Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Song of Solomon 2:11
For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over [and] gone;
11. In this and the two following verses we have one of the loveliest descriptions of the spring in Syria that was ever penned.
the winter is past ] The word sth w, used for winter, does not occur elsewhere in the O.T., but is the same as the Arabic shit, which is also used in the vulgar language to denote ‘rain.’ The Targums on Gen 8:22 and Isa 18:6 use the word sth w for chrph, the ordinary Heb. word for autumn and winter. Probably it denotes the couldy season, the season of rain. This ends with the malqsh or ‘latter rain,’ which falls in March and April; and after that for nearly six months rain is infrequent.
the rain is over and gone ] Lit. has passed, and is gone away. The Heb. suggests the sweep of the rain clouds across the sky, and their disappearance from the horizon.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Verse 11. The winter is past] Mr. Harmer has made some good collections on this part, from Drs. Shaw and Russel, which I shall transcribe. One part of the winter is distinguished from the rest of it by the people of the East, on account of the severity of the cold. At Aleppo it lasts about forty days, and is called by the natives maurbanie. I would propose it to the consideration of the learned, whether the word here used, and translated winter, may not be understood to mean what the Aleppines express by the term maurbanie. It occurs nowhere else in the Old Testament; and another word is used for the rainy part of the year in general. If this thought be admitted, it will greatly illustrate the words of the bridegroom: Lo, the winter is past; the rain is over, and gone. For then the last clause will not be explanatory of the first, and signify that the moist part of the year was entirely past; with which, Dr. Russel assures us, all pleasantness withdraws at Aleppo; but the words will import: “The maurbanie is past and over; the weather is become agreeably warm; the rain too is just ceased, and consequently hath left us the prospect of several days of serenity and undisturbed pleasantness.”
The weather of Judea was in this respect, I presume, like that at Algiers; where, after two or three days of rain, there is usually, according to Dr. Shaw, “a week, a fortnight, or more, of fair and good weather. Of such a sort of cessation of rain alone, the bridegroom, methinks, is here to be understood; not of the absolute termination of the rainy season, and the summer droughts being come on. And if so, what can the time that is past mean but the maurbanie? Indeed, Dr. Russel, in giving us an account of the excursions of the English merchants at Aleppo, has undesignedly furnished us with a good comment on this and the two following verses. These gentlemen, it seems, dine abroad under a tent, in spring and autumn on Saturdays, and often on Wednesdays. They do the same during the good weather in winter; but they live at the gardens in April, and part of May. In the heat of the summer they dine at the gardens, as once or twice a week they dine under a tent in autumn and spring.” The cold weather is not supposed by Solomon to have been long over, since it is distinctly mentioned; and the Aleppines make these incursions very early; the narcissus flowers during the whole of the maurbanie; the hyacinths and violets at least before it is quite over. The appearing of flowers, then, doth not mean the appearing of the first and earliest flowers, but must rather be understood of the earth’s being covered with them; which at Aleppo is not till after the middle of February, a small crane’s bill appearing on the banks of the river there about the middle of February, quickly after which comes a profusion of flowers. The nightingales, too, which are there in abundance, not only afford much pleasure by their songs in the gardens, but are also kept tame in the houses, and let out at a small rate to divert such as choose it in the city; so that no entertainments are made in the spring without a concert of these birds. No wonder, then, that Solomon makes the bridegroom speak of the singing of birds; and it teaches us what these birds are, which are expressly distinguished from turtle doves.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
The winter; which made the ways in some sort unpassable, and so might seem to hinder or affright thee from coming to me. This
winter, and the following
rain, may be understood either,
1. Of worldly tribulations, which he intimates to be past and gone, to wit, so far that they shall not destroy nor hurt the church, but, on the contrary, do her much good, both by multiplying her members, and increasing her graces; and promoting her eternal happiness. Or rather,
2. Of spiritual troubles arising in the minds and consciences of sinners, from a deep sense of the guilt of sin, the justice and wrath of God, the sentence and curse of the law; all which made them afraid to come unto God, and desirous, if possible, to run away from him. But, saith Christ, I have removed this great impediment, God is ready to be reconciled, and therefore cast off all discouragements and excuses, and come unto me.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
11. the winterthe law of thecovenant of works (Mt 4:16).
