Song of Solomon 7:8-9

Notes

Song of Solomon 7:9. And the roof of thy mouth like the best wine for my beloved, that goeth down sweetly, causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak. ‘For my beloved,’ לְדוֹדִי le-dhodhi. Understood by ABEN EZRA, SANCTIUS, and many moderns, as a sudden interruption by the Bride. So ROSENMÛLLER, DELITZSCH, NOYES, &c. Spoken by the Bride, who takes up the king’s words to continue the description, shewing that she fully responded to his love. ZÖCKLER. Viewed by many as spoken, like the preceding, by the virgin-attendants, one speaking in the name of the rest, or the whole choir considered as one person. M. STUART. The virgins viewed, like the Bride, as both one and many, and claiming the Bride’s beloved for their own. So MERCER, AINSWORTH, and others. DURHAM. ‘For my special friends;’ or as personating the Bride in an abrupt expression of her love to the Bridegroom. Some, like the SEPTUAGINT, connect the expression with הוֹלֵךְ (holech) ‘that goeth,’ and either translate ‘that goeth pleasantly,’ as PISCATOR, JUNIUS and TREMELLIUS, PERCY, and BOOTHROYD; or, ‘that goeth towards my beloved,’ or, ‘that goeth down for my beloved,’ as DE WETTE, HAHN, and others; or, ‘for my friends;’ or, ‘sent to those whom I love;’ as PATRICK and WILLIAMS. EWALD would put the word in brackets, as probably an error of the transcribers, but long before the Masorites, as only wanting in one of Kennico’s MSS. (715), and that, perhaps, by oversight. HOUBIGANT conjectures לחכי ‘to my palate,’ as the original word. GLASSIUS supposes it to be used euphonically for לְדוֹדִיס as chap. Song of Solomon 8:2; 2 Kings 11:19. SEPTUAGINT. That goeth to my beloved. VULGATE. Worthy of my beloved to drink. So WICKLIFFE and the DOUAI VERSION. LUTHER. That enters my beloved. MARTIN. In favour of my beloved DIODATI. Which goes to my friend. DUTCH VERSION. To my beloved ones.

‘That goeth down sweetly,’ הוֹלֵךְ (לְדוֹדִי) לְמֵישָׁרִים holech (le-dhodhì) lemesharim. Literally: ‘That goeth to or for my beloved, to or in straightness, or straightly.’ מֵישָׁרִים the plural of מֵישָׁר (mes’ar) straight; with the prefix לְ to or for,—straightly or directly. So GESENIUS and EWALD. Smoothly, or ‘according to evenness.’ ZÖCKLER and DE WETTE. Smoothly, that is, pleasantly. WEISS. That goeth to him directly and ultroneously, as entirely belonging to him. SANCTIUS. Some connect לְמֵישָׁרִים, not with הוֹלֵךְ but with לְדוֹדִי ‘those whom I love for their uprightness.’ So WILLIAMS. Or, ‘whom I love uprightly,’ i.e., from the heart. So RASHI. SEPTUAGINT: Going to my beloved straightly (εἰς εὐθύτητα). VULGATE, perhaps reading למשתים: Worthy for my beloved to drink. LUTHER. Which enters my beloved smoothly. DIODATI. Which goes directly to my friend. CRANMER and GENEVA BIBLE. Which goeth straight to my well-beloved. DUTCH. Which goeth right to my beloved ones. MONTANUS and MERCER. Carrying itself rightly. MUNSTER. Going by straight ways. PAGNINUS Going directly. JUNIUS and TREMELLIUS. Most rightly. COCCEIUS. Flowing to my beloved most smoothly. AINSWORTH. So delicious that it goes down glibly. FRY. Moving to my beloved as it ougut; indicating the Bride’s desire that her conversation should be agreeable to her husband. WEISS. Like the choice wine poured on the altar of burnt offering, which mounts directly to heaven. DAVIDSON supplies a copula, and translates: For my beloved, and for the upright ones. THEODORET, using the Septuagint: For direction to the souls that love thee.

