Song of Solomon 4

Speaker labels come from the WEB translators, not the Hebrew text. Beloved is the woman, Lover is the man.

Lover

1 Behold, 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.

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, on which a thousand shields hang, all the shields of the mighty men.

5 Your two breasts are like two fawns that 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 You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride. You have ravished my heart with one of your eyes, with one chain of your neck.

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 My sister, my bride, is a locked up garden; 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.

Beloved

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.

Around Song of Solomon 4

Context

Context for this book is being written. A note appears here only once it names its sources.

AI explanation

About Song of Solomon as a whole · Written by an AI model · Not reviewed by a theological reader

This explanation was written by an AI model to help you get started. It names no sources and can contain mistakes. Scripture comes first, and context with sources is shown separately on this page.

What this book is about

Spring has come, and a woman hears her beloved before she sees him: he comes leaping on the mountains, looking in at the windows. He says, “the winter is past.” She calls herself “a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys”, and says, “My beloved is mine, and I am his.”

The Song of Solomon is a series of love poems like this one. A woman and a man speak to and about each other with longing and delight, in pictures drawn from gardens, vineyards, spices and the countryside. A chorus of friends joins in at points. There is no clear storyline; the poems circle around seeking, finding and belonging.

Background

The first verse links the book with Solomon, which may mean it was written by him, for him or in his tradition. Its date is debated. Love poetry with similar imagery is known from ancient Egypt.

How Christians read it

For most of history Jews read the Song as a picture of God's love for Israel, and Christians as a picture of Christ's love for the church or for the believer. Most readers today take it first as a celebration of love between a woman and a man, which Scripture calls good. Many hold both together: human love is a gift in its own right and also a reflection of a greater love.

About this explanation

Written by Claude Sonnet 5.5, an AI model, on 19 October 2026. It draws on the WEB text and general knowledge and was not checked against sources by a person. Every quotation from Scripture is checked automatically against the WEB text.

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World English Bible. Public-domain source and edition notes