Song of Solomon 7

WEEK 6                                   Song of Solomon 7

FRIDAY  Reflections

This chapter is the reason Song of Solomon is often not read to children and is rarely read in a church. However, the early church read it at the beginning of Lent. As mentioned in the reflection on chapter five, rabbis thought it was an important tool in what we might call sex education. Sex and desire aren't anything dirty. God created sex, and in its proper place, it is a beautiful thing. However, it is usually either regarded as something dirty, unworthy to be talked about, or made so common that it is nothing more than the actions of any farm animal. God made it to be neither common nor dirty.

I again note that the focus of the lovers is on each other alone. They see their love as mutually exclusive (verse 10). Most love songs, even today, carry this message, though many who sing or listen to them don't practice it.

Son 7:1-13
(1)  How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter! the joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman.
(2)  Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor: thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies.
(3)  Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins.
(4)  Thy neck is as a tower of ivory; thine eyes like the fishpools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bathrabbim: thy nose is as the tower of Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus.
(5)  Thine head upon thee is like Carmel, and the hair of thine head like purple; the king is held in the galleries.
(6)  How fair and how pleasant art thou, O love, for delights!
(7)  This thy stature is like to a palm tree, and thy breasts to clusters of grapes.
(8)  I said, I will go up to the palm tree, I will take hold of the boughs thereof: now also thy breasts shall be as clusters of the vine, and the smell of thy nose like apples;
(9)  And the roof of thy mouth like the best wine for my beloved, that goeth down sweetly, causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak.
(10)  I am my beloved's, and his desire is toward me.
(11)  Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field; let us lodge in the villages.
(12)  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.
(13)  The mandrakes give a smell, and at our gates are all manner of pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for thee, O my beloved.

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