English Standard Version ESV
The Message Bible MSG
1 How beautiful are your feet in sandals, O noble daughter! Your rounded thighs are like jewels, the work of a master hand.
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Shapely and graceful your sandaled feet, and queenly your movement - Your limbs are lithe and elegant, the work of a master artist.
2 Your navel is a rounded bowl that never lacks mixed wine. Your belly is a heap of wheat, encircled with lilies.
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Your body is a chalice, wine-filled. Your skin is silken and tawny like a field of wheat touched by the breeze.
3 Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle.
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Your breasts are like fawns, twins of a gazelle.
4 Your neck is like an ivory tower. Your eyes are pools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bath-rabbim. Your nose is like a tower of Lebanon, which looks toward Damascus.
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Your neck is carved ivory, curved and slender. Your eyes are wells of light, deep with mystery. Quintessentially feminine! Your profile turns all heads, commanding attention.
5 Your head crowns you like Carmel, and your flowing locks are like purple; a king is held captive in the tresses.
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The feelings I get when I see the high mountain ranges - stirrings of desire, longings for the heights - Remind me of you, and I'm spoiled for anyone else!
6 How beautiful and pleasant you are, O loved one, with all your delights!
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Your beauty, within and without, is absolute, dear lover, close companion.
7 Your stature is like a palm tree, and your breasts are like its clusters.
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You are tall and supple, like the palm tree, and your full breasts are like sweet clusters of dates.
8 I say I will climb the palm tree and lay hold of its fruit. Oh may your breasts be like clusters of the vine, and the scent of your breath like apples,
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I say, "I'm going to climb that palm tree! I'm going to caress its fruit!" Oh yes! Your breasts will be clusters of sweet fruit to me, Your breath clean and cool like fresh mint,
9 and your mouth like the best wine.It goes down smoothly for my beloved, gliding over lips and teeth.
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your tongue and lips like the best wine. Yes, and yours are, too - my love's kisses flow from his lips to mine.
10 I am my beloved's, and his desire is for me.
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I am my lover's. I'm all he wants. I'm all the world to him!
11 Come, my beloved, let us go out into the fields and lodge in the villages;
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Come, dear lover - let's tramp through the countryside.
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. There I will give you my love.
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Let's sleep at some wayside inn, then rise early and listen to bird-song. Let's look for wildflowers in bloom, blackberry bushes blossoming white, Fruit trees festooned with cascading flowers. And there I'll give myself to you, my love to your love!
13 The mandrakes give forth fragrance, and beside our doors are all choice fruits, new as well as old, which I have laid up for you, O my beloved.
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Love-apples drench us with fragrance, fertility surrounds, suffuses us, Fruits fresh and preserved that I've kept and saved just for you, my love.
The English Standard Version is published with the permission of Good News Publishers.
Published by permission. Originally published by NavPress in English as THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright 2002 by Eugene Peterson. All rights reserved.