Song of Solomon1chapter 1

"I am black, but comely… look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me: my mother's children were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyards." This is about field labour, not ancestry. A woman put out to guard vineyards worked in the open all day through the dry season, and a deep tan marked her as someone who worked outdoors, in contrast to the sheltered women of a court. She says it defensively and then refuses to apologise for it.

"As the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon." Kedar was a north Arabian people whose tents were woven from black goat hair — dark on the outside, and the same cloth that made the tabernacle's covering. She compares herself to something dark and beautiful in the same breath.

"I have compared thee, O my love, to a company of horses in Pharaoh's chariots." Solomon's records describe horses imported from Egypt and Kue, and Egyptian chariot teams were harnessed with ornamented headstalls and plumes. It is a compliment about magnificence and matched grace, from a king who bought horses for a living.

The perfumes name the trade routes. Spikenard came from the Himalayan foothills by way of long-distance trade; myrrh came up from Arabia and was carried in a small cloth sachet worn at the breast overnight; henna — the "camphire" of the older translation — grew in the oasis of Engedi on the Dead Sea shore and produced both a scent and a reddish dye for hands and hair.

"The beams of our house are cedar, and our rafters of fir" points at the timber Solomon imported from Lebanon by raft down the coast. The lovers are describing the outdoors as their house — but the wood they name is palace wood.