SONG OF SONGS 8
There is not in the first four verses of this chapter the same sense of nearness and intimacy in the language of the spouse. There is intense desire for the Beloved, and to be on terms of intimate affection with Him, but no present conscious possession. She speaks of what she would do if she had opportunity. The very fact that she wishes He were near of kin to her indicates some sense of disparity, and this we find is particularly in her consciousness as something which might be observed by others. “They would not despise me”. It does not occur to her that He would despise her, but the sense that others might is upon her spirit as a cloud. I do not think this is an uncommon exercise in regard to the liberty which love would desire to enjoy. I believe that if our walk and spirit have not been what we feel they ought to have been there is often a feeling that in the eyes of others we are not entitled to be in nearness of intimacy with Him. This is a humbling experience, but there is a blessing in it if the exercise be fully faced. If I have manifested something that was unworthy of Christ I can free myself righteously from it by acknowledgement. There would be much more liberty for spiritual intercourse in Christian families, and amongst believers generally, if there were greater readiness to confess faults. The pride of the flesh thinks this would lower us, but it would really greatly exalt us in the esteem of our friends and brethren. We all [p. 197] know it to be so. If anyone has had grace enough to confess a fault to us we know that that person has been elevated morally in our regard. Let us ever remember this, if we are tempted to withhold an acknowledgement which is not only righteously due, but which is needed to set our own spirits free from a hampering weight.
But what is suggested by the scriptures before us is that a consciousness that others might despise us may become a restraint on our own liberty in affection with the Lord. Now how is the restraint to be removed? How are we to retain, or regain, freedom with Him? I believe it is by returning to a sense that our title to be free in the liberty of love lies purely in the grace and calling of God. Apart from this we have no title whatever. We have to recognise afresh the first principles of our origin in relation to Christ. We never possessed Him, nor did He possess us, on any other ground than divine grace and calling. It was never a question of our having any title according to the flesh, or that our place and relations were conditional on our good behaviour. We came to be of Christ and in Christ by divine grace and calling, and we became the subjects of divine working that we might learn our own nothingness, and the preciousness of Christ, and have no confidence whatever in the flesh. Now the loss of liberty always implies some departure from the sense of grace, and of the sovereignty of the love that has blessed us. Recovered liberty is brought about by self-judgment and by a return to grace. The Lord has really come in on the line of grace to take up all that existed on our side and to remove it by His death. All that the [p. 198] Spouse longs for in verse 1 has been realised in Christ; He has come in grace into the nearest relation to us in taking up the whole question of our guilt and state as in Adam that we might be blessed through Him and in Him according to grace.
So the spouse would lead Him and bring Him into her mother’s house, and her mother would instruct her (verse 2). Our mother is Jerusalem above (Galatians 4: 26); she is the heavenly system of pure grace. It is as being children of the free-woman that we are free. We appropriate Christ, and are free to love Him and to enjoy His love, not as being able to establish any title in ourselves but as being brought into being by pure grace. We are not the children of a system which recognises anything that is of the flesh. All that she recognises is the fruit of promise; that is, it has come in on God’s part and is altogether of Him according to grace. All now is “according to Spirit”, we derive nothing from flesh or from law. We have no title, and we need no title, in a natural way. All is of grace. The only thing on our side is that we have turned to God, and this was brought about by His grace. But when a sinner turns to God what he gets entirely depends on what God is pleased to give, and He is pleased to give Christ, and to set up the soul eternally in Christ. The divine giving is unimpaired and undiminished after nineteen centuries of church failure. We learn that all is of grace in Galatians, and we learn it, too, in a marvellous way in Ephesians. This is the teaching of our mother. “She would instruct me” (margin) would seem to be the right reading.
The very feeling that there is that in us which might be despised — we might say which ought [p. 199] to be despised — when taken up in divine exercise leads to deepened self-judgment and to our turning more entirely to what is of God in Christ. The self that has been condemned in the cross has to go out altogether. This is the instruction of our mother. Christ has come to our side at the cross, that we might be crucified with Him, and that we might be suitable to Him as a new creation in Christ Jesus. “Christ has set us free in freedom; stand fast therefore” (Galatians 5: 1).
