Sequence - (8)
11. Irrisores Elisaei
dum conscendit domum Dei,
zelum calvi sentiunt.
David arrepticius,
hircus emissarius
et passer effugiunt.
'Those who jeer at Elisha when he goes up to the house of God, feel the zeal
of the bald man.'
The reference is to II Kings 2:23-24:
'He went up from there to Bethel; and while he was going on the way, some
small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, "Go up, you
baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!" [or, no doubt, words to that effect]. And
he turned around, and when he saw them, he cursed them in the name of the
Lord. And two she-bears came out of the woods and tore forty-two of the boys.'
It would be unseemly to digress about the pernicious effects of my own
cursing. There is no doubt where the story comes from; what is not so
obvious is why it should prefigure the Resurrection. Perhaps some Gentle
Punters have information about this?
arrepticius in this context means 'inspired' David is regarded as the
author of the Psalms, which are regarded as inspired prophecy. The Psalms
are very often thought of as speaking in the person of Christ; the
reference to the sparrow, two lines later, speaks typologically of the
Resurrection.
hircus emissarius, 'the goat sent out' is the scapegoat of Leviticus 16:20-28.
16:22 Cumque portaverit hircus omnes iniquitates eorum in terram solitariam,
et dimissus fuerit in deserto, revertetur Aaron in tabernaculum testamonii . . .
16:26 Ille vero, qui dimiserit caprum emissarium, lavabit vestimenta sua . . .
'And when the goat has carried all their iniquities into a solitary country,
and it has been sent out into the wilderness, let Aaron return to the
tabernacle of the covenant . . .'
'And he who has sent out the scapegoat shall wash his vestments . . .'
The identification with Christ is made easier by the 'Suffering Servant'
passage in Isaiah 53:
53:4 Et dolores nostros ipse portavit
'And he himself has borne our sorrows'
'passer', the sparrow, is from Psalm 101(102):8,
'Vigilavi, et factus sum sicut passer solitarius in tecto'
'I have watched, and become as a lonely sparrow on the roof'
And what, you may say, does that have to do with Christ's resurrection? I
have to hand J.M. Neale's Commentary on the Psalms, which is a compilation
of patristic and medieval commentaries - a sort of latter-day Glossa
Ordinaria. He comments on Psalm 102 in the BCP version:
6. I am become like a pelican in the wilderness: and like an owl that is
in the desert.
7. I have watched, and am even as it were a sparrow: that sitteth alone
upon the house-top.
'I have watched, in prayers and fastings and vigils, against all the snares
of the enemy, and that as a sparrow on the house-top, uplifted in faith upon
the Church as a secure watch-tower, sitting alone, because separated from
worldly companionship. Of CHRIST they take this watching to be His awaking
at the Resurrection, His sitting on the house-top, to mean his Ascension
into heaven, where He, alone of all mankind, sitteth in the highest;
whereas, but a little before, He was lying, as a bird of night, in the
darkness of the grave, amisdst the ruins of those gates of hell which he
smote down'
Neale has marginal acknowledgements to Dionysius the Carthusian,
Cassiodorus, Gregory the Great and Augustine among others. I pass over the
well-known association of the Pelican with Corpus Christi, which Neale also
discusses.
Augustine, Ennarationes in Psalmos, says of this passage:
"I have watched:" and "am become even as it were a sparrow, that sitteth
alone upon the house-top". Thou hadst then slept amid the ruins, and hadst
said, "I laid me down, and slept." What meaneth, "I slept"? Because I
chose, I slept: I slept for love of night: but, "I rose again," followeth.
Therefore "I watched," is here said. But after He watched, what did He? He
ascended into heaven, He became as a sparrow by flying; that is, by
ascending; "alone on the house-top;" that is, in heaven. He is therefore
as the pelican by birth, as the owl by dying, as the sparrow by ascending
again . . .
For our Head is as the sparrow, His body as the turtle-dove. "For the
sparrow hath found her an house [ps. 83(84, Passer invenit sibi domum]."
What house? I heaven, where He doth mediate for us . . .
One could write a Divine Aviary, on the lines of the Bestiary!
The Supple Doctor.
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