3. Thou art beautiful above the sons of men:
grace is poured abroad in thy lips; therefore hath God blessed thee forever.
You are the most handsome of all men; charm flows
from your lips. God, the Supreme Being, has blessed you from eternity.
45:2.1 Here is commendation of the groom, from
four aspects, as the Gloss proposes: (1) beauty, (2) power: "Put on your
sword", (3) authority of judging: "Your throne", (4) dress or
adornment: "Myrrh and aloes". The first has three points: (1) beauty,
(2) the radiation of this beauty to others: "grace is poured", (3)
the reward for these two: "therefore God blessed". The idea is: He
speaks prophetically, I will speak to the king, You are beautiful, without any
interior stain of sin —Is 53:9 = 1 Pet 2:22 who did not commit sin. —Augustine:
The true and highest beauty is justice. —Jer 23:6 This is the name they will
call him: Yahweh our justice. And this above the sons of men, since he
surpasses all in beauty. Angels are not mentioned, even though he is more
beautiful than all the angels, because the comparison is made within his own
human species. —Augustine: He was among the sons of men, from the sons of men,
and ahead of the sons of men.
Note, with Cassiodorus, that he is speaking here
of the beauty of the mind, not of the body. So the word "beautiful"
does not refer to radiating with the color of milk or shining with blond hair
or having an outstanding build, but that he had no sin —Is 53:2 He had no form
or charm. —Augustine seems to point out a contradiction: He found in us much
that is dirty, yet loved us, while if we find something dirty in him we should
not love it, because he is beautiful in the very fact that he took on flesh.
Response: He was truly beautiful, even according to his humanity, and
Cassiodorus does not deny this, but he wants to say that the Prophet is not
speaking about that beauty, because of Prov 31:30 Charm is a lie and beauty is
vanity. Rather, he is speaking about mental beauty. The passage from Isaiah
refers to his condition in the Passion, when he was smeared with the dirty spit
of the Jews and he was pale while dying on the cross. So he was ugly to the
unbelievers, but to the believers he is always beautiful. —Augustine: To you
who believe he is beautiful everywhere: beautiful in the hands of his parents,
beautiful in his miracles, beautiful as he was scourged, beautiful as he gave
up his soul, beautiful as he took it back, beautiful on the wood, beautiful in
the tomb, beautiful in heaven. But, because beauty if not sufficient unless it
can overflow and beautify others, he adds:
The grace of the doctrine of truth, which you
spread to others so that they may become beautiful, is abundantly poured on
your lips, not only on your lips, but on your whole face —Judith 15?? You are
very wonderful, Lord, and your face is full of grace. But the soul who speaks
here may focus on the beauty of the lips because it is ready for a kiss that
will bring some of that grace —Cant 1:2 Let him kiss me with the kisses of his
mouth. —Cant 8:1 Who will give you to me as a brother sucking the breasts of my
mother. Then if I find you outside I can kiss you and no one will despise me.
Note the abundance of the effusion, since everything that came from his lips
was grace —Augustine: Grace is poured on your lips when you cure the sick with
a word, when you order the sea to be quiet, when you tell the winds to be
silent, when you order a fever to go away, when you call Lazarus forth, and he
comes out when called and listens to you. Everything that you speak is
perfected by the grace of your lips —John 7:46 Never has a man spoken like
this. —Qoheleth 8:4 The word of the king is sovereign. —Mat 7:29 He taught them
as one having power, not like the Scribes and Pharisees.
Because you are beautiful and good and useful to
others, therefore God has blessed you, who is greater than you as a man —Heb
7:7 It is incontrovertible that the lesser is blessed by the greater. And that,
not with a sinister blessing, as Esau received (Gen 27:39-40), which is one of
temporal prosperity, but forever, giving you the kingdom without end —Luke 1:33
He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will have no
end.
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