My beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand.
All Commentaries on Song of Songs 5:10 Go To Song of Songs 5
Gregory of Nyssa
AD 394
All flesh implies birth, with marriage as the means for bringing it about. The person, however, who is not subject to a birth of flesh with respect to the mystery of religion does not submit to the actions effected by human nature or to the passions arising from the mind. He understands that the generation of the flesh belongs to all humankind. The bride says that he who partakes of flesh and blood is “white and ruddy.” However, by indicating the body’s nature by these two colors, she does not say that Christ partakes of that birth common to humankind. Rather, God assumed our human nature from the multitude of people he had begotten. From the passage of succeeding generations, Christ alone entered this life by a new form of birth. Nature did not cooperate in this birth but served it. Therefore, the bride says that her spouse is “white and ruddy.” That is, he dwells in this present life through flesh and blood while having been begotten from virginal purity. His conception is virginal. His birth is undefiled and without pangs. His bridal chamber is the power of the Most High overshadowing the virgin like a cloud. He is a nuptial torch of the Holy Spirit’s splendor. His bed is free from passion, and his marriage is incorruptibility.
The bridegroom born under such circumstances as these is rightly called “chosen from myriads.” He was free from birth resulting from marriage, for his existence does not come from marriage. No terminology pertaining to human birth can rightly pertain to Christ’s incorruptible, painless birth because virginity and childbirth cannot apply to the bridegroom at the same time. As the Son is given to us without a father, the child is thus begotten without birth.
