Song of Solomon 8: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The woman wishes she could show her love openly, without shame, and charges the daughters of Jerusalem not to stir up love before its time. She asks to be set as a seal on his heart, because love is as strong as death and many waters cannot quench it. Speakers ask what they will do for a little sister who has no breasts, and answer with a wall and a door. She says she is a wall and her breasts are like towers, and that in his eyes she became like one who finds peace. Solomon had a vineyard he let out to keepers; her own vineyard is before her.

Claim by Claim

1. 8:1
   • The speaker wishes that the beloved were to her like a brother who nursed at her mother's breasts.
   • The speaker says that if she found him outside, she would kiss him.
   • The speaker says that then no one would despise her.
2. 8:2
   • The speaker says she would lead the beloved and bring him to her mother's house.
   • The speaker says one of them would be taught there: the Hebrew can mean the mother would teach the speaker or that the beloved would teach the speaker.
   • The speaker says she would give him spiced wine to drink.
   • The speaker says she would give him the juice of her pomegranate.
3. 8:3
   • His left hand is under the speaker's head.
   • His right hand embraces the speaker.
4. 8:4
   • The speaker puts the daughters of Jerusalem under oath.
   • The speaker charges them not to stir up or awaken love until it desires.
5. 8:5
   • Someone asks who this is coming up from the wilderness.
   • The one coming up is leaning on her beloved.
   • A speaker says she roused the beloved under the apple tree.
   • The speaker says that in that place the beloved's mother was in labor with him.
   • The speaker says that in that place she who bore him was in labor.
6. 8:6
   • The speaker asks to be set as a seal upon the beloved's heart.
   • The speaker asks to be set as a seal upon the beloved's arm.
   • Love is as strong as death.
   • Jealousy is as unyielding as Sheol.
   • Love's flashes are flashes of fire.
   • Love's flame is described in a phrase that can mean an intense flame or a flame of the LORD.
7. 8:7
   • Many waters cannot quench love.
   • Rivers cannot sweep love away.
   • If a man gave all the wealth of his house for love, he would be utterly despised.
8. 8:8
   • The speakers have a little sister.
   • The little sister has no breasts.
   • The speakers ask what they will do for their sister on the day she is spoken for.
9. 8:9
   • If she is a wall, the speakers will build on her a turret of silver.
   • If she is a door, the speakers will enclose her with a plank of cedar.
10. 8:10
    • The speaker says she is a wall.
    • The speaker says her breasts are like towers.
    • The speaker says that then she was in his eyes as one who finds peace.
11. 8:11
    • Solomon had a vineyard at Baal-hamon.
    • Solomon gave the vineyard over to keepers.
    • Each keeper was to bring a thousand pieces of silver for its fruit.
12. 8:12
    • The speaker's own vineyard is before him.
    • The speaker says the thousand belongs to Solomon.
    • The speaker says two hundred belongs to those who keep its fruit.
13. 8:13
    • The one addressed dwells in the gardens.
    • Companions are listening for her voice.
    • The speaker asks her to let him hear her voice.
14. 8:14
    • The speaker tells the beloved to flee away.
    • The speaker tells the beloved to be like a gazelle or a young stag.
    • The speaker names the mountains of spices as where the beloved should be.

Words Worth Explaining

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

8:1

In this culture a woman could not show physical affection to a man in public without disgrace, but she could kiss a brother openly. The wish is not for him to be her actual brother but for the freedom that relationship would have given them in the street.

8:2

A mother's house is where a daughter's courtship and marriage were arranged and discussed; the Song mentions the mother's household rather than the father's throughout. The Hebrew of "she would teach me" is unclear about who teaches whom: it can be read as the mother teaching the woman, or as the man teaching her. Spiced wine and pomegranate juice were both associated with love and desire.

8:4

The King James "I charge you" means to put someone under a formal oath. This same sworn refrain appears twice earlier in the Song. The Hebrew of the last phrase is ambiguous: it can mean "until love itself is ready" or "until he wishes it."

8:5

The Hebrew text of the Song has no labels saying who is speaking; the shifts between voices here and elsewhere are worked out from the grammar, and translators disagree about some of them. In this verse the person being addressed is grammatically male, so the woman is speaking to the man about his own birth.

8:6

A seal was a personal stamp, carved with its owner's mark and pressed into wax or clay to sign documents and show ownership. It was carried close to the body, worn on a cord round the neck or as a ring on the hand, which is why the two places named are the heart and the arm. "Jealousy" here translates a Hebrew word for fierce, possessive passion rather than petty suspicion, and "the grave" is Sheol, the underworld where the dead were thought to go, a place that never gives anything back. The last word of the verse may end in a shortened form of the divine name, giving "a flame of the LORD," or the ending may simply be an intensifier, "a raging blaze"; translators are divided.

8:7

Marriages were normally settled with a payment from the groom or his family to the bride's household. The line measures love against that ordinary transaction.

8:8

Brothers had a recognized say in whether and to whom their sister was married, and were expected to protect her until then. "Spoken for" means formally asked for in marriage by another family.

8:9

What the wall and the door stand for is disputed. Most read the wall as a girl who keeps herself closed and guarded, rewarded with ornament, and the door as one who is open to approach, needing to be barred shut, but the tone of the brothers' plan, protective or controlling, is left open by the Hebrew.

8:10

The Hebrew word behind "one who brings peace" is shalom, meaning wholeness, safety and contentment as well as peace. The phrase can mean that she brings him peace or that she has found it herself, and it plays on the sound of Solomon's name.

8:11

Baal-hamon is a place name found nowhere else; it appears to mean something like "lord of abundance" or "owner of a crowd," and may be chosen for its sense rather than as a real location. Coins had not yet been invented, so silver was weighed out; a thousand pieces would be roughly twenty-five pounds of silver, an enormous rent for one vineyard.

8:12

Earlier in the Song the woman calls herself a vineyard, and that is the sense here: what she has is not leased out to tenants or priced in silver. The two hundred left to the caretakers is the fifth share a tenant would normally keep.

8:13

The person addressed is grammatically male, so the woman is speaking to the man. "Companions" is the word for his circle of friends, who appear elsewhere in the Song as listeners.

8:14

The Hebrew verb literally means "flee" or "run away," and it is genuinely unclear whether she is calling him to run to her or away with her; the King James "make haste" leaves the direction open. "Mountains of spices" are hills where balsam and other aromatic shrubs grow, and echo the imagery used earlier for her own body.