Please turn with me in your bibles again to Song of Solomon. Song of Solomon. Song of Solomon 7.
We have in this book a collection of poems, and although they might have different parts to them, they weave together for us a plot, a story. A love story.
A story of a king and his beloved. The book begins with the bride celebrating the king, but quickly turning her attention toward herself, and the anxiety that she feels about her appearance. The king then reassures her with his words and actions, and they celebrate their love for each other.
Later, the bride describes how a wall was between them, separating her from her king, which is remedied by the King inviting her into marriage. The king then enters into Jerusalem, processing up from the desert, with all the glory of Yahweh’s ark being brought into the temple. The marriage is entered into using language reminiscent of Israel being united with Yahweh in the land of promise, like a renewed Garden of Eden.
But then in chapter 5 we saw that the bride’s enthusiasm isn’t sustained. Long after the Honeymoon glow has dissipated, She rejects the knock at the door that she hears from her Husband in the middle of the night. But the king doesn’t storm away, in fact, he left a blessing for her on the door. And this prompts her to reconsider the glories of her king, and to seek after him.
Then in chapter 6, She realizes that he’s gone down to his garden, and she recalls the words that he had previously said to her. And that moves her to go to the garden to find him. And there she finds that the king had already made preparations for her arrival, and he sweeps her off of her feet.
So, what we have so far is the full movement of a married couple: from dating, to marriage, to marriage conflict and the resulting separation, and now we will look at the reunion, or restoration. In chapter 7, we get the reconciliation of the previously estranged parties.
Let’s read our text in chapter 7:
How beautiful are your feet in sandals,
O noble daughter!
Your rounded thighs are like jewels,
the work of a master hand.
2 Your navel is a rounded bowl
that never lacks mixed wine.
Your belly is a heap of wheat,
encircled with lilies.
3 Your two breasts are like two fawns,
twins of a gazelle.
4 Your neck is like an ivory tower.
Your eyes are pools in Heshbon,
by the gate of Bath-rabbim.
Your nose is like a tower of Lebanon,
which looks toward Damascus.
5 Your head crowns you like Carmel,
and your flowing locks are like purple;
a king is held captive in the tresses.6 How beautiful and pleasant you are,
O loved one, with all your delights![a]
7 Your stature is like a palm tree,
and your breasts are like its clusters.
8 I say I will climb the palm tree
and lay hold of its fruit.
Oh may your breasts be like clusters of the vine,
and the scent of your breath like apples,
9 and your mouth[b] like the best wine.
It goes down smoothly for my beloved,
gliding over lips and teeth.[c]10 I am my beloved’s,
and his desire is for me.
11 Come, my beloved,
let us go out into the fields
and lodge in the villages;[d]
12 let us go out early to the vineyards
and see whether the vines have budded,
whether the grape blossoms have opened
and the pomegranates are in bloom.
There I will give you my love.
13 The mandrakes give forth fragrance,
and beside our doors are all choice fruits,
new as well as old,
which I have laid up for you, O my beloved.
Let’s look at verse 1-5 and see our first point: the Bride’s Beauty Praised. The Bride’s Beauty Praised.
Before we get into exactly what the king says, we should take note of what we don’t find. We don’t find resentment in the king’s voice. We don’t find bitterness. We find open arms. He’s ready to welcome her back, ready to receive her. Eager to reconcile, even though he was the one rejected by her before.
He’s so eager for her return, that here verses 1-5, we see his sweet, intimate, even sensual poetry, wherein the king is describing his beautiful bride. His words are similar to the words that the bride used in chapter 5, where she described the king by going top to bottom.
But here the king does the same, except he inverts the order. He starts with the feet, the dirtiest part of her body, and then works his way up.
He’s not afraid to gaze upon her filthy feet. In fact, because of their love, he says:
How beautiful are your feet in sandals,
O noble daughter!
But not only does he see her as beautiful, he sees her as precious:
Your rounded thighs are like jewels,
the work of a master hand.
Her figure to him is like precious stones, hand cut and polished by a master jeweler. The language here recalls the description of the garden of Eden, where in Genesis 2:12 we read of the hand of our Lord creating a garden that contained gold and onyx.
Your beauty is like that of the untarnished garden, where man and woman first walked together in purity and holiness. Perfect communion.
Precious and hand-crafted, like Eve herself, who was hand made by the Lord to be a helpmate fit for Adam, to be Adam’s glory, like Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11. She was a custom fit to him, and was precious to him, as Adam’s own poetry in the garden made clear.