‘Causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak.’ דּוֹבֵב dobhebh, from דָּבַב to which the Tulmudists give the meaning of speaking; ‘making the lips of those who sleep to speak,’ i.e., in dreams. So MERCER, HENSTENBERG, DELITZSCH, &c. WILLIAMS. Causing to murmur. WEISS. To lisp. SANCTIUS. Inducing intoxication, and making the stammerers eloquent. PATRICK. Making men speak with the lips of the ancient, i.e. to utter excellent sayings. A. CLARKE. As wine causes the most backward to speak, so thy charms make the most taciturn eloquent in thy praise. FRY: Effervescing against the lips, &c. Others, however, give to דָּבַב the meaning of ‘to creep or flow over.’ So EWALD, GESENIUS, DE WETTE, &c. ‘Gliding over the lips of sleepers,’ that is, he who drinks is insensibly overtaken with sleep; the adjective being taken, as frequently, from the effect. ZÖCKLER, EWALD, NOYES. Flowing down. PERCY. ‘Those that are asleep.’ יְשֵׁנִים yeshenim, may be either ‘persons sleeping,’ or ‘old men;’ the former preferable, as from יָשִׁן to sleep, So GESENIUS and most. HAHN. Persons already sinking into slumber, as if, overcome by the sweetness of the wine, they were unable to remove the cup again from their lips. Some understand it figuratively of the dead. PATRICK. ‘Old men;’ those asleep or dead, or at the point of death. SEPTUAGINT, reading ושנים and שפתי: Reaching my lips and teeth. VULGATE. Suitable for the lips and teeth to ruminate. So WICKLIFF. BISHOP’S, and DOUAI VERSION. COVERDALE and MATTHEWS. The lips and teeth shall have their pleasure. CRANMER. Which bursteth forth from the lips of the ancient Elders. DUTCH, DIODATI, and MARTIN. Making the lips of the sleepers to speak. LUTHER. And speaks of what is afar off. MERCER. Awakening the slumbering senses, and refreshing the mind. VATABLUS. Who (viz., the friend who drinks it) speaks with the lips of them that sleep. CASTALIO: To my friend who (in consequence) babbles with sleeping lips. TARGUM abegorizing. As Elisha and Elijah raised the dead, and as Ezckiel prophesied, and awoke the dead in the valley of Dura RASHI. Even my fathers in the grave shall rejoice and give praise for their portion. RABBINS. Causing, by the Spirit, given in answer to the Church’s intercession, the lips of the nations who were asleep before to be opened, and to show forth the praises of the Lord. WEISS. Perhaps an allusion to the Israelites expecting silently the prayer made by the priests in the Temple, or by the leader in the synagogue, when the lips only moved: the daughters of Jerusalem thus intimating that, while the Church was requested to offer fervent prayer in their behalf, they would silently repeat it after her. AINSWORTH. Sinners awakened and quickened by the word preached (Ephesians 5:14); also others who from negligence tell asleep, and are enabled by this spiritual wine to speak (Isaiah 57:13; Isaiah 57:19).

THE KING’S RESOLUTION AND ANTICIPATION

Song of Solomon 7:8

I said, I will go up to the palm tree:
I will take hold of the boughs thereof;
Now also thy breasts shall be as clusters of the vine,
And the smell of thy nose like apples;
And the roof of thy mouth like the best wine,
(For my beloved),
That goeth down sweetly,
Causing the lips of them that are asleep to speak.

‘I said,’ indicative of the king’s purpose, whether secret or expressed, in regard to Shulamite. The purpose—first, to make her his Bride and then to enjoy her fellowship as such (Proverbs 5:18). Christ’s doings in regard to His Church the result of a Divine purpose. His delights, prospectively, with the children of men, before the foundation of the world (Proverbs 8:31). His purpose to give Himself for sinners, to unite them to Himself as His Bride, and then throughout eternity to rejoice in their fellowship and love. ‘Father, I will that they also whom Thou hast given Me be with me where I am, that they may behold My glory which Thou hast given Me’ (John 17:24). ‘He loved the Church and gave Himself for it that He might sanctify and cleanse it by the washing of water by the Word; that He might present it to Himself a glorious Church.’ ‘He gave Himself for us that redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people.’ ‘This people have I formed for Myself’ (Ephesians 5:26; Titus 2:14; Isaiah 43:21). Having loved and given Himself for His Church, He will ‘rest’ and have delight ‘in His love’ (Zephaniah 3:17). Christ said, I will go up to the palm tree—

(1) In the everlasting covenant when He engaged to be the Redeemer of the world.
(2) When in the fulness of time He gave Himself for His Church, and ‘for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross despising the shame.’
(3) When He, according to His loving purpose, arrests the wanderer in his sins, and, as the good shepherd, lays the lost one ‘on his shoulders, and returns with it rejoicing.’

(4) When from time to time He lovingly manifests Himself to His saved one, comes in and sups with him and he with Him (Revelation 3:20).

