Song of Solomon 4:13

Footnotes

1. 16 The noun פַּרְדֵּס (pardes, “garden, parkland, forest”) is a foreign loanword that occurs only 3 times in the Hebrew Bible (Song 4:13; Eccl 2:5; Neh 2:8). The original Old Persian (Avestan) term pairidaeza designated the enclosed parks and pleasure-grounds which were the exclusive domain of the Persian kings and nobility in the Achaemenid period ( פַּרְדֵּס; ). The Babylonian term pardesu means “marvelous garden,” in reference to the enclosed parks of the kings ( 2:833.a and 3:1582.a). The term passed into Greek as παραδείσος (paradeisos, “enclosed park, pleasure-ground”), referring to the enclosed parks and gardens of the Persian kings ( ). The Greek term was transliterated into English as “paradise.”