Song of Solomon 5:2-7

Maiden’s Dream: Seeking and Not Finding

2 I [was] asleep but my heart was awake. A sound! My beloved knocking! "Open to me, my sister, my beloved, my dove, my perfect one! For my head is full of dew, {my hair drenched from the moist night air}."

3 I have taken off my tunic, {must I put it on}? I have bathed my feet, {must I soil them}?

4 My beloved thrust his hand into the opening, and my inmost yearned for him.

5 I myself arose to open to my beloved; my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with liquid myrrh upon the handles of the bolt.

6 I opened myself to my beloved, but my beloved had turned and gone; my heart sank when he turned away. I sought him, but I did not find him; I called him, but he did not answer me.

7 The sentinels making rounds in the city found me; they beat me, they wounded me; they took my cloak away from me-- {those sentinels on the walls}!

Song of Solomon 5:2-7 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO SONG OF SOLOMON 5

This chapter begins with Christ's answer to the church's request; in which he informs her, that he was come into his garden, as she desired, and gives an account of what he had done there; and kindly invites his dear friends to feast with him there, So 5:1; Then she relates her case and circumstances, which followed upon this, her sleepy frame, and ungrateful carriage to her beloved; which he resenting, withdrew from her, and this gave her sensible pain, So 5:2-6; what treatment she met with from the watchmen; her charge to the daughters of Jerusalem; and the questions they asked about her beloved, So 5:7-9; which put her upon giving a large description of him, by each of his parts, head, hair So 5:10-15; And the chapter is concluded with a general commendation of him and his loveliness, and a claim of interest in So 5:16.

Footnotes

• [a]. Or "and"
• [b]. Or "The sound of my beloved knocking!"
• [c]. Literally "my locks with drops of night"
• [d]. Literally "How will I put it on?"
• [e]. Literally "How will I soil them?"
• [f]. Or "my beloved had left; he was gone"
• [g]. Or "my soul left"
• [h]. Or "when he was speaking." Translations equivocate on how to translate this verb, since there are two terms in Hebrew spelled identically: "to speak" and "to turn aside" (HALOT 1:210). The context suggests the latter
• [i]. Or "mantle"
• [j]. Literally "the sentinels of the walls"