I went down into the garden of nuts to see the fruits of the valley, and to see whether the vine flourished, and the pomegranates budded.

I went down into the garden of nuts, To see the green plants of the valley, To see whether the vine budded, And the pomegranates were in flower.

I went down into the garden of nuts, to see the fruits of the valleys, and to look if the vineyard had flourished, and the pomegranates budded.

I went down into the garden of nuts, To see the verdure of the valley, To see whether the vine budded, Whether the pomegranates blossomed.

Unto a garden of nuts I went down, To look on the buds of the valley, To see whither the vine had flourished, The pomegranates had blossomed,

I went down into the garden of nuts to see the green plants of the valley, and to see if the vine was in bud, and the pomegranate-trees were in flower.

The bride's words may be paraphrased: "You speak of me as a glorious beauty; I was lately but a simple maiden engaged in rustic toils. I went down one day into the walnut-garden" (the walnut abounded on the shores of Lake Gennesaret, and is still common in Northern Palestine) "to inspect the young plants of the vale" (i. e., the wady, or watercourse, with now verdant banks in the early spring after the rainy season), "and to watch the budding and blossoming of vine and pomegranate." Compare Song 2:11-13 notes. "Then, suddenly, ere I was myself aware, my soul" (the love-bound heart) "had made me the chariot of a lordly people" (i. e., an exalted personage, one who resides on the high places of the earth; compare 2-Kings 2:12; 2-Kings 13:14, where Elijah and Elisha, as the spiritual leaders of the nation, are "the chariot and horsemen of Israel," compare also Isaiah 22:18). This last clause is another instance of the love for military similitudes in the writer of the Song.
Ammi-nadib - literally, my people a noble one. The reference is either to Israel at large as a wealthy and dominant nation, under Solomon, or to the bride's people (the Shulamites) in particular, to the chief place among whom, by her union with the king, she is now exalted.

I went down into the garden of nuts - I believe this and the following verse refer at least to the preparations for a farther consummation of the marriage, or examination of the advancement of the bride's pregnancy. But many circumstances of this kind are so interwoven, and often anticipated and also postponed, that it is exceedingly difficult to arrange the whole so as to ascertain the several parts, and who are the actors and speakers. But other writers find no difficulty here, because they have their system; and that explains all things.
It is probably not the hazel but the almond nut, that is referred to here.

I went down into the (f) garden of nuts to see the fruits of the valley, [and] to see whether the vine flourished, [and] the pomegranates budded.
(f) He went down into the synagogue to see what fruits came from the law, and the prophets.