rain is over (Heb 12:18-24;1Jn 2:8). Then first the GentileChurch is called “beloved, which was not beloved” (Ro9:25). So “the winter” of estrangement and sin is”past” to the believer (Isa 44:22;Jer 50:20; 2Co 5:17;Eph 2:1). The rising “Sun ofrighteousness” dispels the “rain” (2Sa 23:4;Psa 126:5; Mal 4:2).The winter in Palestine is past by April, but all the showers werenot over till May. The time described here is that which comesdirectly after these last showers of winter. In the highest sense,the coming resurrection and deliverance of the earth from the pastcurse is here implied (Rom 8:19;Rev 21:4; Rev 22:3).No more “clouds” shall then “return after the rain”(Ecc 12:2; Rev 4:3;compare Ge 9:13-17); “therainbow round the throne” is the “token” of this.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over [and] gone. A season of the year which keeps persons within doors, makes going abroad unsafe, unpleasant, and uncomfortable; very unfit for travelling, roads bad, rivers impassable, and journeying very difficult; but now this season being over, and the spring come, the weather fair, and every thing gay and pleasant, it is inviting to be abroad; winter is by some writers r used not for the season of the year, but for a storm or tempest. Thus the winter and rain may be descriptive of the state and condition of Jews and Gentiles before the coming of Christ s, and which then ceased; it having been a stormy dispensation with the one, and a time of darkness and ignorance with the other, Heb 12:18; or rather it may in general represent the state of God’s people both before and after conversion; before conversion it is a time of darkness, coldness, barrenness, and unfruitfulness; and which are removed by the powerful and efficacious grace of Christ: and after conversion it is often a winter season with them, through the blustering winds of Satan’s temptations; the storms of impending wrath for sin, as they imagine; the nipping blasts of persecution, and sharp and severe afflictions they are at times exposed unto: moreover, they are often in great darkness of soul, clouds interpose between Christ and them; a great deal of coldness attends them, their hearts are frozen up and hard, and no impression made on them by the preaching of the word, or by the providences of God; there is a coolness in their love to God and Christ, his people, ordinances, cause, and interest; great barrenness and unfruitfulness in them, they look like trees in winter, and no appearance of fruit on them; their hands are sealed up from working, and they become indolent and inactive; and by all these fellowship with Christ is greatly interrupted: but, when the spring returns again, light breaks in upon them, and their hearts are melted with a sense of love; they become lively in their frames, and in the exercise of grace, and are fruitful in good works; and enjoy much calmness and serenity, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost: sometimes they think the winter is not over when it is, and fear more storms are behind, even of divine wrath and vengeance, though without reason; since Christ has bore all wrath for them, and has satisfied law and justice, and has delivered them from wrath to come; and he that has done this says, “the winter is past”, &c.
r “Grandaevumque patrem supplex, miseranda rogabo unam hyemem”, Statii Achill. l. 1. v. 50, 51. Vid. Valer. Flacc. l. 1. v. 197. s “Ante adventum Christi hyems erat, venit Christus, fecit aestatem”, Ambros. Enarrat. in Paul. cxviii. octon. 7. p. 821.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
11 For, lo! the winter is past,
The rain is over, is gone.
12 The flowers appear in the land;
The time of song has come,
And the voice of the turtle makes itself heard in our land.
13 The fig-tree spices her green figs,
And the vines stand in bloom, they diffuse fragrance; –
Rise up, my love, my fair one, and go forth!
The winter is called , perhaps from a verb (of the same root as , , without any example, since , Gen 49:11, is certainly not derived from a verb ), to conceal, to veil, as the time of being overcast with clouds, for in the East winter is the rainy season; (Arab.) shataa is also used in the sense of rain itself ( vid., D. M. Zeitsch. xx. 618); and in the present day in Jerusalem, in the language of the people, no other name is used for rain but shataa (not metar ). The word , which the Ker substitutes, only means that one must not read , but , with long a; in the same way , humble, from , to be bowed down, and , a quail, from , to be fat, are formed and written. Rain is here, however, especially mentioned: it is called geshem , from gasham , to be thick, massy (cf. revivim , of density). With , to pass by, there is interchanged , which, like (Arab.) khalaf , means properly to press on, and then generally to move to another place, and thus to remove from the place hitherto occupied. In , with the dat. ethicus, which throws back the action on the subject, the winter rain is thought of as a person who has passed by. , with the noun-ending n, is the same as , and signifies the flower, as the latter the flower-month, floral; in the use of the word, is related to and , probably as little flower is to flower. In hazzamir the idea of the song of birds (Arab. gharad ) appears, and this is not to be given up. The lxx, Aquila, Symm., Targ., Jerome, and the Venet. translate tempus putationis : the time of the pruning of vines, which indeed corresponds to the usus loq. (cf. , to prune the vine, and , a pruning-knife), and to similar names, such as ingathering of fruit, but supplies no reason for her being invited out into the open fields, and is on this account improbable, because the poet further on speaks for the first time of vines. ( ) is an onomatopoeia, which for the most part denotes song and music; why should thus not be able to denote singing, like , – but not, at least not in this passage, the singing of men (Hengst.), for they are not silent in winter; but the singing of birds, which is truly a sign of the spring, and as a characteristic feature, is added
(Note: It is true that besides in this passage zamar , of the singing of birds, is not demonstrable, the Arab. zamar is only used of the shrill cry of the ostrich, and particularly the female ostrich.)
