World English Bible
- Where has your beloved gone, you fairest among women? Where has your beloved turned, that we may seek him with you?
- My beloved has gone down to his garden, to the beds of spices, to pasture his flock in the gardens, and to gather lilies.
- I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine. He browses among the lilies.
- You are beautiful, my love, as Tirzah, lovely as Jerusalem, awesome as an army with banners.
- 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.
- Your teeth are like a flock of ewes, which have come up from the washing, of which every one has twins; not one is bereaved among them.
- Your temples are like a piece of a pomegranate behind your veil.
- There are sixty queens, eighty concubines, and virgins without number.
- My dove, my perfect one, is unique. She is her mother’s only daughter. She is the favorite one of her who bore her. The daughters saw her, and called her blessed. The queens and the concubines saw her, and they praised her.
- Who is she who looks out as the morning, beautiful as the moon, clear as the sun, and awesome as an army with banners?
- 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.
- Without realizing it, my desire set me with my royal people’s chariots.
- Return, return, Shulammite! Return, return, that we may gaze at you. Lover Why do you desire to gaze at the Shulammite, as at the dance of Mahanaim?
The woman who wandered through the night in chapter 5 now speaks with quiet certainty: her beloved is in his garden. His absence has not become abandonment. Her search has taught her where love dwells.
Even more striking, the women who once questioned her now say, “We may seek him with you” (Song of Solomon 6:1, World English Bible). Honest longing becomes witness. The deepest evangelism may begin not with appearing certain, but with desiring Christ so openly that others begin to desire him too.
Earlier she declared, “My beloved is mine, and I am his” (2:16, World English Bible). Here the order changes: “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine” (6:3, World English Bible). By 7:10, she will simply begin, “I am my beloved’s.”
This is the slow purification of love. Immature faith asks first, What do I possess in God? Mature faith asks, To whom do I belong? The center of assurance is not our grip upon Christ, but Christ’s claim upon us. As Paul suggests in Galatians 4:9, the greater wonder is not that we know God, but that we are known by God.
The beloved compares her to Tirzah and Jerusalem. Tirzah—usually identified with Tell el-Far‘ah in the northern hill country—was a royal capital before Samaria. Jerusalem was the city of kingship and worship. To ancient ears, this was not merely a comparison to attractive scenery. He sees in her the dignity of a city: ordered, inhabited, guarded, and full of holy significance. Her beauty is “awesome as an army with banners.” True holiness is not frail prettiness; it is beauty made strong.
Amid sixty queens, eighty concubines, and countless young women, she is “unique.” Royal courts collected women partly as signs of wealth and political power. Covenant love, however, refuses to turn persons into numbers. The Hebrew word translated “perfect,” tammah, can also mean whole or complete. Christ does not love his church as one spiritual option among many trophies. He is making her whole.
The chapter closes with a troubling gaze. The crowd repeatedly commands the Shulammite to return so they may look at her. Yet the final question resists their demand: why should she become a spectacle? “Mahanaim” means “two camps” and recalls the place where Jacob encountered God’s angels (Genesis 32:1–2), though the exact meaning here remains uncertain. The contrast is powerful: the beloved’s gaze gives dignity; the crowd’s gaze consumes.
We live in an age that counts views, admirers, and comparisons. Christ’s love releases us from that market. We need not display ourselves to prove that we are worth seeing. We are already seen by the One whose eyes do not reduce us, but restore us.
Suggested cross-references: John 10:14; Galatians
4:9; Ephesians 5:25–27; Genesis 32:1–2
Suggested hymn: “The King of Love My Shepherd Is”
Lord Jesus, free me from the need to be admired, counted, or compared. Teach me to rest in belonging to you. Make your church whole, beautiful, and strong—not for display, but for faithful love. Amen.
Narrated version of this devotional on Song of Solomon Chapter 6