MY BELOVED IS MINE AND I AM HIS: SELF-KNOWLEDGE IN THE ...

of God, they will grow ever more unlike the Word by their pride and self-will, and so
descend further into the region of unlikeness, blindness, and ultimately, eternal death.
In his inclusio, Bernard is chiefly concerned to address an exegetical conundrum
posed by the Bridegroom’s expression, “If you do not know yourself, most beautiful
among women, go forth” (Sg 1:7). This is, the abbot observes, “a harsh and bitter
rebuke,” the sort of words one would expect to hear from an outraged lord dismissing a
disobedient servant, not a Bridegroom addressing his beloved Bride. 81 Why, then, does
the Word now speak to his Beloved not as a gentle and loving Spouse, but with the
terrifying and even threatening words of a Master?
To solve this interpretive puzzle, Bernard adopts a typically inter-textual
approach, referring his readers both to similar passages in the wider Scriptures and to the
immediate narrative context of the Song. 82 He observes that when Moses once aspired to
see God face to face and dared to ask him, “If I have found grace in your sight, show
yourself to me” (Ex 33:13), God did not immediately grant him this favor, but offered
him instead the vision of his back parts that “through this inferior vision, he might later
reach the great vision for which he longed.” 83 Likewise, when James and John dared to
ask Christ for the privilege to sit at his side in glory (Mk 10:35-40), Christ “directed them
81 SC 35.1 (I, 248): “SI TE, inquit, IGNORAS, EGREDERE. Dura et aspera increpatio, quod
dicit: EGREDERE.”
82 As Jean Leclercq showed, Bernard’s exegetical style, which typifies the exegetical style of
twelfth-century monastic theology more broadly speaking, is characterized by a certain “phenomenon of
reminiscence whereby the verbal echoes so excite the memory that a mere allusion will spontaneously
evoke whole quotations and, in turn, a scriptural phrase will suggest quite naturally allusions elsewhere in
the sacred books.” Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture,
73.
83 SC 34.1 (II, 9): “Accepit autem pro ea visionem longe inferiorem, ex qua tamen ad ipsam, quam
volebat, posset aliquando pervenire.”
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