Song of Solomon 6
The daughters of Jerusalem ask where the Beloved's lover has gone; she answers that he is in his garden; the Lover praises her again and calls her terrible as an army with banners.
Summary
Chapter 6 opens with the daughters of Jerusalem's first genuine question: whither is thy beloved gone, O thou fairest among women? whither is thy beloved turned aside, that we may seek him with thee? The Beloved's answer is firm and almost playful: my beloved is gone down into his garden, to the beds of spices, to feed in the gardens and to gather lilies. I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine; he feedeth among the lilies. The formula of reciprocal possession — I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine — is the book's second occurrence of this phrase (the first was at 2:16), and the slight variation scholars have noted is that here the possession is less possessive in the Hebrew idiom, moving toward the reading of surrender that will reach its fullest form in 7:10: I am my beloved's and his desire is toward me.
The Lover then speaks a third praise sequence, returning to the imagery of the first chapter: thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners. He returns to the imagery of her eyes like doves, her hair like a flock of goats, her teeth like a flock of sheep. There are sixty queens, eighty concubines, and virgins without number, he declares, but the Beloved is his dove, his undefiled, the only one of her mother, the choice one of her that bare her. Even the queens and concubines praise her. The chapter ends with the enigmatic double exchange about the Shulamite: who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, terrible as an army with banners? The identity of the Shulamite — addressed as such only here, in 6:13 — has generated extensive commentary. The name may derive from Shunem (linking the Beloved to Abishag the Shunammite of 1 Kings), or it may be the feminine form of Solomon, a pairing of the two names at the book's structural centre.
- Song of Solomon 1Chapter 1 is the Song's opening statement of desire.
- Song of Solomon 2Chapter 2 is the book's most famous sequence of natural imagery and contains the lines most associated with the Song in popular memory — I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.
- Song of Solomon 3Chapter 3 contains two of the book's most structurally important passages: the first of the two dream sequences (3:1-5) and the description of Solomon's wedding litter (3:6-11).
- Song of Solomon 4Chapter 4 is the first and most extended of the Lover's wasf praise poems — a form with close parallels in classical Arabic love poetry (wasf meaning 'description'), in which the body of the beloved is described part by part from head downward, using a sequence of metaphors from nature, architecture, and precious materials.
- Song of Solomon 5Chapter 5 is the Song's most dramatically concentrated chapter and contains both the second dream sequence and the Beloved's own wasf — her description of the Lover's body.
- Song of Solomon 6Chapter 6 is the briefest of the book's concentrated central chapters and turns on a structural pivot: the daughters of Jerusalem, who have been the passive audience of the Beloved's declarations, now ask a genuine question — whither is thy beloved gone? — and receive an answer that clarifies the garden as both literal meeting-place and something closer to the Beloved's interior life: my beloved is gone down to his garden, to the beds of spices, to feed in the gardens and to gather lilies.
- Song of Solomon 7Chapter 7 contains the fourth and most structurally unusual of the book's wasf passages — the only one that begins with the feet and moves upward, and the only one framed as a performance for an audience (return, return, O Shulamite, that we may look upon thee).
- Song of Solomon 8Chapter 8 is the Song's ending and contains its most famous lines and its most compressed theology of love.