But not only is this bride precious to the king, she’s also delightful. She’s delightful.
2 Your navel is a rounded bowl
that never lacks mixed wine.
Your body is like the king’s goblet that never lacks for high quality wine. Your beauty is a decadent treat, a pleasant vision that brightens the eyes. Delightful, from top to bottom.
Your belly is a heap of wheat,
encircled with lilies.
The meaning here of the language of wheat is a little tough to translate over into English. It could be that there is a bit of double entendre in the image of wheat being encircled by lilies. Or it could be that the wheat mentioned refers to her fertility.
Either way, I think here we have a suggestive description of the woman’s appearance, her unveiled body, that is beautiful to the king, and without shame, like Adam and Eve experienced in the garden, naked and unashamed. She and her beauty delight him.
But she’s not only precious and delightful to him, She is also fruitful. The king praises her fruitfulness:
3 Your two breasts are like two fawns,
twins of a gazelle.
This is language used before in this book in chapter 4:5. The king likens her breasts to a young, graceful, tender animal, like a fawn. The point is not so much a 1 to 1 correspondence in appearance, but a poetic praising of her beauty by comparing it to the tender, fruitful, and beautiful promised land under the blessing of Yahweh.
As we noted before, this description of their love and her beauty in terms of fertility, of bounty, of new life, is all tied up in the imagery of the land flowing with milk and honey. Your love, your beauty, indeed their marriage bed, is compared to the fruitful experience of covenantal blessing, when Yahweh and his bride are finally united in the promised land.
Which segues perfectly to the next verse, where the beauty of the bride is pictured as safe and secure as a guarded castle, or a tower.
4 Your neck is like an ivory tower.
Your eyes are pools in Heshbon,
by the gate of Bath-rabbim.
Again, similar to what was said in 4:4, and 6:4, the king here is comparing his bride’s beauty using language of towers and cities. The tower is linked to the protection that the city receives under the Davidic king. And “the cities hint at the expanding boundaries of the land of promise.”[1]
Your nose is like a tower of Lebanon,
which looks toward Damascus.
Like Adam, who was given the task of subduing and having dominion and expanding the boarders of the garden, and like Israel who was to represent the name of Yahweh to the nations, so too is this bride secure and fruitful, overflowing with beautiful bounty.
And that fruitfulness described here has a regal flavor too, which we note as we move to verse 5 and see her head described:
5 Your head crowns you like Carmel,
and your flowing locks are like purple;
a king is held captive in the tresses.
She’s described in language of royalty. “Purple locks” here doesn’t mean she literally had purple hair. Rather, Purple was the color of wealth, because it was expensive, again hinting at her preciousness. But purple was also the color of royalty, and it was associated with the tabernacle and the temple.
Again, we see the author here praising his beloved in terms of God’s purposes being fulfilled by the flourishing of his people, in the land that he provides, in the worship that he ordains, and with all the security of his love and his covenantal favor.
So, what are we to do with all this poetry? And what in the world does it have to do with us today?
Well, the king uses language and categories of what matters most to him (like blessing/fruitfulness, like land and security, like royalty and security) and he applies those things in poetic praise of his bride and his marriage.
Do you think of your marriage that way? As a sacred picture of communion and intimacy? Your marriage, every marriage, is meant to be a picture. It’s meant to teach us something, and to point us to someone.
And the marriage in our text points out Yahweh’s love for his people. Unfailing. Unstoppable. And that same love is true between Christ and his bride: unfailing and unstoppable.
Do you love your spouse that way? So strongly, so sacrificially, that you’d still be willing to pursue them and invite them back in, even when they rebuffed your advances, like the bride does in chapter 5?
The king here was rejected, and yet he still pursues her. He awaits and prepares for her. He doesn’t try to reprove her, or make a list of her failings. He waits in love, and woos her back with kindness. The same is true of our king and bridegroom, as we will learn more about later on.
Let’s move on to the second point, in verse 6-9, wherein we see the king’s intention. The king’s intention.
The text starts a new section by repeating the same opening refrain from verse 1: How beautiful.
6 How beautiful and pleasant you are,
O loved one, with all your delights!
He’s praising the beauty and sweetness of his bride, in line with what he has said before. Then we get to verse 7, which contains some details that just don’t transfer over without a bit of Hebrew.
7 Your stature is like a palm tree,
and your breasts are like its clusters.
On the surface, he seems to be praising her physical appearance again, mentioning her stature like a tree. But he’s not merely saying that she’s tall or stately.[2] The Word translated “Palm tree” is actually the Hebrew word TAMAR.
