Song of Solomon 7

Today’s Passage: Song of Solomon 7

In this chapter the song rises to one of its warmest heights. The groom takes up again the old poet’s way of praising the one he loves, moving over her from head to foot the way a man might stand back to take in something wholly lovely and name aloud, feature by feature, what his heart already knows. It is a poem of delight, unhurried and glad, the speech of a husband who cannot help but tell his bride how beautiful she is to him. And then the voice turns, and the bride answers. She does not shrink from his love or hold herself back from it. She gathers it all up into a single ringing line that has become one of the most treasured sentences in the whole book, and out of that certainty she invites her beloved away to the open country, offering herself to him freely and wholly. Read it, then, not for its pictures but for its heart, and you will find covenant love as it was meant to be: mutual, glad, and freely given.

As you read, hold this: The beauty of covenant love is its glad mutuality, each belonging to the other and freely giving themselves to the one they love.

Song of Solomon 7:1–5 (BSB)

¹ How beautiful are your sandaled feet, O daughter of the prince! The curves of your thighs are like jewels, the handiwork of a master. ² Your navel is a rounded goblet; it never lacks blended wine. Your waist is a mound of wheat encircled by the lilies. ³ Your breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle. ⁴ Your neck is like a tower made of ivory; your eyes are like the pools of Heshbon by the gate of Bath-rabbim; your nose is like the tower of Lebanon, facing toward Damascus. ⁵ Your head crowns you like Mount Carmel, the hair of your head like purple threads; the king is captured in your tresses.

Here the groom sings his poem of praise, and I would urge you to listen for the tenderness in it rather than to linger over the single images, for that is where the meaning lives. See what he is doing. He is naming his bride’s beauty aloud, openly, gladly, calling her the handiwork of a master, which is to say he sees in her the careful and lovely work of God who made her. The images he reaches for are the finest things his world knew: jewels and wheat and lilies, ivory towers and quiet pools, a mountain and the deep colors reserved for royalty. He praises her not by comparing her to other women but by comparing her to everything grand and good in creation, because to his eyes she gathers up all of it. And notice the beautiful confession in the last line, that the king himself is captured, held fast, undone by love for her. This is not a man taking; this is a man captivated, giving his heart away. That is the first thing covenant love teaches us here: it delights openly in the beloved and holds nothing of its admiration back.

Song of Solomon 7:6–9 (BSB)

⁶ How fair and pleasant you are, O love, with your delights! ⁷ Your stature is like a palm tree; your breasts are clusters of fruit. ⁸ I said, “I will climb the palm tree; I will take hold of its fruit.” May your breasts be like clusters of the vine, the fragrance of your breath like apples, ⁹ and your mouth like the finest wine. May it flow smoothly to my beloved, gliding gently over lips and teeth.

The groom’s praise now gathers into a single glad cry: how fair and pleasant you are, O love. Again the poet reaches for the gentle images of an orchard and a vineyard, the palm and the vine and the apple and the wine, and again we do well to look past the pictures to the thing they are telling us. This is the language of a love that is meant to be enjoyed, and enjoyed together, within the bond that God has made for it. There is nothing furtive here and nothing ashamed. A husband delights in his wife, and the poem lets that delight be spoken plainly and warmly, as a good and honorable thing. And then, most beautifully of all, the voice begins to blend. The groom is speaking, and yet the wine of the bride’s own words seems to flow back toward her beloved, so that we can hardly tell where his voice ends and hers begins. That is exactly the point the whole chapter is building toward. In covenant love, the delight is never one-sided. It flows both ways, from each to the other, until the two are speaking almost with one voice.

Song of Solomon 7:10 (BSB)

¹⁰ I belong to my beloved, and his desire is for me.

Slow down here, for this single line is the beating heart of the chapter, and one of the loveliest sentences in all of Scripture. The bride answers her husband’s long poem of praise not with a poem of her own but with a quiet, settled certainty: I belong to my beloved, and his desire is for me. Hear the gladness and the security in it. She is not anxious about his love; she rests in it. She knows she is his, and she knows that his heart is turned wholly toward her, and those two truths together give her a peace that nothing can shake. This is the deep secret of covenant love, that its beauty lies precisely in its glad mutuality. It is not one person grasping and another enduring. It is two people who each desire (תְּשׁוּקָה) teshuqah, pronounced teh-shoo-KAH. Strong's H8669, longing, desire, a reaching out toward another. This is a rare and remarkable word: it names a longing, a reaching out of the whole self toward another, and it appears only three times in the entire Old Testament, so the story it tells across those three places is worth pausing over. Its first two appearances fall in the shadow of the Fall, in the early chapters of Genesis, where teshuqah names a longing gone crosswise, a desire tangled by sin and struggle. But here, in the bright air of this song, the very same word is set free and made whole again. Now it names a husband’s healthy, honorable desire bent gladly toward his wife, and a wife who rests in it without a trace of fear. It is as if the poem quietly takes a word that had been wounded and heals it, showing us what human longing was always meant to be: not grasping, not warring, but a glad reaching of one beloved toward another inside the safety of covenant. That is the mutual desire this whole chapter celebrates, each turning toward the other, each freely given. the other, so that belonging is not a cage but a home. To be able to say of another soul, “I am his, and his heart is toward me,” and to say it without fear, is one of the sweetest gifts God gives in this life. And it is a faint and precious echo of a greater belonging still, the covenant in which the people of God can say of the Lord Himself, I am His, and His love is set on me.

Song of Solomon 7:11–13 (BSB)

¹¹ Come, my beloved, let us go to the countryside; let us spend the night among the wildflowers. ¹² Let us go early to the vineyards to see if the vine has budded, if the blossom has opened, if the pomegranates are in bloom—there I will give you my love. ¹³ The mandrakes send forth a fragrance, and at our door is every delicacy, new as well as old, that I have treasured up for you, my beloved.

Now the bride, secure in belonging to her beloved, does the most natural and lovely thing in the world: she invites him away to be with her. Come, my beloved, she says, let us go out to the open country together. Notice how her whole speech runs on the words us and together. She does not wait passively to be sought; out of the fullness of her own glad love she reaches toward him and offers herself freely, and she names it plainly and honorably, “there I will give you my love.” This is the mutuality of covenant love come full circle. He has delighted in her, and now she gives herself wholeheartedly to him, each belonging to the other and each freely giving. And hear the tender words she saves for last. At our door, she says, are delicacies new as well as old, which I have treasured up for you. That is the language of a love that is faithful and lasting, a love that gathers up both the fresh joys and the long-kept ones and holds them all in store for the one to whom it belongs. This is not a fleeting passion; it is a treasure laid up over time, given wholly to a single beloved. That is covenant love, and Scripture calls it good.