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The Song of Solomon, Part 11a – Spikenard, and the Bundle of Myrrh

[Study Aired October 2, 2026]

Introduction: Verisimilitude Becoming Reality

In these six verses, Solomon continues to breathe life into his Bride through verisimilitude — the appearance of truth so complete that it unwittingly becomes reality. In dramatic dialogue, he builds her world with such intimate detail, inner logic, and earthly weight that the imagined profoundly resonates in every jewelled joint of the Elect. Armed with God-given, immeasurable wisdom, Solomon never wavers in his vision. Stroke by deliberate stroke, he unveils the very image of the perfect wife.

In the previous study, he contrasts her with the sisters in his harem, to no avail. She, precisely as Christ fashions His Bride, although from the same lump of clay, is Solomon’s innovation, entirely a new creation.

Rom 9:21 Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?

Rev 21:2 And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

Remember that it is Solomon, from a husband’s perspective, who designs his Bride to epitomise his ravishment carnally, flawlessly, as does Christ His Bride spiritually. This first study of the passage opens with the two verses that set the fragrance of the whole scene in motion.

Son 1:12-13 While the king sitteth at his table, my spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof. A bundle of myrrh is my wellbeloved unto me; he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts.

While the King Sitteth at His Table

Every fibre of Solomon’s being is remarkably alert, akin to his first intimate and virginal experience, as youthful hyperarousal and pure first love probably impact the Shulamite even more profoundly—given that women’s bodies and thinner skin yield far greater tactile sensitivity, though in a slightly different way, than men’s. As is almost always the case, Solomon signifies our Lord, who, too, was married to a literal yet symbolic thousand wives—the full company of the First Army of Israel. Although both He and Solomon knew the simplicity of male arousal — Solomon physically, and the Lord both physically and sublimely spiritually — they both felt the bitter experience of stiff-necked, female, duplicitous self-service rather than, because of the curse, giving themselves fully to their husbands. Ironically, though, they minister the negative elements to us, the Bride, today by their escapades.

1Pe 1:11-12 Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow. Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into.

Deu 10:16 Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked.

1Sa 12:24 Only fear the LORD, and serve him in truth with all your heart: for consider how great things he hath done for you.

Jer 29:13 And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.

As are all virgins, physical and spiritual exposure even while dressed, Solomon, the King, is highly conscious of his Bride’s presence, and she of him; she epitomises the unity he never ever experienced with any of his other wives, all of whom, as are all women other than the Elect today, are so deeply naively etched with Eve’s curse that, to varying degrees, they are intrinsically — in their very DNA — taking for granted that they are lusted for and thus hold immense power over all men, particularly husbands.

So, when the Bride’s spikenard sends forth its fragrance, Solomon, like the future Christ, knows its costliness is not to be wasted on an unworthy cause. The perfume announces her unmitigated devotion of a renounced curse.

The only references to spikenard in all Scripture are to the bride—in the Song three times; to spiritual progression—before Jesus’ death via Mary of Bethany; and to witness—to Christ, equalling five, the number of grace through faith.

Eph 2:8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.

Appropriately, the five pillars at the entrance of the tabernacle are interpreted as showing that access to God’s presence is by faith through chastening grace.

Jn 12:3 Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment.

Spikenard — H5373 nerd
1. spikenard, nard — an odoriferous aromatic plant from India.

The word enters Hebrew as a loanword from Sanskrit, travelling the same ancient spice routes that carried it, at ruinous expense, from the Himalayan foothills to Jerusalem — so that every mention of it in Scripture already carries the weight of an impossibly long journey before a single drop is poured.

The Bride’s costly spikenard is a parallel to Christ’s costliness in giving his life for her, and now she at Solomon’s table is blessed to have been through the fiery chastisements, having come forth as a spiritual type of sacrificial sweet-smelling savour, quite different to a wilderness meat sacrifice, of spikenard, filling the room of the signified wedding supper. Its glorious odour presents him with her constant presence of heavenly peace through unity.

Notice, too, what the fragrance does not require of her: performance, or persuasion, or the loud announcement of her own devotion. Mary’s pound of spikenard, poured out at Bethany, was criticised in the room precisely because it seemed wasteful — a whole year’s wages emptied onto feet that could not, by any practical accounting, need it. The Bride’s spikenard operates by the same uneconomical logic. It is not released because it is efficient. It is released because withholding it, once the King is at the table, would be the only genuinely wasteful thing left to do.