to this lovely picture of spring? Thus there is also suitably added the mention of the turtle-dove, which is a bird of passage ( vid., Jer 8:7), and therefore a messenger of spring. is 3rd pret.: it makes itself heard.
The description of spring is finished by a reference to the fig-tree and the vine, the standing attributes of a prosperous and peaceful homestead, 1Ki 5:5; 2Ki 18:31. (from , and thus named, not from their hardness, but their delicacy) are the little fruits of the fig-tree which now, when the harvest-rains are over, and the spring commences with the equinox of Nisan, already begin to assume a red colour; the verb does not mean “to grow into a bulb,” as Bttch. imagines; it has only the two meanings, condire ( condiri, post-bibl. syn. of ) and rubescere. From its colour, wheat has the name = ; and here also the idea of colour has the preference, for becoming fragrant does not occur in spring-in the history of the cursing of the fig-tree at the time of the Passover, Mark (Mar 11:13) says, “for the time of figs was not yet.” In fig-trees, by this time the green of the fruit-formation changes its colour, and the vines are , blossom, i.e., are in a state of bloom (lxx ; cf. Son 7:13, ) – it is a clause such as Exo 9:31, and to which “they diffuse fragrance” (Son 2:13) is parallel. This word is usually regarded as a compound word, consisting of , scent, and , brightness = blossom ( vid., Gesen. Thes.); it is undeniable that there are such compound formations, e.g., , from and ; , from (Arab.) hams , to be hard, and hals , to be dark-brown.
(Note: In like manner as (Arab.) karbsh , corrugare, is formed of karb , to string, and karsh , to wrinkle, combined; and another extension of karsh is kurnash , wrinkles, and mukarnash , wrinkled. “One day,” said Wetstein to me, “I asked an Arab the origin of the word karnasa , to wrinkle, and he replied that it was derived from a sheep’s stomach that had lain over night, i.e., the stomach of a slaughtered sheep that had lain over night, by which its smooth surface shrinks together and becomes wrinkled. In fact, we say of a wrinkled countenance that it is mathal alkarash albayt .” With right Wetstein gathers from this curious fact how difficult it is to ascertain by purely etymological considerations the view which guided the Semites in this or that designation. Samdor is also a strange word; on the one side it is connected with sadr , of the veiling of the eyes, as the effect of terror; and on the other with samd , of stretching oneself straight out. E. Meier takes as the name of the vine-blossom, as changed from , bristling. Just as unlikely as that is cogn. to , Jesurun, p. 221.)
But the traditional reading (not ) is unfavourable to this view; the middle a accordingly, as in , presents itself as an ante -tone vowel (Ewald, 154 a), and the stem-word appears as a quadril. which may be the expansion of , to range, put in order in the sense of placing asunder, unfolding. Symm. renders the word by , and the Talm. idiom shows that not only the green five-leaved blossoms of the vine were so named, but also the fruit-buds and the first shoots of the grapes. Here, as the words “they diffuse fragrance” (as at 7:14 of the mandrakes) show, the vine-blossom is meant which fills the vineyard with an incomparably delicate fragrance. At the close of the invitation to enjoy the spring, the call “Rise up,” etc., with which it began, is repeated. The Chethb , if not an error in writing, justly set aside by the Ker , is to be read (cf. Syr. bechi , in thee, levotechi , to thee, but with occult i) – a North Palestinism for , like 2Ki 4:2, where the Ker has substituted the usual form ( vid., under Ps 103 introd.) for this very dialectic form, which is there undoubtedly original.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
(11) Winter.Heb., sethav, only used here; probably from root = to overcast: the season of cloud and gloom.
