The Song of Songs
The Song of Songs
The spiritual read this book and increase in the love of God. But the carnal need, in reading it, a guide lest they misunderstand it and depart from its lofty meaning to worldly meanings…
We contemplated in the previous issue the Virgin’s saying in the Song, “My beloved is white and ruddy, distinguished among ten thousand.” And we continue our contemplations on her saying, “His appearance is like Lebanon, choice as the cedars” (Song 5:15).
His appearance is like Lebanon:
Lebanon is a beautiful land, like a paradise in the Middle East. Its green highlands with lofty trees, fragrant flowers, poetic dwellings— all this gives it splendor, joy, and beauty. And when the Lord Christ is likened to Lebanon, the book speaks of His surpassing beauty and how He is “fairer than the sons of men.”
Here the Church sees that God is not a burden upon her, nor are His commandments tiring, but rather she sees religion as beauty: His appearance is like Lebanon.
The existentialists see that the existence of God abolishes their existence, so they desire to be rid of Him. They say, “If only He did not exist, so that we might exist.”
But as for us, it is quite the opposite. We see in God our joy and our gladness. His name is sweet in our mouths, and His image is beautiful to our eyes: “His appearance is like Lebanon.” We rejoice in the Lord at all times. And He Himself says to us, “I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you” (John 16:22).
He who lives with the Lord ought to live in continual joy. He does not anger himself if he is to live with the Lord. Nor does he struggle against himself and resist it in order to walk in the way of the Lord.
For anger is evidence that the soul has not yet loved the Lord. But he who loves God loves His ways and sings, saying: “His appearance is like Lebanon.”
Choice as the cedars:
The cedars of Lebanon— tall, lofty, firmly established, strong in their wood, in their purity and hardness. The wood of the cedar which Solomon used in building the Temple (1 Kings 5:6–8) (1 Kings 6:10). There are people whose hearts are like castor plants, easily shaken and bent.
But the true believer is a steadfast person, whom winds do not shake and storms do not break. He is “choice as the cedars.”
The Lord Christ was strong, and He loves that His children be like Him. He loves that the believer in Him be choice as the cedars: like a steed in Pharaoh’s chariots, like a mighty man around Solomon’s throne, like an army with banners.
There are those who misunderstand meekness and think it a form of weakness, forgetting all these verses and their meanings.
Christ was strong. Would that you take His strength as a subject for your contemplations in the Holy Bible. Once it happened that someone poor in understanding compared the meekness of the Lord Christ with the strength of John the Baptist and thought that the Baptist’s personality was stronger… God forbid that this be so. For Christ was very strong. He was able to stand against His corrupt and evil generation, against the scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees and priests and elders of the people, and to expose the hypocrisy and corruption of all these.
John the Baptist was like a fire that consumes thorns and straw in its path and burns them. But the Lord Christ was like calm, clear, gentle water that can split rocks, carve its course through mountains, and sweep away before it everything that stands in its way.
He was strong in His calmness, in His beauty, and in His severity, like the cedar. He was tall and lofty before all. They resisted Him but could not prevail against Him. His calmness was stronger than their violence, and His meekness more powerful than their revolts and conspiracies.
When He stood before Pilate, Pilate feared Him, despite His silence and calmness, and desired to release Him. When they came to arrest Him with soldiers and swords and clubs and torches, He stood firm before them, like the cedar. And He said to them, “Whom are you seeking?” They answered, “Jesus of Nazareth.” He said to them calmly, “I am He.” And they fell back from His majesty onto their faces. He was choice as the cedars.
There are people who think they can shake others by violence. But the Lord Christ shook violence with His gentleness, with His calmness, with His meekness, with His kindness.
He is the stone which the builders rejected, and yet it became the chief cornerstone.
Whoever falls on this stone will be broken; but on whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder (Matthew 21:44).
With sobriety, strength, and loftiness, like the cedar, He said to Pilate the governor who was judging Him, “You have no authority over Me,” and He also said, “I have a soul… I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again” (John 10:18).
And when Caiaphas the high priest asked Him, “I put You under oath by the living God: tell us if You are the Christ,” He answered with the same sobriety and loftiness, like the cedar, “From now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Matthew 26:64). Then the high priest tore his clothes.
This is the strong Christ, who in the midst of the clamor of His arrest, and in the zeal of Peter who drew his sword and struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his ear, we see Him in sublime sobriety and wondrous calmness, stretching out His hand, restoring the servant’s ear to its place, and saying to Peter, “Put your sword into its sheath.” Truly He is choice as the cedars.
An article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III – Al-Keraza Magazine – Fifth Year – Issue Six – 9 November 1974.
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