A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
All Commentaries on Ecclesiastes 3:5 Go To Ecclesiastes 3
Gregory of Nyssa
AD 394
“A moment for embracing and a moment for avoiding an embrace.” These ideas cannot possibly become clear to us unless the passage has first been interpreted through the Scripture, so that it has become clear to us in what connection the divinely inspired word consciously uses the word embrace. Great David exhorts us in the words of the psalm, “Circle Zion and embrace her,” and even Solomon himself, when he was describing poetically the spiritual marriage of the one in love with Wisdom, mentions a number of ways in which union with virtue becomes ours and adds this: “Honor her, so that she may embrace you.” If, then, David tells us to embrace Zion, and Solomon says that those who honor Wisdom are embraced by her, perhaps we have not missed the correct interpretation if we have identified the object which it is timely to embrace. For Mount Zion rises above the upper city of Jerusalem. Thus the one who urges you to embrace her is bidding you to attach yourself to high principles, so that you hasten to reach the very citadel of the virtues, which he indicates allegorically by the name Zion. And the one who makes you live with wisdom announces the good news of the embrace she will give you in the future. Therefore there is a moment for embracing Zion and for being embraced by Wisdom, since the name Zion denotes the pinnacle of conduct and Wisdom in herself means every instance of virtue. If we have learned through these words the right moment for embracing, we have been taught through the same words in what cases separation is more beneficial than union. For he says, “A moment for avoiding an embrace.” The one who has become familiar with virtue is a stranger to the state of evil.… So when the loving disposition clings to the good—that is the “right moment”—the result is surely estrangement from its opposite. If you really love selfcontrol, then of course you hate its opposite. If you look with love at purity, you obviously loathe the stink of filth. If you have become attached to the good, you surely avoid attachment to evil.
