Song of Solomon 3: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

A woman tells how she looked for the man she loves at night, first on her bed and then in the city streets, asking the watchmen for him until she found him and would not let him go. She charges the daughters of Jerusalem not to stir up love before its time. The chapter then asks who is coming up out of the wilderness like columns of smoke, and describes Solomon's carrying couch, guarded by sixty men, and the crown his mother gave him on his wedding day.

Claim by Claim

1. 3:1
   • The speaker sought on her bed at night the one her soul loves.
   • She sought him.
   • She did not find him.
2. 3:2
   • She resolved to rise and go about the city.
   • She resolved to seek the one her soul loves in the streets and the open squares.
   • She sought him.
   • She did not find him.
3. 3:3
   • The watchmen who go about the city found her.
   • She asked them whether they had seen the one her soul loves.
4. 3:4
   • She had only just passed the watchmen when she found the one her soul loves.
   • She held him.
   • She would not let him go.
   • She held him until she had brought him into her mother's house.
   • She held him until she had brought him into the chamber of the woman who conceived her.
5. 3:5
   • The speaker puts the daughters of Jerusalem under oath.
   • The oath is by the gazelles and by the does of the field.
   • The charge is not to stir up or awaken love until it pleases.
   • It is unclear whether what must not be awakened is love itself or the beloved.
6. 3:6
   • Someone asks who this is coming up from the wilderness.
   • The one coming up is like columns of smoke.
   • The one coming up is perfumed with myrrh and frankincense.
   • The one coming up is perfumed with all the powdered spices of the merchant.
7. 3:7
   • Attention is called to a couch or litter.
   • The couch belongs to Solomon.
   • Sixty mighty men surround it.
   • Those mighty men are from the mighty men of Israel.
8. 3:8
   • All of them grasp the sword.
   • All of them are trained in war.
   • Each man has his sword on his thigh.
   • They are armed because of terror in the night.
9. 3:9
   • King Solomon made himself a palanquin, a carried chair or litter.
   • The palanquin was made from the wood of Lebanon.
10. 3:10
    • He made its posts of silver.
    • Its support or base was of gold.
    • Its seat or covering was of purple.
    • Its interior was inlaid or fitted with love.
    • It is unclear whether the love was worked by the daughters of Jerusalem or done for them.
11. 3:11
    • The daughters of Zion are told to go out and look.
    • They are told to look at King Solomon.
    • They are told to look at the crown with which his mother crowned him.
    • His mother crowned him on the day of his wedding.
    • That day was the day of the gladness of his heart.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

3:1

The Hebrew has a plural, literally "on my nights", night after night, or all through the night, rather than one particular evening. The Hebrew also gives no signal whether the search that follows is something happening or something dreamed; the ambiguity is in the original.

3:2

A woman walking the city alone after dark was outside ordinary custom in this period, and the poem expects the reader to feel that. The "open squares" are the wide places just inside the city gates where markets and public business were held.

3:3

Watchmen were the city's night patrol, posted on the walls and through the streets to guard against thieves and raiders. They were the nearest thing to police, so meeting them at night is both plausible and slightly dangerous for her.

3:4

In this culture the bride was normally brought to the husband's family home. A woman bringing a man to her mother's house reverses that, and "the room of the one who gave birth to me" points to the private inner quarters where the women of the household lived. Elsewhere in the Song too the woman locates herself by her mother rather than her father.

3:5

The "daughters of Jerusalem" are the young women of the city, a group the woman speaks to several times in the poem, rather like a chorus. "I put you under oath" is a formal swearing formula: oaths were normally sworn by God, and swearing by gazelles and deer is a playful substitution, the Hebrew words sound close to two divine titles. This whole line is a refrain that recurs at 2:7 and 8:4. The last phrase is ambiguous in Hebrew: it can mean until love itself is ready, or until the beloved wishes it.

3:6

"Who is this" is grammatically feminine in Hebrew, so the figure approaching may be the bride, or the whole procession described in the next verses; the poem does not settle it. The "desert" is open uncultivated grazing land, not sand dunes. Myrrh and frankincense are aromatic tree resins imported from southern Arabia and East Africa, costly luxury goods, burned or carried for their scent, which is why the procession is visible as a column of smoke.

3:7

The King James "bed" translates a word for a portable couch or litter carried on poles by bearers, a way for the wealthy to travel seated or reclining. "Threescore" is sixty. The escorts are the elite class of professional warriors, the same term used of David's celebrated fighting men.

3:8

"Fear in the night" means the dangers the darkness might bring: bandits on the roads was the everyday sense, though the phrase could also carry the older fear of nighttime spirits.

3:9

The word translated "chariot" or "carriage" appears nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible and its meaning is uncertain, a sedan chair, a canopied litter, or a pavilion. It is probably a loan word from Greek or Persian. "Wood of Lebanon" means cedar, the prestige timber of the region, imported at great cost.

3:10

Purple cloth was dyed with a secretion from murex sea snails, so expensive that it marked royalty. The last clause is obscure in Hebrew: "inlaid with love" may be a poetic flourish, or the word may be a term for leather or ebony that has been misread over time. It is also unclear whether "from the daughters of Jerusalem" describes who did the inlaying or belongs with the call that begins the next verse.

3:11

Zion is the hill Jerusalem was built on, so "daughters of Zion" is the same group addressed as "daughters of Jerusalem" earlier. The crown here is not a royal crown of state (Israelite kings were not crowned by their mothers) but the garland a bridegroom wore at his wedding. "Espousals" in 1611 English meant the wedding itself, not a modern engagement.