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Hymns on Faith

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

54. Rhythm the Fifty-fourth

The King of Heaven, when His Son¹ came down to the earth, did the people who had not known Him, know from the voices of Them Both. For the Father bare witness² to the Son, and the Son called Him Father, and even in His low estate He was comprehended to be the Lord; for He was honoured by all things; for the sea was His chariot³ and the air His car. Praises be to Him that sent Thee! From those who ministered to Him learn whose Son He was; for when He was in His low estate the Angels came down and ministered to the Son of their glorious Lord⁴. And as unto handmaids, so gave He orders unto the creatures, and the world in the image of a slave was governed by His nod, after the type of His Father⁵, whose silence ordereth all things.

For since the Lord exalted the children of His house⁶, and they fools despised themselves, and fell, and wallowed [in the mire], He came down and drew them up out of that same wallowing. Error erred because it saw our blots⁷ upon His garments: knowledge alone knew that He came to the mire that He might bring to the Washing. From His taking up of this burden it was comprehended that He was the King’s Son, and as a good Heir, He diligently kept His Father’s House. He saw His servant that was laid; He⁸ raised him up in healthiness. He saw His handmaid that was laid; He rebuked her fever. He saw that bread was⁹ lacking, and He satisfied them of His household, and they¹⁰ praised Him that sent Him. Who would not love Him that loved them of His household, that was blended and mingled¹¹ with His handmaid and servant? They invited Him and He despised it not, He went to the feast and made it glad with His Majesty. He also threw in His marriage-gift, the¹² wine in the flagons, since He carried with Him the treasures of His Kingdom.

Who would not be afraid and purify his body¹³? Since¹⁴ when He went into His Father’s House, that great Temple,¹⁵ with a cord He chastised them, who were without hope as having made light of His Temple. To Jerusalem He gave¹⁶ a writing of divorcement. He also took the vineyard from those husbandmen. Who would not fear, and who would¹⁷ not love Him who praised His merchants, that doubled the talents they had received, and tormented that wicked and¹⁸ harmful servant who had ruined them of His household and undone his fellow-servants, and rebuked the apostate spirit, who when overcome howled out by the mouth of his devils¹⁹, ‘What have we to do with Thee, Jesus?’²⁰

For it is written that the good Master repented and was weary²¹, and clothed Him with our feebleness, and us also He clothed again with the Names of His Majesty. The foolish saw what was ours and thought that to be His which was from us: and they were rebuked, yet they felt not that, at that rate, we should think also what was His to be ours. For when the hearers of Him who is True surrounded Him²² in love, they passed not judgment on His words. The sectarians deceitfully laid wait for His words: for their²³ detestable strife was as it were the adversary of that Righteousness, which laboured by fiction to overbear the right.

The Lord had spoken: plain men were cheered, sullen men were confused, and the simple heard and relied; the crafty heard and questioned, [saying,] ‘How can this Man²⁴ give us His Body²⁵?’ Their questioning kept them deprived of the Medicine of Life: let not our questionings deprive us also of reliance [on Him]. The words of God ought not to be assayed in our furnace. For look at the disciples, and again look at the unbelievers, how confiding the chaste are, and how questioning the furious! They thought that the Son Himself, who could never at any time have His measure comprehended, was not yet fifty years old.²⁶ Wherefore we will briefly say, that all scrutinizing belongs to the left hand²⁷. For even the thief that was crucified on the left hand himself scrutinized, that we might learn by his questionings the audacity of the investigators. O thou hopeless one, that when even pierced and crucified²⁸ scrutinized His Lord! Who again would not be astonished at that thief on the right hand, who, though he hung, saw and believed that He was the Son of God, and quickened us who have believed that He ascended unto glory and sat down at the Right Hand? Him did the Crucified persuade; but as for us, not even the Cherubim²⁹ that carried Him, persuade us.

