His cheeks [are] as a bed of spices, [as] sweet flowers: his lips [like] lilies, dropping sweet smelling myrrh.
Ver. 13. His cheeks are as a bed of spices,] i.e., Comely and pleasant to the sight, sweet also to the smell; areolis similes, aromatum plenis; flourishing with a goodly, comely, fresh, and sweet beard; so declaring his face not only to be gracious and amiable, but also full of gravity, glory, and majesty. There are those who would have all these things to be taken literally about Christ's natural body, and that here is set down his prosopograpohy; but this was written long before Christ was incarnated, and therefore it must needs be meant in a metaphorical and allegorical sense, hard to be explained. Ego quid de singulis statuam fateor me nescire, saith a learned interpreter. Allegorically to handle all these is not in my purpose or power, saith another: since the graces of Christ, as they cannot well be expressed, so, by reason of our weakness, they cannot better be declared. The drift of the Holy Ghost is to paint out unto us the spiritual and heavenly love of his Church to Christ, who doth not and cannot satisfy herself with any words or comparisons of this kind; and, secondly, to stir up our heartiest and liveliest affections to him that hath such a world of worth and wealth in him. As the worth and value of many pieces of silver is in one piece of gold, so all the petty excellencies scattered abroad in the creatures are united in Christ; yea, all the whole volume of perfections which is spread through heaven and earth is epitomised in him. Why do we not then make out to him, and despise all for him with Paul? Why do we not, with David, chide ourselves and others for loving vanity and seeking after leasing? Psa 4:2 "How long wilt thou go about, O backsliding daughter," Jer 31:22 and fetch a compass? knowest thou not that "the Lord hath created a new thing in the earth? a woman shall compass a man"; Isa 7:14 that is, "a virgin shall conceive and bear a son," even the man Christ Jesus, in whom it pleased the Father that there should dwell all fulness. Col 1:19 Make we therefore straight paths for our feet; Heb 12:13 let us go speedily to Christ, Zec 8:21 as bees do to a meadow full of flowers; as merchants do to the Indies, that are full of fruits and spices, that we may return from him full fraught with treasures of truth and grace.
His lips, like lilies, dropping sweet smelling myrrh,] i.e., His word and doctrine is white, sweet, pleasant, far spreading as lilies, sweet to the smell, and yet bitter to the taste as myrrh, no way pleasing to the flesh, which it mortifieth, calling upon men to repent, reform, walk by rule, strive to enter in at the strait gate, resist unto blood, striving against sin. "These things are good and profitable to men," as the apostle speaks in another case, Tit 3:8 but they naturally care not to hear about them. Drop not ye, say they; we like not your lilies dropping myrrh and nitre; let those drop or prophesy that preach pleasing things. We like your lilies, but care not for your myrrh; or, if we smell it, we like not to taste of it, because little toothsome, however it may be wholesome. See Micah 2:6 .