The rain is over and gone.Wordsworth uses this line in a description of an early spring in a very different climate.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
11. Winter is past The winter of Palestine has little frost or snow, except on Hermon, and perhaps a few other mountain-tops, but it is a season of long and surly rains, making it far less enjoyable than the lively and joyous winters of our climate. Few of the houses are built to yield comfort at this time. One item, the lack of glass windows, is of itself suggestive the choice being between darkness and chilliness. No trace can be found of any good method of illuminating, or of any decent appliances for warming, houses. When, therefore, the sun in February began to be felt, welcome was the thought, “The winter is past, the rain is over and gone,” and now hope and love respond to Nature’s gladness.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Son 2:11. The winter is past One part of the winter is distinguished from the rest of it by the people of the East, in the latitude in which Solomon lived, on account of the severity of the cold. At Aleppo it lasts about forty days, and is called by the natives maurbanie. I would propose it to the consideration of the learned, whether the word setaiv, here used and translated winter, may not be understood to mean what the Aleppines express by the term maurbanie. It occurs nowhere else in the Old Testament; and another word is used for the rainy part of the year in general. If this thought be admitted, it will greatly illustrate, in a critical sense, the words of the bridegroom, Lo! the winter is past; the rain is over, is gone: for then the last clause will not be explanatory of the first, and signify that the moist part of the year was entirely past; with which Dr. Russell assures us all pleasantness withdraws at Aleppo;but the words will import, “The maurbanie is past and over; the weather become agreeably warm; the rain too has just ceased, and consequently has left us the prospect of several days of serenity and undisturbed pleasantness.” The weather of Judaea was, in this respect, I presume, like that at Algiers; where, after two or three days of rain, there is usually, according to Dr. Shaw, a week, a fortnight, or more, of fair and good weather. Of such a sort of cessation of rain alone, the bridegroom, methinks, is here to be understood, in the literal sense, and not of the absolute termination of the rainy season, and the summer-drought’s being come on; and if so, what can the time that was past mean, but the maurbanie? Indeed Dr. Russell, in giving us an account of the excursions of the English merchants at Aleppo, has undesignedly furnished us with a good comment on this and the two following verses. “These gentlemen (it seems) dined abroad under a tent, in spring and autumn, on Saturdays, and often on Wednesdays: they do the same during the good weather in winter; but they live at the garden, in April and part of May. In the heat of the summer they dine at the gardens, instead of under the tent; that is to say, I suppose once or twice a week they dine at the gardens, as once or twice a week they dine under a tent in autumn and spring.” The cold weather is not supposed, according to the letter of the text, to have been long over, since it is distinctly mentioned; and the Aleppines make these excursions very early: the narcissus flowers during the whole of the maurbanie, and hyacinths and violets flower also at least before it is quite over. The appearing of flowers then does not mean the appearing of the first and earliest flowers, but must rather be understood of the earth’s being covered with them; which at Aleppo is not till after the middle of February, a small crane’s-bill, appearing on the banks of the river there about the middle of February, quickly after which comes a profusion of flowers. The nightingales too, which are there in abundance, not only afford much pleasure by their songs in the gardens, but are also kept tame in the houses, and let out at a small rate, to divert such as choose it in the city: so that no entertainments are made in the spring without a concert of these birds. No wonder then that Solomon makes the bridegroom speak of the singing of birds; and it teaches us what these birds are, which are expressly distinguished from turtle-doves, and are here used by the Holy Spirit of God to represent much more noble concerts. It would be disparaging the reader’s taste to point out to him the beauty and elegance of this whole address.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Son 2:11 For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over [and] gone;
Ver. 11. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. ] In winter the clouds commonly “return after the rain.” Ecc 12:2 A shower or two doth not clear the air; but though it rain much, yet the sky is still overcast with clouds; and as one shower is unburdened another is brewed. Lo, such is the doleful and dismal condition of such as are not effectually called by Christ. Omnis illis dies hybernus est, it is ever winter with them; no spring of grace, no sunshine of sound comfort. It is with such as it was with Paul and his fellow sailors, when, “as neither sun nor stars in many days appeared, and no small tempest lay on them, all hope that they shall be saved was then taken away.” Act 27:20 All the hope is that God, who by his all-quickening voice “raiseth the dead, and calleth things that are not as if they were,” Rom 4:17 that calleth those “his people that were not his people, and her beloved which was not beloved.” Gen 9:25 Together with his voice, there goeth forth a “power,” as Luk 5:17 as when he bade Lazarus come forth, he made him rise and come away; so here. Of carnal, Christ makes us a people created again; Psa 102:18 Eph 2:10 of a wild ass colt he makes a man, Job 11:12 and of a hollow person (as empty and void of heart as the hollow of a tree is of substance) he makes a solid Christian, fit to be set in the heavenly building. This is as great a work as the making of a world with a word. God “plants the heavens, and lays the foundation of the earth, that he may say to Zion, Thou art my people.” Isa 51:16 Hence Christ is called “the beginning of the creation of God.” Rev 3:14 And the apostle in Rom 5:10 argues from vocation to glorification as the lesser.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
the rain. The first or early rains come about the end of October or beginning of November; and the wet season, i.e. the last or latter rains, in March or beginning of April.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Spring-Time
For, lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth;
The time of the singing of birds is come,
And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;
The fig tree ripeneth her green figs,
And the vines are in blossom,
They give forth their fragrance.