A Bundle of Myrrh Betwixt Her Breasts

The fragrance of the Bride’s spikenard is how the pent-up ravishment the King has never had returned to him from any wife, ever, is now returned with such extravagance, as represented by the meaning of “a bundle of myrrh.” He, too, as is the Shulamite in Song 4:12, “a spring shut up, a fountain sealed,” virginally waiting, as does our Lord, for the day of its espoused release to fill the terrible void of the “desolate” woman’s womb made stupendously fruitful.

Gal 3:23 But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed.

Isa 55:11 So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.

Isa 54:1 Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the LORD. 
Isa 54:2 Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them [Her sisters call her blessed] stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations: spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes;
Isa 54:3  For thou shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left; and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited.
Isa 54:4 Fear not; for thou shalt not be ashamed: neither be thou confounded; for thou shalt not be put to shame: for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth, and shalt not remember the reproach of thy widowhood any more.
Isa 54:5 For thy Maker is thine husband; the LORD of hosts is his name; and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel; The God of the whole earth shall he be called.

Typical of the churches of the world, notice that a harlot, emblematic of women under the curses of Eden, having been gifted their power from Adam, and enlarged their sensual borders (Matt 23:5), takes on the masculine, analogical meaning of myrrh, accommodating and “solacing” men’s natural lust for female sensuality against them without remorse—the classic trait of a harlot.

Pro 7:17-18 I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon. Come, let us take our fill of love until the morning: let us solace ourselves with loves.

It is easy to dismiss the meaning of a “bundle” of myrrh as simply a parcel, a pouch, or, strangely, a pebble. The term “bundle” comes from a root meaning something far heavier.

Bundle / Myrrh (of binding) — H6887 tsarar. Phonetic: tsaw-rar’.
1. to bind, be narrow, be in distress, make narrow, cause distress, besiege, be straitened, be bound.
(Qal): to bind, tie up, shut up; to be scant, be cramped, be in straits. Renders elsewhere as afflict, affliction, besiege, distress, enemies, narrower, vex.

This is the identical root beneath Israel’s own enemies, tsar — those who besiege and straiten. A bundle, by this root, is not gathered gently. It is compressed, bound so tightly that the binding itself becomes the story—akin to the strength of the Behemoth’s self-same “sinews of his stones”, emblematic of the entire assembly, in the strength of his walk protecting the centre of his procreative prowess. Even recognisable in Jacob’s damaged walk after wrestling with Christ all night, just as did the Bride in the literal tents of Kedar for her at Solomon’s, directing her gaze at her goatish sisters’ raunchy frolics.

Job 40:15-19 Behold now behemoth… Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly [Tremendously akin to the strength and life force emanating from beneath a woman’s breasts]. He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones [testies] are wrapped together. 

The human groin and hip assembly, where the iliopsoas tendon, the inguinal tendon, and adductor tendons are, is the central, tightly packed band of connective tissue where the psoas major and iliacus muscles merge is the epicentre of tightly conjoined (wrapped) sinews and muscles, identifying the “strength of his loins, and the force in his navel”—the heartland, where a man’s “bowels of mercy” and every other sensuality, good and evil, is felt. Females, too, have that same centrality, but ideally it is first triggered by her breasts, identifying her heart’s primary source of ravishment descending to the strength in her navel, her belly and beyond.

Accordingly, the strength in the sinews of the Bride’s emblematic stone, their aroma, is what so tremendously arouses our Lord and Solomon, as signified by the “bundle of myrrh,” the Shulamite, and she precisely mirrors her Husband’s incredible power and the strength of his walk. See a powerful man, confident in his walk, such as Goliath, Job, Elijah, Pharaoh, Joseph, or Ahola and Aholabah’s paramours, the Egyptians and Chaldeans (Babylon), as they walk into a gathering and the room falls silent. He makes the hearts of Ahola and Aholabah of the world flutter. Because of the man’s entire presentation, she involuntarily, unconsciously, and intrinsically recognises that his prowess is centred on the “sinews of his stones”—his unchallengeable walk—just as Solomon’s and Christ’s are to their respective Brides. In the natural world, nature itself first shows us how females select a male’s suitability for procreation based on the species’ like masculine command.

