odor (as if blown) · conjunction + noun, common masculine singular construct
ointments
שְׁמָנַ֖יִךְshe.ma.Na.yikh
H8081
grease · noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix, 2nd person feminine singular
spices
בְּשָׂמִֽיםbe.sa.Mim
H1314
fragrance · noun, common masculine plural absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Song of Solomon 1:2-4 Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.
Song of Solomon 7:6 How fair and how pleasant art thou, O love, for delights!
Galatians 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
Song of Solomon 1:12 While the king sitteth at his table, my spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof.
Song of Solomon 3:6 Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, with all powders of the merchant?
Song of Solomon 5:5 I rose up to open to my beloved; and my hands dropped with myrrh, and my fingers with sweet smelling myrrh, upon the handles of the lock.
Philippians 4:18 But I have all, and abound: I am full, having received of Epaphroditus the things which were sent from you, an odour of a sweet smell, a sac…
2 Corinthians 1:21-22 Now he which stablisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God;
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
John Gill on Song of Solomon 4:10
How fair is thy love, my sister, my spouse!.... Of these titles; see Gill on Sol 4:8; See Gill on Sol 4:9; and of the love of the church to Christ; see Gill on Sol 1:3; here said to be "fair", lovely and delightful, grateful and acceptable; as it is to Christ, in the several acts and effects of it, and therefore the word is plural, "thy loves" (r); being exceeding beautiful in his eye, and extremely well pleasing to him; therefore says, "how fair!" as admiring it, it being hard to say how fair it was; and this appears from the large manifestations of Christ's love to those that love him; and from his causing all things to work together for the good of such; and from his preparing and laying…
Tyndale Open Study Notes on Song of Solomon 4:10-11
wine . . . nectar . . . honey . . . milk: The woman is compared with much that is smooth, sweet, and sensuous. Her love and their kissing within the lavish fragrance around them is nearing the ultimate delight for this bridegroom.
Rashi on Song of Solomon 4:10
How beautiful is your love. Every place where you showed me affection is beautiful in My eyes; Gilgal, Shiloh, Nov, Givon, and the eternal Temple. That is what the [poet] from Bavel composed, “A resting place and other meeting places,” “resting place” refers to Yerusholayim, and “other meeting places” refers to each place where the Divine Presence met with Yisroel.
And the fragrance of your oils. Your good name.
Christ, then, feeds his church with these sacraments, by means of which the substance of the soul is strengthened, and seeing the continual progress of her grace, he rightly says to her, "How comely are your breasts, my sister, my spouse, how comely they are made by wine, and the smell of your garments is above all spices. A dropping honeycomb are your lips, my spouse, honey and milk are under your tongue, and the smell of your garments is as the smell of Lebanon. A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse, a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed." By which he signifies that the mystery ought to remain sealed up with you, that it be not violated by the deeds of an evil life, and pollution of chastity, that it be not made known to you, for whom it is not fitting, nor by garrulous talkativeness it be spread abroad among unbelievers. Your guardianship of the faith ought therefore to be good, that integrity of life and silence may endure unblemished.
And the scent of your ointments, etc. The scent of the Church's spiritual ointments is the fame of the gifts; of which it is written: Their voice has gone out unto all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world (Psalm XVIII). And when Mary Magdalene anointed the Lord with nard as a type of the holy Church, it is written: And the house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment (Matthew XXVI); where it is mystically signified that with the devout services of the Church, which are performed in honor of her Redeemer, the whole world would be filled. If, by the name of wine, the legal observance is rightly expressed, as was proven above by evangelical authority, what prevents the sweet rumor of the saints of that time from being indicated by the name of aromatic spices? Therefore, he says, the scent of your ointments is above all spices, because there is no doubt that the fame of the Christian faith, widespread throughout the world, has far surpassed the fame of the righteous who were among the earlier people. Therefore, because it has brought a public conflict to the world, having renounced the worship of the gods, it has endured public persecution from the world until it conquered: for it is not fitting for the Bride of Christ to be compared to base and vile things, either to wine, which taste consumes, or to spices, which the air customarily disperses, since even to the legal observance, it is of very little praise if it is said to surpass the cups or the spices that are suited to the senses of the flesh.
Dictionary and topics
Forest — Heb. ya’ar, meaning a dense wood, from its luxuriance. Thus all the great primeval forests of Syria (Eccl. 2:6; Isa. 44:14; Jer. 5:6; Micah 5:8). The most extensive was the trans-Jordanic forest of…
Spouse — (Cant. 4:8-12; Hos. 4:13, 14) may denote either husband or wife, but in the Scriptures it denotes only the latter.
Anointing · Of the body — Of the body
Bridegroom · General references — General references
Ointment · NOT SACRED — NOT SACRED
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
How beautiful are your breasts! etc. Just as in the neck, eyes, and teeth, so too in the breasts are understood the teachers of the Church; but this is different in that they are to be regarded with these names either when they speak wisdom among the perfect or when they refute those who contradict; indeed, when they become weak for the weak in order to gain the weak, they are rightly said to have the office of breasts, because they impart the milk of milder doctrine to those of small understanding, namely to those who cannot yet comprehend the bread of a higher word. For they are teeth when they rebuke the restless; they are breasts when they comfort the faint-hearted and support the weak. And rightly does he praise and marvel at the beauty of the breasts in his sister and bride, for it is a work great before God and of wondrous virtue, when one who is capable of revealing the higher secrets of truth to the more perfect does not disdain to instruct the weak in the rudiments of faith. Rightly does the Lord testify that such a soul is his sister and bride, because he considers her most worthy of his love and union, as he sees her become an imitator of his work. For he himself, to make us strong from the weak, did not refuse to be weak for a time, even to die so that we might live. Though he was the bread of angels in divinity, he willed to hide himself in the assumption of flesh, so as to nourish human faint-heartedness and make them capable of the same heavenly bread. For since an infant is less fit to feed on bread, by thus consuming the bread the mother in a way incarnates herself, and through the humility of the breast and milk's juice feeds the child on that same bread. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1). This is the eternal food by which the angels are refreshed, for they are satisfied by seeing His glory. But the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (Ibid.), so that thus also the wisdom of God, which consoles us as a mother, might refresh us with that same bread, and through the sacrament of the incarnation lead us to the knowledge and vision of divine love. But the holy teachers also transform the bread by which they are themselves sublimely nourished into milk by which they nourish the little ones, while the higher they contemplate eternal joys in God, the more humbly they sympathize with the…
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
