Bible Commentaries

Song of Solomon 7:1. How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, oh prince’s daughter! We find the term “king’s daughter,” in Psalms 45:13. The church has assurance that the Lord her Maker is her husband. She and her children are the sole heirs of the kingdom. The “feet,” the walk of the church, is beautiful in all the paths of righteousness. Wisdom, virtue and glory, are greater beauties than the splendour and decorations of nuptial dresses. Delicacy, as well as propriety, obliges us to restrict the words thighs, navel, and belly solely to the outward splendour of dress, which the whole succession of commentators turn to the beauty of holiness, the divine adornings of the church.

Song of Solomon 7:4. Thine eyes are like the fishpools in Heshbon; two lakes on the same descending stream, whose beauty augmented the cosmography of the country. Those waters which reflected the glory of the sun by day, and the pale beauty of the moon by night, swell supremely the powers of figurative language in describing the brightness of the eye. So Christ is delighted with the chrystal aspects of a church that reflects his glory, and looks to him alone.—Thy nose is as the tower of Lebanon. Here again we must rebut the carnal wisdom of Arian writers, who say that this song describes the seven happy days of Solomon’s marriage with Pharaoh’s daughter; for Solomon did not build this tower till about the twentieth year of his reign. This far-famed tower, the ornament of the country by its elevation, by its symmetry and its beauty, might, in its just proportions, bear a comparison with the nose of a beautiful face; yet we must look higher, to the towers and bulwarks of Zion, whose glory was the Lord, and whose defence were hosts of angels.

Song of Solomon 7:7. Thy stature is like to a palm-tree, as described in Exodus 15.; and thy breasts are like clusters of grapes. The breasts in the superior formations of a female, are among the first beauties of nature; and in the church, the breast of consolation nourishes her children; who are also fed with grapes, and with all the rich fruits of the garden of the Lord.

Song of Solomon 7:9. The best wine—causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak. The presence of the bridegroom gives a new countenance to the church. The saints go forth as giants refreshed with new wine. His love constrains the heart to sing, and the tongue to speak. The love of Christ shed abroad in the heart is the flame of evangelical preaching. We love his name, we love his work, we love his people.

Song of Solomon 7:10. I am my beloved’s. I am his spouse and his garden, in which he delights. Therefore I am bold to say, let us go forth into the fields, and survey all the enlivened scenery of nature, perfumed with the balm of spring; the tendrils of the grape, the beautiful bud of the pomegranate, and smell the fragrant mandrake. Let us go forth and see all nature, full of the goodness, power and love of God; preparing the early and the latter fruits of the earth to nourish all the living beings that people the whole face of the terrestrial globe. He gives us cooling fruits in summer, and the more substantial food for winter.

REFLECTIONS.

The spiritual intercourse which subsists between Christ and the church, and the holy breathings of a devout mind, form the foundation of rational happiness, and inspire the most delicate and enlivened sentiments of devotion that can be conceived. These are pleasures not tasted by the gay and giddy world. Their joys are the gusts of passion, and the blaze which expires in a moment. By an ungracious look, or an angry word, they are often changed into the greatest misery.

How happy is the devout husband and wife, joined in the Lord, as well as in the flesh. The spiritual conversation they enjoy on earth, shall he renewed and completed in heaven. Death, which takes the one before the other, occasions but a pause, and he shall soon rejoin us to those dear parts of ourselves, where that which is imperfect shall be done away, and where pure felicity shall for ever reign.