Stay me with flagons,.... Of wine, which is a supporter of the animal spirits . 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, So 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", Pr 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 .
It may be rendered, "strew me with apples" ; 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" with it; love's dart stuck in her, and she was inflamed therewith: and "languished" ; as the Vulgate Latin version is; with earnest desires after it; nor could she be easy without it, as is the case of lovers.
"Vino fulcire venas cadentes", Senecae Ep. 95. "Malo me Galatea petit", Virgil. Bucolic. Eclog. 3. v. 64. Vid. Theocrit. Idyll. 3. v. 10. & Idyll. 6. v. 6, 7. & Suidam in vocemhlon. ynwdpr "sternite ante me", so some in Vatablus; "substernite mihi", Tigurine version, Piscator.
tetrwmhnh, Sept. "Langueo amore", V. L. so Michaelis; "aegrotus" is used in this sense, in Terent. Heautont. l.