2

honour in other respects, yet if emitted in the same regular way, and by the same authority, may say also, and trust to the same assistance in diffusing the precious odour of the Holy Ghost's communications, so variously emblematized in this verse; or, in St Paul's language,' in being unto "God a sweet savour of Christ';' and making even the weak performances of the faithful become an ' odour of a sweet smell, well pleasing to God * :' Remembering still, that this blessed honour of conveying blessing belongs only to the shoots, the apostolai of, and from, the church's garden; not to every rash volunteering runner, which, from a fond opinion of its own inherent qualities, may boldly assume that honour, and thereby run the risk of bringing a curse upon itself, by wantonly pretending to convey blessing to others. Such plants may be a thicket of nettles, briars, thistles, noxious stinking weeds. It is the church's plants, and none but they, that in the Beloved's sight are an orchard of pomegranates, &c.

VER. 15.-A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon.

This is the finishing stroke given by the Beloved's pencil at this time, and completes the admirable picture. A fountain (moin, the same word as above) of gardens, gannim, in the plural number.

The

4 2 Cor. ii. 15.

2 Philip. iv. 18.

The church is the Beloved's one garden, the garden of his own plantation. There may be, have been, and still are, other gardens, satanic, idolatrous imitations, dry barren wastes, gardens that have no water (a threatened curse'), and which can never be watered, till they be placed by the fountain of the Beloved's garden, the river, which came out of Eden, (see Psalm xxxvi. 8. the river of thy pleasures,' Try, thy Eden), to water the archetypal garden, and thence was parted into four heads (rashim, Heb. agyas, LXX. capital springs), to spread through all lands, and communicate to them the parabolical blessing of being gardens by the river side.' A fountain of gardens-fitted for, and capable of, this extensive office, by being a well of living waters, which are here said to stream (, nezlim, used to denote the fluxes of the stars, 2 Kings xxiii. 5.) from Lebanon, the favourite type in inspired poetry, (the Parnassus in the heathen), as the original river, the Helicon of fabulous perversion, went out from Eden, the place of delight. Water is a well known element both for internal and external use, and is often mentioned in scripture, sometimes as an emblem of distress, but most frequently in a sense of comfort, as here, by the addition of living—a well of living waters, which, in the spiritual acceptation, conveys its own meaning. The

Isaiah i. 30. Zech.ix. 11.

2 Gen. ii. 10.

3 Numb. xxiv. 6. Compare Ezek. xxxi. 7.

2

The word for well is , bar, which we meet with early in an affair that St Paul expressly calls allegorical: The angel of the Lord * found Hagar by 'a fountain of water 3, wherefore the well was called , bar lehi rai, the well of him that liveth ' and seeth me,' or whom I see,' as the LXX. render it *. We meet with the word again, and with the addition of living water,' where it is said, 'And Isaac's servants digged in the valley, and 'found (bar mim khiim, Ogag udar® (WIT, LXX.) a well of living water.' Digging of wells in those patriarchal times was an act of faith, and had a typical aspect. So says Moses, in mystical style, Then sang Israel this song, Spring up, O well, sing ye unto it: the princes digged the well, the 'nobles of the people digged it by (direction of) the lawgiver, (bemehokkah, in typifactorem, to ⚫ be a typifier), with their staves (bemeshontem, in * fulcrum suum), to be a supporter to them.' Isaac was a prince, as his father Abraham had been, and their servants were nobles. The history tells us, that all the wells, which the servants of Abraham (the

6

I Gal. iv. 24.

2 Gen. xvi. 7. where, by the bye, let it be observed, that this is the first time we read of angel, or angelic appearance, full 2000 years after the creation.

3 Ver. 14.

4 Dging & Ev@TIOY Hdov, see v. 13. x, al rai, Deus visionis meæ, 'the God of my sight.'-Buxtorf.

5 Gen. xxvi. 19.

7 Gen. xxiii. 6,

6 Numb. xxi. 17.

& Gen. xxv. 15.

(the father of the faithful') had digged, had been stopped up by the Philistine infidels; and when Isaac in succession, and under the same direction, digged his first well, these infidels quarrelled with him about it; and, on a second attempt, renewed their opposition, which made him give names significant of oppression and satanic hatred to these two, and leave them. But upon his digging a third time, these heathenish contenders quarrelled not, and he called the name of it Rehoboth, suguxwgia, ευρυχωρία,

6

LXX.

' for now,' he said, 'Jehovah (erehib) hath made room for us. This is a word much employed in the poetic compositions of scripture, to convey the idea of blessing. I shall only give one instance, where the original has a most beautiful antithesis3, I called upon the Lord in distress, (lite

6

rally, from emetzr, de angustia, the narrow place), and the Lord answered me (bemerahhab) into a roomy place,' or, as the Bible translation has properly explained it, answered me and set me in ' a large place *?

6

From this typical history of Isaac's wells, it is

2 Ver. 22.

1 Gal. iii. 7.

3 Psalm cxviii. §.

evi

4 May there not be an allusion to this idea in the name of the woman quoted above, 277, (the very letters of this root), Rabab, who for a while was literally temetør, in a strait, shut up, confined, (ελæde, latuit, as St Paul says), hid, under the scarlet sign of faith, in a narrow place, but was answered and brought out (bemerahhab) into a large, safe space, into the glorious liberty, the happy freedom, free air of the Israel of God?"

evident, what a sacred regard was paid by the church of these primitive times to wells of water', especially when designedly digged, or occasionally met with, in faith under divine impulse, and thereby impregnated with the precious quality annexed in the Song, of becoming living waters. This is the grand distinction, the endearing character which cannot but recommend itself to us. It was under this character of mim hhiim, 'vdwę wv, LXX. aquas vivas, Latin, living water (though our translation renders it running') that it is applied to cleanse the leper, and to purify the unclean; in both cases denoting blessing: Whereas in the case of the jealous husband and suspected wife 4, the application of water to the woman is under the terrible epithet of bitter water that causeth a curse;' a difference which to be sure cannot be owing to the inherent quality of any kind of natural water itself, but must be solely attributed to an immediate operation of him who maketh all created nature subservient to his own purposes; of him who, as St Paul says of the difference of savour 5, is to the wicked ' a consuming fire, but unto his own people,' is the fountain-head of living waters. In this emblematical style of blessing we have a promise, that living

VOL. II.

6

2 G

Gen. xxi. 25-31. xxiv. 12—44. xxix. 2—11. and compare Psalm

1xxxiv. 6.

2 Levit. xiv. 5, 6.

4 Numb. v. 17. 27.
6 Deut. iv. 24.

Zech. xiv. 8.

3 Numb. xix. 17.

5 2 Cor. ii. 16.

7 Jerem. ii. 13.