“Whither is thy beloved gone, O thou fairest among women? whither is thy beloved turned aside? that we may seek him with thee. My beloved is gone down into his garden, to the beds of spices, to feed in the gardens, and to gather lilies. I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine: he feedeth among the lilies. Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners. Turn away thine eyes from me, for they have overcome me: thy hair is as a flock of goats that appear from Gilead. Thy teeth are as a flock of sheep which go up from the washing, whereof every one beareth twins, and there is not one barren among them. As a piece of a pomegranate are thy temples within thy locks.”
(Song of Solomon 6:1-7)

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Song of Solomon 6:1

“Whither is thy beloved gone, O thou fairest among women? whither is thy beloved turned aside? that we may seek him with thee.” – In Song of Solomon 5:9, the daughters of Jerusalem posed a question to the bride – “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?” The bride, then, answered with a vivid description of the beauty of the Bridegroom, the LORD Jesus Christ. Here, they pose a question that every sinner who has been awakened by the Holy Spirit to his spiritual condition in sin and death will ask – “Whither is thy Beloved gone … that we may seek Him with thee.” There is no question that all sinners need the grace of God in salvation from sin. There is no question that this salvation can only be found in and by the pure grace of God through the LORD Jesus Christ. There is no question that all people should seek the LORD for salvation. But it is also a sad reality that no sinner will, of his own will, seek the LORD (Romans 3:10-12; 1st Corinthians 2:14). So, all who truly seek Him do so because the Holy Spirit has brought them under the Gospel truth and convinced them of sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:8-11). The LORD God is drawing them to Himself, bringing them to seek Christ Whom they will find and in Whom they will believe (John 6:44-45). When a convicted sinner finds the LORD Jesus Christ, he continues to seek after Him and come to Him more and more. Salvation is a continual seeking more of the truth and glory of Christ. This is what the daughters of Jerusalem have in mind as they ask the bride, “Where is your Beloved gone so that we may seek Him with you?” They address her as “fairest among women” i.e. one who stands before God in the beauty of Christ, washed clean from all her sins by His blood, clothed in His righteousness imputed, and regenerated by the Holy Spirit and brought to faith in Him and true repentance. This is the glory and power of God’s grace in the salvation of His people based on the merits of Christ’s obedience unto death as their Surety, Substitute, Redeemer, and Preserver.

Song of Solomon 6:2

“My beloved is gone down into his garden, to the beds of spices, to feed in the gardens, and to gather lilies.” – The bride answers simply by pointing them to Christ. This is what God-given faith and perseverance is about – “Looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2). His garden is His church which He has planted and which grows by His power and grace. He goes down because this shows the condescension that He experiences to save and preserve His church (cf. Philippians 2:5-9). He bought His church (God’s elect) with His own precious blood. He has built His church upon the Rock of His glorious Person and finished work. He is the Vine and His church is made up of the branches (all who believe in Him). He continues to dwell with and within His people on earth by His Spirit and His Word. The idea here is not that He is feeding but that He feeds His people with His Spirit and His Word. He waters His garden with the water of life, and He gathers them as lilies in the field.

Song of Solomon 6:3

“I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine: he feedeth among the lilies.” – This is covenant language that describes a marriage union between Christ and His church (cf. Hebrews 8:10). This is an eternal union that cannot be broken. Every true believer belongs to Christ as He purchased us with His own blood, and Christ belongs to every true believer as our LORD and our Savior. Every sinner saved by His grace can say with confidence, “Not only is Christ A Saviour; He is MY Saviour. Not only is He LORD; He is MY LORD.” This union binds us together as one body – His bride, His church. Again, the idea of His feeding among the lilies is that He feeds His people with His Word. As He Himself is the lily of the valley, pure and white, His people are so IN HIM as we are made the righteousness of God IN HIM (2nd Corinthians 5:21). Christ came down to suffer for our sins imputed to Him and to work out by His death for us a perfect righteousness that is imputed to us. This is the ground of our justification and the source of our new birth in spiritual life and in growth in grace and in knowledge of Christ.

Song of Solomon 6:4

“Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners.” – Now, the bride, having sought her Bridegroom, now finds Him, and He begins to speak to her and of her in the poetic language of grace. She is “beautiful,” again, not because of any natural beauty, but because of what she is and what she has in and from Him by His power and grace. As sinners saved by grace, our beauty is HIS beauty. “Tirzah” may refer to an ancient city in Canaan that was known for its beauty. “Jerusalem” obviously refers to the heavenly Jerusalem which is the church of the living God (Hebrews 12:22-24), because the physical city of Jerusalem was anything but beautiful in the eyes of the LORD. The true bride, the true church, is beautiful in the eyes of her Bridegroom, but “terrible as an army with banners” to her enemies. Her beauty is not to be mistaken for weakness. She is protected, preserved, and she perseveres in the strength of her Husband, in the power of His might. Neither the world, the flesh, nor the devil can defeat her, for Christ is her victory (cf. Ephesians 6:10-18).

Song of Solomon 6:5

L“Turn away thine eyes from me, for they have overcome me: thy hair is as a flock of goats that appear from Gilead.” – This is an expression of intense love, not of dislike or disgust. Christ tells her to turn her eyes away from Him because such love consumes His own heart. He uses the same symbol here that He used in Song of Solomon 4:1. This is not to be taken literally because, as sinners saved by grace, we are never to look away from our LORD and Saviour. Our whole life of faith is looking constantly to Him Who is our life and the supreme object of our love. This is a poetic way of expressing the intensity of His love for us. Again, as in Song of Solomon 4:1, when speaking of her hair, the idea is not that her hair is like the hair of a goat, but it is that her hair beautifully flows down her head like a black-haired flock of goats flowing down from Mount Gilead. So, the Bridegroom speaks of His bride’s beauty.

Song of Solomon 6:6-7

“Thy teeth are as a flock of sheep which go up from the washing, whereof every one beareth twins, and there is not one barren among them. As a piece of a pomegranate are thy temples within thy locks.” – Again, we see the same symbols of her beauty as written in Song of Solomon 4:1-3. The reason He repeats these words is because, as sinners saved by grace, we need a constant reminder of our standing before God IN CHRIST – washed in His blood and clothed in His righteousness. We also need to know our state in this world as His true people (His bride) and that, even though we are IN the world, we are not OF the world. As we struggle in our own personal warfare between our flesh and the Spirit, as we struggle against the world and Satan, we have a tendency to forget what we are in Christ by His grace and power and what we can do through Him Who is our life and power (1st Corinthians 15:10; Galatians 2:19-21; Philippians 4:13). So, as stated in Song of Solomon 4:1-3, the teeth being washed is a metaphor for the mouth through which the heart speaks (Matthew 12:34). The testimony of the bride is the pure Word of God in the Gospel. Even our words are washed clean in the blood of Christ. The bearing of twins speaks of the fruitfulness of God’s Word which will always accomplish the purpose for which God sends it (Isaiah 55:10-13; Hebrews 4:12-13). The temples refer to the minds of God’s people, and the pomegranate symbolizes the fertility of God’s promise of salvation and the Biblical concepts of knowledge, learning, and wisdom, qualities that come by the revelation of truth from understanding of the Scriptures.

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W. Parker