I went down into the garden of nuts,.... This is very properly taken notice of in this song of love; it being usual for newly married persons to get nuts, and throw them among children, to make pastime; to signify, among other things, that they now renounced childish things (u). These are the words of Christ, declaring to the church where he went, and what he employed himself about, when he departed from her; see Song 6:2. Of the garden, as it intends the church; see Gill on Song 5:12; into which he was invited to come, and did, as here; see Song 4:16; here it is called a "garden of nuts", which may design a spot in it destined for this fruit; by which some understand "nutmegs", which is not very likely, since such grew not in those parts: rather "walnuts", which the Arabs call "gauz" or "geuz", which is the same word that is here used; Pistacia nuts were well known in Syria (w), which joined to Judea. And by "nuts", which grew in the garden, the church, true believers, may be designed; who, like them, have a mean outward appearance, but are valuable within, having the true grace of God in them; and because of their divers coverings, their outward conversation garments, the robe of Christ's righteousness, and the internal sanctification of the Spirit, which answer to the husk and shell, and the thin inward skin over the nut; and because of their hardiness in enduring afflictions and troubles, the shell may represent; and because of their best and most excellent parts being hidden, even grace, the hidden man of the heart, signified by the kernel, and which will not fully appear until the shell or tabernacle of the body is broken down; and because of their safety from harm and pollution, amidst the storms of afflictions, persecutions, and temptations, and pollutions of the world, the principle of grace, like the kernel, remains unhurt and undefiled; and because of the multitude of believers, united and cleaving together, which is delightful to behold, like clusters of nuts in a nut garden. Some render it, "the pruned garden", or "garden of pruning" (x); whose plants, trees, and vines, are pruned and kept in good order, by Christ's father, the husbandman and vinedresser; see Song 2:12. The ends of Christ in going into it were,
to see the fruits of the valley; to observe the graces of his Spirit; the actings, exercise, and growth of them in humble souls, among whom he delights to be, Isaiah 57:15; the Septuagint version is, "the shoots of the brook" or "river": and may denote the fertile soil in which believers are planted, even by the river of divine love; with which being watered, they flourish, Psalm 1:3;
and to see whether the vine flourished; particular churches, or believers, compared to vines; who may be said to flourish, when they increase in numbers, and are fruitful in grace and good works; see Song 2:13;
and the pomegranates budded; of which, see Song 4:13; the budding, of them may design the beginnings, or first putting, forth, of grace in the saints; which Christ takes much notice of, and is highly pleased with.
(u) Vid. Chartarium de Imag. Deorum, p. 89. & Kipping. Antiqu. Romans. l. 4. c. 2. p. 697. "Sparge marite nuces", &c. Virgil. Bucolic. Eclog. 8. v. 30. "Da nuces pueris", Catuili Juliae Epithal. Ep. 59, v. 131. (w) Plin. Nat. Hist. l. 13. c. 5. Athenaei Deipnosophist. l. 14. c. 17. p. 649. (x) "hortos putatos", Junius & Tremellius; Hebrews. "tonsionis", Piscator; "hortum putationis", Marckius.

In retirement and in meditation the Christian character is formed and perfected. But not in the retirement of the idle, the self-indulgent, or the trifler. When the Christian is released from the discharge of his duties in life, the world has no attractions for him. His prayer is, that all things belonging to the Spirit may live and grow within him, and around him. Such are the interesting cares and employments of him whom the world wrongly deems unhappy, and lost to his true interests. In humility and self-abasement, the humble Christian would turn away from the sight of all; but the Lord delights to honour him. Chiefly, however, may the reference be to the ministering angels who shall be sent for the soul of the Christian. Their approach may startle, but the departing soul shall find the Lord its strength and its portion for ever. The church is called the Shulamite: the word signifies perfection and peace; not in herself, but in Christ, in whom she is complete, through his righteousness; and has peace, which he made for her through his blood, and gives unto her by his Spirit.

The bride's words; for she everywhere is the narrator, and often soliloquizes, which He never does. The first garden (Song 2:11-13) was that of spring, full of flowers and grapes not yet ripe; the second, autumn, with spices (which are always connected with the person of Jesus Christ), and nothing unripe (Song 4:13, &c.). The third here, of "nuts," from the previous autumn; the end of winter, and verge of spring; the Church in the upper room (Acts 1:13, &c.), when one dispensation was just closed, the other not yet begun; the hard shell of the old needing to be broken, and its inner sweet kernel extracted [ORIGEN] (Luke 24:27, Luke 24:32); waiting for the Holy Ghost to usher in spiritual spring. The walnut is meant, with a bitter outer husk, a hard shell, and sweet kernel. So the Word is distasteful to the careless; when awakened, the sinner finds the letter hard, until the Holy Ghost reveals the sweet inner spirit.
fruits of the Valley--MAURER translates, "the blooming products of the river," that is, the plants growing on the margin of the river flowing through the garden. She goes to watch the first sproutings of the various plants.

