Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, terrible as an army with banners? This, of course, is the praise which comes from the lips of the queens and concubines, the ladies of the harem, the daughters of Jerusalem. The word rendered "looketh forth" is literally "bendeth forward," i.e. in order to look out or forth (cf. Psalms 14:2), LXX; ἐκκυπτοῦσα Venet; παρακυπτοῦσα (cf. James 1:25, "stooping down and looking into the Word as into well"). The idea seems to be that of a rising luminary, looking forth from the background, breaking through the shades of the garden, like the morning star appearing above the horizon ( ὡς ἑωσφόρος, Venetian) (cf. Isaiah 14:12, where the morning star is called הֶן שַׁחַר). The moon is generally יָדֵח, "yellow," but here לְבָנָה, "white," i.e. pale and sweet, as the lesser light, with true womanly delicacy and fairness; but the rest of the description, which plainly is added for the sake of the symbolical suggestiveness of the figures, removes all idea of mere weakness. Clear (or, bright) as the sun. And the word for "sun" is not, as usual, shemesh, but chammah, "heat," the warming light (Psalms 19:7; see Job 31:26; Isaiah 49:2). The fierce rays of the Eastern sun are terrible to those who encounter them. The glory of the Church is a glory overwhelming as against all that opposes it. The description is pure hyperbole as applied to a fair bride, referring to the blazing beauty of her face and adornments, but symbolically it has always been felt a precious contribution to religious language. Perhaps no sentence in the Old Testament has been more frequently on the lips of devout men, especially when they have been speaking of the victories of the truth and the glowing prospects of the Saviour's kingdom.
I went down into the garden of nuts to see the green plants of the valley, to see whether the vine budded and the pomegranates were in flower. Or ever I was aware, my soul set me among the chariots of my princely people. There cannot he much doubt as to the meaning of these words. Taking them as put into the lips of the bride, and as intended to be a response to the lavish praises of the bridegroom, we may regard them as a modest confession that she had lost her heart immediately that she had seen King Solomon. She went down into her quiet garden life to occupy herself as usual with rustic labours and enjoyments, but the moment that her beloved approached she was carried away—her soul was as in a swift chariot. Delitzsch thinks that the words refer to what occurred after marriage. He supposes that on some occasion the king Look his bride with him on an excursion in his chariot to a plain called Etam. He refers to a description of such a place to be found in Josephus, 'Ant.,' 8.7, 3, but the explanation is far fetched and improbable. The nut or walnut tree (Juglans regia, Linn.) came originally from Persia. The name is very similar in the Persian, AEthiopic, Arabic, and Syriac. One cannot help comparing the lovely simplicity of the bride's description with the tender beauty of Goethe's 'Herman and Dorothea.' The main point is this, that she is not the mere captive of the king, taken, as was too often the case with Eastern monarchs, by violence into his harem; she was subdued by the power of love. It was love that raised her to the royal chariots of her people. She beholds in King Solomon the concentration and the acme of her people's glory. He is the true Israel; she is the glory of him who is the glory of God.