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.Son 2:11-13
In Britain, spring is the most beautiful season of all the year; but in Palestine it stands out in more strongly pronounced contrast to the three other seasons, and it is in itself exceedingly lovely. While summer and autumn are there parched with drought, barren and desolate, and while winter is often dreary with snow-storms and floods of rain, in spring the whole land is one lovely garden, ablaze with richest hues, hill and dale, wilderness and farmland vying in the luxuriance of their wild flowers, from the red anemone that fires the steep sides of the mountains to the purple and white cyclamen that nestles among the rocks at their feet. Much of the beauty of this poem is found in the fact that it is pervaded by the spirit of an Eastern spring. This makes it possible to introduce a wealth of beautiful imagery which would not have been appropriate if any other season had been chosen. Palestine is even more lovely in March than England is in May; so that this poem, which is so completely bathed in the atmosphere of early spring, calls up echoes of the exquisite English garden pictures in Shelleys Sensitive Plant and Tennysons Maud.
There are good men to whom the din of the streets is more welcome than the songs of birds in the spring-time. Dr. Johnson hated the quiet places of nature, and was never happy except in the thick of life; Socrates had no love for green field and garden, all his interests were among men; and even St. Paul, if we may judge from his writings, found his raptures in work done among the human throng, and was not keenly sensitive to the natural things which his Master loved. We do not envy these men in that one particular. They were great, richly endowed souls, with one sweet capacity missing. We thank God that we have it, that most good men have it in large measure. It is a gift of God with a touch of heaven in it. It makes the whole world a temple, especially in the spring-time, with stained windows and altar lights and innumerable choristers; it makes us hear speech in a thousand languages to which other ears are deaf.1 [Note: J. G. Greenhough.]
1. The winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth. There is a sigh of glad relief in the words, as if some long pain had gone, as if some nightmare had been lifted up, and the spirit of joy had come dancing into our lives again. The winter is long; at least we always feel it long. It is like an unwelcome guest that prolongs its stay. It will not regulate its movements by the calendar. The day for its departure is fixed, but it tarries. It seems to go a dozen times, and comes back again. The spring-time comes with lingering feet. It has to fight with winter for every inch of ground gained. It is like the slow battle of goodness against evil, with the long-deferred result.
That weary time that comes between
The last snow and the earliest green!
One barren clod the wide fields lie,
And all our comfort is the sky.
We know the sap is in the tree,
That life at buried roots must be;
Yet dreary is the earth we tread,
As if her very soul were dead.
Before the dawn the darkest hour,
The blank and chill before the flower!
Beauty prepares this background gray
Whereon her loveliest tints to lay.
Ah, patience! ere we dream of it,
Springs fair new gospel will be writ.
Look up! Good only can befall
While heaven is at the heart of all!2 [Note: Lucy Larcom, Between Winter and Spring.]
2. All through the cold, the forces which make the miracle of spring are gathering in the earth. Down below in every root and seed life is accumulating itself. It is forced down by darkness and cold, but it is not killed; the bitterer the skies above, the harder the crust of the earth, the intenser is the concentration of life. Nor is it quite without its work, though it is hidden. For it fills the sheaths of the buds with the folded leaves; it weaves the down that protects them, it builds within them, in the centre, the glory and beauty of the flower. It prepares itself for its rush and outburst. At last, the burden of darkness and frost and bitter wind is lifted off, the climate changes, and straightway the imprisoned life expands and ripples upwards, the potential energy becomes dynamic, the stored-up sunlight and heart break forth in leaf and blossom to the sunlight, and over a thousand woods and fields apparent death leaps into apparent life.