11 To the nut garden I went down
To look at the shrubs of the valley,
To see whether the vine sprouted,
The pomegranates budded.
12 I knew it not that my soul lifted me up
To the royal chariots of my people, a noble (one).
In her loneliness she is happy; she finds her delight in quietly moving about in the vegetable world; the vine and the pomegranate, brought from her home, are her favourites. Her soul - viz. love for Solomon, which fills her soul - raised her to the royal chariots of her people, the royal chariots of a noble (one), where she sits besides the king, who drives the chariot; she knew this, but she also knew it not for what she had become without any cause of her own, that she is without self-elation and without disavowal of her origin. These are Shulamith's thoughts and feelings, which we think we derive from these two verses without reading between the lines and without refining. It went down, she says, viz., from the royal palace, cf. Song 6:2. Then, further, she speaks of a valley; and the whole sounds rural, so that we are led to think of Etam as the scene. This Etam, romantically (vid., Judges 15:8 f.) situated, was, as Josephus (Antt. viii. 7. 3) credibly informs us, Solomon's Belvedere. "In the royal stables," he says, "so great was the regard for beauty and swiftness, that nowhere else could horses of greater beauty or greater fleetness be found. All had to acknowledge that the appearance of the king's horses was wonderfully pleasing, and that their swiftness was incomparable. Their riders also served as an ornament to them. They were young men in the flower of their age, and were distinguished by their lofty stature and their flowing hair, and by their clothing, which was of Tyrian purple. They every day sprinkled their hair with dust of gold, so that their whole head sparkled when the sun shone upon it. In such array, armed and bearing bows, they formed a body-guard around the king, who was wont, clothed in a white garment, to go out of the city in the morning, and even to drive his chariot. These morning excursions were usually to a certain place which was about sixty stadia from Jerusalem, and which was called Etam; gardens and brooks made it as pleasant as it was fruitful." This Etam, from whence (the עין עיטם)
(Note: According to Sebachim 54b, one of the highest points of the Holy Land.))
a watercourse, the ruins of which are still visible, supplied the temple with water, has been identified by Robinson with a village called Artas (by Lumley called Urtas), about a mile and a half to the south of Bethlehem. At the upper end of the winding valley, at a considerable height above the bottom, are three old Solomonic pools, - large, oblong basins of considerable compass placed one behind the other in terraces. Almost at an equal height with the highest pool, at a distance of several hundred steps there is a strong fountain, which is carefully built over, and to which there is a descent by means of stairs inside the building. By it principally were the pools, which are just large reservoirs, fed, and the water was conducted by a subterranean conduit into the upper pool. Riding along the way close to the aqueduct, which still exists, one sees even at the present day the valley below clothed in rich vegetation; and it is easy to understand that here there may have been rich gardens and pleasure-grounds (Moritz Lttke's Mittheilung). A more suitable place for this first scene of the fifth Acts cannot be thought of; and what Josephus relates serves remarkably to illustrate not only the description of Song 6:11, but also that of Song 6:12.
אגוז is the walnut, i.e., the Italian nut tree (Juglans regia L.), originally brought from Persia; the Persian name is jeuz, Aethiop. gûz, Arab. Syr. gauz (gôz), in Hebrews. with א prosth., like the Armen. engus. גּנּת אגוז is a garden, the peculiar ornament of which is the fragrant and shady walnut tree; גנת אגוזים would not be a nut garden, but a garden of nuts, for the plur. signifies, Mishn. nuces (viz., juglandes = Jovis glandes, Pliny, xvii. 136, ed. Jan.), as תּאנים, figs, in contradistinction to תּאנה, a fig tree, only the Midrash uses אגוזה here, elsewhere not occurring, of a tree. The object of her going down was one, viz., to observe the state of the vegetation; but it was manifold, as expressed in the manifold statements which follow ירדתּי. The first object was the nut garden. Then her intention was to observe the young shoots in the valley, which one has to think of as traversed by a river or brook; for נחל, like Wady, signifies both a valley and a valley-brook. The nut garden might lie in the valley, for the walnut tree is fond of a moderately cool, damp soil (Joseph. Bell. iii. 10. 