Who is this that cometh. — This begins a new section, which contains the most magnificent description of true love ever written by poet. The dramatic theory encounters insuperable difficulties with this strophe. Again we presume that the theatre and the spectators are imaginary. It is another sweet reminiscence, coming most naturally and beautifully after the last. The obstacles have been removed, the pair are united, and the poet recalls the delightful sensations with which he led his bride through the scenes where the youth of both had been spent, and then bursts out into the glorious panegyric of that pure and perfect passion which had united them.
Leaning upon her beloved... — The LXX. add here shining white, and the Vulgate, flowing with delights.
I raised thee up. — Literally, aroused: i.e., I inspired thee with love. For this sense of exciting a passion, given to the Hebrew word, compare Proverbs 10:12; Zechariah 9:13. Delitzsch restores from the Syriac what must have been the original vowel-pointing, making the suffixes feminine instead of masculine.
There thy mother... — Not necessarily under the apple-tree, which is commemorated as the scene of the betrothal, but near it. The poet delights to recall these early associations, the feelings with which he had watched her home and waited her coming. The Vulg. has here ibi corrupta est mater tua, ibi violata est genetrix tua, which savours of allegory. So in later times the tree has been taken to stand for the Cross, the individual excited to love under it the Gentiles redeemed at the foot of the Cross, and the deflowered and corrupted mother the synagogue of the Jews (the mother of the Christian Church), which was corrupted by denying and crucifying the Saviour.