Song of Solomon8chapter 8

"O that thou wert as my brother, that sucked the breasts of my mother! when I should find thee without, I would kiss thee; yea, I should not be despised." Public affection between a man and a woman was not acceptable in that society, but affection between siblings was. She is not confused about who he is; she is complaining about the rules of the street.

"Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm." A seal was the single most personal object a person owned — a carved stone, either a stamp or a cylinder rolled across wet clay, that signed contracts and sealed jars and letters. It was worn on a cord around the neck, resting on the chest, or on a cord at the wrist. Losing it meant someone else could act as you. She is asking to be the thing he never takes off and never hands to anyone.

"Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it." The flood image is the winter torrent that rips down a wadi and carries away everything in its path — the strongest destructive force these hearers ever saw.

"If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned." Marriages in that world involved a bride-price paid to the family. This line says love is outside that market, and any attempt to buy it earns contempt.

The closing vineyard is a business arrangement. Solomon owns a vineyard at Baal-hamon and lets it out to tenant keepers, each of whom owes a thousand pieces of silver from the crop — the standard sharecropping arrangement, where the owner takes his fixed cut and the keepers take the risk. The bride ends by saying, "my vineyard, which is mine, is before me" — Solomon can keep his thousand. Hers is not leased to anyone.