Notes

p. 71, n. y. R. lviii. §. 4.
R. xlvi. §. 2.
Mat. 8, 27; 14, 25. p. 285, a. Acts 1, 9.
p. 24. p. 45.
R. vi. §. 5. p. 286, n. c.
R. xlvi. §. 4.
S. [Syriac] p. 104, n. g. p. 283, n. c.
Mat. 8, 8. Luke 7, 7.
Mat. 8, 14. Mark 1, 30.
Mat. 14, 17; 24, 45.
R. xli. §. 2. on Athan. p. 250, n. d.
John 2, 1. &c.
To the passages given on R. xx. from vol. ii. p. 330—2. the following from vol. iii. p. 656. may be here added as shewing farther how St. E. drew the parallel between the living and material temples: ‘Lo, wrath runneth to and fro in the earth: the penitent impedes its course. Let us be husbandmen to fasting, that seed which yields an hundred-fold! Let us be tilsmen to prayer, that vine whose wine is consolation! Let us be builders of our minds, as shrines that shall be meet for God! If a great man stayed at thy house, reverence would be at thy door. How much then should thy door be esteemed, if God stayeth in thee. Be to Him a temple, yea and a priest! and minister to Him in thy shrine. As He for thy sake was Priest and Sacrifice and Atonement, be thou also for His sake shrine and priest and offering. Since thy mind hath become a shrine, leave not filthiness therein; leave not in the house of God aught that hateful is to God: let the house of God be garnished with whatever to God is pleasing!
1 Cor. 3, 16.
John 2, 14.
Is. 50, 1. Hos. 2, 2. Rom. 7, 1. &c.
Mat. 21, 33.
Mat. 25, 15. and 24, 51.
R. liii. §. 6.
Mark 1, 24.
p. 245, n. a. R. xxix. §. 1.
Mat. 7, 29.
Mark 12, 13.
John 6, 52.
See above, R. xl. §. 3. Cyril in Joan. p. 360. after specifying several instances, thus addresses the Jew: “Many mighty works there be which before thou art found to have gazed upon with wonder, upon which if you press your ‘how’ you will disbelieve all divine Scripture, and subvert all the prophets have said, and the sacred writings of Moses more than any of them. Rather then we ought to believe in Christ, and by assenting without thought to what is said by Him, to be anxious rather to learn how to win the blessing, and not with drunkard recklessness to say, ‘How can this man, &c.’” See Athan. p. 326. O. T. and other passages in Petav. de Trin. v. 6. against this use of ‘How.’ Philo de Abrah. fin. “Touching those things whereof God witnesseth what befitteth men, but with all certainty to believe.”
John 8, 57.
p. 135, n. a.
Luke 23, 39.
i. e. though the highest angels adore Him in spite of His Flesh, we are not to be persuaded: see on R. xvi. fin. and R. xxix. 1. and n. a. p. 285. Perhaps this passage refers to the interpretation of Is. Ixiii. 1. &c. commonly received among the Fathers, (as Antonelli on St. James of Nisibis, p. 298, rightly notices,) and alluded to by St. E. vol. i. p. 372, a. on 1 Sam. xviii. 6. (“In the going out of the damsels and their rejoicings in David’s victories, behold by contemplation the victories of Christ, and His return from the place of the dead, and how the Angels and the souls of the just went forth to meet Him,”) and plainly adopted by him in vol. ii. p. 307, c. where he writes as follows, on Zech. xiii. 6. “They shall say, What are these wounds in Thy Hands? and He shall say, These are the wounds wherewith I was subdued in the house of my friends. This is to be taken of Him who above was called a Fountain of life, (quoted note c. p. 196. fin.) and suits with the Son in every respect. For the heavenly powers, the friends of Christ the Bridegroom, and His labourers ask Him about the wounds wherewith He was subdued by the crucifiers, and about the rents of the nails in His hands. And it is they whom He probably answers and says, These are the wounds wherewith I was subdued, not by Mine enemies, but among My friends and My kinsmen: owing to their hatred of the false prophets, they thought that I was a deceiver and one of the lying prophets. After this fashion the heavenly powers asked the question also in those words that are written in Isaiah, and say, Who is this that cometh from Edom, with His garments red from Bozrah? when they saw that His Body was mysteriously dyed with the Blood of the sufferings of His own self.” Petav. de Angelis i. 8. §. 11. in part disapproves of this interpretation, but does not mention that Orig. in Joan. vi. 39. G. Naz. Hom. in Pasch. Nyss. in Asc. iii. p. 443. Ambr. de Inst. Virg. v. §. 39. Alex. in loc. et ap. Ang. Mai, A. C. x. p. 61. Aretas in Apoc. ed. Oxon. p. 460. all have this interpretation. All he mentions are Theodoret, Anastasius, Sin. Ambr. de Myst. vii. 36. J. Martyr c. Tryph. §. 36. J. Firmicus de Err. prof. rel. 25. Max. ad Dionys. de Cæl. Hier. vii. §. 3. p. 91. Petav. however allows §. 12. which is enough perhaps for the present passage, that the Angels are represented as asking questions, but doubts if we can infer that this is more than an economy to teach us: for St. E. may be taken to imply that they are said to believe what they were told, in order to instruct man.