Song of Solomon 6–7

¹Whither hath thy beloved gone, O fair among women? Whither hath thy beloved turned, And we seek him with thee? ²My beloved went down to his garden, To the beds of the spice, To delight himself in the gardens, and to gather lilies. ³I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine, Who is delighting himself among the lilies.

⁴Fair art thou, my friend, as Tirzah, Comely as Jerusalem, Awe-inspiring as bannered hosts. ⁵Turn round thine eyes from before me, Because they have made me proud. Thy hair is as a row of the goats, That have shone from Gilead, ⁶Thy teeth as a row of the lambs, That have come up from the washing, Because all of them are forming twins, And a bereaved one is not among them. ⁷As the work of the pomegranate is thy temple behind thy veil. ⁸Sixty are queens, and eighty concubines, And virgins without number. ⁹One is my dove, my perfect one, One she is of her mother, The choice one she is of her that bare her, Daughters saw, and pronounce her happy, Queens and concubines, and they praise her. ¹⁰‘Who is this that is looking forth as morning, Fair as the moon—clear as the sun, Awe-inspiring as bannered hosts?’

¹¹Unto a garden of nuts I went down, To look on the buds of the valley, To see whither the vine had flourished, The pomegranates had blossomed— ¹²I knew not my soul, It made me—chariots of my people Nadib. ¹³Return, return, O Shulammith! Return, return, and we look upon thee. What do ye see in Shulammith?

Chapter 7

¹As the chorus of ‘Mahanaim.’ How beautiful were thy feet with sandals, O daughter of Nadib. The turnings of thy sides are as ornaments, Work of the hands of an artificer. ²Thy waist is a basin of roundness, It lacketh not the mixture, Thy body a heap of wheat, fenced with lilies, ³Thy two breasts as two young ones, twins of a roe, ⁴Thy neck as a tower of the ivory, Thine eyes pools in Heshbon, near the gate of Bath-Rabbim, Thy face as a tower of Lebanon looking to Damascus, ⁵Thy head upon thee as Carmel, And the locks of thy head as purple, The king is bound with the flowings! ⁶How fair and how pleasant hast thou been, O love, in delights. ⁷This thy stature hath been like to a palm, And thy breasts to clusters. ⁸I said, ‘Let me go up on the palm, Let me lay hold on its boughs, Yea, let thy breasts be, I pray thee, as clusters of the vine, And the fragrance of thy face as citrons, ⁹And thy palate as the good wine—’Flowing to my beloved in uprightness, Strengthening the lips of the aged!

¹⁰I am my beloved’s, and on me is his desire. ¹¹Come, my beloved, we go forth to the field, ¹²We lodge in the villages, we go early to the vineyards, We see if the vine hath flourished, The sweet smelling-flower hath opened. The pomegranates have blossomed, There do I give to thee my loves; ¹³The mandrakes have given fragrance, And at our openings all pleasant things, New, yea, old, my beloved, I laid up for thee!

Chapter 8