The spouse can say, in verses 2, 3, what she would do if she were free. She would minister to His pleasure and be consciously in His embrace, and she would desire that nothing should disturb the restfulness of his love. But it is to be noticed that all this is in the form of desire or anticipation rather than present experience. An immense amount of true and pious exercise has this character. Perhaps most of us know much better what it is to have spiritual desires after Christ than we know what it is to reach experimentally their full satisfaction! And a great instruction lies in the fact that in verse 6 the spouse is seen coming up from the wilderness, “leaning upon her beloved”, It is not explained how she found Him, but she comes to view — we might say suddenly — in an altogether new character as finding all her support in Him.
The secret of liberty and power lies in being altogether cast upon the grace and support that are to be found in Another. We need a living Person with divine ability to succour and sustain us, and whose love makes Him willing that we should lean wholly upon Him. The wilderness is the place where we are tested and disciplined by the ways of God with us, and where we learn our weakness and the perversity [p. 200] of the flesh. But we also learn dependence there and the grace of the priesthood of Christ. So that we can come up from the wilderness as expressing how our weakness leans on the support of our Beloved. Then the grace and power of Christ come into evidence, though our weakness is so great that we could not take one upward step without Him.
The priestly support of Christ and the power of the Spirit go together. As leaning on our Beloved we walk in the Spirit and do not give place to the flesh. It is a continual exercise to maintain this habit of soul — to walk step by step in the Spirit. The Lord would encourage us in a sense of grace to lean upon Him, so that we may not only be freed from fleshly workings but able to move up from the wilderness into the sphere of divine pleasure. In verse 13 the Beloved can address His spouse as dwelling “in the gardens”. In “the wilderness” we are the subjects of the ways of God, but in “the gardens” we are in the region of divine pleasure. By the support of Christ we can come up from all the exercises of the wilderness to know our place according to divine calling, and according to the purpose of infinite love that chose us in Christ before the world’s foundation.
The exercises of the wilderness are all for profit. Whether it be trial in circumstances, bodily affliction, bereavement, or trials among the brethren, they all come in the ways of God with us, and there is instruction in them all. To go through them with God means that we shall gain something that will be substance and joy in our souls forever. So that when we come up from the wilderness we do not merely get out of its testings but we carry with us positive gain acquired there to God’s glory and praise. When a saint departs to be with Christ he leaves the wilderness behind for ever, but he takes with him all the spiritual gain which he acquired through exercise while a subject of the ways of God in the wilderness.
But it is possible to come up out of the wilderness in spirit, as leaning upon our Beloved, before we actually go out of it by leaving this scene. The Lord’s presence in the midst of the assembly is something quite outside wilderness exercises. If He brings us as His associates, His brethren, into the presence of His Father and His God, now made known to us as our Father and our God, we are, at such a moment, outside the wilderness. Our Beloved supports us so that we may come up with Him into a region which is peculiarly His own, but which is now ours through grace. But in coming there we bring with us all that we have gained spiritually through the exercises of the wilderness. Whatever knowledge of God and of Christ we have acquired as subjects of the ways of God in wilderness conditions will blend eternally with what we enjoy as the fruit of His purposes of love.
We eat the Lord’s supper in the wilderness, but this is that He may come to us, and lead us in company with Himself to God, even the Father. He would have us to enjoy, even while here, our place of association with Him outside all that pertains to the wilderness. But we only reach this as we get His priestly support.
It is rather striking that the explanation of how the spouse came into being is reserved until the last chapter. “I awoke thee under the apple tree: there [p. 202] thy mother brought thee forth; there she brought thee forth that bore thee” (verse 5). The Beloved now reminds her of her origin, and it is important that we should take right account of this. In the early stages of our spiritual history we are conscious of certain experiences, but we have no clear understanding of how entirely we are indebted to grace for every spiritual movement in our souls. A young convert may think that things began on his side, but after a time he comes to see that all was of God from the very beginning. That is so as to new birth, which is the starting point of all spiritual exercise; it is a sovereign movement which results in conviction of sin, repentance, and turning to God.
