In vv. 13-15 the bride's apparel and nuptial procession are described. She is "all glorious within,"--by which is not meant, as ordinarily supposed, that she possesses an inner beauty of soul, but that the poet conceives of her as standing in the inner chamber, where she has been arrayed in her splendour. Krochmal, followed by Graetz and Cheyne, changes the text so as to read _corals_, or, as Cheyne renders, _pearls_ (Heb. _p'ninim_), for _within_ (_p'ninah_), and thus preserves unity of subject in the verse by removing the local designation. But the existing reading is intelligible. In ver. 14 the marriage procession is described. The words rendered "embroidered robes" are by some taken to mean "tapestry of divers colours" (Perowne), or richly woven carpets spread for the bride to walk on, and by others (Hitzig, Riehm) gay-coloured cushions, to which she is led in order to sit beside the bridegroom. But the word means apparel elsewhere, and either of the other meanings introduces an irrelevant detail of another kind into the picture. The analogy of other Scripture metaphors leads at once to interpreting the bride's attire as symbolic of the purity of character belonging to the Church. The Apocalypse dresses "the Lamb's wife" in "fine linen, clean and white." The psalm arrays her in garments gleaming with gold, which symbolise splendour and glory, and in embroidered robes, which suggest the patient use of the slow needle, and the variegated harmony of colour attained at last. There is no marriage between Christ and the soul, unless it is robed in the beauty of righteousness and manifold graces of character. In other places we read that the bride "made _herself_ ready," and also that "to her was _granted_ that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white," in which sayings are set forth the double sources of such a garment of the soul. It is a gift from above. It is "put on" by continual effort, based on faith. The picture of the home-coming of the bride follows. She is attended by her maidens, and with them she passes into the palace amid joys and exultation. The psalm stops at the threshold. It is not for the singer to draw back the curtains and let in the day. "The door was shut." The presence of virgin companions waiting on the bride no more interferes with the application of the psalm to Christ and His Church than the similar representation brings confusion into our Lord's parable of the Ten Virgins. Parables and symbols are elastic, and often duplicate their representations of the same thing; and such is the case here.