Song of Solomon 6

Big idea: The chorus offers to help her search and gets an answer that suggests she knew where he was all along — he is in his garden. The praise that follows is the Song's most formidable, comparing her to two cities and twice to an army under banners, and the chapter ends with a crowd calling her back so they can look at her, and someone objecting.

The objection to the crowd's staring runs straight into chapter 7, where the gaze is the lover's own and moves upward from her feet.

6:1–3 — My beloved has gone down to his garden

Three verses that resolve the crisis of the previous chapter without narrating a reunion. The chorus asks where he went; she answers with a location and a purpose, and then repeats the refrain of belonging with the halves swapped — I am my beloved's comes first now.

¹ Where has your beloved gone, you fairest among women? Where has your beloved turned, that we may seek him with you? ² My beloved has gone down to his garden, to the beds of spices, to pasture his flock in the gardens, and to gather lilies. ³ I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine. He browses among the lilies.

6:4–13 — Awesome as an army with banners

He compares her to Tirzah and Jerusalem — the northern and southern capitals — and then twice to an army under banners, which is not a metaphor English love poetry has much use for. Turn your eyes away, he says, they overwhelm me. Several lines from chapter 4 are repeated exactly, and then the poem does something new: it counts the royal harem and says she is not in it, she is one, unique, her mother's only daughter.

⁴ You are beautiful, my love, as Tirzah, lovely as Jerusalem, awesome as an army with banners. ⁵ Turn away your eyes from me, for they have overcome me. Your hair is like a flock of goats, that lie along the side of Gilead. ⁶ Your teeth are like a flock of ewes, which have come up from the washing, of which every one has twins; not one is bereaved among them. ⁷ Your temples are like a piece of a pomegranate behind your veil. ⁸ There are sixty queens, eighty concubines, and virgins without number. ⁹ My dove, my perfect one, is unique. She is her mother’s only daughter. She is the favorite one of her who bore her. The daughters saw her, and called her blessed. The queens and the concubines saw her, and they praised her. ¹⁰ Who is she who looks out as the morning, beautiful as the moon, clear as the sun, and awesome as an army with banners? ¹¹ I went down into the nut tree grove, to see the green plants of the valley, to see whether the vine budded, and the pomegranates were in flower. ¹² Without realizing it, my desire set me with my royal people’s chariots. ¹³ Return, return, Shulammite! Return, return, that we may gaze at you. Lover Why do you desire to gaze at the Shulammite, as at the dance of Mahanaim?

Scripture text: World English Bible (public domain).

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