Context No. 3098 of 4322 · Song of Solomon

Song of Solomon 4:1-16: in context

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.

The bridegroom praises his bride at length, feature by feature, and gathers it all into one line: you are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you. He calls her his sister, his bride, a locked garden, a sealed fountain, an orchard of choice fruits and rare spices. And she answers, inviting him into his garden.

This is a lavish celebration of the beloved's beauty and of married love. The bridegroom delights in his bride wholly, you are altogether beautiful; there is no flaw in you, a love that sees and treasures the whole person. And the images of the locked garden and sealed fountain honor the reserve and exclusivity of married love, a delight kept for the beloved alone, then freely opened to him. The church has long also heard here Christ's delight in his people, whom he calls beautiful and without flaw, not because they are flawless, but because his love makes them so in his sight.

Do I know, whether in human love or in Christ's love for his people, the wonder of being seen as beautiful and treasured, and do I love others with that kind of wholehearted delight?

Sources

Song of Songs 4:7: "You are all beautiful, my love. There is no spot in you."
Song of Songs 4:12: "My sister, my bride, is a locked up garden; a locked up spring, a sealed fountain."
Ephesians 5:27: "That he might present the assembly to himself gloriously, not having spot or wrinkle... but that it should be holy and without defect."