As Brightman’s Commentary may be regarded as the fullest development of the Chaldee interpretation Christianized, we shall give a few specimens of his mode of exposition.

I sleep, but my heart, &c. chap. v. 1.—The negligence of the Church lying thus is declared first by her drowsiness, then by his enticing call, and lastly by the slight causes of her excuse. Sleep caused her outward senses to be benumbed, that she neither regarded nor considered how superstitions arose, as it happened to the householder in Matt. xiii. 25. Neither could it be otherwise (when the bridegroom left the garden and his friends or fellows drunken with prosperity, wholly gaping after riches and honours, all common good despised), but sleep would overcome the spouse, wherein outwardly she should not differ from a dead woman, however the heart should move and live, the seed of faith not altogether quenched. This drowsiness crept in, in the time of Constantine, when a gaping heaviness, with a continued desire of sleeping, so oppressed the spouse, that the sharpest-sighted pastors could not use their outward senses: not perceiving how ambition crept in among the bishops, and not only that, but how they began to consecrate temples to saints, earnestly to seek their reliques, to worship them with prayers, and to believe that prayers made in the honour of saints at their sepulchres did profit much. Who could now tell whether the Church were sleeping or waking? who neither loathed nor perceived such things. When Constantine was dead, Christ found the Church asleep, and sought by all means to stir her up both by knocking and calling. He knocked by persecutions in the times of Constance, Julian and Valens, of whom though Julian were a professed enemy, (A.D. 368,) yet the other two exceeded him in cruelty. After their tyrannous reign God stirred up Valentinian in the west parts, by whom Christ lovingly called his spouse, that, returning unto her former integrity, she should open and let him in. Then taking away Valens, he called more earnestly at both doors (as it were) as well in the west as in the east, by Gratian and Theodosius the elder; after by Arcadius and Honorius, then by Theodosius the younger, and Valentinian the third. And lastly, (that there might be four pair as it were answerable to the four voices, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled one,) by Marcion alone in the east. These emperors studied and laboured very religiously to defend and enlarge true religion; but the Church was in all the fault, who having these helps [[74]]prepared, would not use them to recover her former brightness. To this readiness of the emperors was added the voice of the most excellent bishops, and best learned men of that time; as Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Ambrose, Hierome, Chrysostome, Augustine and others, the lights of that time. But seeing his profession of love could nothing move her, he tried what his shutting out of the doors at night would do.

My head is filled with dew, &c.—The locks of hair signified, before the congregation of the faithful, among whom true religion was now so much deranged by new and foolish ceremonies, borrowed partly of the Jews and Gentiles, and partly invented of their own idle brains, that the grass is scarce more covered with drops of dew in the night, than the Church was at that time with superstitions.

14. His hands are as gold rings, &c.—Hitherto hath the bridegroom been set forth to the world in some special members, from Frederick the second to Robertus Gallus by almost 100 years. The hands are the instruments of action, and in scripture they figuratively signify works. The gems included in the rings seem to signify the ministers of the word, which elsewhere Christ carried as stars in his right hand (Rev. i. 20). But these times yielded not such splendour. These things show a change and alteration of that which Christ would bring to pass by the labour of his ministers, as it happened about the year 1300, which was called the first resurrection of the dead. For now the thousand years were ended wherein Satan was bound, and the dead raised from their graves. Very many began now more boldly to set forth the truth, as Dante the Florentine, Marsilius Patavinus, William Ockham, John of Gaunt, and many others. Philip the French king despised Pope Boniface, Lewis of Bavaria strove long time with these most humble servants of servants for the rights of the empire. Edward of England made show unto many how little he esteemed the pope’s authority.

His belly is as bright ivory, &c.—By the belly or bowels, bright as ivory overlaid with sapphires, may be understood the two Sacraments. For the word of God is open to the view of every one, as the mouth and countenance, neither is it wont to be hid from strangers; but the Sacraments serve only for the household, as the bowels, which are appointed only to that body whose members they are, but serve to no use for strangers. These things therefore as it were, with the finger, point to those times of John Wickliff (1370), who taught openly, that the substance of the material bread and wine remains in the sacrament of the altar; the accidents of bread remain not without the subject in the same Sacrament; Christ is not really in the Sacrament, in proper presence corporally. Berengarius spoke against this wicked error 200 years before, but the time was not yet come wherein the hands of the bridegroom should be seen full of rings, whence his empire wanted success.

