Deeper Commentary
Song of Solomon 6:1
Daughters of Jerusalem
Where has your beloved gone, you fairest among women? Where has your
beloved turned, that we may seek him with you?-
This is bitter sarcasm. They ask her where Solomon has “turned aside”
so that they can come and seek him with her, using a word elsewhere
associated with ‘turning aside’ in apostasy to other gods. They
sarcastically quote Solomon’s terms of endearment back to her. But
with the hint that she's just another foreign woman and he's turned aside
to her gods.
Beloved
Song of Solomon 6:2 My beloved has gone down to his garden, to the beds of
spices, to feed in the gardens, and to gather lilies-
In Song 4:16; 5:1 she has invited Solomon to enter her closed garden
and he does so. The reference is to them sleeping together, and the
language of beds, feeding and lilies has elsewhere been used in the song
for sexual activity. She is therefore telling the daughters of Jerusalem
that she has slept with Solomon, and therefore he is hers exclusively
(:3). For all her self confidence and forwardness, she is betrayed as a
laughable fool to believe this. In Song 7:6,8, Solomon likewise openly
talks about their sexual encounters; their relationship is now no longer
secret.
The references to the lover as a shepherd in Song 1:7; 6:2,3 have led some to think that the beloved is also in love with a shepherd. But this is to miss the clear connection in Hebrew thought between a king and a shepherd. David was to shepherd Israel (2 Sam. 5:2) and the seed of David likewise would be a shepherd over all Israel (Ez. 37:24).
Her response may mean that yes he has gone to his flock of other women, and thus his macho manliness is seem by her as yet another aspect of his amazing masculinity.
Song of Solomon 6:3 I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine. He browses
among the lilies-
Being in the lilies has been language elsewhere used in the Song for
sex. I noted on :2 that she is retorting to the daughters of Jerusalem
that because she has slept with Solomon, therefore he is uniquely hers and
this, she thinks is her final answer to her competitors. But of course her
argument holds no water. She appears foolish and naive, for all her sexual
manipulation of Solomon. And remember that Solomon is the
author of this Song- he is painting his ex as a fool to believe him. She has likened herself to a lily (Song
2:1). Possibly she is replying that her man is not with her at this point
because he is off with his other lilies, having sex with them ['in the
garden', :2] and this makes him even more of a man in her eyes. A classic
case of seeing what you want to see, a way of reducing the huge cognitive
dissonance she is going through (see on Song 5:10).
The idea is "I am his and he is mine, he who is feeding his flock among the lilies". Although he is off with other women, she likes to think he is still uniquely hers in his affections. Again Solomon is writing this to mock her naivety as discussed on :1.
Lover
Song of Solomon 6:4 You are beautiful, my love, as Tirzah, lovely as
Jerusalem, awesome as an army with banners-
This may continue the dream she has been having beginning in Song
5:2. Or it may be that now Solomon appears on the scene and comforts her
with expressions of his unique love for her, to calm her after her
nightmare. Tirzah was obviously an established city at the time, and was
later briefly the capital of the ten tribe kingdom. But it was destroyed
at the time of the exile, and this would be evidence that the song indeed
dates from Solomon's time, and the Song is not the fantasy of some post
exilic writer as the critics lamely claim; see on Song 7:4. Jerusalem was
the "perfection of beauty" (Ps. 48:3; 50:2), and yet through this allusion
Solomon is showing that unlike for David, Zion was not his chiefest joy,
but this Gentile girl was. "Lovely as Jerusalem" is
another example of Solomon wanting to see this Gentile woman as if she
were quintessentially Jewish, "as Jerusalem".
She now imagines Solomon praising her for her unique beauty, despite being with other women. See on :3. Song 6:4-7 repeats Solomon's praise of her in Song 4:1-3. She is remembering his words then and repeating them to herself, when assaulted by the reality of the fact he is with other women. This is totally psychologically credible.
Song of Solomon 6:5 Turn away your eyes from me, for they have overcome me. Your hair
is like a flock of goats, that lie along the side of Gilead-
Solomon is defying his own wisdom in Prov. 6:25: "Don’t lust after
her beauty in your heart, neither let her captivate you with her eyelids". The blindness of Solomon is driven home time and again. He
warned the typical young man about being captivated by the eyelids
of the Gentile woman (Prov. 6:25); yet it was the eyes of Miss Egypt that he openly admitted stole his heart (Song 4:9; 6:5). We
note his total inability to be self critical and have a sense of
temptation and the possibility of personal failure. This seems to go with
the territory of assuming that mere possession of Divine truth somehow
justifies us of itself.
She has her hair down, a sign she was sexually available. Time and again the imagery of the song is distinctly sexually selective and without appropriate modesty in the contemporary culture. And Solomon clearly likes it.
