Library › St Ephrem the Syrian › Hymns on Faith

Hymns on Faith

St Ephrem the Syrian, tr. Morris, 1847; selections

21. Rhythm the Twenty-first

Do Thou, Lord, play on my harp with all Thy edifying strains: Sing we to the perfect¹ with words that are healthful and with pure words to the nuns, and with simple ones sing we to the simple! Come and hearken to Zacharias that answered Gabriel again! O aged man, search and look where-² unto thy speech is gone! Thus is every one stopped and put to silence that dares to dispute with the Truth. For if Gabriel, though a servant, dealt so severely, because his word was not believed with a Levite, how much more severely will the Son of the Just One deal with those who believe not, that He is, as He said, the Son!

O Zacharias, barren so as to be past cure, in that thy tongue doubted how thou couldest have a son, while there was there that which might reprove thee! Appeal to the rod³ that budded, in the Ark. If then a mortal being⁴ so grudged his fellow servant, that he threw upon him the bit of silence, because he doubted concerning John, as for the mouth that disparageth the Only-begotten, for it is the bit of Sennacherib⁵ fitted⁶.

Let Abraham’s single-heartedness be a mirror to shew thee that prying is an evil blemish unto faith. When he believed, he was also justified, and when he was prying⁷, his seed was subjected to bondage. For as a partridge⁸ which calleth unto the young that are not her own, or a bird whose voice deceiveth him to whom she singeth, so let not the voices of them who confess the Son, but own not His Generation⁹ lead thee astray. There is a fowl that changeth the sounds of its own voice; there is a bird that alters his voice¹⁰, and ensnareth his companion; there is a deceiver¹¹ that alters his words with his hearers, because of advantage to himself.

Deal not then, thou harp, deceitfully with thy hearers; do not respect persons of men in thy song¹²: whether in secret or openly, let thy voice set forth the savour of thy Truth. Moses also, with the mystic trumpets made the camp move,¹³ two trumpets only made proclamations; lo! the type is accomplished, since in the Churches two Testaments sound forth their proclamations. And David too, his harp also sang in three manners. With loud strings he sung to Thy Godhead, with tenor¹⁴ strings to Thy Humanity, with low¹⁵ ones he sang again of Thy Death¹⁶¹⁷. And let Thy Church also be a harp to Thy praise! Appease, Lord, the strifes wherewith its strings are untuned, that upon this harp we may sing of peace, truth, and concord¹⁸!

Notes

p. 152, n. b.
Luke 1, 19. 20.
Numb. 17, 8.
Cyril. Alex. Thes. p. 204, d. “If an Angel be a thing immortal, owing to the will and grace of Him that made him so ordering his estate; still, since he hath a beginning of being, it is also possible for him to have an end. However, what things soever accrue unto any nature, are indeed in relation to their possessors valid, though not in relation to God; as fire is caustic, but not to God, so also an angel is immortal, but not to God; for He only is in His own right immortal, having by nature, not, as things made, by grace, His certainty thereof.” Did. de Trin. p. 373. “Souls and angels are immortal in the imperishableness and incorruptibility of their substance; and mortal, seeing they be sometimes corrupted in their mind;” (speaking of 1 Tim. vi. 17. a passage often quoted in speaking of the immortality of Angels. See on Ambr. de Fid. iii. §. 19. Pet. de Ang. 1. c. 5.) For as St. Greg. Nys. notices, “Creatures grow in such way, that every thing which they acquire becomes the beginning of an advance to what is greater; ...but if they fall off from the partaking of what is good, then they may, owing to the mutability of their nature, also partake in a worse estate, which is nothing else than a death which hath a kind of analogy to the death of the body.” ii. p. 640,1. St. G. is also explaining 1 Tim. vi. 16. and shewing how the word ‘only’ does not exclude the Son, but does exclude the Angels. Probably St. E. meant to glance at the Eunomians by the word rendered ‘a mortal being.’
Is. 37, 29.
Two passages may be given from St. E. here as expanding the idea in the text. On 2 Kings xix. p. 558. d. he says, “The epistles of the king of Assyria, in which he mocketh the power of the Most High, and urgeth his people to come out into a strange land, are a type of the writings of the wicked, who assail the faith of such as fear God, and try to get them by persuasion or fear to leave the Church of Christ, and turn aside to the synagogues of Satan.” p. 558, d. On Is. xxxvii. 29. p. 81, he writes thus: “He is overcome in the members wherewith he blasphemed. For he blasphemed with his lips, and was violent against Jerusalem and her God.”
It is remarkable that St. E. upon Gen. xv. p. 62, e. argues against the notion which he here seems to adopt, as follows: Whereby shall I know, &c. “There are some that say that it was on account of his doubting about this that it was said to him, ‘Know assuredly that thy seed shall be a sojourner in a land that is not theirs.’ But let such an one as saith so know, that at that very time he believed in the seed that was as the sand; if he believed in that which was great, (read [Syriac] as in the Latin,) that from one man and one barren woman who was old his seed should be as numerous as the sand, then would he be doubting about a small piece of ground, who about that great matter doubted not. ...If then he had spoken in the way the accusation assumes, God would not have received his sacrifice or have ratified his covenant with him in that same day, nor have promised upon the same day that ten peoples should be subjected to his seed, &c....How then come men to say of a man who in that same day was [counted] worthy of the greatest rewards for his faith, that his seed was punished for his want of faith in that same day?” This, which accords with the opinion of the Jews, who urged this to shew that Abraham had sinned (see R. Mart. P. Fid. fol. 474.) and is here rejected by St. E., was probably a current opinion, and so urged, in the text, as an argumentum ad hominem; or, as Scripture avails itself of the current views of natural history for illustration.
Of the partridge he says, on Jerem. xvii. p. 230. d. “The partridge craftily stealeth the eggs from the nests of other partridges, and sitteth over them, and warmeth them, and hatcheth from them little partridges; and when they are grown, and have put out their wings to fly, and hear the voices of their own mothers, they go after them, and leave the partridge, that bewails itself and calleth craftily after them.” Compare note b. See Bochart Hieroz. part iv. lib. i. c. 12. who quotes other instances of the use of this fabulous account. St. Aust. c. Faust. xiii. 12, 16. also compares heretics to the partridge, as do some whom Bochart quotes.
See R. xxxix. §. 2.
R. xxxi. §. 3.
p. 104.
S. do not sing faces faces to men
Numb. 10, 2.
middle
weak
This division corresponds, if not in terms at least in meaning, to one often insisted upon afterwards against the Nestorians by St. Cyril, from whom Petavius draws his first rule to be observed in speaking of the communication of the attributes of the two Natures in Christ. “Some expressions of Scripture belong to the Divine Nature only, as ‘I am in the Father, and the Father in Me,’ &c. Others belong to the Human throughout, as ‘Now ye seek to kill Me, a Man Who hath told you the truth,’ &c. (which corresponds to the last in St. E.) Others are intermediate and belong to both Natures, as ‘Jesus Christ the Same to-day, yesterday, and for ever,’ &c.” Pet. de Inc. iv. 16. §. 1.
pp. 49, 127.
pp. 105, 177, n. a.