How different to this is the opinion of Henry Ainsworth, the celebrated Nonconformist divine, who regards this “book as treating of man’s reconciliation unto God, and peace by Jesus [[75]]Christ, with joy in the Holy Spirit!” “In Solomon’s days,” says Ainsworth, “the Church before Christ’s coming had the greatest glory, having the temple builded, living under that most wise, rich, and peaceable King; the Israelites being as the sand which is by the sea in multitude, eating, and drinking, and making merry, and dwelling safely, every man under his vine and under his fig-tree.” (1 Kings iv. 10, 25.) Notwithstanding Solomon, being a prophet, foresaw the ruin of his house and kingdom, and in his book of Ecclesiastes proclaimed all things under the sun to be vanity, and in this Song prophesieth of the Church and Kingdom of Christ. And as he, with many other prophets, and kings, and righteous men, desired to see Christ, and to hear his words, but did not (Luke x. 24; Matt. xiii. 7), so here he manifesteth the desire of himself and of all the faithful to enjoy the blessings and graces of Christ, saying, ‘Let him kiss me.’ Whereby the Church desireth to have Christ manifested in the flesh, and to have the loving and comfortable doctrines of his Gospel applied unto her conscience, that she might not be always under the schoolmaster of the law, which worketh wrath (Rom. iv. 15), but might be prevented with the grace of Christ, and have the feeling of his love towards her.[85]

The difference of opinion respecting the interpretation of this book, which obtained after the Reformation had laid open the Scriptures to all Protestants, and had established the right of private judgment, did not, however, as yet affect the Romish Church. Her followers not only adhered to the allegorical interpretation, but, unlike their predecessors of the middle ages, took the bride of the Song to be the Virgin Mary. Thus Michael Ghislerius and Cornelius à Lapide. The latter is especially to be noticed, since he was the first who endeavoured to show that this Song is a drama in five acts.

1583–1645. The fact, that the allegorical interpretation [[76]]could with equal facility be made to describe the history of the Jewish nation and that of the Virgin Mary, awakened the suspicion of Hugo Grotius, the celebrated statesman, philosopher, and divine. He, therefore, adhered to the literal sense of the book, which, according to him, celebrates the marriage of Solomon with Pharaoh’s daughter, but at the same time also admitted that the ARCANA NUPTIARUM spiritually represent, first, the love of God to the Israelites, and then the love of Christ to the Church.[86] It will be remembered that Origen was already of opinion that this Song primarily celebrates the marriage of Solomon with Pharaoh’s daughter, though with him the literal meaning was of no importance, and that Theodoret mentions some who viewed the Song in no other light than this.

1603–1699. It was to be expected that John Cocceius, the founder of the theological school bearing his name, whose doctrine was, that the whole history of the Old Testament is a mirror, accurately reflecting the transactions and events that were to happen under the New Testament dispensation to the end of the world, would find in this Song something in accordance with his views. Enlarging upon Aponius’ and De Lyra’s mode of interpretation, and, like Brightman, still more approaching the Chaldee, in a manner peculiar to himself Cocceius regards this book as a prophetical narrative of the transactions and events that are to happen in the Church, and divides the whole into seven distinct periods, similar to the seven trumpets and seven seals in the Revelation of St. John. [[77]]

Chapter.
1. The period of the preaching of the Gospel to Jews and Gentiles i.–ii.
2. The period of the increase of the Church, and persecution from without iii.–iv.
3. The period of peace from without and danger within v.–vi. 8.
4. The period of the Reformation vi. 9–vii. 10.
5. The period of unsettlement after the Reformation vii. 11–viii. 3.
6. The period of the persecution viii. 4–6.
7. The period of rest after the sufferings and longing for the spread of the Gospel viii. 7–14.[87]

1648. Strange as this mode of interpretation may appear, yet, as we have seen, it is not confined to a single individual or country. John Cotton also affirms that Solomon in this book “describes the estate of the Church towards Christ, and his respect towards her from his (i.e. Solomon’s) own time to the last judgment.”[88]

1650. John Trapp, however, adhered to the more general view, and regarded this Song as “a treasury of the most sacred and highest mysteries of Holy Scriptures, streaming out all along, under the parable of a marriage, that full torrent of spiritual love that is betwixt Christ and the Church.” … “The form of it is dramatical and dialogistical; the chief speakers are, not Solomon and the Shulamite, as Castellio makes it, but Christ and his Church. Christ also hath associates (those friends of the bridegroom), 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.”[89]