8). But the אבּי are the young shoots with which the banks of a brook and the damp valley are usually adorned in the spring-time. אב, shoot, in the Hebrews. of budding and growth, in Aram. of the fruit-formation, comes from R. אב, the weaker power of נב, which signifies to expand and spread from within outward, and particularly to sprout up and to well forth. ב ראה signifies here, as at Genesis 34:1, attentively to observe something, looking to be fixed upon it, to sink down into it. A further object was to observe whether the vine had broken out, or had budded (this is the meaning of פּרח, breaking out, to send forth, R. פר, to break),
(Note: Vid., Friedh. Delitzsch, Indo-Germ. Sem. Studien, p. 72.)
- whether the pomegranate trees had gained flowers or flower-buds הנצוּ, not as Gesen. in his Thes. and Hebrews. Lex. states, the Hiph. of נוּץ, which would be הניצוּ, but from נצץ instead of הנצוּ, with the same omission of Dagesh, after the forms הפרוּ, הרעוּ, cf. Proverbs 7:13, R. נץ נס, to glance, bloom (whence Nisan as the name of the flower-month, as Ab the name of the fruit-month).
(Note: Cf. my Jesurun, p. 149.)
Why the pomegranate tree (Punica granatum L.), which derives this its Latin name from its fruit being full of grains, bears the Semitic name of רמּון, (Arab.) rummân, is yet unexplained; the Arabians are so little acquainted with it, that they are uncertain whether ramm or raman (which, however, is not proved to exist) is to be regarded as the root-word. The question goes along with that regarding the origin and signification of Rimmon, the name of the Syrian god, which appears to denote
(Note: An old Chald. king is called Rim-Sin; rammu is common in proper names, as Ab-rammu.)
"sublimity;" and it is possible that the pomegranate tree has its name from this god as being consecrated to him.
(Note: The name scarcely harmonizes with רמּה, worm, although the pomegranate suffers from worm-holes; the worm which pierces it bears the strange name (דרימוני) הה, Shabbath 90a.)
In Song 6:12, Shulamith adds that, amid this her quiet delight in contemplating vegetable life, she had almost forgotten the position to which she had been elevated. ידעתּי לא may, according to the connection in which it is sued, mean, "I know not," Genesis 4:9; Genesis 21:26, as well as "I knew not," Genesis 28:16; Proverbs 23:35; here the latter (lxx, Aquila, Jerome, Venet., Luther), for the expression runs parallel to ירדתי, and is related to it as verifying or circumstantiating it. The connection לא יד נפשי, whether we take the word נפשי as permut. of the subject (Luther: My soul knew it not) or as the accus. of the object: I knew not myself (after Job 9:21), is objectionable, because it robs the following שׂמתני of its subject, and makes the course of thought inappropriate. The accusative, without doubt, hits on what is right, since it gives the Rebia, corresponding to our colon, to יד; for that which follows with נפשׁי שׂם is just what she acknowledges not to have known or considered. For the meaning cannot be that her soul had placed or brought her in an unconscious way, i.e., involuntarily or unexpectedly, etc., for "I knew not,"as such a declaration never forms the principal sentence, but, according to the nature of the case, always a subordinate sentence, and that either as a conditional clause with Vav, Job 9:5, or as a relative clause, Isaiah 47:11; cf. Ps. 49:21. Thus "I knew not" will be followed by what she was unconscious of; it follows in oratio directa instead of obliqua, as also elsewhere after ידע, כּי, elsewhere introducing the object of knowledge, is omitted, Ps. 9:21; Amos 5:12. But if it remains unknown to her, if it has escaped her consciousness that her soul placed her, etc., then naphsi is here her own self, and that on the side of desire (Job 23:13; Deuteronomy 12:15); thus, in contrast to external constraint, her own most inward impulse, the leading of her heart. Following this, she has been placed on the height on which she now finds herself, without being always mindful of it. It would certainly now be most natural to regard מרכּבות, after