Flagons - More probably cakes of raisins or dried grapes (2-Samuel 6:19 note; 1-Chronicles 16:3; Hosea 3:1). For an instance of the reviving power of dried fruit, see 1-Samuel 30:12.

Stay me with flagons - I believe the original words mean some kind of cordials with which we are unacquainted. The versions in general understand some kind of ointment or perfumes by the first term. I suppose the good man was perfectly sincere who took this for his text, and, after having repeated, Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love sat down, perfectly overwhelmed with his own feelings, and was not able to proceed! But while we admit such a person's sincerity, who can help questioning his judgment?

Stay me with flagons,.... Of wine, which is a supporter of the animal spirits (w). The church was now in a house of wine, where was plenty of it; even of the love of Christ, compared to wine, and preferred unto it, Song 1:2; the church though she had had large discoveries of it, desired more; and such that have once tasted of this love are eagerly desirous of it, and cannot be satisfied until they have their fill of it in heaven: the flagons, being vessels in which wine is put, and from thence poured out, may signify the word and ordinances, in which the love of Christ is displayed and manifested; the church desires she might be stayed and supported hereby, while she was attending on Christ in them;
comfort me with apples; with exceeding great and precious promises; which, when fitly spoken and applied, are "like apples of gold in pictures of silver", Proverbs 25:11; and are very comforting: or rather, with fresh and greater manifestations of his love still; for the apple is an emblem of love, as before observed; for one to send or throw an apple to another indicated love (x). It may be rendered, "strew me with apples" (y); in great quantities, about me, before me, and under me, and all around me, that I may lie down among them, and be sweetly refreshed and strengthened: the words, both in this and the former clause, are in the plural number; and so may be an address to the other two divine Persons, along with Christ, to grant further manifestations of love unto her, giving the following reason for it:
for I am sick of love; not as loathing it, but as wanting, and eagerly desirous of more of it; being, as the Septuagint version is, "wounded" (z) with it; love's dart stuck in her, and she was inflamed therewith: and "languished" (a); as the Vulgate Latin version is; with earnest desires after it; nor could she be easy without it, as is the case of lovers.
(w) "Vino fulcire venas cadentes", Senecae Ep. 95. (x) "Malo me Galatea petit", Virgil. Bucolic. Eclog. 3. v. 64. Vid. Theocrit. Idyll. 3. v. 10. & Idyll. 6. v. 6, 7. & Suidam in voce (y) "sternite ante me", so some in Vatablus; "substernite mihi", Tigurine version, Piscator. (z) Sept. (a) "Langueo amore", V. L. so Michaelis; "aegrotus" is used in this sense, in Terent. Heautont. l. 1.

flagons--MAURER prefers translating, "dried raisin cakes"; from the Hebrew root "fire," namely, dried by heat. But the "house of wine" (Song 2:4, Margin) favors "flagons"; the "new wine" of the kingdom, the Spirit of Jesus Christ.
apples--from the tree (Song 2:3), so sweet to her, the promises of God.
sick of love--the highest degree of sensible enjoyment that can be attained here. It may be at an early or late stage of experience. Paul (2-Corinthians 12:7). In the last sickness of J. Welch, he was overheard saying, "Lord, hold thine hand, it is enough; thy servant is a clay vessel, and can hold no more" [FLEMING, Fulfilling of the Scriptures]. In most cases this intensity of joy is reserved for the heavenly banquet. Historically, Israel had it, when the Lord's glory filled the tabernacle, and afterwards the temple, so that the priests could not stand to minister: so in the Christian Church on Pentecost. The bride addresses Christ mainly, though in her rapture she uses the plural, "Stay (ye) me," speaking generally. So far from asking the withdrawal of the manifestations which had overpowered her, she asks for more: so "fainteth for" (Psalm 84:2): also Peter, on the mount of transfiguration (Luke 9:33), "Let us make . . . not knowing what he said."