Where are the snowdrops? said the sun;
Dead, said the frost,
Buried and lost,
Every one!
A foolish answer, said the sun;
They did not die,
Asleep they lie,
Every one!
And I will wake them, I the sun,
Into the light,
All clad in white,
Every one!
Last year I was in Surrey at the end of April, for a single day, and walked through the woods of Albury. There had been abundance of rain the night before, but the sunlight of the day was bright, and every leaf, tree, and flower was glittering with waterdrops. In the warm mist everything seemed to grow with more swiftness, and the old phrase, that if one stayed in the silence and listened, one could hear the grass growing, seemed literally true. Life ran to the end of every spray, and rushed into a million leaves and flowers; and I thought that no human passion could be more intense than that with which the young leaves of the beech burst from their long sheath; no light in human eyes more suggestive of fulness of life within the heart than the gold and green glory of light that rained upon me through the unnumbered foliage of the limes. A step further, and the sky seemed to have fallen on the earth, for where the wood opened a little, a great slope, as far as the eye could reach up and down, was clothed with a myriad-flowered mist of bluebells; it seemed as if all the life of the earth had given itself to make them, so multitudinous were they; and as to the primroses, a bank of which I came to by-and-by, so rich was the life in them that I counted fifty flowers springing from a single root, and there were thousands of plants in that sunny place. It was the same in everything, everywhere incalculable, inexhaustible, rushing life, life that never rested, never wearied.1 [Note: Stopford A. Brooke, The Fight of Faith, 327.]
3. The coming of spring awakens new energies in man as well as in nature. No one who hears the warm west wind of April flowing through the trees, and feels the secret stirring that it makes in blood and brain, but knows the influence of spring upon the body. As the sap ran upwards through the flowers, so the blood went swifter through the veins, and the physical emotion sent its message to that immaterial life of thought and feeling which we call the spirit. And the spirit, receiving the impressions, took and moulded them into ideas by the imagination and sent the ideas forth to give motives to the will. If those ideas are dull or sensual, the new bodily life that comes with spring will only serve to make life more commonplace or our passions more degraded. If they are poetical, or enkindling, linked to high aspirations and pure thoughts, then the quickened powers of the body will be restrained from evil, impelled to finer work, hallowed and dignified under the command of a will directed by such thoughts.
It was that peculiar period of spring which most powerfully affects a human soul: a bright, illuminating, but not warm sun, rivulets and thawed spots, an aromatic freshness in the air, and a gently azure sky with long, transparent clouds. I was in a very bad and dissatisfied mood. Everything somehow went against me. I wanted to get angry and to grumble; I recalled that we had to go to confession that very day, and that I had to abstain from everything bad. Suddenly a meek spirit came over me. Through the open window the fresh, fragrant air penetrated the room and filled it. Through the window was heard the din of the city and the chirping of the sparrows in the garden. I went up to the window, sat upon it, bent down to the garden, and fell to musing. A novel, exceedingly powerful and pleasant sensation suddenly penetrated into my soul. The damp earth through which here and there burst bright-green blades of grass with their yellow stalks; the rills glistening in the sun, along which meandered pieces of earth and chips; the blushing twigs of the lilac bushes with their swelling buds swaying under the very window; the busy chirping of the birds that swarmed in the bushes; the black fence wet with the thawing snow; but above all, that aromatic moist air and joyous sun spoke to me distinctly and clearly of something new and beautiful, which, though I am not able to tell it as it appeared to me, I shall attempt to tell as I conceived it. Everything spoke to me of beauty, happiness, and virtue; it told me that all that was easy and possible for me, that one thing could not be without the other, and even that beauty, happiness, and virtue were one and the same. How was it I did not understand it before? As bad as I was in the past, so good and happy shall I become in the future! I said to myself, I must go at once, this very minute, become another man, and live another life.1 [Note: Tolstoy, Youth, chap ii. (Works, i. 255).]
