Song of Solomon 7

Chapter 7 opens with the third voice of the book (uncertain attribution — the daughters of Jerusalem, the Lover, or a chorus figure) asking: return, return, O Shulamite; return, return, that we may look upon thee. The Beloved asks what they see in the Shulamite, as it were a dance of Mahanaim — a phrase of uncertain reference, possibly a place name or a type of dance — and the wasf begins, this time ascending from the feet: how beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter! The thighs are like jewels; the navel is like a round goblet that wanteth not liquor; the belly is like a heap of wheat set about with lilies; the breasts like two young roes; the neck like a tower of ivory; the eyes like fishpools in Heshbon by the gate of Bath-rabbim. The head is like Carmel, the hair like purple, and the king is held captive in its tresses. The Lover declares that he will go up to the palm tree and take hold of its boughs — the palm's fruit clusters a transparent figure for the Beloved's breasts.

The Beloved speaks the chapter's second movement. I am my beloved's and his desire is toward me — the third and subtly altered form of the mutual-possession formula, now placing desire explicitly on his side rather than asserting symmetric possession. Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field; let us lodge in the villages. Let us get up early to the vineyards; let us see if the vine flourish, whether the tender grape appear, and the pomegranates bud forth: there will I give thee my loves. The mandrakes give a smell, she says, and over their door are all manner of pleasant fruits, new and old, which she has stored for the Lover. The chapter reads as the book's fullest presentation of the lovers going out from the city into the countryside — the garden and vineyard world in which they meet without supervision — and the Beloved's declaration of desire is here the most explicit in the book.