But our spiritual origin as presented in the verse before us is not exactly new birth or conversion. The thought here is not quite that we are begotten of God, though that is, of course, true, but that we have been brought forth by a mother. We need to understand this. Paul speaks in Galatians 4 of two mothers, one a maid-servant and the other a free woman, and he shews that these two mothers represent two systems, one marked by bondage and the other by liberty. One is the legal system connected with Sinai; the other is a spiritual system of grace and liberty which is spoken of as “Jerusalem above”; and Paul says of the latter, “which is our mother”. And he adds further, “So then, brethren, we are not maid-servants’ children, but children of the free woman” (Galatians 4: 22 - 31).
The legal system could never bring forth the spouse; it could not minister the love of Christ, nor could it, form affections responsive in liberty to Christ. It [p. 203] needed an altogether different mother to bring about such a result, and that mother is “Jerusalem above”. “Jerusalem which is now” which “is in bondage with her children” represents earthly religion, which can be taken up by man in the flesh, but which only results in bondage, for the man who takes it up can never answer to the claims which it makes upon him. But “Jerusalem above” is a new and heavenly metropolis; it represents all that is the fruit of divine promise, all that has come in as being purely of God in His grace, and all that is “according to Spirit” in contrast with what is “according to flesh”. It is a free city, and its children are free-born. “Christ has set us free in freedom; stand fast therefore, and be not held again in a yoke of bondage” (Galatians 5: 1).
When we turn to God we find that He is prepared to do everything for us, to forgive our sins, to give us Christ as our righteousness, and His Holy Spirit to seal and indwell us. There is a blessed system of grace, comprising all that God has ever committed Himself to in promise, and which has all taken form now in a risen and glorified Christ. And the Spirit is now given to those who believe, so that He may be counted on and not the flesh. The system which is characterised by all this is our mother. Everything which forms our thoughts, desires, affections, is of God and of grace; we are brought forth under the influence of a system which confers infinite and everlasting good. The knowledge of what God bestows in grace and love is the basis in our souls of the affections which characterise the spouse.
Our mother brought us forth “under the apple tree”, and the Beloved awoke us there. “The apple tree” is undoubtedly a figure of Christ. See chapter 2: 3. As brought forth by our mother, and awakened by Christ, we find ourselves under His shadow. That is, we realise that as to all our relations with God, and God’s relations with us in grace, it is no question at all of what came in by Adam, but of what has come in by Christ. What an awakening for the soul, when it realises for the first time that God has intervened, and has brought in a new Head for men, who is not the source of death and condemnation but who is a Tree of life! Everything in the history of the world is as nothing compared with the coming in of Christ, and with what was secured thereby through His death. And all that came in subsists in Him; it is no question now of what ought to be, but of what is. Every thought of God in blessing for us is set forth in Christ. But we only realise it as “brought forth”, and divinely awakened. As natural men we do not appreciate Christ; if we did, it would prove that we were not fallen, but that even by nature we could value what was of God. It is as those “brought forth” and awakened that we realise the blessedness of Christ. “The law was given by Moses: grace and truth subsists through Jesus Christ” (John 1: 17). It not, only came in in perfection, but it subsists in perfection, and we have nothing outside Christ. “Of his fulness we all have received, and grace upon grace”. How happy it is, and how glorifying to God, to know that He has brought in every blessing for us from His own side in the free and sovereign action of His love, and He has secured it all in Christ, and now we are divinely awakened to see it, and to praise Him for it!
[p. 205] When this liberty is known the heart is free to engage itself with the love of Christ, and verses 6, 7, develop the appreciation of that love. It is a necessity to the heart that loves Christ to be assured of a permanent place in the affections of the Beloved. Nothing could be more destructive of all true Christian affection than any degree of uncertainty as to our place in the love of Christ. A seal upon His heart and arm is a permanent pledge of love and service, and nothing less than this will satisfy the spouse. She is conscious that the seal which will secure her permanently must be on His heart and arm. If all the relations between Him and His loved ones began on His side, as they surely did, they must subsist and be maintained in the faithfulness of His love. “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you”. And nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.