4. Nor does the influence of spring come only to the body As we breathe the soft new air, and see the green cloud gather on the trees, a thousand memories come back; life is re-lived from the first primrose gathering in childhood to the wonder and joy of last year, when we looked up through the snow of a roof of apple-blossoms to the blue air. Early love, early sorrow, later and wilder passions, the aspirations of youth, the ideals that made the life of lonely wanderings, the thoughts with which we took up work when manhood called us to the front of the battle, the graver thoughts that came when we laid aside hopes too impossible to realize, are all felt, pursued, and longed for, more deeply far in the stirring airs of spring. Every new spring reawakens them all to life within us. With their memories, as with flowers, the meadows of our heart are covered. We walk among them, and as we walk a gentler, tenderer, more receptive temper fills our being. We throw open all the gates of the heart.
Milton tells us that the Muses always came back to him in spring. He could not sing very much, as a rule, in winter, but when spring came back the Muses came. He caught the youthfulness and hopefulness of spring; he looked round, and saw life springing triumphantly out of the grave of winter: he saw the feeblest growths rejoice in a new life and beauty. Then, too, his own intellect, under the blessing and inspiration of a spring sky, began to blossom anew.1 [Note: D. Davies, Talks with Men, Women and Children, v. 174.]
Its rather dark in the earth to-day,
Said one little bulb to his brother,
But I thought that I felt a sun-beam ray;
We must strive and grow till we find the way!
And they nestled close to each other.
And they struggled and toiled by day and by night,
Till two little snowdrops in green and in white
Rose out of the darkness into the light,
And softly kissed each other.
5. The coming of spring is a parable of the resurrection. Every returning spring-time is a confirmation of our Easter hopes. For it is a parable of that resurrection and restoration of nature which the Bible says is to accompany the liberty of the glory of the children of God. It is not man alone that will be glorified. Not apart from the struggling, yearning creation round about him will he reach perfection. His lot is bound up in hers for joy as for sorrow. The resurrection will not free man from his oneness with nature; it will express that oneness in a form that will fill uncreated beings with wonder and praise. It is so often implied by religious writers, even if not expressed, that with the last great resurrection the natural world passes away. On the contrary, St. Pauls philosophy of resurrection is in nothing more wonderful than in the place which it gives to nature. In that philosophy he is confirmed, as he in turn confirms its reasoned conclusions, by the investigations of recent science. For he takes his stand on the solidarity between man and nature, and on the common character of their destiny. The same great principles of finality, of travail, of hope which mark mans being mark also the world round about him. The creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know, he adds, that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only so, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for our adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. Towards the same great goal man and creation, therefore, alike are hastening. The times of restoration of all things prophesied since the world began, the regeneration, when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of his glory, are to be marked by the final bridals of man and nature. Together redeemed man and restored nature are to shape one glorious future, as they have shared one shadowed and chequered past. As yet neither is perfectly fitted for that future, and hence the life of man in nature is not yetwhat one day it will betruly natural. Nor has nature yet on her side become what one day she will becomethe perfect vehicle of spirit. These two futures are slowly but surely converging towards each other across the ages, and one day they will meet in the worlds golden eventide, as Isaac met Rebekah and was comforted after his sorrow. And then will nature
Set herself to man,
Like perfect music unto noble words;
And so these twain, upon the skirts of time,
Sit side by side, full summed in all their powers
Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-Be.
Shakespeare has nothing more beautiful than the closing scene in his Winters Tale. The long-lost, long-mourned wife of Leontes, Hermione, unknown to him, lives all the while, and is given back to him after years of separation, the happy victim of a loving plot prepared for his own after-pleasure. Ushered into the chapel of the house of Paulina, her true friend, he beholds what he imagines to be her lovely statue, till slowly it glides towards him; then offers him her hand, and hangs upon him in loving embrace. The statue has become his long-lost wife, risen as it were from her grave, and moving with tenderness of grace across the long interval of years, to fling herself once more upon his arms. But Leontes himself is chastened by the long bitter years which prepare him for this moment, and when the vision of his former joy comes, he is ready to welcome it. When man himself has been disciplined by the long ages of waiting, then shall the end which brings fruition and realization to every pure earthly hope come. Nature, quickened in Christ out of her long winter sleep, shall move to him across those ages of separation which sin has made, his true bride, speaking to his heart the music of a long-forgotten language, waking in him the buried instincts of love, calling him to the mountain of myrrh and to the hill of frankincense.1 [Note: T. Gurney, The Living Lord, 189.]
