아가 4:12의 주석

A locked garden. This refers to the modesty of the daughters of Yisroel, who are not of loose morals.⁶⁰Alternatively, ‘גן’ refers to the Pentateuch which has fifty-three sidros, the numerical value of ‘גן’. (Gra)

A garden locked is my own, my bride: The shekhinah is compared to a garden, since a person plants and fences it, bringing in water to irrigate it and producing all manner of lovely herbiage and plants. The shekhinah’s fence is the cherubim, the plants are the seventy nations, the trees are the angels. All these are supplied by that spring which proceeds from Wisdom’s paradise, within which souls flower in joy. It flows forth without ceasing either day or night; on its account the world is sustained. As our sages said in tractate Yoma:¹²¹b. Yoma 38b. “On account of the righteous one is the world created and sustained,” as it says: “The righteous one is the world’s foundation” [Prov. 10:25].¹²²Zaddik or “the righteous” is yesod, the source of sefirotic energy as it flows into the shekhinah. Our sages also said concerning this: “The circumference of the tree of life is a journey of five hundred years and all of the waters of creation are divided forth from it.” Rabbi Yehudah said: “It is not the circumference of its bough, but its trunk that constitutes a journey of five hundred years.”¹²³Genesis Rabbah 15:7.
“A river goes forth from Eden to water the garden” [Gen. 2:10]. The garden constitutes the beginning of the differentiated universe. As it says: “from there it divides and becomes four branches” [ibid.]. The verse is in present tense, the process is eternal. Thus it says: “There is a river whose streams gladden God’s city, the holy dwelling-place of the Most High” [Ps. 46:5]. And “You make springs gush forth in torrents; they make their way between the hills, giving drink to all the wild beasts” [Ps. 104:10–11].
Concerning this spring, it states: “a garden spring, a well of fresh water, flowing streams from Lebanon” [Cant. 4:15]. Our Sages of blessed memory said: “‘a garden spring’: this is Jacob who is a spring for the garden. ‘A well of fresh water’: this is Isaac. ‘Flowing streams’: this is Abraham.”¹²⁴No such interpretation is found in the extant rabbinic sources. It is also found, however, in Zohar 1:135b, a passage possibly dependent upon R. Ezra. Everything is sated from that Lebanon which is divine Wisdom.¹²⁵The three patriarchs represent ḥesed, gevurah, and tiferet, way-stations in the flow of life from Wisdom, the primal sefirotic font, to the shekhinah.
Contemplate the wonders of this symbolism and you will know and understand what our Sages wrote, the manner in which their words constitute the height of completeness and perfection. Such truly befits sages like these, whose every word was uttered through the holy spirit in allegoric allusion, so as to arouse the consciousness of the Kabbalistic illuminati, rather than the fools, idiots, and confused who treat their words as if they were fox fables! Thus we find in the tractate Sanhedrin: “‘As I looked upon, thrones were set down …’ [Dan. 7:9]—one for God and one for David: these are the words of R. Akiba. R. Yose the Galilean said to him: ‘Akiba, how long are you going to profane the shekhinah!? Rather, one throne is for justice and one is for righteousness.’ R. Elazar b. Azaryah said to Akiba: ‘What are you doing occupying yourself with words of aggadah!? Desist from your discourse and occupy yourself with the laws of leprosy and tents.¹²⁶Return to your safe haven of halakhic expertise. Rather one is a throne and one is for a footstool: a throne upon which to sit, a footstool to rest the feet.’”¹²⁷b. Sanhedrin 38b. Surely these sages had no essential argument with one another, but they differed on whether it was appropriate to reveal the secret meaning. This occurs in several places where the rabbis are in dispute.

A locked up spring. This can be explained as a term referring to a fountain, as in, “upper fountains גֻּלּוֹת,”⁶¹Yehoshua 15:19. and it can also be explained as a term referring to a gate, and it is an Aramaic term in the Talmud, “lock the gates גַלֵּי.”⁶²Maseches Berachos 28a.

A garden locked: A closed gate.

A fountain sealed: The light lacks nothing for it is preserved in its “grapes” from the seven days of creation.¹²⁸Here the light imagery becomes that of wine. The primal flow is as perfect and undiminished as it was before creation, before the flow through the seven primal “days.”