Song of Solomon 4:14, commentary and pictures

The verse belongs to one of the one thousand and five songs or poems written by Solomon, formed as a dialogue between various parties and filled with vivid, warm, Oriental or Eastern figurative imagery as an Oriental love poem. It is to be read, alone with God, as a poetical picture or parable of Christ and His church, showing His wonderful love for her and her love in response, though often wanting in faithfulness and constancy.

In Song of Solomon 4:12-16 the garden of spices pictures a fully transformed heart, fragrant and fruitful, and verse 14 contributes its rich array of spices and aromatic trees to that picture, representing the spiritual life transformed by the living water of Christ's Spirit. The garden's spices and fragrant trees are the graces of a Christian's character, which do not arise naturally in the human heart but are planted through regeneration and require careful cultivation. The fragrant plants and spices are images of a life whose pure thoughts, words, and deeds give a pleasing spiritual influence to others.

The verse shows the church as a garden holding choice spices whose fragrance pictures her spiritual life, and her condition is changeable: at one time the north wind and south wind blow upon her spices yet they put forth no fragrance and she is a garden barred, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed, while at another time even the lightest breeze makes her bloom and fills the air with perfume and she is a garden open, a well of living waters with streams from Lebanon. The rich perfume of myrrh, frankincense, and spikenard represents tokens of the Prince's loving presence reaching His betrothed while He is personally absent. The rich fragrance of myrrh and spices, pictured as incense carried from afar, helps portray the beauty and worth of the Beloved, with whom all the treasures of earth are declared unable to compare.