5 Support me with grape-cakes,
Refresh me with apples:
For I am sick with love.
She makes use of the intensive form as one in a high degree in need of the reanimating of her almost sinking life: סמּך is the intens. of סמך, to prop up, support, or, as here, to under-prop, uphold; and ripeed, the intens. of רפד (R. רף), to raise up from beneath (vid., at Proverbs 7:16), to furnish firm ground and support. The apple is the Greek attribute of Aphrodite, and is the symbol of love; but here it is only a means of refreshing; and if thoughts of love are connected with the apple-tree (Song 2:3; Song 8:5), that is explained from Shulamith's rural home. Bttcher understands quinces; Epstein, citrons; but these must needs have been more closely denoted, as at Proverbs 25:11, by some addition to the expression. אשׁישׁות (from אשׁשׁ, to establish, make firm) are (cf. Isaiah 16:7; Hosea 3:1) grapes pressed together like cakes; different from צמּוּקים, dried grapes (cf. דּבלה), fig-cakes (Arab. dabbûle, a mass pressed together), and πλακοῦς, placenta, from the pressed-out form. A cake is among the gifts (2-Samuel 6:19) which David distributed to the people on the occasion of the bringing up of the ark; date-cakes, e.g., at the monastery at Sinai, are to the present day gifts for the refreshment of travellers. If Shulamith's cry was to be understood literally, one might, with Noack, doubt the correctness of the text; for "love-sickness, even in the age of passion and sentimentality, was not to be cured with roses and apples." But (1) sentimentality, i.e., susceptibility, does not belong merely to the Romantic, but also to Antiquity, especially in the Orient, as e.g., is shown by the symptoms of sympathy with which the prophets were affected when uttering their threatenings of judgment; let one read such outbreaks of sorrow as Isaiah 21:3, which, if one is disposed to scorn, may be derided as hysterical fits. Moreover, the Indian, Persian, and Arabic erotic (vid., e.g., the Romance Siret 'Antar) is as sentimental as the German has at any time been. (2) The subject of the passage here is not the curing of love-sickness, but bodily refreshment: the cry of Shulamith, that she may be made capable of bearing the deep agitation of her physical life, which is the consequence, not of her love-sickness, but of her love-happiness. (3) The cry is not addressed (although this is grammatically possible, since סמּכוּני is, according to rule, = סמּכנה אתי) to the daughters of Jerusalem, who would in that case have been named, but to some other person; and this points to its being taken not in a literal sense. (4) It presupposes that one came to the help of Shulamith, sick and reduced to weakness, with grapes and apple-scent to revive her fainting spirit. The call of Shulamith thus means: hasten to me with that which will revive and refresh me, for I am sick with love. This love-sickness has also been experienced in the spiritual sphere. St. Ephrem was once so overcome by such a joy that he cried out: "Lord, withdraw Thine hand a little, for my heart is too weak to receive so great joy." And J. R. Hedinger († 1704) was on his deathbed overpowered with such a stream of heavenly delight that he cried: "Oh, how good is the Lord! Oh, how sweet is Thy love, my Jesus! Oh, what a sweetness! I am not worthy of it, my Lord! Let me alone; let me alone!" As the spiritual joy of love, so may also the spiritual longing of love consume the body (cf. Job 19:27; Psalm 63:2; Psalm 84:3); there have been men who have actually sunk under a longing desire after the Lord and eternity. It is the state of love-ecstasy in which Shulamith calls for refreshment, because she is afraid of sinking. The contrast between her, the poor and unworthy, and the king, who appears to her as an ideal of beauty and majesty, who raises her up to himself, was such as to threaten her life. Unlooked for, extraordinary fortune, has already killed many. Fear, producing lameness and even death, is a phenomenon common in the Orient.
(Note: "Ro‛b (רעב, thus in Damascus), or ra‛b (thus in the Hauran and among the Beduins), is a state of the soul which with us is found only in a lower degree, but which among the Arabians is psychologically noteworthy. The wahm, i.e., the idea of the greatness and irresistibility of a danger or a misfortune, overpowers the Arabian; all power of body and of soul suddenly so departs from him, that he falls down helpless and defenceless. Thus, on the 8th July 1860, in a few hours, about 6000 Christian men were put to death in Damascus, without one lifting his hand in defence, or uttering one word of supplication. That the ro‛b kills in Arabia, European and native physicians have assured me; and I myself can confirm the fact. Since it frequently produces a stiffening of the limbs, with chronic lameness, every kind of paralysis is called ro‛b, and every paralytic mar‛ûb. It is treated medically by applying the 'terror-cup' (tâset er-ro‛b), covered over with sentences engraved on it, and hung round with twenty bells; and since, among the Arabians, the influence of the psychical on the physical is stronger and more immediate than with us, the sympathetic cure may have there sometimes positive results." - Wetstein.)
If Pharaoh's daughter, if the Queen of Sheba, finds herself in the presence of Solomon, the feeling of social equality prevents all alarm. But Shulamith is dazzled by the splendour, and disconcerted; and it happens to her in type as it happened to the seer of Patmos, who, in presence of the ascended Lord, fell at His feet as one dead, Revelation 1:17. If beauty is combined with dignity, it has always, for gentle and not perverted natures, something that awakens veneration and tremor; but if the power of love be superadded, then it has, as a consequence, that combination of awe and inward delight, the psychological appearance of which Sappho, in the four strophes which begin with "Φαίνεταί μοι κῆνος ἴσος θεοῖσιν ἔμμεν ὡνήρ," has described in a manner so true to nature. We may thus, without carrying back modern sentimentality into antiquity, suppose that Shulamith sank down in a paroxysm caused by the rivalry between the words of love and of praise, and thus thanking him, - for Solomon supports and bears her up, - she exclaims:

Stay me - Or, support me, keep me from fainting. The spouse speaks this to her bride - maids, the daughters of Jerusalem: or to the bridegroom himself. Flaggons - With wine, which is a good cordial. Apples - With odoriferous apples, the smell whereof was grateful to persons ready to faint. By this understand the application of the promises, and the quickening influences of the Spirit.