And for people who know their Old Testament’s well, you will recall that there are two shameful episodes in the life of Israel’s history that involve a woman who had the name of Tamar.
The first is in Genesis 38, where Judah uses his daughter in law as a prostitute, which was a horrific perversion of God’s design for marriage and intimacy.
And the other episode involving a Tamar was in 2 Samuel 13, where Amnon seizes his sister, named Tamar, and rapes her, again, another awful and horrific episode in Israel’s history, where God’s design for marriage and intimacy are grossly and wickedly distorted.
These horrific stories would be immediately called to mind to anyone reading this story and running across the word TAMAR. But what is significant here is that the king is taking what was connected with shame and horror, and he redeems it. He takes what is connected with pain, and instead rewrites the story, taking what was associated with evil, and associates it with good again.
It’s as if he is redeeming marriage, just like he redeemed Israel.
Unlike the wicked Judah, and the wicked Amnon, who took their Tamars and used them for their own lusts, this Davidic son, this King Solomon, is instead approaching his palm tree, his Tamar, with glory and goodness.
Verse 8:
8 I say I will climb the palm tree
and lay hold of its fruit.
Oh may your breasts be like clusters of the vine,
and the scent of your breath like apples,
9 and your mouth like the best wine.
The language of clusters of the vine are reminiscent of the famous clusters of fruit that the spies brought back from the land in Numbers 13:23. But unlike the spies that were too afraid to enter into the promised land, this king is unafraid to approach his Tamar.
And this scene can be very encouraging for each of us. Each of us has a history like that of the nation of Israel. Each of us has moments in our lives that we look back on and grimace. We lament. We might feel shame, or even horror, to reflect upon those past events.
You may not have an episode as horrific as Genesis 38 or 2 Samuel 13, or maybe you do. Maybe you’ve been mistreated and used, or maybe you were the one who did the mistreating or the using. Either way, what we have in this story is a picture of a king.
An idealized Solomon, “rewriting history by reliving it well, undoing the wrongs by setting them right, and this [points us to] the one who will come and re-live the history of Israel in [perfect] righteousness.
Jesus was obedient where the nation of Israel transgressed. Jesus took responsibility for Israel’s sin. He lived the righteous life they should have lived. He was put forward by the father as a sacrifice of propitiation.”[3] Of atonement.
So, what is it that you are going to do with YOUR painful past? With your dark secrets that you hope nobody ever finds out about?
You can either bury them, living in fear, just hoping that they will never see the light of day. Or you can take them to Jesus. Faith in Jesus is the only way to true peace and joy, rather than fear. Jesus can take them to the grave, bearing your sin and condemnation and impurity, and instead give you peace and freedom and purification.
If you have a history like that of Israel’s, with pain and perversion, then this story should give you hope. By faith in Jesus Christ, the perfect Davidic king, you can experience joy and intimacy with God. He can turn your painful past around. He delights in taking Tamars and turning them into fruitful palm trees.
His delight is taking his bride, who was soiled and dirty, and making her clean and lovely again. This song paints the King as a hero, a redeemer, and that hero is Jesus Christ.[4] Trust in him.
We’ve seen the Bride’s beauty praised, and we’ve seen the king’s intention, now let’s look at the final three verses and see the Bride’s intention. The bride’s intention.
10 I am my beloved’s,
and his desire is for me.
11 Come, my beloved,
let us go out into the fields
and lodge in the villages;
12 let us go out early to the vineyards
and see whether the vines have budded,
whether the grape blossoms have opened
and the pomegranates are in bloom.
There I will give you my love.
13 The mandrakes give forth fragrance,
and beside our doors are all choice fruits,
new as well as old,
which I have laid up for you, O my beloved.
The bride begins this section with familiar words. I am my beloved’s and his desire is for me.
This is similar to 2:16, where she said “My beloved is mine, and I am his,” Or in chapter six, she said, “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.” But now she modifies the statement, by saying something deeper, more powerful.
I am my beloved’s and his desire is for me. The word “desire” here is especially significant, because that word is only used 3 times in the whole old testament. The first time is in Genesis 3:16, where God is pronouncing the curse upon the woman.
God says, ““I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be contrary to [against] your husband,
but he shall rule over you.””
And the other time the word for desire is used is the very next chapter, Genesis 4:7, where God tells Cain that sin was crouching at his door, and that sin’s desire “is contrary to/against you, but you must rule over it.”
