Song of Solomon 2:8-17

A Visit and an Invitation

8-13 After an interval she relates one of his visits to her home. He comes swiftly and easily; hills and mountains are no obstacle. He stands behind the wall of her mother’s house, and she gazes at him through the lattice, for she has seen his approach from afar. The unglazed, latticed windows of an Oriental house admits air and a softened light, allow those within to see out, and prevent their being observed from outside.

10. He would have her accompany him to the open country.

11. It is the right season. The winter and the rains are over, for in that climate there is a cloudless sky from the beginning of May to the end of October.

12. It is the time of flowers: ’Everywhere this day the earth was beautifully green, and carpeted with flowers. The air was fresh and balmy and laden with the sweet scents of spring... The sky was so blue, the mountains and plains looked so beautiful, the birds, insects, the wild flowers, the fresh balmy breeze, the sweet smells, and gentle sun, the black tents, all combined to make one glad to be alive.’ ’Come here in spring, O traveller!’ Lady Butler says, ’and not in the arid, dusty, burnt-up autumn.’

13. The early figs are growing spicy; the vines are all blossom and fragrance. It is the season when a young man’s mind turns lightly to thoughts of love. Even in our cold England the poet sings—

’Twas when the spousal time of May

Hangs all the hedge with bridal wreaths,

And air’s so sweet the bosom gay

Gives thanks for every breath it breathes;

When like to like is gladly moved,

And each thing joins in Spring’s refrain,

“Let those love now who never loved;

Let those who have loved love again.”’

14. 15. He begs her to lay aside her coyness, for she is concealing herself, like a dove in an inaccessible mountain gorge. Where there is no village pigeon-house the wild doves of Syria build in hollows of the steep rocks. At the monastery of St. Saba ’one sees, sailing on outstretched wings from out of those caverns, flights of the fair blue pigeons.’

15. She sings him the little ditty concerning the foxes that ruin the vineyards: any song, on any theme, would have pleased him, and short poems that seem to have no special relevance to the occasion are still in common use amongst the peasants and the Bedouin.

16, 17. She declares their unchangeable, mutual devotion, and bids the shepherd, who pastures his flock in the fields bright with lilies, come to her.

17. At midday the heat is overpowering—All round the coast the languid air did swoon, Breathing like one that hath a weary dream.’ But at sunset the day ’breathes’ (RM); a cool breeze blows, and the shadows gradually disappear (Genesis 3:8; Job 14:2). The gazelles (RM) descend at night to the plains to feed; they leap and run safely on the mountains of Bether. The meaning of the last word is not clear: it may be the name of a locality not mentioned elsewhere in Scripture; it may signify ’the cloven mountains’; it may be the same as the besamim (= spices) of Song of Solomon 8:14, or, as RM suggests, the spice malobathron.