In the Resurrection, Giotto has combined two subjects. On one side we have the white-robed Angels seated on the red porphyry tomb, with the soldiers, sunk in deep slumber at their feet. On the other, the risen Lord, bearing the flag of victory in His hand, is in the act of uttering the words Noli me tangere to the Magdalen, who, wrapt in her crimson mantle, falls at his feet, exclaiming, Rabboni!Master. No master of later times ever painted so touching and beautiful a Magdalen as this one with the yearning eyes and the passion of love and rapture in her outstretched arms. And while the trees behind the sepulchre are bare and withered, here the fig and olive of the garden have burst into leaf and the little birds carol on the grassy slopes. The winter is past, the rain over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing of birds is come.2 [Note: Julia Cartwright, The Painters of Florence, 30.]
There is a very beautiful monument by Chan trey in Lichfield Cathedral; it is called the snowdrop monument. It is of marble, and commemorates two little girls who died. The monument represents them lying asleep with their arms about one another, and in the hand of the younger there is a bunch of snowdropsthe snowdrops of promise, the snowdrops which in this instance are intended to tell of the new life that those who die wake into, and of Gods summer land, where there is no death.3 [Note: J. Eames, The Shattered Temple, 176.]
A little poem of the spring which has come down to us from the Roman Empire shows us by contrast what the world without Christ was. The first stanza tells us that sharp winter is loosed by the breath of the spring in the west. The second gives a picture of mingled mirth and toil, as it might be seen in any village among the Saban Hills, and the third speaks of the joy which every one feels in such a scene. Then, like a thunderclap in a clear blue sky, the whole thing changes with a suddenness that makes the reader shudder. Pale death comes impartially to the cot of the poor and the palace of the king. In a moment you will be in night, in the shades, and in the narrow house of Pluto. Oh! that sad pagan world, clutching feverishly at the joys of wine and love because death is close at hand, always drawing nearerdeath and forgetfulness! It is precisely the same note that was struck more than a thousand years afterwards by the Persian poet, Omar Khayyam:
Ah, my Beloved, fill the Cup that clears
To-day of past Regrets and Future Fears:
To-morrow!Why, To-morrow I may be
Myself with Yesterdays Sevn thousand Years.
A Moments Halta momentary taste
Of Being from the Well amid the Waste
And Lo! the phantom Caravan has reachd
The Nothing it set out fromOh, make haste!
How quickly that which Horace recommended, and recommended with perfect innocence, and apparently with reason, leads to satiety and sickness of spirit. And so the age of Augustus passed into the age of Nero and Petronius.
On that hard Pagan world disgust and secret loathing fell;
Deep weariness and sated lust made human life a hell.
It was in that old Pagan world, with its disgust and despair, that the light of Christ shone. Jesus came into the world just about the time that Horace was writing his poems, and when He came a breath of hope shivered throughout the world. A light broke in upon human life, a possibility dawned which apparently man had never taken into account before.1 [Note: R. F. Horton, in The British Congregationalist, May 18, 1911.]
Literature
Banks (L. A.), Hidden Wells of Comfort, 116.
Brooke (S. A.), The Fight of Faith, 324.
Davies (D.), Talks with Men, Women and Children, v. 173.
Eames (J.), The Shattered Temple, 171.
Fox (C. A.), Memorials, 282.
Greenhough (J. G.), in Gods Garden, 29.
Gurney (T. A.), The Living Lord and the Opened Grave, 176.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, viii. (1862), No. 436.
Stone (C. E.), Gods Hardest Task, 2.
Williams (T. R.), Addresses to Boys, Girls, and Young People, 98.
British Congregationalist, May 18, 1911 (R. F. Horton).
Christian World Pulpit, xi. 379 (W. Simpson); lxi. 364 (A. Macrae); lxix. 347 (S. Thornton); lxxvii. 252 (W. Martin)
Churchmans Pulpit: Easter Day and Season, vii. 373 (S. J. Buchanan).
Preachers Magazine, iv. 274 (J. Wright); xvi. 180 (H. Friend).
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
Ecc 3:4, Ecc 3:11, Isa 12:1, Isa 12:2, Isa 40:2, Isa 54:6-8, Isa 60:1, Isa 60:2, Mat 5:4, Eph 5:8, Rev 11:14, Rev 11:15
Reciprocal: Gen 8:8 – a dove Gen 8:22 – seedtime 1Jo 2:8 – the darkness
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
2:11 For, lo, the {g} winter is past, the rain is over [and] gone;
(g) That is, sin and error is driven back by the coming of Christ, who is here described by the springtime, when all things flourish.