Song of Solomon 6:2

6:2,3 Christ's church is a garden, enclosed, and separated from the world; he takes care of it, delights in it, and visits it. Those who would find Christ, must attend him in his ordinances, the word, sacraments, and prayer. When Christ comes to his church, it is to entertain his friends. And to take believers to himself: he picks the lilies one by one; and at the great day he will send forth his angels to gather all his lilies, that he may be for ever admired in them. The death of a believer is not more than the owner of a garden plucking a favourite flower; and He will preserve it from withering, yea, cause it to flourish for ever, with increasing beauty. If our own hearts can witness for us that we are Christ's, question not his being ours, for the covenant never breaks on his side. It is the comfort of the church, that he feeds among the lilies, that he takes delight in his people.

My beloved is gone down into his garden,.... Which may be said by Solomon, in allusion to what he himself was wont to do, as Josephus (q) relates; who used to go very early in a morning in great pomp to Etham, about two miles from Jerusalem, a pleasant place, abounding with gardens and flows of water: or respect may be had to the king's gardens nearer Jerusalem, which were at the descent of Mount Zion, and reached to the lower pool (r); see Nehemiah 3:15 ; and which lying lower than the king's palace, he might be said to go down to it. And this may point at the low estate of the people of God on earth, depressed with sorrows, afflictions, and persecutions; and the condescension of Christ, in visiting them in their low estate, and granting them his gracious presence: of the garden of Christ, and of his coming into it; see Gill on Sol 4:12; See Gill on Sol 4:16; See Gill on Sol 5:1; and the church might remember what he said, "I am come into my garden", Sol 5:1; though she soon fell asleep and forgot it, and now calls it to mind, and so could direct the daughters where he was. She adds, to the beds of spices; of odoriferous plants; to which particular believers, planted regularly in the churches of Christ, may be compared, for the excellency and fragrancy of their graces; and among whom Christ delights to be; see Sol 4:13.

The spouse had hitherto been at a loss for her Beloved, but having diligently sought him, and inflamed both her own and others’ affections with love to him by her just commendations, now at last she meets with a gracious answer from God, directing her where to find him, which also comes very seasonably, not only for her own relief and comfort, but also for the benefit of others, who inquired after him. The garden seems to signify the church catholic, and the gardens , as it follows here, as also the beds, may note the particular assemblies of the faithful, in which Christ affordeth his presence and his blessing. Beds of spices; in which the gifts and graces of God’s Spirit, which are fitly compared to spices or aromatical flowers, do appear and grow. To feed; to refresh and delight himself, or to gather the flowers and fruits of it, as men use to do in their gardens. To gather lilies; which may note either, 1. Particular believers, whom Christ gathereth to himself in his church, who are compared to lilies, Song of Solomon 2:2 . Or, 2. The prayers and praises tendered to him by his people in the public congregations, and all their gracious dispositions and actions.

2. gone down—Jerusalem was on a hill (answering to its moral elevation), and the gardens were at a little distance in the valleys below. beds of spices—(balsam) which He Himself calls the "mountain of myrrh," &c. (So 4:6), and again (So 8:14), the resting-place of His body amidst spices, and of His soul in paradise, and now in heaven, where He stands as High Priest for ever. Nowhere else in the Song is there mention of mountains of spices. feed in … gardens—that is, in the churches, though He may have withdrawn for a time from the individual believer: she implies an invitation to the daughters of Jerusalem to enter His spiritual Church, and become lilies, made white by His blood. He is gathering some lilies now to plant on earth, others to transplant into heaven (So 5:1; Ge 5:24; Mr 4:28, 29; Ac 7:60).

2 . The bride gives them an evasive answer, becoming jealous perhaps of their eager interest. She simply says he has gone forth to his usual haunts. Budde would strike out Song of Solomon 6:1-3 , on the ground that the garden, the beds of spices, and the lilies are figures for the bride’s person, as similar natural objects are in Song of Solomon 4:12 f., Song of Solomon 5:13 , Song of Solomon 2:16 , Song of Solomon 5:1 . Here they cannot be that, since the bride is confessedly describing an absent lover, and they must consequently on his theory be put in by someone who did not understand the other references. But this curious reversion to the allegorical interpretation of the Song in a physical sense, by the opponents of allegorical interpretation in a spiritual sense, must be rejected. In all the passages referred to, save Song of Solomon 2:16 , which must be taken literally, the simile or metaphor is fully stated; the bride is like so and so, or her cheeks are so and so. No one, consequently, could possibly misunderstand them. Here the absence of any indication of simile makes the literal interpretation necessary, and so understood these verses have a perfectly natural and appropriate meaning. The similes referred to are taken in the first instance from surrounding nature, and when the Shulammite’s lover disappears it would be among these surroundings he would disappear.

