St. Ephraim of Syria
Translated by J.B. Morris
re-edited by John Gwynn
On a certain day a pearl did I take up, my brethren;
I saw in it
mysteries pertaining to the Kingdom;
Semblances and types of the Majesty;
It became a fountain, and I drank out of it mysteries of the Son.
I put it, my brethren, upon the palm of my hand,
That I might
examine it:
I went to look at it on one side,
And it proved faces on
all sides.
I found out that the Son was incomprehensible,
Since He is
wholly Light.
In its brightness I beheld the Bright One Who cannot be clouded,
And in its pureness a great mystery,
Even the Body of Our Lord which
is well-refined:
In its undivideness I saw the Truth
Which is
undivided.
It was so that I saw there its pure conception,
The Church,
and the Son within her.
The cloud was the likeness of her that bare Him,
And her type the heaven,
Since there shone forth from her His
gracious Shining.
I saw therein his Trophies, and His victories, and His crowns.
I saw His helpful and overflowing graces,
And His hidden things with
His revealed things.
It was greater to me than the ark,
For I was astonied thereat:
I saw therein folds without shadow to them
Because it was a daughter of
light,
Types vocal without tongues,
Utterances of mystery without
lips,
A silent harp that without voice gave out melodies.
The trumpet falters and the thunder mutters;
Be not thou
daring then;
Leave things hidden, take things revealed.
Thou hast
seen in the clear sky a second shower;
The clefts of thine ears,
As
from the clouds,
They are filled with interpretations.
And as that manna which alone filled the people,
In the place
of pleasant meats,
With its pleasantnesses,
So does this pearl fill
me in the place of books,
And the reading thereof,
And the
explanations thereof.
And when I asked if there were yet other mysteries,
It had no
mouth for me that I might hear from,
Neither any ears wherewith it might
hear me.
O Thou thing without senses, whence I have gained new senses!
It answered me and said,
"The daughter of the sea am I, the
illimitable sea!
And from that sea whence I came up it is
That there
is a mighty treasury of mysteries in my bosom!
Search thou out the sea,
but search not out the Lord of the sea!
"I have seen the divers who came down after me, when astonied,
So that from the midst of the sea they returned to the dry ground;
For a few moments they sustained it not.
Who would linger and be searching
on into the depths of the Godhead?
"The waves of the Son are full of blessing,
And with
mischiefs too.
Have ye not seen, then, the waves of the sea,
Which if
a ship should struggle with them would break her to pieces,
And if she
yield herself to them, and rebel not against them,
Then she is preserved?
In the sea all the Egyptians were choked, though they scrutinised it not,
And, without prying, the Hebrews too were overcome upon the dry land,
And how shall ye be kept alive?
And the men of Sodom were licked up by the
fire,
And how shall ye prevail?
"At these uproars the fish in the sea were moved,
And
Leviathan also.
Have ye then a heart of stone
That ye read these
things and run into these errors?
O great fear that justice also should be
so long silent!"
"Searching is mingled with thanksgiving,
And whether of the two
will prevail?
From the tongue
The incense of praise riseth
Along
with the fume of disputation
And unto which shall we hearken?
Prayer
and prying from one mouth,
And which shall we listen to?
"For three days was Jonah a neighbour in the sea:
The living
things that were in the sea were affrighted,
Saying, 'Who shall flee from
God?
Jonah fled,
And ye are obstinate at your scrutiny of Him!'"
Whereunto art thou like?
Let thy stillness speak to one that hears;
With silent mouth speak with us:
For whoso hears the stammerings of
thy silence,
to him thy type utters its silent cry concerning our
Redeemer.
Thy mother is a virgin of the sea, though he took her not:
She fell into his bosom, though he knew her not;
She conceived thee near
him, though he did not know her.
Do thou, that art a type, reporach the
Jewish women
That have thee hung upon them.
Thou art the only progeny
of all forms
Which art like to the Word on High,
Whom singly the Most
High begot.
The engraven forms seem to be the type of created things
above.
This visible offspring of the invisible womb
Is a type of
great things.
Thy goodly conception was without seed,
And without
wedlock was thy pure generation,
And without brethren was thy single
birth.
Our Lord had brethren and yet not brethren,
Since He was an
Only-Begotten.
O solitary one, thou type exact of the Only-Begotten!
There is a type of thine in the crown of kings,
Wherein thou hast brothers
and sisters.
Goodly gems are thy brethren,
With beryls and unions as
thy companions:
May gold be as it were thy kinsman,
May there be unto
the King of kings
A crown from thy well-beloved ones!
When thou
camest up from the sea, that living tomb,
Thou didst cry out,
Let me
have a goodly assmblage of brethren, relatives and kinsmen.
As the wheat
is in the stalk,
So thou art in the crown with princes:
And it is a
just restoration to thee, as if of a pledge,
That from the depth thou
shouldest be exalted to a goodly eminence.
Wheat the stalk bears in the
field;
Thee the head of the king upon his chariot carries about.
O daughter of the water,
Who hast left the sea, wherein thou
wert born,
And art gone up to the dry land, wherein thou art beloved:
For men have loved and seized and adorned themselves with thee,
Like as
they did that Offspring Whom the Gentiles loved
And crowned themselves
withal.
It is by the mystery of truth that Leviathan is trodden down of
mortals:
The divers put him off, and put on Christ.
In the sacrament
of oil did the Apostles steal Thee away, and came up.
They snatched their
souls from his mouth, bitter as it was.
Thy Nature is like a silent lamb
in its sweetness,
Of which if a man is to lay hold,
He lifts it in a
crucial form by its ears, as it was on Golgotha.
He cast out abundantly
all His gleams upon them that looked upon Him.
Shadowed forth in thy beauty is the beauty of the Son,
Who clothed
Himself with suffering when the nails passed through Him.
The awl passed
in thee since they handled thee roughly,
As they did His hands;
And
because He suffered He reigned,
As by they sufferings thy beauty
increased.
And if they showed no pity upon thee,
Neither did they love
thee:
Still suffer as thou mightest,
Thou has come to reign! Simon
Peter showed pity on the Rock;
Whoso hath smitten it, is himself thereby
overcome;
It is by reason of Its suffering
That Its beauty hath
adorned the height and the depth.
Thou dost not hide thyself in thy bareness, O pearl!
With the love
of thee is the merchant ravished also,
For he strips off his garments;
Not to cover thee --
(thy clothing is thy light, thy garment is thy
brightness,
O thou that art bared!)
Thou art like Eve who was clothed with nakedness.
Cursed be
he that deceived her and stripped her and left her.
The serpent cannot
strip off thy glory.
In the mysteries whose type thou art,
Women are
clothed with Light in Eden.
Very glistening are the pearls of Ethiopia, as it is written,
Who
gave thee to Ethiopia of black men.
He that gave light to the Gentiles,
Both to the Ethiopians and unto the Indians did His bright beams reach.
The eunuch of Ethiopia upon his chariot saw Philip:
The Lamb
of Light met the dark man from out of the water.
While he was reading, the
Ethiopian was baptised
And shone with joy, and journeyed on!
He made disciples and taught,
And out of black men he made
men white.
And the dark Ethiopic women became pearls for the Son;
He
offered them up to the Father, as a glistening crown from the
Ethiopians.
The Queen of Sheba
Was a sheep that had come into the place of
wolves;
The lamp of truth did Solomon give her,
Who also married her
when he fell away.
She was enlightened and went away,
But they were
dark, as their manner was.
The bright spark which went down home with that blessed [Queen],
Held on its shining amid the darkness,
Till the new Day-spring came.
The bright spark met with this shining,
And illumined the place.
There are in the sea divers fishes of many cubits,
And with all
their greatness they are very small;
But by thy littleness the crown is
made great,
Like as the Son, by whose littleness Adam was made great.
For the head is thy crown intended:
For the eye thy beauty,
For the ear thy goodliness.
Come up from the sea, thou neighbour to
the dry land,
And come and sojourn by the [seat of] hearing.
Let the
ear love the word of life as it loveth thee!
In the ear is the word,
And without it is the pearl.
Let
it as being warned by thee,
By thee get wisdom, and be warned by the word
of truth.
Be thou its mirror:
The beauty of the Word in thine own
beauty shall it see:
In thee it shall learn how precious is the Word on
High!
The ear is the leaf:
The flesh is the tree,
And thou in
the midst of it are a fruit of light,
And to the womb that brings forth
Light,
Thou art a type that points.
Thee He used as a parable of that kingdom, O pearl!
As He did
the virgins that entered into it, five in number,
Clothed with the light
of their lamps!
To thee are those bright ones like, thou that art clad in
light!
Who would give a pearl to the daughter of the poor?
For when it
hangs on her, it becomes her not.
Gain without price that faith, all of
which becomes all the limbs of men.
But for no gold would a lady exchange
her pearl.
It were a great disgrace
If thou shouldst throw thy pearl
away into the mire for nought!
In the pearl of time
Let us behold that of eternity;
For
it is in the purse, or in the seal, or in the treasury.
Within the gate
there are other gates with their locks and keys.
