It is not here, then, the Lamb rejected on earth and glorified in another scene. That is what we who are Christians are looking for, and, consequently, now we are willing to follow Him—glad to follow Him in His path of rejection. But in the case before us it is another thing, and so we find a beautiful picture of what is to be, what belongs to Him. Threescore valiant men surround—of the valiant men of Israel. “They all hold swords, being expert in war: every man hath his sword upon his thigh because of fear in the night"; for you see it is not yet the day. You must remember that. She is expecting, and looking for the day. You find her here, but it is a vision of the night. She is on her bed, so when she does go forth it is from her bed, and so on. It is not yet the day. The day is expected, looked for, counted on; but not yet come.
“King Solomon” —for there again it is the king— “King Solomon made himself a chariot of the wood of Lebanon. He made the pillars thereof of silver.” There was grace there. “The bottom thereof of gold” —divine righteousness—just as much indeed for Israel as for us. It is no question of man's righteousness at any time. “The covering of it of purple” —as suits a royal personage. “The midst thereof being paved with love, for the daughters of Jerusalem.” I need not say that the groundwork of it all is love. “Go forth, O ye daughters of Zion, and behold king Solomon with the crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals, and in the day of the gladness of his heart.” It is anticipative: He is not yet come; but that is what He is to be when He comes for her. Thus you see it is not at all the scene of one taken away into heaven: that is not the point at all. It is one coming—coming to the earth.
It is one that is crowned here; and again you observe the mother reappears, for her heart is different now. When He was here what had she for Him. No heart at all, none whatever, not even Jerusalem—not even that which ought to have been an answer to His love as His earthly bride. On the contrary, if there was any difference between Israel as, a whole and Jerusalem in particular, Jerusalem was the hottest of all against the King—against the Lord Jesus. But when this day comes His mother reappears. Always remember that it is not the bride: it is His, mother that comes out here. That is, it is not the bride only.
Now when we look at the New Testament, where we have the heavenly bride, we have the Father, but no mother. Why the Father there, and the mother here? Because for us, all is divine in its source. The Father—the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ—He is the One that is our God and our Father. But the mother is connected more with nature. The Father of Christ, who is the source of everything, is the One that gives us our place and being and relationship; but not the mother. We find here Israel's connection as the mother, so that I think there need not be a doubt on the part of any person who is open to conviction. Of course I am entirely hopeless of convincing those that will not be convinced. But I think that those that are willing to face the word of God need have no question whatever left in their souls as to the true intended bearing of this beautiful book.
Let no one suppose that I mean from this that we are not entitled to take all the love of it, for indeed we are. If Christ has, or will have, such love for them, how much more for us—for ours is much more, what I may call, a settled love: I mean a love that flows out of an already established—and divinely established—relationship. In their case it is a relationship that is going to be established. I grant that there is a certain beauty in the affections that proceed, but they are not of the same kind. They are greatly associated with the hope, whereas in our case it is not merely that. Ours is the present conscious lore of the Lord Jesus, and not exercises through which we pass in order to know that that love rests upon us. We may need them. If there be anything that hinders there must be exercises to deal with it and get rid of it; but that is not the proper state of a Christian person.
In the next chapter (4) we see how the Lord works to draw out the love of His people. And here we have a beautiful address which faith will lay hold of in the day that is coming. They will know that it is the Messiah that says this of them, and it will be full of comfort. “Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves' eyes within thy locks: thy heir is as a flock of goats that appear from mount Gilead.” And so he dwells upon her personal grace and beauty. Well, I am not going to enter, of course; into the details of this, but everything; is taken up that belonged to herself expressly. Not what she did: it was not her doings, because that is not the thing that sets the heart perfectly at rest. We cannot be always doings, and we may be very often too self-reproached because of the poverty of our doings, and if the love be to ourselves personally—if the love be told out, and told out not as a mere matter of feeling, not as a passing vision of anything of that kind; but if it be the unmovable, the immutable word of God, how blessed are the souls that are awakened to say, That is His language to me, that is what He feels about us. Well, this is what will be brought home to their heart in that day. You will notice the difference.
She speaks also. There is the interchange of affection on the part of the bride towards the Bridegroom. But I will point out one very marked and, I think, striking difference, and that is—that when He speaks He always speaks to her; when she speaks she speaks of Him, but not to Him. Now that is exactly what it should be. One can feel the propriety of this, and how perfectly suited it is in the relationship in which they stand, because what she wants is to know that such an one as He—that One so holy—that One so Perfect could love one who had been brought (in the very first chapter) to own that she had been the very reverse. Still grace had wrought, and she knew that grace had wrought, and she did not deny it. But still she wanted to know what He felt. And He speaks out; He lets her know.
The first half of the chapter then is occupied with the Bridegroom telling the bride how beautiful she was in His eyes. The latter part of it is something else, and that is it is fully knowing, fully appreciating the danger in which she found herself—the snares and the enemies that surrounded her. That is the meaning of the word “Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse, with me from Lebanon” (ver. 8), and this is explained still more where he goes on to say, “Look from the top of Amana, from the top of Shenir and Hermon, from the lions' dens.”