The Spirit is a divine seal upon us, indicating that we are secured for God eternally, but here the spouse will not be content without knowing that she is set as a seal upon the heart and arm of her Beloved. There is a sense in her heart that if He sets her there her place is secured in His affections and service eternally. She counts upon the fidelity of His love to do this, as knowing that His love has already met all the power of death. “For love is strong as death”. “No one has greater love than this, that one should lay down his life for his friends”. And the Son of God has done this. His love is of such a character that it would go through everything, even death itself. He will never cease to love us and serve us; our names are upon His heart and on His shoulder even as the names of the tribes were in the breast-plate [p. 206] and on the shoulders of the high priest. Each name was “engraved as a seal” (Exodus 28: 21). How plainly does it suggest the thought of indelibility! Nothing can ever remove the saints from their permanent place as objects of the love and service of Christ. How the sense of this binds up our affections with Him!
“Love is strong as death” would, I think, set forth how firmly He holds His loved ones. Death holds those who come into its embrace with a grip which will not yield to any creature power. And the love of Christ will never relax its hold upon those whom the Father has given to Him. (See John 10: 27 - 29).
Then jealousy, as known in Christ, is very wondrous. Such is the intensity of His love that any thought of a rival which would steal our hearts away from Him is intolerable to Him. How hateful to Him is every influence that corrupts the affections of those who are espoused as a chaste virgin to Him! (2 Corinthians 11: 1 - 3). His exhortations, warnings, convictings, and discipline all express the jealousy of His love. It comes out in innumerable dealings which are sometimes of a very searching character. “Flashes of fire, flames of Jah”, remind us that the chapter in the New Testament which speaks much of divine chastening ends with the solemn statement, “For also our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12). But there is ever behind all the divine ways, however searching and severe they may be, the burning power of an unquenchable love. That love is against all the influences that tend to divert us; it ever acts to consume and destroy them; but this is to liberate us from their power, that we may enjoy, and respond to, the love of Christ.
“[p. 207] Many waters cannot quench love, neither do the — floods drown it”. Divine love is superior to the most adverse influences. Nothing that men or Satan can do can overcome it. Think of the history of the church — the history even of true believers! Even in the Lord’s loved disciples when He was here there was unbelief, self-seeking, and self-confidence, but His love burned on; it could not be quenched. There has been much in every one of us that would have quenched any other love but His. But it is unquenchable and eternal, and He loves us with the same intensity this minute as when He gave Himself for us upon the cross. Blessed be His Name!
We need to think much of the intensely personal character of the love of the Son of God. No giving of substance could really either express or procure love. “Even if a man gave all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned”. There must be in some way the giving of the person himself, the disclosure of his own heart, to truly win the affections of another. And this has been done in the fullest way, in the highest degree, by the Son of God. “The Son of God, who has loved me and given himself for me” (Galatians 2: 20). “Hereby we have known love, because he has laid down his life for us” (1 John 3: 16). We were individually in His heart when He was upon the cross. There is a general aspect of His death, in which He died for all, and gave Himself a ransom for all. But when we think of the elect — of those given to Him by the Father — there was something directly personal about His giving Himself. It was for each one individually; each believer can say, “Who has loved me”. He has given far more than “the substance of his house”; ‘He has given’ Himself. Anything short of this would have been inadequate to express His love, or to procure love for Him. As we realise that we are thus personally loved by the Son of God, we must love Him. His giving of Himself cannot be “contemned” by any heart that really knows it. If we retired more into the contemplation of His personal love to us, and the self-sacrifice to which it moved Him, it would have a marvellous effect upon us. He would have us to think of it, to cherish it, as a precious and personal reality. This would form affections suitable to His spouse.
Verse 8 introduces “a little sister”. This is no doubt a reference to Israel as being, as yet, diminutive in stature and undeveloped in affection for the Messiah. But we might not have to go far to find believers whose state corresponds more with that of the “little sister” than it does with that of the spouse. We noticed in the previous chapter that the stature of the spouse is compared with a palm-tree, and in verse 10 of this chapter she says, “My breasts like towers”. She is viewed as having come to full stature, and as having affections completely developed. But the “little sister” — though recognised as the subject of divine working, and thus morally kindred with the spouse — is little in stature, and unformed in her affections. It is to be feared that many are in this case today, and this makes the question “What shall we do for our sister”; a very important and urgent one. How is this condition to be remedied?
