Song of Solomon 6: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The woman's friends ask where her beloved has gone, and she answers that he is down in his garden, repeating that she and he belong to each other. The man then praises her beauty in detail, calling her the one flawless woman among sixty queens, eighty concubines, and countless young women, and others ask who she is. The chapter closes with a walk down to a nut grove, a line about being carried away by longing, and a call for the Shulammite to come back and be looked at.

Claim by Claim

1. 6:1
   • A group asks the woman where her beloved has gone.
   • The group addresses her as the fairest among women.
   • The group asks which way her beloved has turned aside.
   • The group says they want to seek him along with her.
2. 6:2
   • The woman says her beloved has gone down to his garden.
   • She says he has gone to the beds of spices.
   • She says he has gone to pasture in the gardens.
   • She says he has gone to gather lilies.
3. 6:3
   • The woman says she belongs to her beloved.
   • She says her beloved belongs to her.
   • She says he pastures among the lilies.
4. 6:4
   • The man tells the woman she is beautiful as the city of Tirzah.
   • He says she is lovely as Jerusalem.
   • He says she is awe-inspiring as armies under banners.
5. 6:5
   • The man tells the woman to turn her eyes away from him.
   • He says her eyes have overwhelmed him.
   • He says her hair is like a flock of goats streaming down from Gilead.
6. 6:6
   • The man says her teeth are like a flock of ewes coming up from the washing.
   • He says every one of them bears twins.
   • He says not one among them is bereaved of young.
7. 6:7
   • The man says her temples are like a slice of pomegranate.
   • He says her temples are behind her veil.
8. 6:8
   • There are sixty queens.
   • There are eighty concubines.
   • There are maidens beyond counting.
9. 6:9
   • The man calls the woman his dove and his perfect one.
   • He says she is unique, only one.
   • He says she is the only one of her mother.
   • He says she is the favored one of the woman who bore her.
   • He says the young women saw her and called her blessed.
   • He says the queens and concubines praised her.
10. 6:10
    • Someone asks who this woman is who looks out like the dawn.
    • She is said to be fair as the moon.
    • She is said to be bright as the sun.
    • She is said to be awe-inspiring as armies under banners.
11. 6:11
    • The speaker went down to the garden of nut trees.
    • The speaker went to see the green growth of the valley.
    • The speaker went to see whether the vine had budded.
    • The speaker went to see whether the pomegranates had bloomed.
12. 6:12
    • Before the speaker was aware of it, something happened to the speaker.
    • The speaker's soul or desire set the speaker among chariots.
    • The chariots are identified either as belonging to a person named Amminadib or as the chariots of the speaker's noble people; the text is ambiguous.
13. 6:13
    • A group calls on the Shulammite to return, repeating the call.
    • The group says they want to look upon her.
    • Someone asks why they would look upon the Shulammite.
    • The answer compares the sight to a dance, either the dance of two camps or the dance of Mahanaim; the text is ambiguous.

Words Worth Explaining

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

6:1

The speakers here are the group of women of Jerusalem whom the woman has been addressing since chapter 5. Hebrew marks who is speaking through the gender and number of its verbs and pronouns, so the original audience could hear the change of voice; English cannot show it, and the Song carries no speaker labels of its own.

6:2

A "bed of spices" was a cultivated plot of aromatic plants (balsam, nard, saffron and the like) an expensive luxury, not a vegetable patch. The same garden was used as an image for the woman herself in chapter 4, so the line works on two levels at once. The Hebrew verb translated "feed" can mean either to pasture a flock or simply to graze and browse; no flock is actually named in the Hebrew, so it is left open whether he is shepherding animals or feeding himself among the flowers.

6:3

The man is pictured as a shepherd. Sheep do not really graze on lilies. The words are painting a pretty scene, not reporting where his flock ate.

6:4

Tirzah was a real city in the north of Israel, later the royal seat of the northern kingdom before Samaria was built. Its name also means "pleasing" or "delightful," so pairing it with Jerusalem praises her beauty and plays on the sound of the word at the same time. "Terrible" in 1611 English meant awe-inspiring or overwhelming, something that stops you in your tracks: it did not mean dreadful or nasty. The last phrase is genuinely obscure in Hebrew: it describes something marked out or banner-like, and translators have taken it as troops under their standards, or as stars in their ranks.

6:5

Gilead was the hill country east of the Jordan River, known for its herds. The goats of the region were black, and a flock winding down a hillside in a long dark line is the picture behind the compliment: it is about the movement and thickness of her hair, not its texture.

6:6

Newly washed sheep are startlingly white, and a flock filing up out of the water moves in an even double line. The point of "every one beareth twins" is that the ewes are evenly matched and paired, like a full set of upper and lower teeth. The Hebrew behind KJV's "barren" means bereaved, none has lost her young, so no gap breaks the row.

6:7

"Temples" here means the sides of the face, cheeks and brow, not the inside of the head. A pomegranate cut open is deep red flecked with paler seeds; the comparison is to the flush of her skin glimpsed through a veil.

6:8

A "score" is twenty, so threescore is sixty and fourscore eighty. These are almost certainly not a head count of anyone's household but a rhetorical ladder (sixty, then eighty, then a number past counting) set up so the next verse can say that one woman outweighs the whole crowd.

6:9

"Undefiled" translates a word meaning whole, unblemished, without flaw, with no suggestion that anyone else is dirty. "The only one of her mother" can mean either that she is an only daughter or that she is her mother's singular favorite; the Hebrew allows both. "Blessed her" here means they called her fortunate, they said out loud how lucky she was, an exclamation of envy and admiration rather than a religious blessing.

6:10

The Hebrew does not use the ordinary words for moon and sun but poetic names, roughly "the white one" and "the hot one." "Clear" in 1611 English meant bright or radiant. "Terrible" again means awe-inspiring, and the final phrase is the same obscure expression as in verse 4, troops under banners, or the stars marching in order.

6:11

The nuts are walnuts, an imported tree crop associated with royal gardens rather than a common orchard. Checking whether the vines had budded and the pomegranates flowered is a spring inspection: the walk through the garden marks the season of new growth, the same setting the lovers used earlier in the Song.

6:12

This is the most obscure line in the whole book, and the Hebrew is broken enough that no translation is confident. The last word can be read as a personal name, Amminadib, or split into words meaning "my people, a prince" or "my princely people," giving "the chariots of my noble people." "My soul" means the self, the desire, the appetite, what a person wants, not a spiritual part of them. The rendering keeps the puzzle rather than smoothing it out.

6:13

In Hebrew Bibles this line is numbered 7:1, so verse numbers here run one behind Hebrew editions for the rest of the Song. "Shulammite" appears only here and its meaning is disputed: a woman from the village of Shunem, or a feminine form of the name Solomon, or a word built on the root for peace and wholeness. The speaker changes partway through the verse, a new voice objects to the others' staring. "The company of two armies" is one word in Hebrew, Mahanaim, which is both a place name and the ordinary phrase "two camps"; the reference is to some known dance, and what it looked like is simply lost.