The narrative in Solomon’s mind switches between himself and his Bride without bracketing, as it does in anyone’s mind deeply in the spirit of finding out the truth of a thing — in the thinking process, we do not tell ourselves who is speaking in a soliloquy — by discounting one by one the lies.

Ecc 7:27 Behold, this have I found, saith the preacher, counting one by one, to find out the account:

The Song of Solomon, in chapter six, depicts us emblematically as having threescore queens, fourscore concubines, and virgins (Pro 30:20) without number, adding to one hundred, meaning the fullness of a thing.

Son 6:8 There are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, and virgins without number.

This means that by the time he conceptualises the Shulamite Bride, he has been like a bundle of myrrh — sorely afflicted, besieged, and distressed physically and spiritually by the full number of his wives, not to mention incidental concubines without number, in his vain quest not to deny himself any pleasure.

Ecc 2:10 And whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them, I withheld not my heart from any joy; for my heart rejoiced in all my labour: and this was my portion of all my labour.

In Song 1:13, Solomon bears the ache of years spent without the wife envisioned in the Song of Songs. His bundle of myrrh embodies the costly pride of a love long withheld, guarded for a woman joined to him in mind and spirit. Clutched against the heart of his life, it could never be fully poured out upon his many presumptuous wives. His respect for his God-given wisdom, as abused as it was, parallels the costly myrrh reserved for Jesus’ feet in readiness for his Bride, and her imitative walk in His spirit, and the Elect today, not casting their pearls before swine. Now, the reality of that myrrh is expensively, freely, in peace, is discharged to the one Wife of his design who starkly recognises the costliness of Christ’s sacrifice and the incredulous future He has for her, whereupon she, as a living sacrifice, wants his presence deeply imprinted on her heart betwixt her breasts — a perfume reminding them both of their unified walk, bound like the Behemoth’s sinews of his stones, forever never stale.

Eze 23:43 Then said I unto her that was old in adulteries, Will they now commit whoredoms with her, and she with them?

That question, asked of a woman grown old in her adulteries, is precisely the question the Bride’s fresh unity now answers in the negative for good. She is not the old woman returning, exhausted, to the same tired whoredoms once the appetite momentarily revives. Her devotion is not a relapse waiting to happen the moment novelty fades. It is the one perfume in Scripture explicitly promised never to grow stale, because it was never manufactured from appetite in the first place. Many women don’t even, after years of literally Edenic ‘cursed’ frustration, recognise that their amorous desire is not spontaneous but responsive, yet they still try to be like their husbands’ inherent spontaneity. The curse keeps them doggedly trying and almost always failing. This is where the Shulamite’s curse is reversed. She now has a phenomenal reason to be responsive like her Husband. She, now with the holy spirit in the Song, goes out of her way to initiate responsiveness “with all her heart” (Jer 29:13) right from the get-go—a hope that slowly goes stale in every Babylonian would-be bridegroom.

The desire of a woman to have a man lie in her bosom has only two meanings. The first is literally and figuratively the seared mind of an everyday female, and immoral males besides, utterly unconscious that she is portraying the essence of a harlot by her usage of machinations to get and discard her man by an Aholah and Aholibah-like proof of allure and beauty, or for ensnaring in marriage.

1Ti 4:2 Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron;

In the flesh, an Elect male or female later discovers that the “evil” associated with such artifices is, to the spiritual man, ironically, and through fiery trial, only good—and the Shulamite Bride of Christ, literally only spiritual good to her Husband and Lord.

Pro 31:10 Who can find a virtuous woman? [Christ, of course] for her price is far above rubies.
Pro 31:11 The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil [utterly understated!].
Pro 31:12 She will do him [ironically] good and not evil all the days of her life.

Secondly, our former harlotry ministers spiritually to us, the Elect of God, looking back at who we were, lying in the bosom of a thousand harlot churches of Babylon.

