Canticles 1:12
A bundle of myrrh is my beloved to me, he shall abide between my breasts.
Open Canticles 1:12 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Fasciculus myrrhæ dilectus meus mihi ; inter ubera mea commorabitur.
- Septuagint (Swete) shown from Canticles 1:13
- ἀπόδεσμος τῆς στακτῆς ἀδελφιδός μου ἐμοί,
- Hebrew (WLC) shown from Canticles 1:13
- צְר֨וֹר הַמֹּ֤ר דּוֹדִי֙ לִ֔י בֵּ֥ין שָׁדַ֖י יָלִֽין
Haydock's commentary
Abide. Hebrew adds, "all night." Christ remained nine months in the virgin's womb. (Calmet)
The faithful discover him in both the Testaments, (Haydock) and meditate on his sufferings. Myrrh is a bitter but odoriferous liquor.
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St Jerome The Letters of St. Jerome, To Eustochium
Go not from home nor visit the daughters of a strange land, though you have patriarchs for brothers and Israel for a father. Dinah went out and was seduced. Do not seek the Bridegroom in the streets; do not go round the corners of the city. For though you may say: “I will rise now and go about the city: in the streets and in the broad ways I will seek Him whom my soul loveth,” and though you may ask the watchmen: “Saw ye Him whom my soul loveth?” no one will deign to answer you. The Bridegroom cannot be found in the streets: “Strait and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life.” So the Song goes on: “I sought him but I could not find him: I called him but he gave me no answer.” And would that failure to find Him were all. …