Canticles 2:4
He brought me into the cellar of wine, he set in order charity in me.
Open Canticles 2:4 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Introduxit me in cellam vinariam ; ordinavit in me caritatem.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- εἰσαγάγετέ με εἰς οἶκον τοῦ οἴνου, τάξατε ἐπ᾽ ἐμὲ ἀγάπην.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- הֱבִיאַ֨נִי֙ אֶל בֵּ֣ית הַיָּ֔יִן וְדִגְל֥וֹ עָלַ֖י אַהֲבָֽה
Haydock's commentary
Cellar. This was not under ground. Homer (Odyssey b. 237.) places the wine near the nuptial bed. (Calmet)
In me. Hebrew, "he brought me to the banquetting-house, and his banner over me was love." (Protestants) (Haydock)
He has shewn me the greatest tenderness. Only the religion of Christ lays before us our duties to God, to ourselves, and neighbours. (Calmet) (St. Thomas Aquinas, ii. 2. q. 26.) (Haydock)
The holy Spirit came on the assembled disciples, who were deemed to be drunk, and Christ nourishes the pious soul with the wine of his own blood. (Menochius)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St Augustine City of God, Of the Fall of the Sons of God Who Were Captivated by the Daughters of Men, Whereby All, with the Exception of Eight Persons, Deservedly Perished in the Deluge
But if the Creator is truly loved, that is, if He Himself is loved and not another thing in His stead, He cannot be evilly loved; for love itself is to be ordinately loved, because we do well to love that which, when we love it, makes us live well and virtuously. So that it seems to me that it is a brief but true definition of virtue to say, it is the order of love; and on this account, in the Canticles, the bride of Christ, the city of God, sings, “Order love within me.” It was the order of this love, then, this charity or attachment, which the sons of God disturbed when they forsook God, and were enamored of the daughters of men. And by these two names (sons of God and daughters of men) the two cities are sufficiently distinguished. For though the former were by nature children of men, they had come into possession of another name by grace. …
St Augustine Expositions on the Book of Psalms, Psalm VII
14. “And in it He hath prepared the instruments of death: He hath wrought His arrows for the burning” ( ver. 13 ). That bow then I would readily take to be the Holy Scripture, in which by the strength of the New Testament, as by a sort of string, the hardness of the Old has been bent and subdued. From thence the Apostles are sent forth like arrows, or divine preachings are shot. Which arrows “He has wrought for the burning,” arrows, that is, whereby being stricken they might be inflamed with heavenly love. …
St John Cassian The Conferences of John Cassian. Part II. Containing Conferences XI-XVII, Chapter XIV. On the different grades of love
It is possible then for all to show that love which is called ἀγάπη , of which the blessed Apostle says: “While therefore we have time, let us do good unto all men, but specially to them that are of the household of faith.” And this should be shown to all men in general to such an extent that we are actually commanded by our Lord to yield it to our enemies, for He says: “Love your enemies.” But διάθεσις , i.e., affection is shown to but a few and those who are united to us by kindred dispositions or by a tie of goodness; though indeed affection seems to have many degrees of difference. For in one way we love our parents, in another our wives, in another our brothers, in another our children, and there is a wide difference in regard to the claims of these feelings of affection, nor is the love of parents towards their children always equal. …