Spiritual Canticle

^2. The soul feels itself as if it were in the land of enemies, tyrannized over by the stranger, like the dead among the dead. Its feelings are those which the prophet Baruch gave vent to when he described the misery of Jacob’s captivity: “How happens it, O Israel, that you are in your enemies’ land? You have grown old in a strange country, you are defiled with the dead: you are counted with them that go down into hell.”^[169] This misery of the soul, in the captivity of the body, is thus spoken of by Jeremiah, saying: “Is Israel a bondman or a home-born slave? Why then is he become a prey? The lions have roared upon him, and have made a noise.”^[170] The lions are the desires and the rebellious motions of the tyrant king of sensuality. In order to express the trouble which this tyrant occasions, and the desire of the soul to see this kingdom of sensuality with all its hosts destroyed, or wholly subject to the spirit, the soul lifting up its eyes to the Bridegroom, as to one who can effect it, speaks against those rebellious motions in the words of the next stanza.

[169] Bar. 3:10, 11

[170] Jer. 2:14, 15