Song of Solomon7chapter 7

Song of Solomon 7:1-3

How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter opens the poem's fourth full praise song, and its form is the same the poem set at 4:1-7, images given for their impression rather than their outline, as Delitzsch's reading there already established. Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor, and thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies picture abundance and provision, the wheat a harvest image drawn from the same working world the poem has used throughout. Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins closes the unit with the twin figure the poem had already used of her teeth in 4:2 and 6:6, tenderness and matched pairing carried into a new image.

Song of Solomon 7:4-5

Thy neck is as a tower of ivory, thine eyes like the fishpools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bath-rabbim continues the portrait upward with real geography, Heshbon an Amorite city east of the Jordan known for its pools, the comparison built from a place the first hearers could picture rather than an invented scene. Thy nose is as the tower of Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus keeps the same method, borrowing a known height for an impression of dignity rather than a literal report of shape. Thine head upon thee is like Carmel, and the hair of thine head like purple leads into the chapter's one line about him rather than her, the king is held in the galleries, which the commentators read as her beauty holding him captive in the very halls built for a king's freedom.

Song of Solomon 7:6-7

How fair and how pleasant art thou, O love, for delights turns the praise from catalogue to exclamation, the poem's own summary breaking into the description rather than waiting for its end. This thy stature is like to a palm tree, and thy breasts to clusters of grapes moves to a single tall image, the palm's upright bearing read by the commentators as stature and grace together rather than mere height. Delitzsch reads the palm figure as preparing the verse that follows, where the tree becomes something to climb rather than only admire.

Song of Solomon 7:8-9

I will go up to the palm tree, I will take hold of the boughs thereof turns the palm image of the previous verse into desire acted on, the bridegroom's own voice answering the figure just given. Now also thy breasts shall be as clusters of the vine, and the smell of thy nose like apples returns two images already used earlier in the poem, the vine and the apple both carried forward from chapter two. And the roof of thy mouth like the best wine for my beloved, that goeth down sweetly, causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak closes the unit with taste, the wine language the poem opened with at 1:2 now completing the circle from the bridegroom's side.

Song of Solomon 7:10

I am my beloved's, and his desire is toward me completes the poem's progression of mutual-possession formulas, from my beloved is mine, and I am his at 2:16, through the reversed order at 6:3, to this final form where possession rests entirely in being wanted. The Hebrew word for desire here is the same rare word used at Genesis 3:16 of the woman's desire toward her husband under the curse, and part of the bench, Gill among them, reads this verse as that same word answered in a different key, longing without the rule that followed it in Genesis, a reading named as theirs rather than the verse's own stated claim. The commentators trace the formula's three-stage movement from claiming to being claimed to simply being desired as the poem's own account of what love becomes over time.

Song of Solomon 7:11-12

Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field, let us lodge in the villages turns the poem back outdoors, the court images of verses four and five giving way again to the vineyard world the poem has used since its opening chapter. Let us get up early to the vineyards, let us see if the vine flourish, whether the tender grape appear, and the pomegranates bud forth repeats almost exactly her own invitation and search from 6:11, now spoken as a shared plan rather than a solitary errand. There will I give thee my loves closes the couplet with a promise kept for the vineyard itself, the poem's own working image of love as something tended rather than only felt.

Song of Solomon 7:13

The mandrakes give a smell closes the chapter with a plant already remembered from Reuben's find in Genesis 30:14, though the poem here uses it only for its fragrance rather than any of that older history. At our gates are all manner of pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for thee, O my beloved gathers the poem's language of fruit kept for one person, echoing the sealed garden of 4:12 in a different image, provision rather than enclosure. The chapter ends without arrival, an invitation extended rather than completed, which the commentators note as the pattern the whole poem keeps until its final lines in chapter eight.