Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Song of Solomon · About this commentary
A Locked Garden
Song of Solomon 4:12-5:1
12 My sister, my bride, is a locked up garden; a locked up spring, a sealed fountain. · WEB
Exclusivity is praised as a locked garden, the garden is given from within, and an unmarked voice blesses the consummation aloud.
A locked garden is my sister, my bride; a locked spring, a sealed fountain. The lock is the compliment. What she is, is not public property, and the poem treats her enclosure as glory rather than deprivation — a spring sealed is a spring unspoiled, kept whole for one.
The inventory that follows grows an impossible garden: pomegranates and henna, nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, frankincense trees, myrrh and aloes, all the chief spices. These plants do not share a climate; no such garden exists on earth. The praise assembles the world's whole perfume trade into one enclosure and calls it her — and then adds water: a fountain of gardens, a well of living water, streams flowing from Lebanon.
Verse 16 is the hinge of the entire Song, and it is hers. Awake, north wind; come, south wind; blow on my garden — and then the gift, made in a single pronoun's shift: let my beloved come to his garden and eat its choicest fruits. My garden becomes his garden inside one verse. The locked door opens from within, by the only hand entitled to open it.
And he comes — five verbs of arrival and delight: come, gathered, eaten, drunk; myrrh and spice, honeycomb and honey, wine and milk Song of Solomon 5:1. Then a voice the Hebrew leaves unmarked blesses them aloud: eat, friends; drink, and be drunk with love. Whoever speaks it, the Song's center is a consummation with a benediction over it — welcomed, not watched; blessed, not hidden.
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