I Am My Beloved's
The daughters of Jerusalem offer to help her search, and she answers that she knows where he has gone. The man praises her: sixty queens and countless women, and still she is the only one. Then onlookers call the Shulammite back to watch her.
6 1Where has your beloved gone, most beautiful of women? Which way did your beloved go, that we may seek him with you?
2My beloved has gone down to his garden, to the beds of spices, to graze among the gardens and to gather lilies.
3I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine; he grazes among the lilies.
4You are beautiful, my love, as Tirzah, lovely as Jerusalem, awesome as an army with banners. a a v4 Tirzah was an ancient royal city celebrated for its beauty, paired here with Jerusalem as the loveliest of cities.
5Turn your eyes away from me, for they overwhelm me. Your hair is like a flock of goats streaming down from Gilead. 6Your teeth are like a flock of ewes that have come up from the washing, all of them bearing twins, and not one among them has lost its young. 7Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate behind your veil.
8There are sixty queens and eighty concubines, and young women without number, 9but my dove, my perfect one, is the only one, the only daughter of her mother, the favorite of her who bore her. The young women saw her and called her blessed; the queens and concubines praised her too.
10Who is this who shines forth like the dawn, beautiful as the moon, bright as the sun, awesome as an army with banners?
11I went down to the nut orchard to look at the blossoms of the valley, to see whether the vine had budded, whether the pomegranates were in bloom.
12Before I knew it, my desire set me among the chariots of my noble people.
13Return, return, Shulammite; return, return, that we may gaze at you. Why do you gaze at the Shulammite, as at the dance of the two camps? b b v13 The 'dance of the two camps' pictures a graceful processional performed between two facing lines of onlookers.