We are taught here that the development of spiritual affections can only be brought about by the addition to the soul of that which has spiritual value. It does [p. 209] no good to tell people that they ought to have breasts if they have none. Something must be added to them. This is suggested by the “turret of silver” and the “boards of cedar” (verse 9). Paul laboured to add what was of divine value to the saints (Romans 1: 11; 1 Corinthians 2: 13; Colossians 1: 24; Ephesians 2: 3; Ephesians 3: 1 - 12; 1 Thessalonians 3: 10; 2 Timothy 2: 10; Hebrews 6: 1).
“If she be a wall” suggests that those represented by the “little sister” are marked, at any rate, by features of separation from the world, and by making some stand against the evil which surrounds them. Such features mark all those who are the subjects of a work of God; but there may be this without “breasts”; that is to say, spiritual affections may not yet be formed. To be “a wall” is good; it is ever necessary; it marks, in a very distinctive way, the holy city of Revelation 21. But though the city has “a great and high wall” she has other features also; she is “the bride, the Lamb’s wife”, which indicates that she is formed in the affections suitable to that relationship. Now these are lacking in the verse before us, and the Spirit suggests how the defect may be remedied.
“We will build upon her a turret of silver”. Being “a wall” conveys the thought that the fear of God has place in the soul, leading to separation from what is evil. But this is not sufficient. It is needful that there should be added the knowledge of the very precious character which attaches to saints as set up in the grace of redemption. If spiritual affections are not developed it will be found that souls need to have added to them a sense of how they have been secured for the pleasure of God through what has [p. 210] been wrought by the Lord Jesus Christ. “A turret of silver” is not a foundation, like the silver sockets under the boards of the tabernacle, but it is an elevated and conspicuous feature. It implies that the “little sister” will be enriched with a precious sense of all the divine favour that rests upon her as redeemed. Redemption was a very precious thought in the history of Israel (Exodus 15: 13). The “right of redemption” was brought out in a typical way in Leviticus 25: 25 - 34, and illustrated beautifully in the history of Ruth. And in a coming day Israel, who has forfeited everything, will be brought back into fullest blessing as the redeemed of Jehovah. I think it will be found that there are more references to redemption in the book of Isaiah than in any other book of the Bible. God will make Israel conspicuous in the earth as a redeemed people, and they will be divinely taught that they owe it all to what was wrought by their rejected Messiah when He went into death for them. This will make Him very precious in their sight; affection for Him will be developed in them. The prophecy of Isaiah, when taken up in faith by Israel in the day when her heart turns to the Lord, will build “a turret of silver” upon her. That will be “the day when she shall be spoken for” by the eternal Lover whom she has slighted so long.
But in the meantime the Spirit of God is adding to those who fear God amongst the Gentiles a blessed consciousness that they stand, through faith in Christ, in all the value of redemption. All has been effected at the cost of the blessed God and His beloved Son, “in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of offences, according to the riches of his grace” (Ephesians 1: 7). As redeemed we are set free from all vain religious observances or traditions (1 Peter 1: 18, 19). Christ has redeemed us out of the curse of the law; the blessing of Abraham has come to us in Christ Jesus, and we have received the promise of the Spirit through faith (Galatians 3: 13, 14). We are redeemed that we might receive sonship, and have the Spirit of God’s Son in our hearts, crying, Abba, Father (Galatians 4: 4 - 6). All this would answer, I think, to the “turret of silver”, and it would be impossible to have this built upon us without having the effect of developing new and holy affections. Response to God and to Christ depends on our apprehension of how Divine Persons are toward us, and the ground on which we are with Them as having redemption in Christ. Nothing could really be more affecting to the heart.
“And if she be a door, we will enclose her with boards of cedar”. Israel should have been, and is intended yet to be, a door by which men could enter into the knowledge of God. We know how miserably they failed to be this. Then Christ became the true Door (John 10), and by Him access to God, and to divine blessing, was possible in the fullest way. But God has not given up the thought of His people being also “a door” through which men may pass into the knowledge of Himself, They have that place as representing the God whom no one has seen at any time, but who abides in His children as loving one another (1 John 4: 12).
