5. A royal portrait is painted
with visible colors,
and with oil that all can see
is the hidden portrait of our hidden King portrayed
on those who have been signed:
on them baptism, that is in travail with them in its womb,
depicts the new portrait, to replace the image the image of the former Adam
who had become corrupted; it gives birth to them with triple pangs,
accompanied by the three glorious names,
of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
6. The oil is the dear friend of
the Holy Spirit, it is Her minister
following Her like a disciple,
With it the Spirit signed priests and anointed kings;
for with the oil the Holy Spirit imprints Her mark on Her sheep.
Like a signet ring which leaves its impression on wax,
so the hidden seal of the Spirit is imprinted by oil on the bodies
of those who are anointed in baptism;
thus they are signed in the baptismal [mystery].
7. With the oil of discernment
bodies are anointed for forgiveness,
bodies that were filled with stains are made white without effort:
they go down sordid with sin, they go up pure like infants,
for baptism is a second womb for them.
Rebirth [in the font] rejuvenates the old,
as the river rejuvenated Naaman.
O womb that gives birth every day without pangs
to the children of Kingdom!
8. It is the priesthood which ministers
to this womb as it gives birth;
anointing precedes it, the Holy Spirit hovers over its streams,
a crown of Levites surrounds it, the chief priest is its minister,
the Watchers rejoice at the lost who in it are found.
Once this womb has given birth,
the altar suckles and nurtures them;
her children eat straight away, not milk, but perfect Bread!
9. Oil, the beneficial fountain,
accompanies the body, that fount of ills;
for oil wipes out sins, just as the Flood wiped out the unclean;
for the Flood, acting in justice, wiped out the wicked:
those who had not subdued their lusts drowned,
having brought on the Flood through lusts;
but oil, acting in goodness, wipes out sins in baptism,
for sin is drowned in the water and cannot live with all its desires.
10. Oil in its love accompanies
the baptized in his need,
when, despising his life, he descends and buries himself in the water;
oil by nature does not sink,
but it accompanies the body on which it imprints [its mark].
once baptized, it raises up from the deep a treasure of riches.
Christ by nature cannot die,
yet He clothed Himself with a mortal body,
He was baptized, and so raised up from the water
the treasure of salvation for the race of Adam.
11. The oil gave itself for sale
in place of the orphans,
to prevent their being sold;
it acts as a guardian to the fatherless,
having restrained the fate that had tried to sever
the two brothers, like shoots, from the stock of freedom
and graft them on to the stocks of slavery.
The price of the oil made an end to the bonds [of debt]
that cried out against the debtors;
it tore up the bonds that had come to tear away
a mother from her son.
12. Oil in its love, like Christ,
pays debts that are not its own.
the treasure that of its own accord turned up
for the debtors in the pottery vessel
is like the Treasure that also turned up for the Peoples
in a body made from earth.
The oil became a slave for sale to free the freeborn,
and Christ became a slave for sale
to free those who were enslaved to sin.
In both name and deed does the oil depict Christ. (“Oil and Its Symbols,” in Ephrem
the Syrian: Select Poems [trans. Sebastian P. Brock and George A. Kiraz;
Eastern Christian Texts 2; Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2006], 189,
191, 193, 195)
