The Song of Songs - The Old Testament

¹ Ah, why are you not my brother, nursed at my mother's breast! Then if I met you out of doors, I could kiss you without people thinking ill of me.

² I should lead you, I should take you into my mother's house, and you would teach me! I should give you spiced wine to drink, juice of my pomegranates.

³ His left arm is under my head and his right embraces me.

⁴ LOVER: I charge you, daughters of Jerusalem, do not rouse, do not wake my beloved, before she pleases!

⁵ Who is this coming up from the desert leaning on her lover? I awakened you under the apple tree, where your mother conceived you, where she who bore you conceived you.

⁶ BELOVED: Set me like a seal on your heart, like a seal on your arm. For love is strong as Death, passion as relentless as Sheol. The flash of it is a flash of fire, a flame of Yahweh himself.

⁷ Love no flood can quench, no torrents drown. Were a man to offer all his family wealth to buy love, contempt is all that he would gain.

⁸ Our sister is little: her breasts are not yet formed. What shall we do for our sister on the day she is spoken for?

⁹ If she is a rampart, on the crest we shall build a battlement of silver; if she is a door, we shall board her up with planks of cedar.

¹⁰ I am a wall, and my breasts represent its towers. And under their eyes I have found true peace.

¹¹ Solomon had a vineyard at Baal-Hamon. He entrusted it to overseers, and each one was to pay him the value of its produce, a thousand shekels of silver.

¹² But I tend my own vineyard myself. You, Solomon, may have your thousand shekels, and those who oversee its produce their two hundred.

¹³ You who dwell in the gardens, my companions listen for your voice; let me hear it.

¹⁴ Haste away, my love, be like a gazelle, a young stag, on the spice-laden mountains.