Thy pearl hath the High
One sealed up as taking account of all.
The thief gained the faith which gained him,
And brought him up and
placed him in paradise.
He saw in the Cross a tree of life;
That was
the fruit,
He was the eater in Adam's stead.
The fool, who goes astray,
Grazes the faith, as it were an
eye,
By all manner of questions.
The probing of the finger blinds the
eye,
And much more doth that prying blind the faith.
For even the diver pries not into his pearl.
In it do all
merchants rejoice
Without prying into whence it came ;
Even the king
who is crowned therewith
Does not explore it.
Because Balaam was foolish,
A foolish beast in the ass spoke with
him,
Because he despised God Who spoke with him.
Thee too let the
pearl reprove
In the ass's stead.
The people that had a heart of stone,
By a Stone He set at
nought,
For lo, a stone hears words.
Witness its work that has
reproved them ;
And you, ye deaf ones,
Let the pearl reprove to-day.
With the swallow and the crow did He put men to shame ;
With
the ox, yea with the ass, did He put them to shame ;
Let the pearl reprove
now,
O ye birds and things on earth and things below.
Not as the moon does thy light fill or wane ;
The Sun whose light
is greater than all,
Lo! of Him it is that a type is shadowed out in thy
little compass.
O type of the Son,
One spark of Whom is greater than
the sun!
The pearl itself is full,
for its light is full ;
Neither is there any cunning worker who can steal from it ;
For its wall
is its own beauty,
Yea, its guard also!
It lacks not,
since it
is entirely perfect.
And if a man would break thee
To take a part from thee,
Thou art like the faith which with the heretics perishes,
Seeing they have
broken it in pieces and spoiled it :
For is it any better than this
To have the faith scrutinized?
The faith is an entire nature
That may not be corrupted.
The spoiler gets himself mischief by it:
The heretic brings ruin on
himself thereby.
He that chases the light from his pupils
Blinds
himself.
Fire and air are divided when sundered.
Light alone, of all
creatures,
As its Creator, is not divided;
It is not barren, for that
it also begets
Without losing thereby.
And if a man thinks that thou art framed [by art]
He errs greatly;
Thy nature proclaims that thou, as all stones,
Art not the framing of
art;
and so thou art a type of the Generation
Which no making framed.
Thy stone flees
From a comparison with the Stone [which is]
the Son.
For thy own generation is from the midst of the deep,
That
of the Son of thy Creator is from the highest height;
He is not like thee,
In that He is like His Father.
And as they tell,
Two wombs bare thee also.
Thou camest
down from on high a fluid nature;
Thou camest up from the sea a solid
body.
By means of thy second birth
Thou didst show thy loveliness to
the children of men.
Hands fixed thee, when thou wast embodied,
Into thy
receptacles ;
For thou art in the crown as upon the cross,
And in a
coronet as in a victory ;
Thou art upon the ears, as if to fill up what
was lacking ;
Thou extendest over all.
O gift that camest up without price for the diver!
Thou laidest
hold upon this visible light,
That without price rises for the children of
men:
A parable of the hidden One
That without price gives the hidden
Dayspring!
And the painter too paints a likeness of thee with colours.
Yet by thee is faith painted in types and emblems for colours,
And in the
place of the image
By thee and thy colours is thy Creator painted.
O thou frankincense without smell,
Who breathest types from
out of thee!
Though art not to be eaten,
Yet thou givest a sweet
smell unto them that hear thee!
Though art not to be drunk,
Yet by
thy story, a fountain of types art thou made unto the ears!
It is thou which art great in thy littleness, O pearl!
Small is thy
measure and little thy compass with thy weight;
But great is thy glory:
To that crown alone in which thou art placed, there is none like.
And Who hath not percieved of thy littleness, how great it is;
If one despises thee and throws thee away,
He would blame himself for
his clownishness,
For when he saw thee in a king's crown he would be
attracted to thee.
Men stripped their clothes off and dived and drew thee out, O pearl!
It was not kings that put thee before men,
But those naked ones who
were a type of the poor
And the fishers and the Galileans.
For clothed bodies were not able to come to thee;
They came
that were stript as children;
They plunged their bodies and came down to
thee;
And thou didst much desire them,
And thou didst aid them who
thus loved thee.
Glad tidings did they give for thee:
Their tongues before
their bosoms did the poor [fishers] open,
And produced and showed the new
riches among the merchants:
Upon the wrists of men they put thee as a
medicine for life.
The naked ones in a type saw thy rising again by the sea-shore;
And
by the side of the lake they,
The Apostles of a truth,
Saw the rising
again of the Son of thy Creator.
