Aponius

Like one body has five senses and five movements by which all of its works are performed, so also are five different personas typified in this Canticle, each through the image of a spouse, not counting the “sixty queens” and “eighty concubines” and “adolescents without number,” or “daughters,” and “the only child of her mother,” who calls herself a “wall,” and she who “has no breasts.”These five personas, I believe, denote five languages. Hebrew, the first of all languages, was the language of those from among whom the church was first assembled at the coming of Christ and to whom the first Gospel was addressed in Hebrew through the apostle Matthew. Greek is the language of those collaborators of the apostles, the Evangelists Mark and Luke, who are shown to be the first after the Hebrews to have gone on their missions. Egyptian, with which Mark the disciple of the apostles was not unfamiliar, is the tongue of those to whom he was sent as a teacher; the example he left them flowers still today with holy piety. Latin, which the ancients called Auxonian after King Auxonius, is the language of the one who has Peter, prince of the apostles, as its teacher and patron; decorated with the jewels of his doctrine, it is united by participation in Christ. It is to it, we believe, that it was said, “How beautiful are your feet in sandals, daughter of the prince!” Fifthly, Assyrian, also called Syriac, is the tongue of the country to which the nation of ten tribes, the kingdom of Ephraim, was led away captive. By proclaiming the merit of its religion through this tongue, the people were made one body. Assyrian, then, represents the nation which was led by the Word of God “out of the wilderness” where Christ was not honored and out of the thorny conduct of humanity, to be settled in the delightful garden of sanctity.
After or apart from these languages, all the others under heaven, once converted to Christ, will be grafted into them like a limb onto a body. For everyone who believes in one omnipotent God and confesses one Redeemer, Christ, the Son of God, and receives the one Holy Spirit who proceeds from both, together constitutes the one body of the church, which is unified, as we have said, as though by the five senses. And it was prophesied quite clearly in mystery through the prophet Isaiah, I believe, that these five languages would become one language rejoicing in the praises of its one Creator by holding firm to the one faith. The coming of such a time was predicted when he said, “There will be in that day,” the day when the Lord will break the chains of his people, “five cities in the land of Egypt speaking the language of Canaan, one of which will be called the city of the sun.”
We know that “Egypt” means “obscurity” or “darkness,” which characterized the entire world before the incarnation of Christ, as blessed John the Evangelist taught when he said, “The light shone in the darkness, and the darkness has not overtaken it.” Zechariah also taught that Christ came “to illuminate those who were sitting in darkness and the shadow of death.” And the Savior himself declared, “I am the light of the world.” “Canaan,” on the other hand, means “glowing chalice.” Who else are we able to understand as a glowing chalice except the Holy Spirit, who, after the ascension of the Lord, was first sent by the Father and the Son to the apostles while their faith was still cold? Of him it is said in the Acts of the Apostles that “he rested upon each one like a flame.” He filled those who spoke the one praise of the one God in the tongue of every nation, such that they appeared intoxicated to the unaware. Having received from this chalice, the five prophesied cities now speak the marvels of the omnipotent God with one mouth or one tongue, “that our Lord Jesus Christ,” as Paul, teacher of the Gentiles, shows, “is to the glory of God the Father,” and that “no one can say that Jesus Christ is Lord except in the Holy Spirit.”
The name “city of the sun” designates the one Hebrew language itself, whose kingdom is seated in Jerusalem. There is the throne, there is the temple, the holy place of worship, and there is the kingdom of Judah, whence came Christ, the Sun of Justice. It is from Jerusalem, which was previously called Heliopolis, meaning “city of the sun,” that light is shed throughout the entire, darkened body of the world. From it, a healing balm is applied to every member of the church. And it was of this sun that the prophet predicted, “For you who fear the Lord, the sun of justice will rise, and healing is in its rays; and you will leap like young bulls in the middle of the herd, and you will trample your enemies until they become like the dust under your feet.”