Song of Solomon 6:6 Your teeth are like a flock of ewes, which have come
up from the washing; of which each one has twins; none is bereaved among
them-
Without dental science, missing teeth would have been common in those
days, even in youth. But she apparently had none missing. Here and in Song
4:3 "your mouth is lovely" suggests they had already been involved in deep
kissing.
Song of Solomon 6:7 Your temples are like a piece of a pomegranate behind
your veil-
Solomon has seen behind her veil, the symbol of her virginity, for he
has entered her closed garden by sleeping with her (Song 4:16; 5:1). But
he likes to still perceive her as a virgin. They both create images of
each other which are simply not true to reality, and fall in love with
those images rather than reality. Although I am no fan of the allegorical
interpretation of the Song, it could be argued that this looks ahead to
Christ's imputation of righteousness to His bride.
I noted on Song 1:1 that the Shulamite acts as a prostitute, and there are many connections between her and the bad woman of Proverbs who is a prostitute. Prostitutes wore veils (as Tamar in Gen. 38:14,15, and this is the sense of Song 1:7 ISV "Why should I be considered a veiled woman beside the flocks of your companions?"). Solomon's lover wears a veil (Song 4:1,3; 6:7) which the watchmen angrily pull off her to expose her for who she is (Song 5:7). The Shulamite acts like a very forward woman, if not a prostitute, and her veil may suggest that.
Song of Solomon 6:8 There are sixty queens, eighty concubines, and virgins
without number-
The Queens were the women of noble birth he had already
married; the virgins refer to the women in the house of the women still
waiting and being prepared to sleep with him.
Solomon boasts that he has many Jewish queens and concubines, but
there is only one woman, the Egyptian, that he truly loves (:8,9); he even
calls her his “sister”, associating himself thereby with Egypt. See on
:13. This is his answer to her nightmare which began in Song 5:2, about
the daughters of Jerusalem. Perhaps at that time he had 60 queens and 80
concubines, a number which would later rise to 700 wives and 300
concubines (1 Kings 11:3). Solomon wrote this Song; he is
painting her as naive to have believed that she was unique despite him
having so many other women in his life. He leaves us to join the dots and
see her as a fool for believing him at this point.
Song 6:8 refers to queens, concubines and virgins. The next verse speaks of queens, concubines and "the daughters" (Song 6:9). These are surely "the daughters of Jerusalem". Harems were comprised of virgins who were prepared for the king and once readied, they slept with him. After this, some were chosen as queens. The others, no longer virgins, were counted as "concubines" if they weren't chosen as queens. The book of Esther describes just such a harem. "The daughters of Jerusalem" would then refer to the virgins in Jerusalem who were being prepared to go and sleep with Solomon, in order for him to choose whether he wanted them as his queen or not. And they were "of Jerusalem", Hebrew women. Hence their jealousy and spirit of bitter competition against this foreigner who had come amongst them.
Song of Solomon 6:9 My dove, my perfect one, is unique-
Solomon seeks to persuade the girl that really she is his special
love, better than all his women of :8. We marvel at her naivety in
believing him.
She is her mother’s only daughter. She is the favourite one of her
who bore her. The daughters saw her, and called her blessed; the queens
and the concubines, and they praised her-
This is simply not the case, obviously. She has just had a nightmare
about the daughters of Jerusalem
mocking her. And she is aware of
Solomon's existing harem (:8). And he tries to persuade her that actually
his queens, concubines and the daughters of Jerusalem think she is in fact
wonderful. They clearly do not, and she is presented as hopelessly foolish
in believing Solomon, who likewise presents himself as no more than a
sweet talking womanizer.
The allusion is to "the daughters will call me happy / blessed" (Gen. 30:13); Solomon has a vision of this Egyptian girl as becoming as one of the founding mothers of Israel. But her heart is far from it. He speaks as if she is in fact already this. He is in love with an image and projection upon her which is simply unrealistic and untrue.
Solomon assures her that all his existing harem consider her just as he is telling her she is- the most beautiful and beloved of them all. Or perhaps she is imagining him to be saying this, i.e. the words of Solomon are in fact still part of her own fantasy.
Solomon likes to view positively the fact that she is her mother's only daughter, and therefore her mother's favourite daughter. Yet we know that the woman fantasizes about bringing Solomon back to her mother's house in Egypt. He is not at all factoring in that if she is her mother's favourite daughter, then there will always be a strong pull back to her mother and homeland.
Song of Solomon 6:10 Who is she who looks forth as the morning, beautiful as the moon,
clear as the sun, and awesome as an army with banners?-
The reference is to the morning star. This apparently is common
Egyptian love poem language. Solomon was clearly very influenced by Egypt
from a young age, and likes to try to talk to the girl as it were in her
own terms. He presents her as the brightest of all the stars, and more
awesome than an entire army. The idea is that although he admits he does
have a harem (:8), he seeks to persuade her that she is the brightest of
all the stars, she is the sun and moon, and greater than an army with
banners. The significance of "banners" is that she had rejoiced that his
banner over her was love (Song 2:4). He is saying that his banner over her
was far greater than that over a whole army of women. And she appears, for
the time being, to believe his story. Which may well have been a standard
story trotted out to all his many women.
