TOM · The Owner's Manual · Old Testament

Song of Solomon 4

Chapter 4 in 30 seconds

The groom gives a head to toe compliment speech: teeth like sheep, a neck like a tower. Do not try these lines today. He calls his bride a locked garden, and she invites him in.

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In this chapterField Notes · ArchaeologyEgyptian Love Songs · after verse 15

Solomon Admires His Bride

The Bridegroom

¹How beautiful you are, my darling—

how very beautiful!

Your eyes are like doves

behind your veil.

Your hair is like a flock of goats

streaming down Mount Gilead.

SONG 4:1[NOTE]A HEAD TO TOE POEM. Old love songs often praise a loved one bit by bit. The pictures are about beauty and color: hair like black goats streaming down a hill, teeth white with none missing, 4:2.

²Your teeth are like a flock of newly shorn sheep

coming up from the washing;

each has its twin,

and not one of them is lost.

³Your lips are like a scarlet ribbon,

and your mouth is lovely.

Your brow behind your veil

is like a slice of pomegranate.

⁴Your neck is like the tower of David,

built with rows of stones;

on it hang a thousand shields,

all of them shields of warriors.

SONG 4:4[NOTE]THE TOWER OF DAVID. A neck held high with strings of jewels, like a tower hung with soldiers' shields. A thousand shields just means a lot of them.

⁵Your breasts are like two fawns,

twins of a gazelle grazing among the lilies.

⁶Before the day breaks and the shadows flee,

I will make my way

to the mountain of myrrh

and to the hill of frankincense.

⁷You are altogether beautiful, my darling;

in you there is no flaw.

⁸Come with me from Lebanon, my bride,

come with me from Lebanon!

Descend from the peak of Amana,

from the summits of Senir and Hermon,

from the dens of the lions,

from the mountains of the leopards.

⁹You have captured my heart,

my sister, my bride;

you have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes,

with one jewel of your neck.

SONG 4:9[HEART]You have captured my heart, my sister, my bride. One look and love takes over the heart.
SONG 4:9[NOTE]MY SISTER, MY BRIDE. Not his real sister. In Egyptian love songs, lovers called each other my sister and my brother. Stolen my heart is one Hebrew word, libbavtini, made from levav, heart.

¹⁰How delightful is your love,

my sister, my bride!

Your love is much better than wine,

and the fragrance of your perfume than all spices.

SONG 4:10[ARCHAEOLOGY]Love songs on papyrus and pottery from Egypt, about 1300 to 1150 BC, where lovers call each other my sister and my brother, see the Egyptian Love Songs Field Notes page

¹¹Your lips, my bride,

drip sweetness like the honeycomb;

honey and milk are under your tongue,

and the fragrance of your garments

is like the aroma of Lebanon.

¹²My sister, my bride, you are a garden locked up,

a spring enclosed, a fountain sealed.

SONG 4:12[NOTE]A LOCKED GARDEN. A picture of her purity: she kept herself for her husband. Many read the garden pictures in 4:12 to 5:1 as the joy of the wedding, told gently in poetry.

¹³Your branches are an orchard of pomegranates

with the choicest of fruits, with henna and nard,

SONG 4:13[NOTE]ORCHARD. The Hebrew word pardes comes from Persian, the same word as in Ecclesiastes 2:5, and gives us the word paradise.

¹⁴with nard and saffron, with calamus and cinnamon,

with every kind of frankincense tree,

with myrrh and aloes,

with all the finest spices.

¹⁵You are a garden spring,

a well of fresh water

flowing down from Lebanon.

Field Notes · Archaeology

Egyptian Love Songs

Song of Solomon 2:5 · 4:9 to 5:1 · 8:5

Egyptian love songs on papyrus, the Songs of the Orchard, about 1150 BC, probably from Deir el Medina. Museo Egizio, Turin, Cat. 1966. Public domain, CC0.

WHAT THEY ARE: Love songs from ancient Egypt, written on papyrus and on pottery. A young man and a young woman take turns singing about each other, a lot like the bride and groom in the Song.
HOW OLD THEY ARE: Most were written down about 1300 to 1150 BC, a few hundred years before Solomon. Papyrus Chester Beatty I, the best known, is from about 1160 BC.
WHERE THEY ARE: Papyrus Chester Beatty I is in the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin. Papyrus Harris 500 is in the British Museum. The Songs of the Orchard are in Turin, Italy, and songs written on a pottery jar are in Cairo.
HOW THEY WERE FOUND: Many came from Deir el Medina, the village of the workmen who built the royal tombs. The Chester Beatty papyri began as the library of a scribe named Qenherkhepeshef, and his family kept adding to it after he died. It was found in 1928, and Alan Gardiner published the love songs in 1931.
MY SISTER, MY BROTHER: In these songs the lovers call each other my sister and my brother. They were not family; it was a love name. That is why the groom says my sister, my bride, 4:9 and 5:1.
WHAT THEY SAY: In plain words: one song begins, my sister is one of a kind, fairer than all the rest. The lovers praise each other from head to toe, long for each other, meet in gardens, and say love has made them sick, like 2:5 and 5:8.
THE TALKING TREES: In the Turin songs, the trees of an orchard talk about the young lovers who meet in their shade. The Song is full of gardens and fruit trees too, like the apple tree, 2:3 and 8:5.
WHAT IS DIFFERENT: The Egyptian songs call on many gods, like Hathor, the goddess of love. The Song of Solomon is part of the Scriptures of the one God who made man and woman and joined them, Genesis 2:24.
SEE ALSO: Papyrus Harris 500 also holds a harper's song, see The Harper's Songs in Ecclesiastes.
WHAT IT DOES NOT PROVE: It does not show the Song was copied from Egypt. It shows love poems like this were loved in Solomon's world. Solomon even married Pharaoh's daughter, 1 Kings 3:1.

CONFIDENCE: HIGH

The Bride

¹⁶Awake, O north wind,

and come, O south wind.

Breathe on my garden

and spread the fragrance of its spices.

Let my beloved come into his garden

and taste its choicest fruits.

Song of Solomon 4

Solomon Admires His Bride

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