World English Bible
- How beautiful are your feet in sandals, prince’s daughter! Your rounded thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a skillful workman.
- Your body is like a round goblet, no mixed wine is wanting. Your waist is like a heap of wheat, set about with lilies.
- Your two breasts are like two fawns, that are twins of a roe.
- Your neck is like an ivory tower. Your eyes are like the pools in Heshbon by the gate of Bathrabbim. Your nose is like the tower of Lebanon which looks toward Damascus.
- Your head on you is like Carmel. The hair of your head like purple. The king is held captive in its tresses.
- How beautiful and how pleasant you are, love, for delights!
- This, your stature, is like a palm tree, your breasts like its fruit.
- I said, “I will climb up into the palm tree. I will take hold of its fruit.” Let your breasts be like clusters of the vine, the smell of your breath like apples.
- Your mouth is like the best wine, that goes down smoothly for my beloved, gliding through the lips of those who are asleep.
- I am my beloved’s. His desire is toward me.
- Come, my beloved! Let’s go out into the field. Let’s lodge in the villages.
- Let’s go early up to the vineyards. Let’s see whether the vine has budded, its blossom is open, and the pomegranates are in flower. There I will give you my love.
- The mandrakes produce fragrance. At our doors are all kinds of precious fruits, new and old, which I have stored up for you, my beloved.
“I am my beloved’s. His desire is toward me.”
—Song of Solomon 7:10, World English Bible
Song of Solomon 7 is openly sensual, yet it is not crude. Desire here does not consume; it beholds, praises, waits, and answers. The woman is not treated as a possession. She receives her beloved’s delight and then speaks with strong agency: “Come, my beloved!” Love becomes mutual invitation.
The Hebrew poetic form is sometimes called a wasf—a description moving from one feature of the beloved to another. Yet these images would have sounded different to ancient ears than to ours. Her neck is a tower; her nose resembles a fortress looking toward Damascus; her head rises like Mount Carmel. This is not praise of fragile prettiness. She is beautiful because she is dignified, commanding, and strong.
Her body also becomes a map of the land: Carmel, Heshbon, Lebanon, vineyards, wheat, lilies, palms, and pomegranates. The precise location of Heshbon’s pools and the gate of Bathrabbim remains uncertain, though ancient Heshbon lay east of the Jordan and was known as a fortified center. The poem gathers the abundance of creation into one beloved person. Biblical love does not escape the created world; it learns to see creation’s glory concentrated in another.
Then comes the chapter’s theological center: “His desire is toward me.” The rare Hebrew word teshuqah, “desire,” appears only three times in the Old Testament. Most strikingly, it appears in Genesis 3:16: “Your desire will be for your husband.” There, desire stands within a world disordered by sin and domination. Here, the language is transformed. The woman does not anxiously reach for one who rules over her; she rests in belonging and rejoices that desire moves toward her.
This is not merely romance. It is a glimpse of desire being healed from the curse—love without seizure, intimacy without shame, belonging without erasure.
Ancient Christian teachers often read the beloved as the Church responding to Christ. That spiritual reading can be fruitful, provided we first honor the poem as a celebration of embodied covenant love. God does not redeem us by teaching us to despise the body. The Word became flesh. Christ’s love restores both soul and body from shame, teaching us to say, without pride or terror: I am loved.
The woman then leads her beloved into vineyards where buds are opening. Mandrakes, associated in the ancient world with fertility and desire, release their fragrance. Love that is secure does not remain enclosed in admiration; it goes out to tend life. Grace makes us fruitful.
Suggested hymn: “The King of Love My Shepherd Is”
Lord Jesus, heal in us every desire distorted by fear, shame, or control. Teach us to receive Your delight without hiding and to love others without possessing them. Make our lives like vineyards in flower, bearing old wisdom and new fruit for You. Amen.
Narrated version of this devotional on Song of Solomon Chapter 7