Fathers

Song of Solomon 4

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Behold, you are beautiful, my love. Behold, you are beautiful. Your eyes are like doves behind your veil. Your hair is as a flock of goats, that descend from Mount Gilead. Your teeth are like a newly shorn flock, which have come up from the washing, where every one of them has twins. None is bereaved among them. Your lips are like scarlet thread. Your mouth is lovely. Your temples are like a piece of a pomegranate behind your veil. Your neck is like David’s tower built for an armory, on which a thousand shields hang, all the shields of the mighty men. Your two breasts are like two fawns that are twins of a roe, which feed among the lilies. Until the day is cool, and the shadows flee away, I will go to the mountain of myrrh, to the hill of frankincense. You are all beautiful, my love. There is no spot in you. Come with me from Lebanon, my bride, with me from Lebanon. Look from the top of Amana, from the top of Senir and Hermon, from the lions’ dens, from the mountains of the leopards. You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride. You have ravished my heart with one of your eyes, with one chain of your neck. How beautiful is your love, my sister, my bride! How much better is your love than wine, the fragrance of your perfumes than all kinds of spices! Your lips, my bride, drip like the honeycomb. Honey and milk are under your tongue. The smell of your garments is like the smell of Lebanon. My sister, my bride, is a locked up garden; a locked up spring, a sealed fountain. Your shoots are an orchard of pomegranates, with precious fruits, henna with spikenard plants, spikenard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with every kind of incense tree; myrrh and aloes, with all the best spices, a fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, flowing streams from Lebanon. Awake, north wind, and come, you south! Blow on my garden, that its spices may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and taste his precious fruits.

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What the Fathers say

Song of Solomon 4:1

Western Saints

Augustine of Hippo

We are not to administer rebukes until we have removed from our eye the beam of envy or malice or pretense, so that we may have clear vision to cast out the speck from a brother's eye. For we shall then see that speck with the eyes of the dove, the kind of eyes that are commended [as belonging to] the spouse of Christ, the glorious church which God has chosen for himself, the church which has neither spot nor wrinkle, that is, the church which is pure without guile.

Sermon On The Mount 2:19.66 ↗

Ambrose of Milan

But Christ, beholding his church, for whom he himself, as you find in the book of the prophet Zechariah, had put on filthy garments, now clothed in white raiment, seeing, that is, a soul pure and washed in the laver of regeneration, says, "Behold, you are fair, my love, behold you are fair, your eyes are like a dove's," in the likeness of which the Holy Spirit descended from heaven. The eyes are beautiful like those of a dove, because in the likeness of a dove the Holy Spirit descended from heaven.

On the Mysteries 7:37 ↗

Bede

Without that which lies hidden within. Without the invisible reward in the heavens, which in your pilgrimage on earth you are not yet able to see. For this is the greater beauty of glory, which cannot be worthily evaluated at present. And beautifully, where he praises the simplicity of her eyes, that is, the knowledge of what is hidden in her, he also calls her a friend, according to the Lord's words: "I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know what his master is doing. …

Commentary on the Song of Songs ↗