Song 2:13 | KingComments | STEP | After winter, the time of trial, come the fruits. Besides the flowers that appear on the land ( ), we also see “the fig tree” and “the vines in blossom” ( ). The young figs show that it is spring and that summer is on tour ( ). The fig tree represents righteousness. Adam and Eve, after their fall into sin, wanted to cover their nakedness before God with loin coverings of fig leaves ( ). However, these homemade aprons are not a covering for God. There is no self-righteousness whatsoever that counts for God as a covering for sin. Israel has tried to establish its own righteousness before God with the result that it has not submitted itself to the righteousness of God ( ). The only righteousness that is valid for God is the righteousness which is worked through Christ on the cross and to which man gains part through faith ( ). On the basis of faith in that righteousness, God’s people can enjoy the blessing before God in the coming kingdom of peace. The result is joy. We see this in the picture of the flowering vines ( ; ). A flowering vine has the promise of an abundant harvest of grapes, that means joy. The grapes are not there yet, but the scent is already smelled. So it is with the believer who has had a time of trial. He is no longer in need, there is deliverance and that can be seen in him. Peace and rest have come in his life. It won’t be long before he expresses his joy about it in an exuberant way. He will testify of how the Lord has redeemed him from his need and what a joy fills his heart for what the Lord has done. The author of the letter to the Hebrews links to the discipline which God inflicts on believers the production of righteousness as a good fruit: “All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness” ( ). Through discipline we are “trained”, that is, we are trained in how to deal with it. By training we learn to control something. If we can thus accept discipline, if we know how to deal with it, then we will have a more intimate fellowship with God. The result will be that we enjoy more inner peace and show more justice in our lives. The “peaceful fruit of righteousness” will soon be reality for Israel in the realm of peace, after the people have passed through the exercises of the great tribulation. God already wants to bring this fruit into our life through His education ( ). The vine and fig tree together symbolize the time of the kingdom of peace, of which we in the reign of Solomon – the prince of peace and a picture of the Lord Jesus – have a foreshadowing ( ). After the description of spring with its wonderful evidence of new, fresh life in , the groom invites his bride to come to him again with the same words as in . He would like her to enjoy that spring. She can forget winter by accepting his invitation. After what he has shown her of spring, it can no longer be difficult for her to give up her backslidden existence and share her life with him. The Lord Jesus presents to us the attraction of living with Him, so that we no longer let ourselves be controlled by circumstances that depress. He is committed to ensuring that it is not the ‘wintery conditions’ in which we sometimes find ourselves that determine the temperature of our spiritual life, but the mild temperature of ‘spring life’. To this end, He points out to us the features of the new life, which He possesses and also wants to work in us.