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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Song of Solomon 4:12 - 4:12
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The praise is sensuous, but it has a moral consecration.
12 A garden locked is my sister-bride;
A spring locked, a fountain sealed.
גַּן (according to rule masc. Böttch. §658) denotes the garden from its enclosure; גַּ (elsewhere נֻּלָּה ere), the fountain (synon. מַבּוּעַ), the waves bubbling forth (cf. Amo 5:24); and מַעְיָן, the place, as it were an eye of the earth, from which a fountain gushes forth. Luther distinguishes rightly between gan and gal; on the contrary, all the old translators (even the Venet.) render as if the word in both cases were gan. The Pasek between gan and nā'ul, and between gal and nā'ul, is designed to separate the two Nuns, as e.g., at 2Ch 2:9; Neh 2:2, the two Mems; it is the orthophonic Pasek, already described under Son 2:7, which secures the independence of two similar or organically related sounds. Whether the sealed fountain (fons signatus) alludes to a definite fountain which Solomon had built for the upper city and the temple place,
(Note: Vid., Zschocke in the Tübinger Quartalschrift, 1867, 3.)
we do not now inquire. To a locked garden and spring no one has access but the rightful owner, and a sealed fountain is shut against all impurity. Thus she is closed against the world, and inaccessible to all that would disturb her pure heart, or desecrate her pure person.
(Note: Seal, חוֹתָם, pers. muhr, is used directly in the sense of maiden-like behaviour; vid., Perles' etymol. Studien (1871), p. 67.)
All the more beautiful and the greater is the fulness of the flowers and fruits which bloom and ripen in the garden of this life, closed against the world and its lust.