the usual constr. of the verb שׂוּם with the double accus., e.g., Genesis 28:22; Isaiah 50:2; Psalm 39:9, as pred. accus. (Venet. ἔθετό με ὀχήματα), as e.g., Hengst.: I knew not, thus my soul brought me (i.e., brought me at unawares) to the chariots of my people, who are noble. But what does this mean? He adds the remark: "Shulamith stands in the place of the war-chariots of her people as their powerful protector, or by the heroic spirit residing in her." But apart from the syntactically false rendering of ידעתי לא, and the unwarrantable allegorizing, this interpretation wrecks itself on this, that "chariots" in themselves are not for protection, and thus without something further, especially in this designation by the word מרכבות, and not by רכב (2-Kings 6:17; cf. 2-Kings 2:12; 2-Kings 13:14), are not war-chariots. מר will thus be the accus of the object of motion. It is thus understood, e.g., by Ewald (sec. 281d): My soul brought me to the chariots, etc. The shepherd-hypothesis finds here the seduction of Shulamith. Hollnder translates: "I perceived it not; suddenly, it can scarcely be said unconsciously, I was placed in the state-chariots of Amminidab." But the Masora expressly remarks that עמי נדיב are not to be read as if forming one, but as two words, תרין מלין.
(Note: עמּי־נדיב, thus in D F: עמּי, without the accent and connected with נדיב by Makkeph. On the contrary, P has עמּינדיב as one word, as also the Masora parva has here noted חדה מלה. Our Masora, however, notes לית ותרתין כתיבין, and thus Rashi and Aben Ezra testify.)
Hitzig proportionally better, thus: without any apprehension of such a coincidence, she saw herself carried to the chariots of her noble people, i.e., as Gesen. in his Thes.: inter currus comitatus principis. Any other explanation, says Hitzig, is not possible, since the accus. מרך in itself signifies only in the direction wither, or in the neighbourhood whence. And certainly it is generally used of the aim or object toward which one directs himself or strives, e.g., Isaiah 37:23. Koděsh, "toward the sanctuary," Psalm 134:2; cf. hashshā'rā, "toward the gate," Isaiah 22:7. But the accus. mārom can also mean "on high," Isaiah 22:16, the accus. hashshāmaīm "in the heavens," 1-Kings 8:32; and as shalahh hāārets of being sent into the land, Numbers 13:27, thus may also sīm měrkāvāh be used for sim beměrkāvāh, 1-Samuel 8:11, according to which the Syr. (bemercabto) and the Quinta (εἰς ἃρματα) translate; on the contrary, Symm. and Jerome destroy the meaning by adopting the reading שׁמּתני (my soul placed me in confusion). The plur. markevoth is thus meant amplifi., like richvē, Song 1:9, and battēnu, Song 1:17.
As regards the subject, 2-Samuel 15:1 is to be compared; it is the king's chariot that is meant, yoked, according to Song 1:9, with Egypt. horses. It is a question whether nadiv is related adject. to ammi: my people, a noble (people), - a connection which gives prominence to the attribute appositionally, Genesis 37:2; Psalm 143:10; Ezekiel 34:12, - or permutat., so that the first gen. is exchanged for one defining more closely: to the royal chariot of my people, a prince. The latter has the preference, not merely because (leaving out of view the proper name Amminidab) wherever עם and נדיב are used together they are meant of those who stand prominent above the people, Numbers 21:18, Ps. 47:10; Psalm 113:8, but because this נדיב and בּת־נדיב evidently stand in interchangeable relation. Yet, even though we take נדיב and עמי together, the thought remains the same. Shulamith is not one who is abducted, but, as we read at Song 3:6 ff., one who is honourably brought home; and she here expressly says that no kind of external force but her own loving soul raised her to the royal chariots of her people and their king. That she gives to the fact of her elevation just this expression, arises from the circumstance that she places her joy in the loneliness of nature, in contrast to her driving along in a splendid chariot. Designating the chariot that of her noble people, or that of her people, and, indeed, of a prince, she sees in both cases in Solomon the concentration and climax of the people's glory.

I went - When I went away from thee these are the words of the bridegroom. Valley - Which being low, and well watered is very fruitful. To see - What beginnings or appearances there were of good fruits or works among believers.