Stay me with flagons,.... Of wine, which is a supporter of the animal spirits w. The church was now in a house of wine, where was plenty of it; even of the love of Christ, compared to wine, and preferred unto it, Song of Solomon 1:2; the church though she had had large discoveries of it, desired more; and such that have once tasted of this love are eagerly desirous of it, and cannot be satisfied until they have their fill of it in heaven: the flagons, being vessels in which wine is put, and from thence poured out, may signify the word and ordinances, in which the love of Christ is displayed and manifested; the church desires she might be stayed and supported hereby, while she was attending on Christ in them;
comfort me with apples; with exceeding great and precious promises; which, when fitly spoken and applied, are "like apples of gold in pictures of silver", Proverbs 25:11; and are very comforting: or rather, with fresh and greater manifestations of his love still; for the apple is an emblem of love, as before observed; for one to send or throw an apple to another indicated love x. It may be rendered, "strew me with apples" y; in great quantities, about me, before me, and under me, and all around me, that I may lie down among them, and be sweetly refreshed and strengthened: the words, both in this and the former clause, are in the plural number; and so may be an address to the other two divine Persons, along with Christ, to grant further manifestations of love unto her, giving the following reason for it:
for I [am] sick of love; not as loathing it, but as wanting, and eagerly desirous of more of it; being, as the Septuagint version is, "wounded" z with it; love's dart stuck in her, and she was inflamed therewith: and "languished" a; as the Vulgate Latin version is; with earnest desires after it; nor could she be easy without it, as is the case of lovers.
w "Vino fulcire venas cadentes", Senecae Ep. 95. x "Malo me Galatea petit", Virgil. Bucolic. Eclog. 3. v. 64. Vid. Theocrit. Idyll. 3. v. 10. Idyll. 6. v. 6, 7. Suidam in voce
μηλον. y רפדוני "sternite ante me", so some in Vatablus "substernite mihi", Tigurine version, Piscator. z τετρωμηνη, Sept. a "Langueo amore", V. L. so Michaelis "aegrotus" is used in this sense, in Terent. Heautont. l. 1.