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 4:15

Eastern Fathers

Cyril of Jerusalem

Now who is the "fountain sealed," or who is signified by the "wellspring of living water"? It is the Savior himself, of whom it is written: "For with you is the fountain of life."

Catechetical Lecture 14:5 ↗

Western Saints

Ambrose of Milan

And about mystical wells it remains for us, which we also find in the Song of Songs, as Scripture says: A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and flowing down from Lebanon. For if you pursue the depth of mysteries, the well appears to you as if the mystical wisdom is located in the profound: but if you desire to draw from the abundance of charity, which is greater and richer than faith and hope, then the fountain is for you. …

On Isaac and the Soul 4.26 ↗

Bede

Fountain of gardens, well of living waters, etc. The fountain of gardens is born among others in the enclosed garden of the Lord, because the heavenly doctrine has proceeded into the world from the primitive Church, which would generate many churches for the Lord, that is, spiritual gardens. To which fountain it is rightly inferred, the well of living waters which is a fountain, except that a well is always at a height, whereas a fountain, being always submerged in height, can also be at the highest peak of the land. …

Commentary on the Song of Songs ↗

Robert of Tombelaine

Rightly in the sendings forth, she is described as a fountain of gardens and a well of living waters. For what is designated by the fountain and the well, if not Holy Scripture? Which so generates the water of wisdom that it both always refreshes those who drink and yet does not cease to flow. It is fittingly said to belong to gardens, because Holy Scripture belongs especially to those in whose minds the seeds of virtues spring up. …

Commentary on the Song of Songs, Chapter 4 ↗