A Garden Fountain

In recent posts we’ve been considering the significance of the Garden of Eden for human vocation and environmental stewardship.

Eden is also the Bible's original setting where a man and woman first set eyes on each other. So it is entirely fitting that the Song of Songs, which is full of extravagant poetic description, uses garden and water imagery to depict the intimacy and vibrancy of marital love.

Dear lover and friend,
you're a secret garden,
a private and pure fountain.
Body and soul, you are paradise, . . .
A garden fountain, sparkling and splashing,
fed by spring waters from the Lebanon mountains.
Song of Songs 4:12-15 MSG


In the exotic language of this song, this is an extended metaphor of sexual intimacy.

Rodin "The Kiss" 1889

Until now, she has ‘kept the garden locked’, preserving her purity as a gift for her husband, but now he is asking that she open the gates and give herself to him. He extols her as a luxuriant orchard – a pure paradise – rich with stimulating fragrances and flowing with water.

As he expands on the imagery of the fountain, his praise for his bride increases.You are a garden fountain, … you are a well of flowing water, ... you’re a river streaming down from Lebanon (v.15). The river expands; he is excited and ravished by his bride; his elation is overflowing. And she responds, “Oh, let my lover enter his garden! Yes, let him eat the fine, ripe fruits (v.16).

This is Biblical water imagery at its most exotic. It is pure sensuality fused with spirituality incarnated in passionate marital love. The waters of creation, the rains that end drought, the rivers of baptism and the swells of the great deep all converge in this pure moment of rapturous ecstasy.