Grazing among lilies

In his superb commentary on the Vulgate of the Song of Songs ( Song of Songs (Brazo’s Theological Commentary on the Bible) , p. 28), Paul Griffiths asks what Solomon means by talking about grazing among the lilies. He answers:

“This, in the Song, is something the lover is said by his beloved to do. Might the Lord do this? Perhaps. If the lily is his beautiful creation, then for him to graze inter lilia . . . and lilia colligat . . . is to delight himself in his creation, to provide nourishment for himself in contemplating its beauty, a beauty that exists only by participation in him. And more is suggested. If she, the beloved, is ‘a valley-lily’ and a ‘lily among thorns’ (2:1, 2), then in saying that he grazes among lilies she says that he grazes upon her, in the dual sense of nourishing her and delighting in her. Who, or what, in the created order, is the Lord likely to graze upon in this dual sense? The scriptural sense of grazing provides the first answer: the people of Israel. Jesus’s command to Peter, pasce agnos meos , and his taking to himself the title ‘pastor’ provide the second answer: the Lord’s sheep, the lilies in which he delights and among whom he grazes, are the disciples of Christ, which is to say the church. And that the Song’s beloved also figures Mary provides the third answer: she, as lily, is his special delight; she, as lily of unsurpassed beauty, exceeds all beloveds in beauty; and he grazes upon her . . . with the delight of one who has chosen her to bear his child.”