(5) When at death He receives the believer to Himself, that where He is he may be also (John 14:2). Christ’s resolution that of enjoying the fruit of the travail of His soul, and of putting His people also in possession of it. In His love He provided the feast, and with His people He sits down to it. Planted the tree when He ascended the cross, and eats the fruit of it now that He has ascended the throne. The happiness of the believing soul to yield itself to Christ as the palm tree, for His enjoyment of the fruits of it.

Anticipation connected with resolution. ‘Now also thy breasts shall be as clusters of the vine,’ &c. The loving fellowship of his beloved bride should be sweet and refreshing to him as the clusters of the vine, the fragrance of citrons, and the richest wine. A similar anticipation and desire already expressed on the part of the Bride in reference to her Beloved (chap. Song of Solomon 2:5). A mutual ‘comfort of love’ between Christ and His people. ‘My soul desired the first ripe fruit.’ ‘I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals.’ ‘I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness’ (Hosea 9:10; Jeremiah 3:2; Micah 7:1). This joy experienced by Christ in the first love of the New Testament, as well as that of the Old Testament, Church. His delight found in His people in proportion as He finds in them the graces of His Spirit (Psalms 149:4; Jeremiah 9:24). In the finished work of the first creation, God ‘rested and was refreshed;’ much more in that of the second. The redeemed Church to be to Him ‘for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.’—The spiritual breath of the regenerate soul sweet and fragrant to Christ. ‘The smell (or fragrance) of thy nose (or breath) like apples (or citrons)’. Such breath the love and longing, the aspirations and expressions, the penitence and gratitude, the confessions and thanksgivings, the sighs and groans, the prayers and praises, of the new and spirit-born nature. ‘To this man will I look, even to him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, and that trembleth at My word.’ ‘I dwell in the high and holy place; with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones’ (Isaiah 57:15; Isaiah 66:2). Marked contrast between the wholesome breath of a living soul and the noxious effluvium of a dead one. The fragrance of a humble and holy love breathed by a believer in proportion as he walks with Christ and posseses His spirit. The love and spiritual-mindedness of a pardoned soul the Saviour’s sweetest refreshment. Powerful motive to the cultivation of a holy, loving, and spiritual life.

The loving self-surrender of the Bride apparently indicated in the words, ‘for my beloved’ (Song of Solomon 7:9). Probably the words of the Bride interjected while the Bridegroom was speaking and comparing her love, and the expression of it, to the best wine. The Bride hastens to assure him that that wine should be entirely for himself. He who was so worthy of her love, and who possessed such claims to it, should alone possess it. As his happy and favoured Bride she would love him with an undivided love. The warm and devoted affection of our heart the best gift we can offer; and, through grace, freely given to Him who is most worthy of it, and has the best right to it. That affection desired and prized by Him whom angels delight to honour. Our highest happiness to be permitted and enabled to render it. ‘O, what am I, to love such a One, or to be loved by that high and lofty one! I think the angels may blush to look upon Him. Hell (as I now think), and all the pains in it, laid on me alone, would not put me from loving. Woe, woe is me; I have a lover, Christ, and yet I want love for Him. I have a lovely and desirable Lord, who is loveworthy, and who beggeth my love and heart, and I have nothing to give Him.’—S. Rutherford. ‘For my Beloved,’ the appropriate motto of a loving believer’s life. To be inscribed on all we are and have.

Perhaps an intimation, in the conclusion of the verse, of the effects of the believer’s love to Christ on others as well as himself. The wine to which the Bride’s love, and the expression of it (‘the roof of thy mouth’) is compared, said, according to our English version, to cause the lips of them that are asleep (Margin, ‘the ancient’) to speak. The language obscure, though indicating some property or effect of the wine spoken of, and so of that which is compared to it. Perhaps the reference to its stimulating as well as refreshing virtue. The influence which Christ condescends to allow His people’s love to have upon Himself already stated (chap. Song of Solomon 4:9; Song of Solomon 6:5). Its influence on the world, asleep in the snare of Satan and under the power of sin, to be found, indirectly, in the success attending the efforts, prompted by love to Christ and love to souls for His sake, to reclaim the wanderer and rescue the perishing, by conveying to them the glad tidings of His love. Love to Christ the highest and strongest motive impelling believers to self-denying endeavours on behalf of a perishing world. ‘Lord, thou knowest that I love Thee,’ naturally followed by—‘Feed my lambs; feed my sheep.’ ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto Me.’ Silent lips constantly being opened, from devotedness to Jesus, in the praise of redeeming love.