These passages are complementary, in that they help us understand the nature of desire in this context. And that nature of desire is not a good one. Just like sin wants to master Cain and dominate him, so too will the curse manifest itself in the woman having a desire AGAINST or contrary to her husband.
She was made to be a helper fit for man, but now in a fallen, sinful world, she will not want to remain a helper, but rather become the leader. To dominate. To reject God’s design and plan, just as fallen man will want to “rule over her” or rule harshly over his wife.
So, with that in the background, we can then see that the use of the Hebrew word for desire in Song of Solomon 7 is very significant. Why would he bring up a specific word that is laden with such negative connotations, like curse and sin?
She says, “I am my beloved’s,
and his desire is for me,” and in this language, she is picturing a reversal of the curse.
She’s relinquishing the desire to rule, and places the desire to lead where it belongs, in the heart of the husband. She’s picturing a restoration of what a godly marriage was intended to be, before sin came along.
This chapter ends with a picture of marriage being set back right, undoing the curse, redeeming marriage from the sinful desires that come with it.
Too often marriages suffer because the man acts like Adam: he fails to lead or he leads harshly, and the wife fails to be the helper that God intended her to be, and instead wants to take the wheel.
And yet here we have a picture of the reversal of the curse. Just like all of humanity was plunged into sin and placed under a curse, so now the bride is experiencing the blessed state of being liberated from the curse.
This passage points us very clearly to another son of David to come. The one who would undo the curse, as far as it is found. We’re reminded of the messianic hope that this king to come would make things right, and provide for us a way back into the garden, back into communion, to make things go back to the way they were before sin came in and messed it all up.
This text points us to another garden as well. Just like the bible begins with a garden, it also ends with a garden too. In Revelation 21 and 22 we see a scene of heaven that parallels the descriptions of Eden in multiple ways.
Just like Eden had rivers, in Revelation 22 there is the river of the water of life flowing from the throne of God himself.
Just like there were two trees in the garden, the tree of Knowledge of Good and evil and the three of life, so too does Revelation 22 say that there we find “the tree of life[b] with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”
And just like the Garden was created upright, holy, and without any sin or cursing, so too do we find the absence of the curse in Revelation 22:3, “No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him.”
The love of the bride and the king in Song of Songs 7 anticipates this kind of eternal communion between God and his people. Secure and holy. United and un-cursed. Blissful and beautiful.
No more sin. No more pain. No more curse. That’s where our text points us.
And back in verse 12, we see the bride eager to experience this communion. She says,
12 let us go out early to the vineyards
and see whether the vines have budded,
whether the grape blossoms have opened
and the pomegranates are in bloom.
There I will give you my love.
She intends to commune with him. She longs to be with him. And she invites him in. Verse 13:
13 The mandrakes give forth fragrance,
and beside our doors are all choice fruits,
new as well as old,
which I have laid up for you, O my beloved. “”
She mentions mandrakes in verse 13, which are the root of a plant associated with fertility. In fact, the only other time this word is used in scripture is in Genesis 30, where Leah bought Jacob from Rachel for the price of a bunch of mandrakes.
Again, we see words associated with a shameful moment in Israel’s history, a moment tied to bad marital memories, being overturned. Bad associations being overtaken by good ones. Painful remembrances being exchanged with all kinds of choice fruits.
Within the story, the bride’s memories of her mistreating her husband are long replaced. Within Israel’s history, God has poetically replaced memories of Israel’s harlotry with fresh remembrances of faithfulness.
And within the full scope of redemptive history, the unfaithfulness and sinfulness of Christ’s bride is long replaced with the joyful celebration of His faithfulness toward his bride, and his love for her.
A bride that is treated so well by a king, will desire to open up to him. That’s where we will land, with a simple application, and a final reflection.
The application is this: husbands, love your wives as the King loves his bride in this book, and as Christ loves his bride, the church. Freely forgiving, and wooing her in love.
And wives, nothing would bless your husbands more than for you to love them as the bride does in this text. She is inviting, promising, and brings all manner of choice fruits, both new and old. Nothing stagnant and dated here. Fresh love, that never grows stale.
[1] James M. Hamilton, Song of Songs: A Biblical-Theological, Allegorical, Christological Interpretation (Fearn, Ross-shire, Scotland, U.K.: Christian Focus Publications Ltd., 2015), 127.
[2] This section on Tamar largely drawn from: Hamilton, 129; see also: Tremper Longman, Song of Songs, New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), 197.
[3] Hamilton, Song of Songs, 130.
[4] Hamilton, 130.
