Chapter Four
verses 12-15
You are a garden locked up, my sister, my bride; you are a spring enclosed, a sealed fountain. Your plants are an orchard of pomegranates with choice fruits, with henna and nard, nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with every kind of incense tree, with myrrh and aloes and all the finest spices. You are a garden fountain, a well of flowing water streaming down from Lebanon.
pictures a garden that has walls and is closed off from the intrusion of strangers (the five megilloth) p. 16
One of the most beautiful things and one of the greatest pleasures known to the ancient Near East was a garden—a carefully enclosed and heavily watered plot of ground planted with fragrant plants, blooming bushes, and trees filled with choicest fruits. The inner court of every house had some kind of garden. A few herbs for the kitchen, a grape vine, or a fig tree usually had to suffice. To sit under these trees in peace and to enjoy their fruits without disturbance was the highest from of happiness (1 Kgs 4:25 [5:5]; Mic 4:4) (29) page 169
Solomon is referring to her virginity. If a person has already lost this before marriage a believer can become a new creature in Christ and all sins have been forgiven. It is impossible to become a virgin again, but one can become as one from this point on and enter into all the joys of sexual union at marriage.” (24)
owners of fountains sealed them with clay which quickly hardened in the sun. Thus sealed they became private property. (the five megilloth) p. 16
The list of rare and expensive spices in 4:12-14 reads so much like the bill of goods of a South Arabian caravan merchant that Rabin is tempted to believe that the author put it in as a clue. (20) page 31
Be it what it may, it provides the atmosphere of a period when Indian goods like spikenard, curcuma, and cinnamon, as well as South Arabian goods like incense and myrrh, passed through Judeasin a steady flow of trade. This can hardly relate to the Hellenistic period, when Indian goods were carried by ship and did not pass through Palestine: it sets the Song of Songs squarely in the first Temple period (Rabin, 215).
Solomon is describing the lubricating secretions resulting from the foreplay and needed for intercourse – the lubricating juices have begun to flow in the preparation for intercourse. (24) page 38
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