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Scripture Reading: S. S. 3:6-11; 4:1, 4
In all the figures mentioned in the previous chapter, there is a great change in the character, in the personality, and especially in the will of the seeking one. The first figure is a mare — the strongest of all the figures in personality. If we compare a mare with a dove, the dove has a little character, and it is not strong. And the lily has almost no personality. Hence, of the first four figures — the mare, the doves’ eyes, the lily, and the dove — the mare is clearly the strongest in personality. While the lily has almost no personality, something is still there. But in the last four figures — the pillars of smoke, the bed, the palanquin, and the crown — there is definitely no personality. The seeking one’s personality has been lost.
Do you think that the pillars of smoke have any personality? And do you think that the bed, the palanquin, or the crown have a personality? It is so clear that the pillars are strong, yet they are without personality. The bed is quite useful in affording rest, but according to the figure, we can see no personality in it. It is the same with the palanquin and the crown. This sequence of pictures from the mare to the crown is quite meaningful and descriptive. At the beginning, the Lord’s seeking one was exceedingly strong in her personality, especially in her will. But eventually, by appreciating the Lord Jesus and enjoying His riches, her strong will has been subdued step by step. She stayed in the clefts of the rock and in the covert of the precipice, where she was permeated with the sweet flavor of the death of Christ and the fragrance of His resurrection. This means that the cross and the resurrection life have worked within her to change her character and transform her personality.
To understand such a poetic book with its many figures, we need not only a knowledge of the Bible but also the proper and adequate experience to match our understanding. When all the figures are put together, the picture becomes very meaningful. At first the seeking one is a mare pulling Pharaoh, but eventually she becomes a palanquin containing and carrying Solomon. This picture is better than a thousand words.
Do you love the Lord? If so, then what stage are you in? Are you as strong as a mare among Pharoah’s chariots? Or do you have the doves’ eyes? Transformation is always by the renewing of the mind. The transformation of the seeking one began with the changing of her concept. She was like a mare, but she began to have doves’ eyes. When your spiritual insight is changed, all outward things seem different. In fact, they do not change; they are just the same. The change is in your concept. Perhaps the movies were very attractive to you in the past. They have not changed, but now they seem so unattractive to you. This is because your eyes have changed. Many of the young people used to love long hair and short skirts. These things have not changed, but their eyes have changed. At the beginning you had mare’s eyes, but now you have doves’ eyes. You may not have become a dove yet, but your eyes have been transformed. Transformation always begins with our eyes; this is the renewing of our mind. We should not be fashioned according to this age, but we should be transformed by the renewing of our mind (Rom. 12:2). This is to have the mare’s eyes changed into doves’ eyes.
Then she becomes a lily. Because her concept, ideas, and insight have been changed, she does not trust in the mare’s strength any longer. Now she puts her trust in God. She has lost her confidence in the mare’s strength. Her strength is still there, but her insight has been turned to another direction. Hence, she is no longer like a mare but like a lily. A mare relies upon its own strength, but a lily must trust in God. This signifies that she puts her trust in God.
This book reveals that to love the Lord Jesus requires us to take Him as our person. But for the Lord to become our person, we need to lose many things. We must lose our insight, our concepts, and eventually our will, our character, and our personality. Then as we progress, we will reach the stage of the pillars of smoke. At that stage no personality is left. It is not an accident that the pillars follow the lily, and the bed comes after the pillars. The first four figures have some amount of personality, but the last four figures have no personality at all. This proves that the more we go on with the Lord, the more we will lose our personality, for the Lord Jesus will be our person.
By the time the seeking one comes up from the wilderness, she has lost her personality. The wilderness, according to my experience, is just our will. To come up from the wilderness is to come out of the will. The wilderness is really the willderness. As long as we are remaining in our will, we are wandering in the wilderness. We could never take a straight path to follow the Lord. Our will becomes a deception to us. Thus, when the seeking one comes up from the wilderness, she comes out of her will. She was like a mare, a lily, and a dove; but now such a strong-willed person has become the pillars.
“Who is she who comes up from the wilderness / Like pillars of smoke?” The answer is that this is Solomon’s bed. She no longer has a character or a will. We all know that a bed does not have a will. As long as we have a will, we can never be the resting place of Jesus. To try to rest upon anything with a strong will would be dreadful. But it is easy to rest on a bed, because it has no will. If our bed had a will, it would be impossible for us to rest during the night. But now she has become a bed and a palanquin with no will. And eventually she becomes the crown.
It is quite interesting to see that when the question is asked concerning the one coming up from the wilderness, even the answer shows some improvement. First, she is the bed, then she is a palanquin, and finally, she is Solomon with a crown. She is not simply something with Solomon, but she is Solomon with something. Who is this one? It is just Christ with a crown. She is not only the bed of Solomon or the palanquin of Solomon but also Solomon himself with a crown. This proves that now the seeking one is really one with the Lord. She has become Christ with a crown. Only when we are one with Christ, can He boast and glory in us. Praise the Lord, someday when others ask about us, the answer will be about Christ. We will be Christ with His crown.
