body in himself, and reduces his own flesh to servitude: therefore it is said, Luke xvii, 21: The kingdom of God is within you. Whence he beautifully says to the soul: Go forth, that is, go forth from servitude, go forth from the empire and dominion of the flesh; and go forth not in the flesh, but in the spirit, go forth to the rule of power; and therefore he added: Feed your kids, that is, govern the things that are on your left. For if they are not governed, they easily slip. Restrain the petulance and wantonness of your body; tame its light impulses: feed them not in bodily tents, but in the tents of the shepherds who know how to rule the flock. For the tents of Israel are lovely, like groves overshadowing a river." This is what God commanded Abraham, when he called him to himself, saying: "Go forth from your land, and from your kindred, and from your father's house," etc., Gen. chap. xii, 1. Hence John the Carmelite explains it thus: Go forth, that is, cut yourself in two, and divide yourself down the middle, so that you separate the mind from the appetite, and constitute, as it were, two camps: in the one camp you will number the appetite that feels, and its unbridled movements; from this camp you will separate the mind and the will, and you will count them as the other camp, in which you place yourself, and, war having been declared, you will avoid the conversations and dealings of the first camp. Thus you will seize the way and enjoy the light. "Go after the footsteps of your flocks," that is, after handing over the flocks, not so that you may be dragged by the unbridled movements of appetite, but so that as it were

with a whip inflicted you may drive yourself, and compel yourself to go rightly where the mind calls — "Feed your kids beside the shepherds' tents," that is, when you have tamed the rebellious senses, exulting in the manner of kids while young blood still boils, and made them obedient to your word, do not allow them to give themselves over to idleness, nor abandon them so soon, as if they were unable, or unaccustomed, to rebel: indeed, if you permit them to act with impunity, they will break the covenant, and rush upon you with one united effort. Preside over them, therefore, and strike them sharply, and at the same time feed them beside the huts or folds of the shepherds, who are men most skilled in divine things, the successors and heirs of the apostles, who hold out to the flock entrusted to them the most wholesome herbs of spiritual doctrines to be gathered: whose teachings, if you drink in with your whole heart, you will most swiftly hasten, under their guidance, to their midday.

Third, the soul, that it may find God, ought to follow the footsteps of the flock, that is, of the saints, who followed the law of God, and fed upon his teachings in sacred Scripture as upon pasture. Let it likewise restrain its kids, that is, the wanton and unbridled movements of concupiscence, by the discipline of the shepherds.

Symbolically, St. Bernard: The flocks of God, he says, are the creatures, from whose footsteps, that is, from the consideration of them, we trace out and arrive at their Creator, as St. Thomas teaches, Part I, Question v, art. 6, and Question xlvii, art. 7. See St. Basil, Homily 11 on the Hexaemeron, St. Augustine, Confessions, Book x, chap. vi, St. Gregory, Morals, Book xii, chap. viii. Thus St. Anthony, through these footsteps, recognized the resting-place of the bridegroom, that is, the throne and glory of God, as Nicephorus relates, Book xi, chap. xlii. Whence this was St. Anthony's axiom, indeed his definition of the world: "What is the world? It is a book of divinity. For the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament announces the works of his hands," Ps. xviii, 1.

Further, Gregory of Nyssa reads: "If you do not know yourself, O beautiful one among women, go forth from the footsteps of the flocks, and feed your kids in (or, as other manuscripts have it, near) the tents of the shepherds": and they explain it thus: "The soul, which from black has been made beautiful, if it is a care to you that the grace and beauty of your form endure for a long time, do not wander after the footsteps of those who have gone before; follow reason, not the common custom of men that is devoid of reason: do not look to the footprints of cattle, which by their heels signify those who are fixed to earthly life, etc. For it is not evident whether that path which appears, which you follow, is the path of the kids, because those who have worn away their life by their own footsteps are not seen by you. After you have passed through life, and have been shut up in the stable of death, it is to be feared lest you be enrolled among the flock of kids, who are to be placed on the left, whom, not knowing, and clinging to their footsteps, you have followed." And Origen, who expounds it thus, as if to say: "If you do not know yourself, that you are the bride of a king, and made beautiful by me, this will be to you for a punishment, that you will become last in the footsteps of the shepherds; and that, not among the sheep and the just, but among the kids and sinners.

Finally, Rupert adapts these words to the Blessed Virgin, who was the most beautiful of all, not only of women, but of all creatures, in whose womb, as in a temple, indeed as in heaven, Christ lay, as though Christ were saying to her: Since you do not fail to know yourself, that you are the Mother of God, and blessed among women, you likewise know where I lie, namely in your faith and humility. For you said: "Because he has regarded the humility of his handmaid." Therefore from faith and humility — indeed, faith and humility are your whole beauty — and this is the place of my rest; the place in which your beloved delights, feeding and lying down, at midday, that is, in this time of full grace, when the figure, now past, the reality has shone forth; the shadow driven away, the sun of truth rises."