Song of Solomon 8 YLT
Summary: The woman wishes her beloved were like a brother she could kiss openly without shame and bring to her mother's house, again repeating the refrain against awakening love before its time. A poem on love's power follows, one of the book's best-known passages: "love is strong as death... many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it" (v. 6-7), and love cannot be bought with all a man's wealth. The scene shifts to a memory of a young sister with no breasts yet, and brothers debating how to guard her depending on whether she is a "wall" or a "door"; the woman answers that she is a wall whose breasts are like towers, bringing her beloved contentment, alongside a note about Solomon's own vineyard let out to keepers. The book closes with the beloved wanting to hear her voice and her final words urging him to be swift, "like a gazelle or a young stag on the mountains of spices" (v. 14).
1Who doth make thee as a brother to me, Sucking the breasts of my mother? I find thee without, I kiss thee, Yea, they do not despise me,
2I lead thee, I bring thee in unto my mother's house, She doth teach me, I cause thee to drink of the perfumed wine, Of the juice of my pomegranate,
3His left hand is under my head, And his right doth embrace me.
4I have adjured you, daughters of Jerusalem, How ye stir up, And how ye wake the love till she please!
5Who is this coming from the wilderness, Hasting herself for her beloved? Under the citron-tree I have waked thee, There did thy mother pledge thee, There she gave a pledge that bare thee.
6Set me as a seal on thy heart, as a seal on thine arm, For strong as death is love, Sharp as Sheol is jealousy, Its burnings are burnings of fire, a flame of Jah!
7Many waters are not able to quench the love, And floods do not wash it away. If one give all the wealth of his house for love, Treading down--they tread upon it.
8We have a little sister, and breasts she hath not, What do we do for our sister, In the day that it is told of her?
9If she is a wall, we build by her a palace of silver. And if she is a door, We fashion by her board-work of cedar.
10I am a wall, and my breasts as towers, Then I have been in his eyes as one finding peace.
11Solomon hath a vineyard in Baal-Hamon, He hath given the vineyard to keepers, Each bringeth for its fruit a thousand silverlings;
12My vineyard--my own--is before me, The thousand is for thee, O Solomon. And the two hundred for those keeping its fruit. O dweller in gardens!
13The companions are attending to thy voice, Cause me to hear. Flee, my beloved, and be like to a roe,
14Or to a young one of the harts on mountains of spices!
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