With the palanquin there are two aspects: the exterior structure and the interior decoration. Solomon built a palanquin of the wood of Lebanon. This is the substantial structure. Wood signifies humanity, and Lebanon signifies resurrection and ascension. The humanity of the resurrected and ascended Christ is the wood of Lebanon. Christ can make wild mares into a palanquin with His resurrected and ascended humanity. Hallelujah! A mare is something natural by birth; there is absolutely nothing of building up related to it. It is altogether natural. But the palanquin is not something of birth; it is something built up. And the substantial material used for this building is the humanity of Jesus in resurrection and ascension. The moving vessel of Christ is not of natural birth but something built with the resurrected and ascended humanity of Christ.
We should not be shallow. We need to see something substantial, solid, real, deep, and yet so practical. How much we must repudiate our old nature and our own humanity! We must learn to take the Lord’s resurrected and ascended humanity as our basic structure so that we may be built into the moving vessel that contains and expresses Him. Moreover, there is not only the wood of Lebanon but also the posts of silver and the golden bottom. Silver signifies the Lord’s redemption, and gold, God’s divine nature. The redemption of Christ is our supporting strength, and the divine nature of God is the very base of our building.
We need to take all these things to the Lord in prayer so that He may bring us into the reality. We must be such a builded structure, not with our natural strength but with the humanity of Christ, the redemption of Jesus, and the divinity of God.
Solomon made the palanquin himself. It is not that we make it. No one can make such a palanquin except Christ Himself. Throughout the years, the Lord has been working on us with the intention to make a palanquin for Himself. He does not use anything of our natural makeup, but He uses His humanity, His redemption, and the divinity of God.
What is our responsibility? Our responsibility is simply to offer our love to Him. The interior decoration of the palanquin was inlaid with love from the daughters of Jerusalem. We must offer our love to the Lord. He does not want anything from us other than our love. “Simon, son of John, do you love Me more than these?” (John 21:15). He is always seeking our love, and only our love affords something for the interior decoration of the palanquin. The Lord Jesus made it, but it is decorated with our love. The basic structure is of wood, silver, and gold, but our love is the only thing with which the interior is decorated. The more we love Him, the more we will lose our character and personality. The more we love Him, the more we will lose our will, but the interior of the palanquin will be fully decorated.
Now we come to Song of Songs 4, which is a continuation of chapter 3. When the question was first asked about the seeking one coming up from the wilderness, the answer did not come from the Lord Himself but from someone else. Then in chapter 4 the Lord gives His answer. “Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves’ eyes within thy locks: thy hair is as a flock of goats, that appear from mount Gilead” (v. 1, KJV). The Lord speaks of her beauty as still being in her eyes, but now something is added. Her doves’ eyes are within her locks. I believe that we all know what locks are. It is hair that is curled and put together in a row. Her hair is not left in a loose way. Her beauty is not only in her eyes but in her eyes within the locks. If our hair is loose, there is no way to have locks. The hair must be dealt with in a certain way in order to have the locks.
In this verse I really appreciate the punctuation of the King James Version. After locks, there is a colon, which means “as follows.” So the following part of the verse explains what her hair is like. It is like a flock of goats that appears from Mount Gilead. We must realize that this is poetry. It is easy to understand if you have ever seen a flock of goats on a mountain. I saw such a sight both in Scotland and in New Zealand. It does not say that the goats are scattered over the mountain, but that they are flocked together. This is the poetic picture of the hair of the seeking one after becoming the crown. Her hair has been dealt with to become locks, which appear like a flock of goats on a mountain.
We have already seen that the eyes signify spiritual insight; this was the first change in the seeking one. What then does the hair signify? Hair in the Bible always indicates something of the will. All her scattered wills have been gathered together into rows to appear as a flock of goats on a mountain. A flock of goats standing on a mountain presents a picture of submission. Some of the goats are standing on a lower part of the mountain, and some are standing on a higher part. If they were standing on a flat plain, there would be no impression of submission, but for them to be standing on a mountain presents a picture of submission.
The goats are not scattered but gathered; they are not on the plain but on the mountainside, giving a picture of submission. This means that by the improvement from a mare to a palanquin, all the wills of the seeking one have been dealt with. They have been subdued and gathered together to be made into rows full of submission.
Chapter 4 is a continuation of chapter 3. It tells us the secret of how the seeking one made such an improvement: her will was subdued and dealt with. By the time she was the moving vessel of Christ, all her wills had been dealt with and gathered together to present a picture of submission.
