Love Accurately III

Song of Solomon 7:1-8:14

SummaryPassage

Everyone knows how it feels to want love. All our experiences of love differ. The Song of Songs re-establishes what it is to be loved properly and causes us to seek a lover like no other.

Song of Solomon 7:1-8:14

How beautiful are your feet in sandals,
    O noble daughter!
Your rounded thighs are like jewels,
    the work of a master hand.
²Your navel is a rounded bowl
    that never lacks mixed wine.
Your belly is a heap of wheat,
    encircled with lilies.
³Your two breasts are like two fawns,
    twins of a gazelle.
⁴Your neck is like an ivory tower.
Your eyes are pools in Heshbon,
    by the gate of Bath-rabbim.
Your nose is like a tower of Lebanon,
    which looks toward Damascus.
⁵Your head crowns you like Carmel,
    and your flowing locks are like purple;
    a king is held captive in the tresses.

⁶How beautiful and pleasant you are,
    O loved one, with all your delights!
⁷Your stature is like a palm tree,
    and your breasts are like its clusters.
⁸I say I will climb the palm tree
    and lay hold of its fruit.
Oh may your breasts be like clusters of the vine,
    and the scent of your breath like apples,
⁹and your mouth like the best wine.

She

It goes down smoothly for my beloved,
gliding over lips and teeth.

¹⁰I am my beloved’s,
and his desire is for me.

The Bride Gives Her Love

¹¹Come, my beloved,
    let us go out into the fields
    and lodge in the villages;
¹²let us go out early to the vineyards
    and see whether the vines have budded,
whether the grape blossoms have opened
    and the pomegranates are in bloom.
There I will give you my love.
¹³The mandrakes give forth fragrance,
    and beside our doors are all choice fruits,
new as well as old,
    which I have laid up for you, O my beloved.

Longing for Her Beloved

Oh that you were like a brother to me
    who nursed at my mother’s breasts!
If I found you outside, I would kiss you,
    and none would despise me.
²I would lead you and bring you
    into the house of my mother—
    she who used to teach me.
I would give you spiced wine to drink,
    the juice of my pomegranate.
³His left hand is under my head,
    and his right hand embraces me!
⁴I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
    that you not stir up or awaken love
    until it pleases.

⁵Who is that coming up from the wilderness,
leaning on her beloved?

Under the apple tree I awakened you.
There your mother was in labor with you;
there she who bore you was in labor.

⁶Set me as a seal upon your heart,
    as a seal upon your arm,
for love is strong as death,
    jealousy is fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
    the very flame of the Lord.
⁷Many waters cannot quench love,
    neither can floods drown it.
If a man offered for love
    all the wealth of his house,
    he would be utterly despised.

Final Advice

Others

⁸We have a little sister,
    and she has no breasts.
What shall we do for our sister
    on the day when she is spoken for?
⁹If she is a wall,
    we will build on her a battlement of silver,
but if she is a door,
    we will enclose her with boards of cedar.

She

¹⁰I was a wall,
and my breasts were like towers;
then I was in his eyes
as one who finds peace.

¹¹Solomon had a vineyard at Baal-hamon;
    he let out the vineyard to keepers;
    each one was to bring for its fruit a thousand pieces of silver.
¹²My vineyard, my very own, is before me;
    you, O Solomon, may have the thousand,
    and the keepers of the fruit two hundred.