His eyes are like doves beside streams of water, bathed in milk, sitting beside a full pool.
Others have asked the bride what makes her Beloved different from any other man, and she answers with a portrait drawn from head to foot. This verse stops at His eyes, and raises a question: what look meets a believer who has failed?
Why She Describes Him At All
This description comes after a lapse. She had been slow to open to Him, lost Him, searched the city, and took blows from its watchmen. One writer treats her recovery as a pattern for anyone whose love has cooled:
The Christian's FriendIt is leaving your first love, if after you have known Him you do not give Him His place. You are like the Bride in Canticles 5, and the way you are restored is by dwelling upon the beauties of His person. (See vv. 10-16.)
Eyes Like Doves
Elsewhere Scripture shows Christ's eyes blazing like fire. One writer sets that picture beside this one:
VariousIn Revelation 1:14, "His eyes were like a flame of fire." For there He appears as judge, searching out and judging all that does not correspond with His holy nature. But here His eyes like doves speak of gentle, tender, faithful love. The dove is always faithful to its mate. If two doves get separated, they always mourn until they find each other again. Oh, what tenderness one sees in His eyes as He gazes in faithful love upon her for whom He gave His life!
The same writer reads the rest of the picture in the same key. The dove is also a symbol of peace. The rivers of water speak of refreshing in abundance, the milk of purity, the setting of beauty. The water and milk may also hint at the cleansing, purifying effect of His love on our hearts.
Nothing To Fear From That Gaze
Those same eyes miss nothing. Yet the searching and the tenderness belong to one face:
Andrew MillerIn Revelation 5:6, John speaks of the Lamb he sees in the middle of the throne, with "seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth." The number seven stands for fullness and perfection, and here it means intelligence. But the believer has nothing to fear from the keen, penetrating glance of that eye of sevenfold brightness. To him it is soft, tender and affectionate, "like doves beside streams of water." It is his happy privilege to watch its direction. What feature is so expressive as the eye! And, oh, what an eye is now before the eye of faith! Tender as the dove's — bright and shining as when bathed in the river, or glistening with a passing tear of deep compassion.
The believer's privilege is to watch which way His eye is looking. The gaze that examines is also the gaze that guides.
Washed With Milk, Fitly Set
One writer takes the verse phrase by phrase:
Hamilton SmithHis eyes, like the eyes of doves, speak of His tender compassion. "Washed with milk" speaks of purity. "You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong." "Fitly set" speaks of the perfection of His vision. Before Him all things lie naked and open.
Older translations end the verse with "fitly set." The ESV has the eyes "sitting beside a full pool." Commentators read the phrase in different ways. One reads it as an eye neither too prominent nor too sunk, set like a precious stone in a ring. Another ties it to how He weighed what He saw:
Jeffrey BrettWe are told that the eyes are the most expressive feature of our faces. How true this is of the Lord Jesus. How His eyes saw every need of those around Him and often shed tears of compassion and understanding. Yet being fitly set would suggest that their estimation was always in accord with the mind of God.
What The Verse Is For
The portrait is not decoration. A restored heart speaks it, and it works on the heart that reads it:
VariousNothing will transform our hearts and draw them to Him so much as keeping our eyes fixed upon His love. It is like gazing into the depth of those dove's eyes, full of love and thoughts of peace for us.
Summary
- Failure — the bride had lost her Beloved through slowness of heart, and the road back was dwelling on the beauties of His person.
- Gaze — she starts with His eyes: doves by the water, a picture of faithful love that mourns until it finds its mate again.
- Gentleness — the eyes that are a flame of fire in judgment are dove's eyes toward His own. The believer has nothing to fear from that searching glance.
- Purity — washed with milk, fitly set: eyes too pure to look on wrong, seeing everything as God sees it.
- Transformation — the look that searches also guides. Nothing changes a heart like gazing back into eyes full of thoughts of peace.