Now we understand what the Lord means when He says, “Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves’ eyes within thy locks: thy hair is as a flock of goats, that appear from mount Gilead.” Her beauty is now not only in her insight but in the insight within her locks. Her beauty is seen in her changed concepts within her subdued will. There is not only the renewing of her mind but also the subduing of her will. This is exceedingly fair and comely to the Lord. Formerly, she had only the beauty of the renewing of her mind, but now she also has the beauty of the subduing of her will.
Many times in the past forty years I have come back to the Song of Songs. I have had many experiences in this book, and I have come to realize that it speaks not only of love but also of the subduing of the will. To have complete, adequate, and thorough transformation, there must be the subduing of the will. The more our will is subdued, the more we will be transformed.
Many of us love the Lord, but we still hold on to our will. Our concept has been changed, and our mind has been renewed, but our will needs subduing. Many of us are so stubborn — not only the brothers but also the sisters. The problem is not with our heart. We do love the Lord. I believe that in the past few months the Lord has heard many voices saying, “Lord Jesus, I love You!” But in answer to these voices, I believe the Lord would say, “Yes, I know that you love Me, but what about your will?” To have our concept changed is not enough. We must go on to have our will subdued.
As we have already mentioned, the discrepancy between the seeking one and the Lord in chapter 2 was due entirely to her strong will. The Lord asked her to rise up and come away with Him, but she said that she was not ready. In other words, she was telling the Lord that it was not a matter of His will but her will. Her will was so strong that she would allow the Lord to go away only if He came back when she needed Him. She was even giving orders to the Lord by her strong will. Therefore, the Lord spent a long time dealing with her in the wilderness of the stubborn will. When our will is not subdued, it simply becomes a wilderness to us. The real entering into the good land is a full subduing of our will.
Chapter 3 tells us of the maturity of the seeking one, and chapter 4 continues by explaining how she reached such a mature stage. But this is not all. Eventually, she is reckoned by the Lord as Jerusalem. This is the maturity that is mentioned in chapter 3 when she becomes the palanquin. A palanquin is a miniature of the city. The city contains the Lord in a full way, and the palanquin contains the Lord on a smaller scale. This is the maturity mentioned in chapter 3. Then chapter 4 explains that such a maturity is reached by the subduing of the will.
We also need to read 4:4: “Your neck is like the tower of David, / Built for an armory: / A thousand bucklers hang on it, / All the shields of the mighty men.” Here the Lord likens her neck to the tower of David. We have seen that the hair signifies our will, and we know that our neck also signifies our will. Those who are rebellious toward God in the Bible are called stiff-necked (Exo. 32:9; Acts 7:51). So we see that a flock of goats appearing on the mountain shows the subduing of her will, and the tower of David illustrates how strong her will is in resurrection. First of all, our will must be subdued; then it must be strong in resurrection. The natural will must be dealt with, and then we will have a resurrected will. The crucified and subdued will is just like a flock of goats standing on a mountainside, but the resurrected will must be like the tower of David builded up as an armory. An armory is a place where weapons for fighting are kept.
How poetic the Song of Songs is! First, our will must be subdued; then it will be resurrected like the tower of David, the armory for the spiritual warfare. All the weapons for spiritual warfare are kept in our subdued and resurrected will. If our will has never been subdued by the Lord, it can never be a strong armory to keep all the weapons for spiritual warfare. All the weapons are mostly defensive, not offensive. It is not so much a matter of going out to fight as it is a matter of standing to resist. Bucklers and shields are all for protection in order to stand. In spiritual warfare, we are not so much on the offensive as we are on the defensive, standing against all the devilish, subtle attacks of the enemy. Most of the items of the armor mentioned in Ephesians 6 are also defensive. There is really no need for us to fight; the Lord has won the battle already.
We simply need to stand and resist all the enemy’s attacks. The bucklers and the shields that protect us against the arrows of the enemy are kept in this tower, which is the subdued and resurrected will of the Lord’s seeking one. This is the real maturity in life.
An unsubdued will is, on the one hand, stubborn, and on the other hand, weak. When the enemy comes, the stubborn, unsubdued will always makes an unconditional surrender. We all know this by our own experience. This is especially true with the sisters. The sisters who are stubborn in the matter of submission are the first to surrender when the enemy attacks. But if we have a submissive will, a will that has been subdued like a flock of goats on a mountain side, our will is expressed like a tower of David. When the enemy comes, our will is like the tower of David that holds all kinds of weapons against his attacks.
The secret of the maturity of the seeking one in chapter 3 is that her will has been completely subdued and resurrected. Of all eight figures, the first one is strongest in the will, and the last one has no will of its own at all. The mare has an exceedingly strong will, but the palanquin and the crown have no will at all. She has come out of her natural will and is now standing in her resurrected will against the enemy. She is like the tower of David builded as an armory for the spiritual warfare.