By thee and by thy Lord the sea and the
lake were beautified.
The diver came up from the sea and put on his clothing;
And
from the lake too Simon Peter came up swimming on his coat;
Clad as with
coats, with the love of both of you, were these two.
And since I have wandered in thee, pearl,
I will gather up my mind
And by having contemplated thee,
Would become like thee,
In that
thou art all gathered up into thyself;
And as thou in all times art one,
One let me become by thee!
Pearls have I gathered together that I might make a crown for the Son
In the place of stains which are in my members.
Receive my offering,
not that Thou art shortcoming;
It is because of mine own shortcoming that
I have offered it to Thee.
Whiten my stains!
This crown is all spiritual pearls,
Which instead of gold are
set in love,
And instead of ouches in faith;
And instead of hands,
let praise offer it up to the highest!
Would that the memory of the fathers would exhale from the tombs;
Who were very simple as being wise;
And reverend as believing.
They
without cavilling searched for, and came to the right path.
He gave the law;
The mountains melted away;
Fools broke
through it.
By unclean ravens He fed Elijah at the desert stream;
And
moreover gave from the skelton honey unto Samson.
They judged not, nor
inquired why it was unclean,
Why clean.
And when He made void the sabbaths,
The feeble Gentiles were
clothed with health.
Samson took the daughter of the aliens,
And
there was no disputing among the righteous;
The prophet also took a
harlot,
And the just held their peace.
He blamed the righteous,
And He held up and lifted up their
delinquencies:
He pitied sinners,
And restored them without cost:
And made low the mountains of their sins:
He proved God is not to be
arraigned by men,
And as Lord of Truth.
That His servants were His
shadow;
And whatsoever way His will looked,
They directed also their
own wills;
And because Light was in Him,
Their shadows were
enlightened.
How stangely perplexed are all the heretics by simple things!
For
when He plainly foreshadowed this New Testment
By that of the Prophets,
Those pitiable men rose, as though from sleep,
And shouted out and
made a disturbance.
And the Way, wherein the righteous held straight on,
And by their truths had gone forth therein,
That [Way] have these
broken up, because they were besotted:
This they left and went out of;
Because they pried into it, it fell, and was lost.
Of the pearl they
made a stone, that they might stumble upon it.
O Gift, which fools have made a poison!
The People were for
separating Thy beauteous root from Thy fountain,
Though they separated it
not:
Teachings estranged Thy beauty also from the stock thereof.
By Thee did they get themselves estranged,
Who wished to
estrange Thee.
By Thee the tribes were cut off,
And scattered abroad
from out of Sion,
And also the teachings of the seceders.
Bring Thyself within the compass of our littleness,
O Thou
Gift of ours.
For if love cannot find Thee out on all sides,
It
cannot be still and at rest.
Make Thyself small,
Thou Who art too
great for all,
Who comest unto all!
By this would those who wrangle against our Pearl be reproved;
Because instead of love,
Strife has come in and dared to essay to unveil
thy beauty.
It was not graven,
Since it is a progeny which cannot be
interpreted.
Thou didst show thy beauty among the abjects
To show whereto
thou are like,
Thou Pearl that art all faces.
The beholders were
astonied and perplexed at thee.
The separatists separated thee in two,
And were separated in two by thee,
Thou are of one substance
throughout.
They saw not thy beauty,
Because there was not in them the
eye of truth.
For the veil of prophecy,
Full as it was of the
mysteries,
To them was a covering of thy glistering faces:
They
thought that thou wast other [than thou art],
O thou mirror of ours!
And therefore these blind schismatics defiled thy fair beauty.
Since they have extolled thee too much,
Or have lowered thee too
much,
Bring them to an even level.
Come down,
Descend a little
that height of infidelity and heathendom;
And come up from the depth of
Judaism, though thou art in Heaven.
Let our Lord be set between God and men!
Let the Prophets be
as it were His heralds!
Let the Just One, as being His Father, rejoice!
That Word it is which conquered both Jews and Heathen!
Come, Thou Gift of Holy Church, stay, rest in the midst of Her!
The
circumsized have troubled Thee,
In that they are vain babblers,
And
so have the [false] doctrines in that they are contentious.
Blessed be He
that gave Thee a good company which bears Thee about!
In the covenant of Moses is Thy brightness shadowed forth:
In
the new covenant Thou dartest forth:
From those first Thy light shineth
forth unto those last.
Blessed be He that gave us Thy gleam
As well
as Thy bright rays.
As in a race saw I the disputers,
The children of strife,
[Trying]
To taste fire,
To see the air,
To handle the light:
They were troubled at the gleaming,
And struggled to make divisions.
