Song of Solomon2chapter 2

Song of Solomon 2:1-2

I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys is spoken by the bride of herself, naming her own beauty in the coastal plain's common flowers rather than a rare one, a modesty the bench notes against the habit of quoting the line for someone else without saying who speaks it. As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters answers from the bridegroom's side, setting her above her companions the way one flower stands out among thorns. The later Christian tradition transferred the rose of Sharon title to Christ himself; that reading belongs to the tradition and is named as such, while the text's own voice keeps the line hers.

Song of Solomon 2:3-4

As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons answers her flower image with a fruit tree, one tree bearing shade and sweetness where the forest's others offer neither, and I sat down under his shadow with great delight reads the same tree as shelter enjoyed rather than merely admired. He brought me to the banqueting house names literally a house of wine, the setting for a feast, and his banner over me was love reads a military banner raised over an army as the poem's figure for a love standing over her openly and publicly. Henry and Clarke both take the banner as love declared rather than love hidden.

Song of Solomon 2:5-6

Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love asks for the ordinary refreshments of the orchard and the winepress to steady a longing the poem treats as overwhelming rather than shameful, love itself named the sickness. His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me pictures an actual embrace, the same line returning later in the poem at 8:3 to close the same thought. Gill reads the sickness of love as a figure later generations applied to the soul's longing for Christ, a reading named as the tradition's own beside the plain sense of desire answered by nearness.

Song of Solomon 2:7

The first of the poem's adjuration refrain falls here, repeated at 3:5, 5:8 and 8:4: I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please. The oath is sworn on gentle wild creatures rather than on God's own name, fitting a book that never names him plainly, and the charge asks the chorus of daughters to let love's own timing stand rather than force it. Wesley reads the refrain as counsel against forcing affection before its season, a reading the poem repeats at each return of the line.

Song of Solomon 2:8-9

The voice of my beloved! behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills turns the poem suddenly urgent, the bride hearing him before she sees him. My beloved is like a roe or a young hart compares him to swift, watchful animals, and he standeth behind our wall, he looketh forth at the windows, shewing himself through the lattice pictures a real house with a wall still between them, nearness without yet arrival. Clarke reads the lattice as an eastern house's lattice window, letting him see in without being fully seen, the poem's own suspense built into the architecture.

Song of Solomon 2:10-13

Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away opens his invitation, and the reason he gives is the arrival of spring itself: the winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle, the turtledove, is heard in the land, a real Judean spring named season by season. The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell completes the picture from the orchard, and the invitation returns, now arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. Delitzsch counts the passage among the most naturally beautiful in the poem, the changing season standing for love's own readiness.

Song of Solomon 2:14-15

in the clefts of the rock: O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs asks to see her face and hear her voice, a dove hidden in a cliffside called into view: sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely. Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines, for our vines have tender grapes became the poem's single most quoted proverb outside itself, and the readings are named rather than settled: small sins that ruin a young love before it is tested, the daily small quarrels that spoil affection, or simply the real pest of a spring vineyard heavy with tender grapes. Gill and Henry both carry the moral reading; Delitzsch keeps the plain agricultural sense as the verse's own ground.

Song of Solomon 2:16-17

My beloved is mine, and I am his: My beloved is mine, and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies states the poem's first mutual-possession formula, claiming him before naming herself claimed, and the same formula returns twice more, at 6:3 turned around to I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine, and at 7:10 completed as I am my beloved's, and his desire is toward me, a progression the bench reads as possession maturing from claiming toward being claimed. Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be thou like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether closes the chapter with him sent away rather than arriving, the same animal images from verse 9 now used for parting instead of approach.