Or we can read "an army with banners" as NIV "stars in procession". This would fit the context of describing her as one amongst many, the prettiest star amongst many others in the procession of stars.
Song of Solomon 6:11 I went down into the nut tree grove, to see the green
plants of the valley, to see whether the vine budded, and the pomegranates
were in flower-
AV "I went down into the garden of nuts". Entrance to the locked
garden has been used by the couple to reference their lovemaking (Song
4:16; 5:1). He could be implying that he had slept with her in the hope
that she was "in flower" and would fall pregnant. He calculated that this
was going to comfort her more than anything at this time; he is trying to
show that he is very serious about their relationship. "Pomegranates" have
been used as erotic imagery in Song 1:6; 4:13. And she uses his reasoning
here to urge him to sleep with her in Song 7:12.
Plants, fruitfulness, vines budding, pomegranates etc. are all sexual symbols in the song. Solomon could be saying [or she is imagining him as saying, or the daughters of Jerusalem are imagining him as saying] that he has gone to his other women, the orchard of trees representing his harem. And he was then blown away by his desire for her and how attractive he found her (:12).
Song of Solomon 6:12 Without realizing it, my desire set me with my royal
people’s chariots-
The idea is that he assures her that the sexual encounter of :11 had
made him "beside himself" [NEV "Without realizing it"]. He felt he had
been as it were whisked away by the passion she stirred in him, "she put
me in the chariots of Ammi Nadib". Perhaps this was an Egyptian phrase. He
is by all means trying to persuade her that he found her sexually
superlative. We noted the confusion between the carriage / chariot and the
marriage bed of Solomon in Song 3:9.
LXX "There I will give thee my breasts: my soul knew it not: it made me as the chariots of Aminadab".
Solomon tried to see in her an Israelite woman, "O daughter of my princely people" (when she was the daughter of the Egyptian Pharaoh, 6:12 cp. 7:1), comparing her body parts to various geographical places in Israel (e.g. goats on Gilead, 4:1; the tower of David, 4:4; "as beautiful as Tirzah, as lovely as Jerusalem" 6:4), so she tried to see him as an Egyptian. They were trying to see each other as who they were not... and so the relationship was doomed to failure.
Or we can go with RV "my soul (or, desire, RV marg.) set me
among the chariots of my princely people". She could be saying that for a
moment, she was back amongst her father's chariots, her princely, superior
people to whom she wanted to return. This would then be in the same vein
as her desire to return to her mother's house.
Daughters of Jerusalem
Song of Solomon 6:13 Return, return, Shulammite! Return, return, that we
may gaze at you-
This would appear to be the sarcastic comment of the Israelite girls
after the Egyptian girl has run off away from them. They call her the
Shulammite, the Jerusalem girl, mockingly. Whilst "Shulammite" is
not the exact female form of ''Shlomo', Solomon, the inexactness may be
because they are mocking her by this term, as if to call her 'Solomon's
wannabe lover who didn't quite make it'.
For they all know she is a dark
skinned foreigner and not really a Shulammite. The girl is presented in
Song 5:7 as bedraggled, without her makeup and having been raped. Having
made her defence of herself to them, she runs off; and they sarcastically
invite her to return so they can look at her. This would assume that the
nightmare dream which began in Song 5:2 is here continuing.
Lover
Why do you desire to gaze at the Shulammite, as at the dance of Mahanaim?-
Perhaps the tension between the two groups- the Jerusalem women and the
Egyptian girl and her family (see on :8,9)- is behind the enigmatic
reference to “the company of two armies” or “the dance of the two camps”.
Solomon has to now carefully broker between his Egyptian woman and the
daughters of Jerusalem. He asks them rhetorically why they want to gaze at
her. The idea is of a girl dancing before two camps, one who support her
with encouragement, the other who detest her and shout insults. And
Solomon would be saying that he doesn't wish for this competitive
situation to arise. He may be implying to the daughters of Jerusalem that
they too need fear no competition, and so there need be no dance of
comparison. And yet Solomon confirms that indeed this Egyptian girl is a
Shulammite, a girl of Jerusalem, Yerushalem. She is one of the daughters
of Jerusalem, so he decides; and therefore there should be division
between her and the daughters of Jerusalem, as if they were in two camps.
Again we observe that Solomon projects an image onto her, as an Israelite
daughter of Zion... and believes it. Regardless of the reality.
These words could still belong to the daughters of Jerusalem. The context is the situation described in :11 where Solomon has gone to other women. The rhetorical question could be “why should you look at your own woman when there are so many others who will dance and present themselves to you?”.
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