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Hymns on Paradise
St Ephrem the Syrian, tr. Burgess, 1853; selections
II
Count me worthy in Thy goodness
To attain to Thy gift;1
A depositary of sweet ointments,
A treasury of choice perfumes;
Delicately satisfying my hunger
With the scent of its spices.
In every age its odour hath nourished all men;
And whoever inhales it,
Luxuriates in it, unmindful of his food:—
This is a royal table,
Blessed is He who hath prepared it in Eden!
Something sprung up2 within me,
And troubled me as I investigated it;
And I was desirous of making enquiry,
Yet feared to be presumptuous.
But as he who knew me
Understood my thoughts,
He clothed the question most skilfully.3
And from that I confided in him,
Respecting all he said to me;
For he took and fashioned for me
That which I wished, in his own words.
In this manner the Serpent
Persuaded Adam to transgress,
By his web of falsehood.4
For he attentively listened
To the truth of hidden mysteries,
And learned it, and appeared to be wise.
A voice called to Adam and warned him,
From the tree of the knowledge
Of good and of evil;
That crafty one heard the voice,
And fixed upon5 it an interpretation.
For he subtilly deceived the husbandman,
To pluck immaturely
The fruit which in full season
Would have produced its sweetness:
But that fruit, being out of season,
Was bitter to the gatherer.
He interwove the truth with craftiness;4
For he knew that the result
Would be different to the presumptuous ones.
For a blessing, by sinful actions,
Becomes a curse to the receiver of it.
For remember that king Uzziah,6
Who entered the holy place,
And hastily took the priest’s office,
Lost the kingdom.
Adam, intending to enrich himself,
Incurred a double loss.
See, as in a type,7 the tree in the sanctuary,
And the fruit in the censer,
The sense of nakedness in the leprosy:—
From two diverse sources
Ruin proceeded to both of them.
Then there came another champion,
Who was free from guilt;
And He put on the armour8
In which Adam had been conquered.
And when the enemy saw
The arms of the defaulter,
He was glad and perceived not that He was concealed
Within, who was an object of terror to him.
That which was external gave him confidence:—
The Evil One came to conquer,
But was desperately vanquished!
There were two trees
Placed by God in Paradise;
The one the tree of life,
The other of great knowledge;9
These were twin fountains,
Blessed with all benefits.—
By these two glorious things
Man is able to become
The likeness of God:—
By a life without death,
And by knowledge without error!
This piece must be read in connection with the former one, from which it receives some illustration. Both indeed should be studied in their place in the whole production of which they form but a small part, in order that their beauty and meaning may be fully understood. The observations on the metre of the former homily apply to this.
Notes
- “To attain to Thy gift.”—That is, of the Spirit spoken of as proceeding from Paradise, in the former homily.
- “Something sprung up within me.”—[Syriac], scaturivit. The same figure, expressive of mental conception, is employed in Hebrew; [Hebrew] ebullivit, scaturivit, is used in Psalm xlv. 1, “My heart conceives (bubbles up) a good matter.”
- “Most skilfully.”—Sy., [Syriac] with knowledges, an emphatic plural.
It is plain that this strophe has no connection with the former one, which obviously coheres with the previous homily. Asseman states (Bibliotheca Or., tom. i., p. 84) that in one MS. the whole piece, De Paradiso Eden, is without divisions, which explains this want of connection; the arbitrary arrangements of transcribers having been a fruitful source of confusion in all branches of literature. The translator confesses that while the general sentiment of this whole composition is easy to be understood, this second strophe has presented difficulties which he has not solved to his own satisfaction. For example:—to whom does the pronoun refer in the sentence, “as he who knew me?” Is it a general proposition which is here stated, or is it a special case? The argument is, that Satan acted in his dealings with Adam and Eve, in the same manner as Ephraem had been treated in a case of doubt and difficulty. But who was it that thoroughly understood him, and gave a distinct form to the obscure subject of his reflections? The Latin translator has:—“Quod ille meæ inspector mentis comperiens, quæstionem mihi natam scitè vestivit et explicuit.” - “By his web of falsehood.”—“He interwove the truth with craftiness.” The Syriac root in both these sentences is [Syriac], the meaning of which is thus stated by Castell:—“Mentitus est, decepit, fefellit, dolosè egit.” Now the Hebrew [Hebrew], according to Gesenius is, “Texit, obduxit, unde etiam tectè egit, fefellit.” This idea of weaving, plaiting, or contorting, is attached to the words in the text, as admirably expressive of the devices of Satan.
- “And fixed upon it.”—Sy., [Syriac], and followed it out to an interpretation.
- “King Uzziah.”—See 2 Chron. xxvi. 16.
- “See as in a type.”—Sy., [Syriac]. This sense of [Syriac] is pointed out and illustrated by Wiseman in his Horæ Syriacæ, p. 49. In his Comment on Exodus, chap. xxxvii. 10, 11, Ephraem says of the ornaments of the table in the sanctuary:—“There were crowns on the table, in which we typically behold ([Syriac]) the upper and the lower world.”
- “And he put on the armour.”—The armour in which man had been defeated was the flesh:—Christ took this upon Him, that by His death He might procure salvation and defeat the devil. This is the doctrine stated in Heb. ii. 14.
- “Of great knowledge.”—Sy., of knowledges;—an emphatic plural.