But to be truly “a door” in this sense there must be features of spiritual adornment. There must be formation in the divine nature, and God’s people [p. 212] must be beautified by being brought into correspondence with Himself, through having a more full and blessed knowledge of Him. In 1 Corinthians Paul had to say, “Some are ignorant of God: I speak to you as a matter of shame” (1 Corinthians 15: 34). He had spoken to them in chapter 1 of their place in Christ Jesus, and in chapter 2 he had referred to the Holy Spirit as giving capacity to know the things which have been freely given to us of God. In this, and in the epistle generally, he had been building upon them “a turret of silver”. But, recognising their deficiency in the knowledge of God, he writes a second epistle which might be regarded as enclosing them with “boards of cedar”. The glory of the Lord as the Mediator of the new covenant is seen to be a transforming power, and the thought of new creation being brought in, as connected with being in Christ, introduces a region where all things are of God. The saints are not only to know the blessedness of their place as having redemption in Christ Jesus, but they are to be beautified, so that the knowledge of God may be more fully set forth in them.
Moses prayed, “Let the beauty of Jehovah our God be upon us” (Psalm 90: 17), and the prophets contain many declarations of how God will beautify His people. “Boards of cedar” suggest ornamentation and attractiveness. Through the knowledge of redemption God lays a basis of righteousness in the souls of His people. They learn His righteousness through redemption, and there is a moral formation in their souls accompanying this, so that they become ashamed of things which they once took pleasure in. As under grace the work is always progressing so [p. 213] that we should all probably feel very sorry to do now what we did with a good conscience a few years ago. The putting off the old man and putting on the new, “which according to God is created in truthful righteousness and holiness”, is the basis of this, like the stone in Solomon’s temple. But then the atone was covered with cedar, indicating the addition of features which are spiritually beautiful. The saints are beautified as such features appear in them as are seen in Romans 12; 1 Corinthians 13; and Colossians 3: 12 - 15. There we see what answers to “boards of cedar”.
We have referred to the prophecy of Isaiah as presenting what corresponds with “a turret of silver”. And I think we can also see in that book how God intends to beautify His people. See chapter 4: 2, 3; 28: 5; 35: 2; 41: 19, 20; 60: 1 - 3. When Jehovah’s glory is seen on His people they will be truly adorned with that which, like the cedar, comes from a higher region. And as we increase in the knowledge of God, spiritual affections are developed. We could not “grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ”, without “breasts” being formed.
“Yet sure, if in Thy presence
My soul still constant were,
Mine eye would, more familiar,
Its brighter glories bear.
And thus Thy deep perfections
Much better should I know,
And with adoring fervour
In this Thy nature grow”.
In verse 10 the spouse is able to say, “I am a wall, and my breasts like towers”. She can secure [p. 214] all that is of God in holy separation, and along with that her affections are fully developed. “Then was I in his eyes as one that findeth peace”. She is conscious that He is entirely complacent in her; there is no adverse element present.
In verses 11, 12 the thought of “a vineyard” is introduced, and this brings in the subject of responsible service. This subject does not take a prominent place in this book, but it is not altogether omitted, because true affection for the Lord will always bear it in mind. The book is almost entirely taken up with what the Lord is to us, and what we are to Him. But when this is known and answered to there will be the desire to serve Him, to do something for Him. And He is seen here as the true Solomon who has a vineyard at Baal-hamon, which means, “Master of a multitude”. It suggests the sphere of His Lordship in the kingdom, and the multitude of individuals who are His responsible servants under His authority there. So that this is not quite the same thought as the spouse, though we shall see her attitude in relation to it in verse 12. But this is a vineyard let out to keepers, for which everyone has to bring a thousand silver-pieces. There is in the kingdom an allotted service for each one, and a prescribed return for each one to make to the Master of the vineyard. I take it that “a thousand silver-pieces” represent a full return according to Solomon’s expectations and His due. It is not left open here for each one to bring according to his ability or his diligence, as in the parables of the talents and the pounds (Matthew 25 and Luke 19). Here it is the full and prescribed return which will [p. 215] be brought when Christ is truly owned as Master. If you and I take up our allotted place in His vineyard, and serve Him there normally, just as we are responsible to serve Him, we shall get a full portion of “the fruit thereof”, and He will get “a thousand silver-pieces” from each of us. One may be called to preach, another to lie on a sick bed, but each has his bit of the vineyard to cultivate, and if each fulfils the allotted service, each will enjoy the fruit, and each will bring “a thousand silver-pieces”. Both the keepers and the Master will have a full portion. The great thing is to allow the Master to have His place and way with each of us, and to remember that we are keepers of His vineyard. Whether individually, or in our homes, or in business, or in the meetings, we are always under responsibility to serve Him. And in doing so we gather much fruit, and are able to bring what is due to Him. The knowledge of God in grace is committed to us, that we may cultivate it, and secure the fruit of it for our joy, so that in result there may be a return for Him who brought it to us.
