Song of Solomon 2
Big idea: The chapter's centre is a spring song — winter past, rain gone, figs ripening, one bird singing — used as an argument: the season has changed, so come away. Around it sit the Song's first faintness with love and its first charge to the daughters of Jerusalem not to wake love before its time.
It ends with her sending him off over the hills until the day breathes. Chapter 3 opens at night with him not there, and her going to look.
2:1–7 — Faint with love
She calls herself a common wildflower and he turns the modesty into a comparison — a lily among thorns — which she returns in kind with an apple tree in a wood. The middle of the poem is a banqueting house with a banner over it, military vocabulary put to the least military use imaginable. Then the physical detail, and the first of three identical charges to the daughters of Jerusalem.
1 I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys. 2 As a lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters. 3 As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, his fruit was sweet to my taste. 4 He brought me to the banquet hall. His banner over me is love. 5 Strengthen me with raisins, refresh me with apples; for I am faint with love. 6 His left hand is under my head. His right hand embraces me. 7 I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, or by the hinds of the field, that you not stir up, nor awaken love, until it so desires.
2:8–17 — Arise, my love, and come away
She hears him before she sees him, and the poem watches him arrive in stages: over the mountains, at the wall, at the window, looking through the lattice. What he then says is the Song's most anthologised passage, and its logic is seasonal — the rains have stopped, the vines are in flower, therefore come. The poem ends with a proverb about small foxes and a line she will repeat twice more.
8 The voice of my beloved! Behold, he comes, leaping on the mountains, skipping on the hills. 9 My beloved is like a roe or a young deer. Behold, he stands behind our wall! He looks in at the windows. He glances through the lattice. 10 My beloved spoke, and said to me, “Rise up, my love, my beautiful one, and come away. 11 For behold, the winter is past. The rain is over and gone. 12 The flowers appear on the earth. The time of the singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. 13 The fig tree ripens her green figs. The vines are in blossom. They give out their fragrance. Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away.” 14 My dove in the clefts of the rock, in the hiding places of the mountainside, let me see your face. Let me hear your voice; for your voice is sweet and your face is lovely. 15 Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that plunder the vineyards; for our vineyards are in blossom. 16 My beloved is mine, and I am his. He browses among the lilies. 17 Until the day is cool, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be like a roe or a young deer on the mountains of Bether.
Scripture text: World English Bible (public domain).
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