Hos 2:2 Plead with your mother, plead: for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband: let her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight, and her [spiritual] adulteries from between her breasts [For an Elect, physical adulteries should by this, never enter our minds]

Pro 4:23 Carefully guard your thoughts because they are the source of true life (CEV)

In Babylon today, a most odious concept, utterly misunderstood, of the Bride being a completely new vessel for our Husband’s use (1Cor 9:11), his head lying on his wife’s bosom all night, nonetheless, would be most uncomfortable for both, taken literally. Outstandingly, the picture of him lying betwixt her breasts all night has been happening for the Bride for two thousand years of Christ in her heart. Once the night is spent upon sleep, yet with an awakened heart, the Morning Star, Christ, rises just before the Sun — the first shall be last, and the last shall be first principle, in that the Morning Star, although signifying Christ, reflects the Father, the Sun’s replication — in ever-increasing brilliance of spiritual understanding is the self-same Evening Star, the very essence of what Solomon wants his Bride to have in unified spirit with him day and night.

Son 5:2 I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.

Consider what this ordering claims. The Morning Star does not wait for full daylight to prove itself; it is deliberately visible in the last dark hour before the greater light rises, so that whoever is already watching learns to recognise the dawn before it is undeniable to everyone else.

Pro 31:15 She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens.

This is precisely her present privilege and her present labour, both at once: to watch for a brightening the sleeping world around her cannot yet see, and to trust that the Star she watches is not a rival to the Sun but its own herald, the first visible fragment of a glory that has not yet finished rising.

That singular devotedness of the Bride to Solomon is precisely what Christ wants from his Elect.

Closing: The Bundle You Have Never Released

You have your own bundle of myrrh, never identified, and it has not been released. Somewhere within a potentially “dragged” Elect lies a reservoir of devotion, longing, even ordinary affection, assembled for a marriage, a friendship, a church, or a family that never once turned to receive it in the unity you were God-given to lavish, and maybe now given to release. All the while hopefully blessed with the stark realisation that there is only One God, and One Church of the living God, his Bride, and not one of the 40,000 goat-like churches frolicing beside the tents of Kedar.

2Ch 6:18 But will God in very deed dwell with men on the earth? behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house which I have built!

You once called the resulting ache disappointment (Luke 24:32). Examine it more honestly: it is tsarar, the very root beneath the bundle — bound, besieged, cramped into a space too small for what it holds. Or worse, the weak sinews in the loins and mincing walk of a harlot?

Here is what remains undone while that bundle stays sealed. Every fresh relationship, every new act of devotion, receives not your full spikenard but only what leaks around the edges of the Edenic wound, never actually, not given to be opened for self-judgement—maybe, unless, of course, you ask (Matt 7:8). It is not your fault; you are not necessarily withholding out of malice. You are withholding out of unwitting old distress, still bound by the Adamic curses exactly where it was first tied off, and calling the binding caution, rather than naming it what it is.

Psa 147:2 The LORD doth build up Jerusalem: he gathereth together the outcasts of Israel.
Psa 147:3 He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.

Name the one place this bundle is still bound in you — the relationship, the resisted dragging, the version of devotion you once offered and had refused or wasted — and ask plainly whether your conscience pricks you to release it to Christ, or merely stopped mentioning it while it remains, untouched, exactly where the distress first bound it.

The release is not complicated, though it will cost you the last comfortable excuse for keeping the bundle tied. Bring the actual memory — not a vague gesture toward past hurt, but the specific person, the specific refusal, the specific years spent besieged — to Christ in far fewer babbling words today than used to in the Orthodoxy, and give Him the authenticity rationed wisely (Luk 18:9-14).

Ecc 5:1 Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more ready to hear, than to give the sacrifice of fools: for they consider not that they do evil.
Ecc 5:2 Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few.
Ecc 5:3 For a dream cometh through the multitude of business; and a fool’s voice is known by multitude of words. 

This is not for His information. It is so that what is sealed by distress can finally be sealed instead by covenant, the way her myrrh was sealed: virginally kept, not to be hoarded forever, but to be poured out entirely the moment the true Bridegroom finally sits at the table.

A bundle of myrrh kept bound past its appointed hour does not preserve its fragrance. It only grows more bitter the longer it is denied the air.

End of Part 11a

Part 11b continues: Son 1:14-17 — the cluster of camphire, doves’ eyes, and the house of cedar.