Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love [is] better than wine.
Ver. 2. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.] It must be premised and remembered that this book is penitus allegoricus et parabolicus, as one saith, allegorical throughout, and aboundeth all along with types and figures, with parables and similitudes. Quot verba, tot sacramenta, So many words, so many mysteries, saith Jerome of the Revelation, which made Cajetan not dare to comment upon it. a The like may be truly affirmed of the Canticles; nay, we may say of it in a special manner, as Possevinus doth of the whole Hebrew Bible, tot esse sacramenta, quot literae, tot mysteria, quot puncta, tot arcana, quot apices. so much is sacred, how many books, so much is mysterious, how many marked with vowel points, so much is secret, how many marked vowels. b Hence Psellus in Theodoret asketh pardon for presuming to expound it. But difficilium facilis est venia; et, in magnis voluisse sat est: In hard things the pardon is easy, and in high things let a man show his goodwill and it sufficeth. The matter of this book hath been pointed at already; as for the form of it, it is dramatic and dialogistical. The chief speakers are not Solomon and the Shulamite, as Castalio makes it, but Christ and his Church. Christ also hath his associates, those friends of the bridegroom, Joh 3:29 viz., the prophets, apostles, pastors, and teachers, who put in a word sometimes; as likewise do the fellow friends of the bride - viz., whole churches, or particular Christians. The bride begins here abruptly, after the manner of a tragedy, through impatience of love, and a holy impotence of desire after, not a union only, but a unity also with him whom her soul loveth. "Let him kiss me," &c. Kissing is a token of love, 1Pe 5:14 Luk 7:45 and of reconciliation. 2Sa 14:33 And albeit καταφιλειν ουκ εστι φιλειν, as Philo observeth, love is not always in a kiss - Joab and Judas could kiss and kill, Caveatur osculum Iscarioticum, consign their treachery with so sweet a symbol of amity 1Pe 1:22 - yet those that "love out of a pure heart fervently," do therefore kiss, as desiring to transfuse, if it might be, the souls of either into other, and to become one with the party so beloved, and in the best sense suaviated. kissed That, therefore, which the Church here desireth, is not so much Christ's coming in the flesh - that "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners had spoken in times past unto her by the prophets, would now speak unto her by his Son," Heb 1:1-2 as some have sensed it - as that she may have utmost conjunction to him, and nearest communion with him, here as much as may be, and hereafter in all fulness of fruition. "Let him kiss me," and so seal up his hearty love unto me, even the "sure mercies of David." "With the kisses of his mouth"; not with one kiss only, with one pledge of his love, but with many - there is no satiety, no measure, no bounds or bottom of this holy love, as there is in carnal desires, ubi etiam vota post usum fastidio sunt. Neither covets she to kiss his hand, as they deal by kings, or his feet, as they do the pope's, but his "mouth"; she would have true kisses, the basia, the busses of those lips, whereinto "grace is poured," Psa 45:2 and wherehence those words of grace are uttered Mat 5:2-12 "He openeth his mouth with wisdom, and in his lips is the law of kindness." Pro 31:26 Hence her affectionate desires, her earnest pantings, inquietations, and unsatisfiablenesses. She must have Christ, or else she dies; she must have the "kisses of Christ's mouth," even those sweet pledges of love in his Word, or she cannot be contented, but will complain, in the confluence of all other comforts, as Abraham did, "Lord God, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless?" Gen 15:2 or as Artabazus in Xenophon did, when Cyrus had given him a cup of gold and Chrysantas a kiss in token of his special favour, saying that the cup that he gave him was nothing so good gold as the kiss that he gave Chrysantas. The poet's fable, that the moon was wont to come down from her orb to kiss Endymion. It is a certain truth that Christ came down from heaven to reconcile us to his Father, to unite us to himself, and still to communicate unto our souls the sense of his love, the feeling of his favour, the sweet breath of his Holy Spirit.
For thy love is better than wine.] Heb., Loves. The Septuagint and Vulgate render it ubera, thy breasts; but that is not so proper, since it is the Church that here speaks to Christ, and by the sudden change of person shows the strength and liveliness of her affection, as by the plural "loves," she means all fruits of his love, righteousness, peace, joy in the Holy Ghost, assurance of heaven, which Mr Latimer calls the deserts of the feast of a good conscience. There are other dainty dishes at that feast, but this is the banquet, this is "better than wine," which yet is a very comfortable creature, Psa 104:15 and highly set by. Psa 4:7 Plato calls wine a music, miseriarum humanarum μαλακτικα, the chief allayments of men's miseries.
a Apocalypsin fateor me nescire exponere, &c., exponat cui Deus concesserit. - Cajet.
b Possev. in Biblioth. Select.