Song of Solomon 1King James Version
The book opens without apology as a love poem. A woman speaks first: 'Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.' She is dark but comely, like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon. She has been a worker in vineyards. He answers back in praise of her. She calls him her beloved.
The Shulamite bride opens with urgent longing, asking her beloved to draw her close. She is self-conscious about her sun-darkened skin, forced to tend others' vineyards while neglecting her own. The bridegroom praises her beauty. The daughters of Jerusalem form a listening chorus as the two exchange tender, sensory compliments ending in a pastoral scene of cedar beams and green beds.
Love announces itself without apology. The bride's first words are not a greeting but a request: kiss me. Desire leads before dignity.
verse: "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine." (1:2), The poem opens mid-longing, not mid-introduction, placing physical desire at the very center of its first breath.
Tenth century BC Jerusalem, likely court circles familiar with Egyptian love poetry. The setting is all sensory richness: ointments, spikenard, myrrh, vineyards, shepherd pastures at noon. The bed is green, the rafters cedar, the atmosphere charged with the ease of people who know they are beautiful to each other.
The Shulamite bride, sun-bronzed and self-aware, voices most of the chapter. The bridegroom responds with jeweled praise. The daughters of Jerusalem are the court chorus, witnesses and interlocutors throughout.
The poem refuses to spiritualize desire away. Taken literally, it celebrates a woman's unashamed longing and a man's equally unashamed admiration. Read allegorically, the bride's cry to be drawn close maps onto Israel's hunger for God, or the soul's first movement toward the divine.
Chapter 1 hums with anticipation barely contained, the ache of wanting someone who has not yet arrived in the room. Beneath the bride's self-deprecation about her complexion runs a current of genuine confidence in being loved.
1The song of songs, which is Solomon's.
2Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.
3Because of the savour of thy good ointments thy name is as ointment poured forth, therefore do the virgins love thee.
4Draw me, we will run after thee: the king hath brought me into his chambers: we will be glad and rejoice in thee, we will remember thy love more than wine: the upright love thee.
5I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.
6Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me: my mother's children were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept.
7Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon: for why should I be as one that turneth aside by the flocks of thy companions?
8If thou know not, O thou fairest among women, go thy way forth by the footsteps of the flock, and feed thy kids beside the shepherds' tents.
9I have compared thee, O my love, to a company of horses in Pharaoh's chariots.
10Thy cheeks are comely with rows of jewels, thy neck with chains of gold.
11We will make thee borders of gold with studs of silver.
12While the king sitteth at his table, my spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof.
13A bundle of myrrh is my wellbeloved unto me; he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts.
14My beloved is unto me as a cluster of camphire in the vineyards of Engedi.
15Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves' eyes.
16Behold, thou art fair, my beloved, yea, pleasant: also our bed is green.
17The beams of our house are cedar, and our rafters of fir.