I made me gardens and orchards The latter word, originally Persian, and found only in the O. T. in this book, in Song Song of Solomon 4:13, and Nehemiah 2:8, is the "paradise" of Xenophon, of later Rabbinic writings and of the New Testament (Luke 23:43; 2 Corinthians 12:4). It indicates what we call a park, with flowing streams and shady groves and fruit trees, and deer feeding on the fresh green grass, and doves flitting through the trees, such as seemed to the Eastern imagination the fittest type of the highest blessedness. The whole scenery of the Song of Solomon is such a garden, planted with pomegranates and pleasant fruits, spikenards and camphire, calamus and cinnamon, and trees of frankincense, and lilies (Song Song of Solomon 4:13-15; Song of Solomon 6:2). The pools of Solomon at Etam, on the south-west of Bethlehem, described by Josephus (Ant.viii. 7. 3) still preserve the memory of such a "paradise." Other traces of these surroundings of the palaces of Jewish kings are found in the history of Naboth's vineyard, where the "garden of herbs" can hardly be thought of as merely a "kitchen garden" (1 Kings 21:2) and in the garden of Zedekiah (Jeremiah 52:7).

all kind of fruits The horticulture of Palestine included the apple, the fig, the pomegranate, the date, the caper-tree, nuts, almonds, raisins and mandrakes. The account is in strict keeping with the character of the king who spake of trees "from the cedar that is in Lebanon to the hyssop on the wall" (1 Kings 4:33).

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