The Son,
Who is too subtle for the mind,
Did they seek
to feel:
And the Holy Ghost
Who cannot be explored,
They sought
to explore with their questionings.
The Father,
Who never at any time
was searched out,
Have they explained and disputed of.
The sound form of our faith is from Abraham,
And our
repentance is from Nineveh and the house of Rahab,
And ours are the
expectations of the Prophets,
Ours of the Apostles.
And envy is from Satan:
The evil usage of the evil calf is from the
Egyptians.
The hateful sight of the hateful image of four faces is from
the Hittites.
Accursed disputation, that hidden moth, is from the Greeks.
The bitter one read and saw orthodox teachings,
And subverted
them;
He saw hateful things,
And sowed them;
He saw hope,
And he turned it upside down and cut it off.
The disputation that he
planted,
Lo! it has yielded a fruit bitter to the tooth.
Satan saw that the Truth strangled him,
And united himself to the
tares,
And secreted his frauds,
And spread his snares for the faith,
And cast upon the priests the darts of the love of pre-eminence.
They made contests for the throne,
To see which should first
obtain it.
There was that meditated in secret and kept it close:
There was that openly combated for it:
And there was that with a bribe
crept up to it:
And there was that with fraud dealt wisely to obtain it.
The paths differed,
Ths scope was one,
And they were
alike.
Him that was young, and could not even think of it,
Because it
was not time for him;
And him that was hoary and shaped out dreams
For time beyond;
All of them by his craftiness did the wicked one persuade
and subdue.
Old men, youths, and even striplings, aim at rank!
His former books did Satan put aside,
And put on others:
The
People who was grown old
Had the moth and the worm devoured and eaten and
left and deserted:
The moth came into the new garment
Of the new
peoples:
He saw the crucifiers who were rejected and cast forth as
strangers:
He made of those of the household, pryers;
And of
worshippers, they became disputants.
From that garment
The moth
gendered
And wound it up and deposited it.
The worm gendered in the storehouse of wheat,
And sat and
looked on:
And lo! the pure wheat was mildewed,
And devoured were the
garments of glory!
He made a mockery of us,
And we of ourselves,
since we were besotted!
He sowed tares,
And the bramble shot up in the pure vinyard!
He infected the flock,
And the leprosy broke out,
And the sheep
became hired servants of his!
He began in the People,
And came unto
the Gentiles, that he might finish.
Instead of the reed which the former people made the Son hold,
Others have dared with their reed to write in their tracts
That He is only
a Son of man.
Reed for reed does the wicked one exchange against our
Redeemer,
And instead of the coat of many colours, wherewith they clothed
Him,
Titles has he dyed craftily.
With diversity of names he clothed
Him;
Either that of creature or of a thing made, when He was the Maker.
And as he plaited for Him by silent men speechless thorns that cry
out,
Thorns from the mind has he plaited [now] by the voice, as hymns;
And concealed the spikes amid melodies
That they might not be
perceived.
When Satan saw that he was detected in his former [frauds];
That
the spitting was discovered, and vinegar,
And thorns, nails and wood,
Garments and reed and spear,
Which smote him, and were hated and openly
known;
He changed his frauds.
Instead of the blow with the hand, by which our Lord was overcome,
He brought in distractions;
And instead of the spitting,
Cavilling entered in;
And instead of garments,
Secret divisions;
And instead of the reed,
Came in strife to smite us on the face.
Haughtiness called for rage its sister,
And there answered
and came envy,
And wrath, and pride, and fraud.
They have taken
counsel against our Redeemer
As on that day when they took counsels at His
Passion.
And instead of the cross,
A hidden wood hath strife become;
And instead of the nails,
Questionings have come in;
And instead
of hell, apostasy:
The pattern of both Satan would renew again.
Instead of the sponge which was cankered with vinegar and
wormwood,
He gave prying, the whole of which is cankered with death.
The gall which they gave Him did our Lord put away from Him;
The subtle
questionings, which the rebellious one hath given,
To fools is sweet.
And at that time there were judges against them,
Lo, the judges
are, as it were, against us,
And instead of a handwriting are their
commands.
Priests that consecrate crowns,
Set snares for kings.
Instead of the priesthood praying for royalty
That wars may
cease from among men,
They teach wars of overthrow,
Which set kings
to combat with those round about.
O Lord, make the priests and kings peaceful;
That in one
Church priests may pray for their kings,
And kings spare those round about
them;
And may the peace which is within Thee become ours, Lord,
Thou
that art within and without all things!
The Nazarenes of Mount Carmel
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