Taken simply as they stand, the words mean that he has gone back for a time to his ordinary occupations, and she thinks of him as gathering a garland for her as he had often done before. Further, the expression lilqôt shôshannîm is in favour of this view. ‘To pluck lilies’ would be a very strange expression if lilies meant ‘lips’ here. to feed ] i.e. ‘to feed the flock.’

Verses 2, 3. - My beloved is gone down to his garden, to the beds of spices, to feed in the gardens, and to gather lilies. I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine: he feedeth his flock among the lilies. In Ecclesiastes 2:5, 6 Solomon says, "I planted me vineyards; I made me gardens and parks, and I planted trees in them of all kinds of fruit; I made me pools of water, to water therefrom the forest where trees were reared." In Revelation 7:17 it is said, "The Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall be their Shepherd, and shall guide them unto fountains of water of life: and God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes." We can scarcely doubt that the meaning is - The bridegroom is not gone far; he is where he is congenially employed; where his pure and lovely nature finds that which is like itself - beauty and fragrance and innocence. It is his resort, and it corresponds with his perfection. Delitzsch thinks "thoughtfulness and depth of feeling are intended" (cf. Psalm 92:5 ). "His thoughts are very deep." But it would seem more fitting, in the lips of the bride, that she should dwell on the aspects of her beloved which correspond with her own feelings. She is one of the lilies. The king is coming into his garden, and I am ready to receive him. The shepherd among his flock. They are all like lilies, pure and beautiful. The bride has nothing but chaste thoughts of her husband: because she knows that he is hers, and she is his.

Surely such language is not inaptly applied to spiritual uses. Tennyson's lovely poem, 'St. Agnes' Eve,' has caught the spirit of Shulamith. A few of his lines will illustrate this - "The shadows of the convent towersSlant down the snowy sward,Still creeping with the creeping hoursThat lead me to my Lord. Make thou my spirit pure and clearAs are the frosty skies,Or this first snowdrop of the yearThat in my bosom lies. He lifts me to the golden doors;The flashes come and go;All Heaven bursts her starry floors,And strews her lights below, And deepens on and up! the gatesRoll back, and far withinFor me the heavenly Bridegroom waits,To make me pure of sin. The sabbaths of eternity,One sabbath deep and wide,A light upon the shining sea -The Bridegroom with his bride." Song of Solomon 6:2

2 My beloved has gone down into the garden, To the beds of sweet herbs, To feed in the gardens And gather lilies. He is certainly, she means to say, there to be found where he delights most to tarry. He will have gone down - viz. from the palace (Sol 6:11; cf. 1 Kings 20:43 and Esther 7:7) - into his garden, to the fragrant beds, there to feed in his garden and gather lilies (cf. Old Germ. "to collect rsen"); he is fond of gardens and flowers. Shulamith expresses this in her shepherd-dialect, as when Jesus says of His Father (John 15:1), "He is the husbandman." Flowerbeds are the feeding place (vid., regarding לרעות under Sol 2:16) of her beloved. Solomon certainly took great delight in gardens and parks, Ecclesiastes 2:5. But this historical fact is here idealized; the natural flora which Solomon delighted in with intelligent interest presents itself as a figure of a higher Loveliness which was therein as it were typically manifest (cf. Revelation 7:17, where the "Lamb," "feeding," and "fountains of water," are applied as anagogics, i.e., heavenward-pointing types). Otherwise it is not to be comprehended why it is lilies that are named. Even if it were supposed to be implied that lilies were Solomon's favourite flowers, we must assume that his taste was determined by something more than by form and colour.

The words of Shulamith give us to understand that the inclination and the favourite resort of her friend corresponded to his nature, which is altogether thoughtfulness and depth of feeling (cf. under Psalm 92:5, the reference to Dante: the beautiful women who gather flowers representing the paradisaical life); lilies, the emblems of unapproachable grandeur, purity inspiring reverence, high elevation above that which is common, bloom there wherever the lily-like one wanders, whom the lily of the valley calls her own. With the words: