Song of Solomon 2:5
Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.
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
mhlon.
{y} ynwdpr "sternite ante me", so some in Vatablus; "substernite mihi", Tigurine version, Piscator.
{z} tetrwmhnh, Sept.
{a} "Langueo amore", V. L. so Michaelis; "aegrotus" is used in this sense, in Terent. Heautont. l. 1.