World English Bible
- Behold, you are beautiful, my love. Behold, you are beautiful. Your eyes are like doves behind your veil. Your hair is as a flock of goats, that descend from Mount Gilead.
- Your teeth are like a newly shorn flock, which have come up from the washing, where every one of them has twins. None is bereaved among them.
- Your lips are like scarlet thread. Your mouth is lovely. Your temples are like a piece of a pomegranate behind your veil.
- Your neck is like David’s tower built for an armory, on which a thousand shields hang, all the shields of the mighty men.
- Your two breasts are like two fawns that are twins of a roe, which feed among the lilies.
- Until the day is cool, and the shadows flee away, I will go to the mountain of myrrh, to the hill of frankincense.
- You are all beautiful, my love. There is no spot in you.
- Come with me from Lebanon, my bride, with me from Lebanon. Look from the top of Amana, from the top of Senir and Hermon, from the lions’ dens, from the mountains of the leopards.
- You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride. You have ravished my heart with one of your eyes, with one chain of your neck.
- How beautiful is your love, my sister, my bride! How much better is your love than wine, the fragrance of your perfumes than all kinds of spices!
- Your lips, my bride, drip like the honeycomb. Honey and milk are under your tongue. The smell of your garments is like the smell of Lebanon.
- My sister, my bride, is a locked up garden; a locked up spring, a sealed fountain.
- Your shoots are an orchard of pomegranates, with precious fruits, henna with spikenard plants,
- spikenard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with every kind of incense tree; myrrh and aloes, with all the best spices,
- a fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, flowing streams from Lebanon.
- Awake, north wind, and come, you south! Blow on my garden, that its spices may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and taste his precious fruits.
Song of Solomon 4 refuses two common religious errors: treating the body as unspiritual, and using spirituality to erase the body. This is first a poem of married desire—a celebration of embodied, covenant love. Yet within the whole canon, it also offers language for Christ’s delight in his people.
The lover’s comparisons may sound strange to Western ears. Goats descending Gilead would appear as a dark, rippling stream against the hillside. Teeth like washed, twin-bearing sheep speak of whiteness, symmetry, and completeness—no small blessing in an ancient world where gritty bread caused severe dental wear. The “tower of David” is not about a long neck but an upright, ornamented dignity: she carries herself like a stronghold hung with shields.
The poem gradually turns the woman into a landscape. Her hair is Gilead; her neck is Jerusalem’s tower; her fragrance is Lebanon; her life is a garden fed by living water. She is not being reduced to body parts. Rather, love discovers a whole world within another person.
The rare Hebrew verb translated “You have ravished my heart” is libbabtini. It could almost be rendered, “You have unhearted me”—you have taken possession of my heart with a single glance. God is not the unmoved deity imagined by cold philosophy. Scripture dares to speak of covenant love as affecting him: he rejoices over his people “with singing” (Zephaniah 3:17).
Yet the garden is “locked,” the fountain “sealed.” In the ancient Near East, a private garden required walls because water and fruit were precious. This image speaks of chastity, but not lifeless possession. A sealed fountain is not dry; it is protected abundance. Holy boundaries do not deny desire—they preserve its power to become a gift.
Most importantly, the garden opens from within. The woman herself says, in the World English Bible, “Let my beloved come into his garden.” Covenant love does not break locks, demand fruit, or rename seizure as passion. It waits for willing self-giving. This matters in marriage, friendship, pastoral care, and discipleship: Christ stands at the door and knocks; he does not batter it down.
The final prayer summons both north and south winds. The north wind was cold and severe; the south wind warm and gentle. She asks both to make the spices flow. So may grace use both hardship and consolation. Fragrance often remains hidden until the wind moves through the garden.
The Church has long heard in this chapter Christ’s love for his bride. Bernard of Clairvaux especially cherished the Song as the language of communion with Christ. Read canonically, “There is no spot in you” anticipates the bride Christ sanctifies and presents in splendor—not because she never needed cleansing, but because his love finishes what it begins (Ephesians 5:25–27).
For further reflection: Genesis 2:21–25; Isaiah 58:11; John 4:10–14; Ephesians 5:25–27; Revelation 3:20.
Suggested hymn: “O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go.”
Lord Jesus, teach me to receive your holy delight without pride or fear. Guard the garden of my heart, open it by willing love, and use every wind to release the fragrance of your grace. Amen.
Narrated version of this devotional on Song of Solomon Chapter 4