Song of Solomon

Song of Solomon 4

16 verses · Wisdom · Old Testament

1Behold, you are beautiful, my love.

Behold, you are beautiful. Your eyes are like doves behind your veil. Your hair is as a flock of goats, that descend from Mount Gilead. 2Your 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. 3Your lips are like scarlet thread. Your mouth is lovely. Your temples are like a piece of a pomegranate behind your veil. 4Your neck is like David’s tower built for an armory, on which a thousand shields hang, all the shields of the mighty men. 5Your two breasts are like two fawns that are twins of a roe, which feed among the lilies.
6Until the day is cool, and the shadows flee away, I will go to the mountain of myrrh, to the hill of frankincense.
7You are all beautiful, my love. There is no spot in you. 8Come 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.
9You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride. You have ravished my heart with one of your eyes, with one chain of your neck. 10How 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! 11Your 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. 12My sister, my bride, is a locked up garden; a locked up spring, a sealed fountain. 13Your shoots are an orchard of pomegranates, with precious fruits, henna with spikenard plants, 14spikenard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with every kind of incense tree; myrrh and aloes, with all the best spices, 15a fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, flowing streams from Lebanon. 16Awake, 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.

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1 commentator · 16 notes on this chapter

John GillParticular Baptist / High Calvinist · 1746–176316

The most exhaustive and the most doctrinally committed here. Expect high — even supralapsarian — Calvinism applied consistently, and unusually heavy use of rabbinic and Talmudic sources for Jewish context. Where a passage bears on election or the will, Gill will read it in one direction, and knowing that in advance is the point.

Why this voice is here: The strongest Calvinist reading available in the public domain, and the best on Jewish background. Read alongside Clarke, not instead of him — between them you get both sides of the argument.

v. 1

Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair,.... The same as in Sol 1:15; here repeated by Christ, to introduce the following commendation; to express the greatness of his love to his church; and show that he had the same opinion of her, and esteem…

v. 2

Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep,.... That is, like the teeth of a flock of sheep; as her eyes were like the eyes of doves, and her hair like the hair of goats: and Galen long ago observed, that human teeth are much like the teeth of sheep, in figure…

v. 3

Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet,.... To a "thread" for thinness, to "scarlet" for colour; thin red lips being beautiful, as well as white teeth; so the beautiful Aspasia had red lips (b), and teeth whiter than snow; hence we read of red and purple lips…

World English Bible — Public domain