There is nothing in scripture without a blessed meaning, and in perfect grace towards the reader of the Bible who counts upon God's opening His word. “From the lions' dens, from the mountains of the leopards.” These are images clearly of the greatest possible danger. They signify that she had been, so to speak, in the lions' den. And so she had. The images show that she was surrounded by these most cruel enemies that are so eager to seize upon their prey. “From the mountains of the leopards.” And so she had been in the mountains of the leopards! But, “Come with me.” He calls her away—gives her the certainty of deliverance; for who is He? Is not He entitled to do so? Can He fail? Impossible. It is not, therefore, merely a cry from her heart. That is not the character of it. It is not herself bemoaning her danger. It is not herself praying therefore to be delivered “from the lions' dens, and from the mountains of the leopards,” but it is He who feels for her—He who knows it all infinitely better than she. It is He who says, “Come with me from Lebanon.” There is no reproach.
How did she get there? Departed from Him! How was she found in the mountains of the leopards? Was He there? Not at all. Did she go there to find Him? It was her self-will. It was her evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God. It was that which had done the mischief for Jerusalem; it was that which had scattered the Jew to every part of the world. There they had been, no doubt, and even then they will be suffering, although they will be back in Jerusalem, as I suppose, when this Song of Solomon applies. They will be again in the mere place—the scene, but not yet in the conscious favor and under the glorious protection of Jehovah. Far from that. The lions and the leopards will still have to do with them, although they may not be any longer scattered among the Gentiles, but the lion and the leopard will have their hand over them. They will have their paw, so to speak, over them still. For, as we know, it is exactly in that way—as the beast—that the Gentile powers are described in the prophets. And I refer to this as an evident link of connection between this book and, I might say, the Psalms also; but the Psalms relate more to individual dealings. There is one Psalm, the 45th, and there may be other allusions, which form a kind of transition-link between the Book of Psalms and this wonderful Song of Songs. In that Psalm we have the bride, and the very same bride that is spoken of here. I only throw out this hint, by the way, as possibly helping souls who may not have considered it adequately.
Well then, the Lord pursues this second address, this invitation to come away from all these evil and dangerous surroundings and again speaks of what she is to Him. A very sweet word is added here—that after He had spoken of her as in the den of the lions and the mountains of the leopards, He should still say, “Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb: honey and milk are under thy tongue; and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon” (ver. 11.) It is just in keeping with the same spirit, only a little stronger than what we find in the prophets; that is, that whereas Jerusalem will have really been discarded as the unfaithful wife, the Lord will look upon her more as in the sorrows of a widow. That is, He will not reproach her with her being a repudiate because a guilty woman, but He will speak of her with tenderness and mercy as in the sorrows and weeds of widowhood.
Then in the next chapter (5.) we have a further experience through which she passes, particularly in the second verse. The first verse rather belongs to the chapter before.
“I sleep.” It is still the same thought: it is night. “I sleep, but my heart waketh; it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled.” It is not His actual coming. This is what passed through her soul. This is what she sees, as it were, in the vision of the night. It is not, as yet, His coming in the morning. It is not that. He will come in the morning without clouds, but I repeat, you must always bear in mind that the morning has not yet come. This is, therefore, what passes through her heart which is filled with longing desire for His coming in the bright day. So here she, as it were, hears His voice, and she shows that her heart is by no means fitted, as yet, for His return for this is the excuse— “I have put off my coat; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them?” That is, though God's love was brought before her soul, instead of there being an answer at once by going forth to meet Him, she makes excuses why she cannot go, and why she cannot take the trouble to open the door, for that was all that was needed. So “My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door.” There is still an appeal to her, but there is that which is intended to produce self-judgment in her. She, as it were, says that He lingers, that He does not at once turn His back upon one that so ill-requited His love. “My beloved put in His hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him.”
There was real affection, although there was not any right answer to His. “I rose up to open to my beloved; and my hands dropped with myrrh, and my fingers with sweet-smelling myrrh, upon the handles of the lock. I opened to my beloved, but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone: my soul failed when he spite: I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave no answer.” It was the needed rebuke for Israel—for Jerusalem. It was making her feel that this occupation with herself or her circumstances, this lack of freshness of heart in going forth to meet Him was what she had to rebuke herself for; and so, now that she has come to her senses, to feel the wrong that she had done to His love, she goes, and she calls; and she searches for Him once more. “The watchmen that went about the city found me; they smote me.” Now, you see, it is worse. On the former occasion they could give her no direction to find Him whom her soul loved, but now they smote her, for what business had she to be out at that time of night? And so they smote her. “The keepers of the walls took away my vail from me.”
It was no doubt because of the, reality of her affection, and her desire to find the One that she loved, but still it was out of season: it was out of place and they, at any rate, dealt with that. Thus the very desire she had to find the Bridegroom brought her into a false position. So she says, “I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved, that ye tell him that I am sick of love.” And here then we find fresh persons—not the watchman, but her companions; Jerusalem will not be alone. There will be others: there will be others awakening at that time to whom she can speak, so to say. And, accordingly, say they, “What is thy beloved more than another beloved, O thou fairest among women? What is thy beloved more than another beloved that thou dost so charge us?” Now comes what I referred to—her confession of the beauty of the Bridegroom. You see it is not said to Him. Now you see all her heart goes out in speaking of the Bridegroom. She speaks well of the Lord. She is not ashamed to tell about Him. It is not now merely that she loved Him, but who He was, and what He was, whom she loved, are what come out in the rest of the chapter.
[W.K.]