Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Song of Solomon 4:15 - 4:15

Online Resource Library

Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com

Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Song of Solomon 4:15 - 4:15


(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)

This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

The panegyric returns now once more to the figure of a fountain.

15 A garden-fountain, a well of living water,

And torrents from Lebanon.

The tertium compar. in Son 4:12 was the collecting and sealing up; here, it is the inner life and its outward activity. A fountain in gardens (גַּנִּים, categ. pl.) is put to service for the benefit of the beds of plants round about, and it has in these gardens, as it were, its proper sphere of influence. A well of living water is one in which that which is distributes springs up from within, so that it is indeed given to it, but not without at the same time being its own true property. נָזַל is related, according to the Semitic usus loq., to אָזַל, as “niedergehen” (to go down) to “weggehen” (to go away) (vid., Pro 5:15); similarly related are (Arab.) sar, to go, and sal (in which the letter ra is exchanged for lam, to express the softness of the liquid), to flow, whence syl (sêl), impetuous stream, rushing water, kindred in meaning to נֹֽזְלִים. Streams which come from Lebanon have a rapid descent, and (so far as they do not arise in the snow region) the water is not only fresh, but clear as crystal. All these figures understood sensuously would be insipid; but understood ethically, they are exceedingly appropriate, and are easily interpreted, so that the conjecture is natural, that on the supposition of the spiritual interpretation of the Song, Jesus has this saying in His mind when He says that streams of living water shall flow “out of the belly” of the believer, Joh 7:38.