My THE SONG OF SOLOMON, Chapter 7: 4-13 fi How graceful are your feet in sandals, O queenly maiden! Your rounded thighs are like jewels, the work of a master hand, 2 Your navel is a rounded bowl that never lacks mixed wine, Your belly is a heap of wheat, encircled with lilies 3 Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle. 4 Your neck is like an ivory tower. Your eyes are pools in Hashbon, by the gate of Bath-rab'bim. Your nose is like a tower of Lebanon, overlooking Damascus. 5 Your head crowns you like Carmel, and your flowing looks are like purple; a king is held captive in the tresses. 6 How fair and pleasant you are, O loved one, delectable maiden! 7. You are stately as a palm tree and your breasts are like its clusters. 8 ” | say | will climb the paim tree and lay hold of its branches Oh, may your breasts be like clusters of the vine, and the scent of your breath like apples, 9 and your kisses like the best wine that goes down smoothly, gliding over lips and teeth. 10 1am my beloved’s and his desire is for me. Scanned with CamScaniW Come, my beloved, fel us go forth into the fields, €nd lodge in the villages; 12 let us go out early to the vineyards, - and see whether the vines have budded, whether the grape blossoms have opened and the pomegranates are in bloom. 4g Pe | will give you my love 3 The mandrakes give forth fragrance, and over our doors are all choice fruits, new as well as old, Which I have laid for you, © my beloved. The Song of Solomon, like Ecclesiastes and Esther, almost a of. ace admission into the canon of the Old Testament when the Jewish Church made up its pore ond to senpiure at Jamnia in A.D. 90. ‘The concem of the theologians was designed od ook regulate the life of the People of YHWH, and could see no place in the anthology of sa hysical the inclusion of poems which deal with sexual love and dwell sensuously on the physical attractions of the human body The committee of rabbis, albeit with come hesitation, finally decided to include them in the official list of the Old Testament by identifying the two young lovers as YHW (Jehovah) and Israel, 0 that the erotic character of the poems could be given religious significance. When the Old Testament became also Christian scriptures, the Church followed the Jewish example by making the lover Christ, while the girl became the Church. William Neil, in Haper’s Bible Commentary, makes this statement: “Itis simpler. . . to take [the Songs of Solomon] at their face value, and to be grateful that the Bible includes the little book which is not only unsurpassedly beautiful as a piece of writing, but also’sets the seal of divine @pproval on human love and affection despite the well meant attempts of Jewish and Christian ecclesiastics to transform it into somthing it was never intended to do. Solomon, moreover was known to have 700 wives (many of them Princesses from other ands) and 500 concubines. Chapter 7 is divided into two sections: verses 1 - 9 are spoken by - by the women Pc y the lover; verses 10-13 Scanned with CamScani