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Song of Solomon 4
Behold, you are beautiful, my love
The Bridegroom Pursues His Bride1
Behold, you are beautiful, my love.Behold, you are beautiful.Your eyes are doves behind your veil.Your hair is as a flock of goats,that descend from Mount Gilead.
2
Your teeth are like a newly shorn flock,which have come up from the washing,where every one of them has twins.None is bereaved among them.
3
Your lips are like scarlet thread.Your mouth is lovely.Your temples are like a piece of a pomegranate behind your veil.
4
Your neck is like David's tower built for an armory,whereon a thousand shields hang,all the shields of the mighty men.
5
Your two breasts are like two fawnsthat are twins of a roe,which feed among the lilies.
6
Until the day is cool, and the shadows flee away,I will go to the mountain of myrrh,to the hill of frankincense.
7
You are all beautiful, my love.There is no spot in you.
8
Come with me from Lebanon, my bride,with me from Lebanon.Look from the top of Amana,from the top of Senir and Hermon,from the lions' dens,from the mountains of the leopards.
9
10
How beautiful is your love, my sister, my bride!How much better is your love than wine!The fragrance of your perfumes than all kinds of spices!
11
Your lips, my bride, drip like the honeycomb.Honey and milk are under your tongue.The smell of your garments is like the smell of Lebanon.
12
A locked up garden is my sister, my bride;a locked up spring,a sealed fountain.
13
Your shoots are an orchard of pomegranates, with precious fruits:henna with spikenard plants,
14
spikenard and saffron,calamus and cinnamon, with every kind of incense tree;myrrh and aloes, with all the best spices,
15
a fountain of gardens,a well of living waters,flowing streams from Lebanon.
16
Awake, north wind; and come, you south!Blow on my garden, that its spices may flow out.Let my beloved come into his garden,and taste his precious fruits.
So 4:1-16.
1. Contrast with the bride's state by nature (Isa 1:6) her state by grace (So 4:1-7), "perfect through His comeliness put upon her" (Eze 16:14; Joh 15:3). The praise of Jesus Christ, unlike that of the world, hurts not, but edifies; as His, not ours, is the glory (Joh 5:44; Re 4:10, 11). Seven features of beauty are specified (So 4:1-5) ("lips" and "speech" are but one feature, So 4:3), the number for perfection. To each of these is attached a comparison from nature: the resemblances consist not so much in outward likeness, as in the combined sensations of delight produced by contemplating these natural objects.
doves'--the large melting eye of the Syrian dove appears especially beautiful amid the foliage of its native groves: so the bride's "eyes within her locks" (Lu 7:44). MAURER for "locks," has "veil"; but locks suit the connection better: so the Hebrew is translated (Isa 47:2). The dove was the only bird counted "clean" for sacrifice. Once the heart was "the cage of every unclean and hateful bird." Grace makes the change.
eyes-- (Mt 6:22; Eph 1:18; contrast Mt 5:28; Eph 4:18; 1Jo 2:16). Chaste and guileless ("harmless," Mt 10:16, Margin; Joh 1:47). John the Baptist, historically, was the "turtledove" (So 2:12), with eye directed to the coming Bridegroom: his Nazarite unshorn hair answers to "locks" (Joh 1:29, 36).
hair . . . goats--The hair of goats in the East is fine like silk. As long hair is her glory, and marks her subjection to man (1Co 11:6-15), so the Nazarite's hair marked his subjection and separation unto God. (Compare Jud 16:17, with 2Co 6:17; Tit 2:14; 1Pe 2:9). Jesus Christ cares for the minutest concerns of His saints (Mt 10:30).
appear from--literally, "that lie down from"; lying along the hillside, they seem to hang from it: a picture of the bride's hanging tresses.
Gilead--beyond Jordan: there stood "the heap of witness" (Ge 31:48).