Song of Solomon1chapter 1

Song of Solomon 1:1-4

The title names itself the song of songs, the Hebrew superlative form meaning the best of all the songs Solomon wrote, a man the record credits with a thousand and five (1 Kings 4:32). The bride's voice opens the poem at once, wishing his kisses on her own mouth and naming his love better than wine, desire stated without preface or apology. Draw me, we will run after thee pictures a company running together rather than one alone, and the king hath brought me into his chambers reads either as the plain wedding chamber or, in the church's later line of reading, as the soul's nearness to Christ.

Song of Solomon 1:5-6

The bride names herself black, but comely, sun-darkened as the tents of Kedar and yet lovely as Solomon's own curtains, labor and dignity held together in the same line. Look not upon me, because I am black gives the reason plainly: her mother's sons were angry with her and set her to keep the vineyards, so the sun did what a family quarrel caused, and mine own vineyard have I not kept turns the same word on herself, her own care left unattended by the work laid on her. The older allegorical reading heard the church's beauty and imperfection together in the verse; the text itself reads as an unashamed woman naming honest labor.

Song of Solomon 1:7-8

The bride asks where he shepherds his flock at noon, unwilling to go veiled and wandering among his companions' flocks in search of him. The reply sends her to the flock's own footsteps and the shepherds' tents, an ordinary answer that keeps the poem inside a real pastoral world rather than a palace alone. Wesley and Henry both read the exchange as courtship's plain speech, one wanting the other's company without contrivance or delay.

Song of Solomon 1:9-11

The comparison likens the bride to a company of horses in Pharaoh's chariots, praise drawn from Solomon's own trade in Egyptian horses and chariotry (1 Kings 10:28-29) and read by the bench as admiration of stately, ornamented movement rather than of size, since Egyptian chariot teams were famously decked in gold and jewels. Thy cheeks are comely with rows of jewels, thy neck with chains of gold continues the same picture in her own ornaments, and we will make thee borders of gold with studs of silver answers her beauty with a promised gift finer still. Clarke and Gill both note the comparison sounds odd to modern ears yet stood among the highest compliments available at a king's court.

Song of Solomon 1:12-14

While the king sitteth at his table, my spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof turns the scene domestic, her own fragrance filling the room where he rests. A bundle of myrrh is my wellbeloved unto me, worn between the breasts through the night by the custom of the time, names him a fragrance she carries close rather than a gift she merely awaits, and my beloved is unto me as a cluster of camphire in the vineyards of En-gedi sets him against a real oasis on the Dead Sea famous for its balsam groves. Delitzsch reads the three images together as the poem moving from scent surrounding her, to scent she keeps against her own body, to scent tied to one named place.

Song of Solomon 1:15-17

Behold, thou art fair, my love is doubled for emphasis, and thou hast doves' eyes is answered at once by her own behold, thou art fair, my beloved, yea, pleasant, praise returned rather than merely received. Also our bed is green, the beams of our house are cedar, and our rafters of fir describes no built palace but the outdoors itself furnished as a house, grass for a bed and standing trees for a roof. Bernard of Clairvaux, preaching on the Song's opening chapters, read the doves' eyes as the simplicity of a gaze fixed on Christ alone; the verses themselves picture two lovers content under open sky.