Then the spouse also has a vineyard (verse 12) which is before her; that is, it is the object of her attention. And on her part, out of her own free affection, she dedicates to Solomon a thousand silver-pieces from her vineyard. Her affections are equal to His claim. If He claims a thousand from His vineyard He shall not have one less from hers. Here we see love equal to responsibility — a truly happy state of things! If our hearts know how to take up all that appeals to affection in this wonderful part of Scripture we shall become witnesses to the fact [p. 216] that love is very practical. Love alone will yield in the place of responsibility all that is due, but will yield it not simply because it is due, but because of the pleasure love finds in yielding it. This seems to be the force of the spouse saying, “The thousand silver-pieces be to thee, Solomon”. Affection dedicates to Him a full return, so that He can receive it, not merely as being due, but as being gladly and freely accorded to Him by the love of His spouse. We see here how everything that pertains to responsibility can be rendered in the affections of the bride. So that service in the sphere of responsibility can be carried on as blended with bridal affection. May we know more what it is to take up things in this way!
Then the spouse recognises, too, the principle that obtains in the kingdom of recompense for labour. “And to the keepers of its fruit, two hundred”. Nothing is more plainly set forth in Scripture than the fact that all labour will have its sure and full reward. No one ever did anything in faithfulness to the Lord who will not receive full recompense. In a spiritual sense the recompense is given now; in a public sense it will be given at the judgment seat of Christ. And even recompense will be awarded on the principle of grace. I believe everyone who receives a reward will be conscious that he receives far more than he deserved. The spouse, it seems to me, has entered into this in declaring that the keepers would receive “two hundred”. In verse 11 there is nothing about the keepers getting anything except the fruit. There it is a question of an assigned responsibility and a prescribed return. But in verse [p. 217] 12 it is what the spouse dedicates in love, and its being enlarged herself she can enter into the largeness of divine thoughts even as to recompense. “And then shall each have his praise from God” (1 Corinthians 4: 5). It will go beyond what is due, and it is the pleasure of God that it should do so.
Then the closing verses return to the personal relations of the spouse and the Beloved. She now dwells “in the gardens”. No longer in the wilderness, she is in the place of privilege and pleasure. The companions hearken to her voice; Hr would hear it also. That is important, as being His final word to the object of His love. We may have a pleasant dwelling; and we may say much that the brethren hear, but how much do we say that is directly and personally said to Him, so that He can hear it as something that was meant for Him alone? It is n final word to remind His spouse that her chief concern should be to speak to HIM in accents of personal love. I am sure we need this word. Personal intercourse with Him is perhaps more lacking than anything else. But He longs for it more than for anything else. He would like to have an expression of love from us that is purely for Himself.
He gets it in the last verse. She calls Him to “Haste”! He is absent as yet; but she longs for His presence. It is the Old Testament counterpart to, “And the Spirit and the bride say, Come”. She would have Him to come quickly, to remove the desert conditions that have so long prevailed. She knows that the result of His coming will be to change this sin-blighted scene of thorns and briars so that everything will be fragrant beneath His feet. The [p. 218] earth will be for the pleasure of its Creator, and rich odours will be wafted from “the mountains of spices”. It is the millennial prospect, as longed for by the bride of the Lamb — Himself its glory and its crown, as He is already hers. This precious book leaves upon our hearts, as a final impression, that the Lord is coming. The divine intent of the book is that our hearts should be prepared to bid Him “Haste”! He has said, “Yea, I come quickly”. May we truly say, “Amen; come, Lord Jesus”!