MY BELOVED IS UNTO ME AS A CLUSTER OF CAMPHIRE

For the first of many times in the Song, the bride here uses the expression ‘My beloved’ and she likens Him to a cluster of camphire in the vineyards of Engedi. It is quite remarkable that in the Holy Land camphire is found only at Engedi on the shores of the Dead Sea. In his excellent book, ‘The Natural History of the Bible’, H. B. Tristram describes camphire as ‘a small shrub with dark bark, pale green foliage, and clusters of white and yellow blossoms of a powerful fragrance. highly prized’. How very precious this would be at Engedi, for Engedi is an oasis in the Judean desert where the vineyards flourish in such contrast to the surrounding barrenness.

So, in the bleak wilderness of a world which does not appre­ciate the beauty of the Beloved, every believer in the Lord Jesus revels in the sweetness of that blessed One and delights to sing with John Newton, ‘How sweet the name of Jesus sounds in a believer’s ear’.

The spouse in the Song has already spoken of spikenard and of myrrh. Is she searching for every sweet substance that would somehow express just how precious her Beloved is to her? Spikenard! Myrrh! Camphire! She desires that the sweetness of His person should be intimately buried in her affections in the night hours, but she is anxious too that the fragrance might also issue forth to be appreciated by others. How interesting that there is only one other mention of camphire in the Song, 4. 13, where the Beloved is speaking. He compares His bride to a fruit­ful garden and says, ‘Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits; camphire, with spikenard, spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices’, 4. 13, 14. Note the ref­erences to spikenard, myrrh, and camphire, exactly the metaphors that she has used of Him.

Is this the lesson, that in the measure in which His people appreciate and enjoy the sweetness of the Beloved so the Beloved, in turn, will find fragrance in His people? How bless­edly reciprocal it is. He is sweet to her and she is sweet to Him!