Song of Solomon 1; Song of Solomon 2; Song of Solomon 3; Galatians 2

1 Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth: for thy breasts are better than wine,

2 Smelling sweet of the best ointments. Thy name is as oil poured out: therefore young maidens have loved thee.

3 Draw me: we will run after thee to the odour of thy ointments.

4 The king hath brought me into his storerooms: we will be glad and rejoice in thee, remembering thy breasts more than wine: the righteous love thee.

5 (1-4) I am black but beautiful, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Cedar, as the curtains of Solomon.

6 (1-5) Do not consider me that I am brown, because the sun hath altered my colour: the sons of my mother have fought against me, they have made me the keeper in the vineyards: my vineyard I have not kept.

7 (1-6) Shew me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou liest in the midday, lest I begin to wander after the flocks of thy companions.

8 (1-7) If thou know not thyself, O fairest among women, go forth, and follow after the steps of the flocks, and feed thy kids beside the tents of the shepherds.

9 (1-8) To my company of horsemen, in Pharao’s chariots, have I likened thee, O my love.

10 (1-9) Thy cheeks are beautiful as the turtledove’s, thy neck as jewels.

11 (1-10) We will make thee chains of gold, inlaid with silver.

12 (1-11) While the king was at his repose, my spikenard sent forth the odour thereof.

13 (1-12) A bundle of myrrh is my beloved to me, he shall abide between my breasts.

14 (1-13) A cluster of cypress my love is to me, in the vineyards of Engaddi.

15 (1-14) Behold thou are fair, O my love, behold thou are fair, thy eyes are as those of doves.

16 (1-15) Behold thou art fair, my beloved, and comely. Our bed is flourishing.

17 (1-16) The beams of our houses are of cedar, our rafters of cypress trees.

1 I am the flower of the field, and the lily of the valleys.

2 As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.

3 As the apple tree among the trees of the woods, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow, whom I desired: and his fruit was sweet to my palate.

4 He brought me into the cellar of wine, he set in order charity in me.

5 Stay me up with flowers, compass me about with apples: because I languish with love.

6 His left hand is under my head, and his right hand shall embrace me.

7 I adjure you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and the harts of the field, that you stir not up, nor make the beloved to awake, till she please.

8 The voice of my beloved, behold he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping over the hills.

9 My beloved is like a roe, or a young hart. Behold he standeth behind our wall, looking through the windows, looking through the lattices.

10 Behold my beloved speaketh to me: Arise, make haste, my love, my dove, my beautiful one, and come.

11 For winter is now past, the rain is over and gone.

12 The flowers have appeared in our land, the time of pruning is come: the voice of the turtle is heard in our land:

13 The fig tree hath put forth her green figs: the vines in flower yield their sweet smell. Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come:

14 My dove in the clefts of the rock, in the hollow places of the wall, shew me thy face, let thy voice sound in my ears: for thy voice is sweet, and thy face comely.

15 Catch us the little foxes that destroy the vines: for our vineyard hath flourished.

16 My beloved to me, and I to him who feedeth among the lilies,

17 Till the day break, and the shadows retire. Return: be like, my beloved, to a roe, or to a young hart upon the mountains of Bether.

1 In my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, and found him not.

2 I will rise, and will go about the city: in the streets and the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, and I found him not.

3 The watchmen who keep the city, found me: Have you seen him, whom my soul loveth?

4 When I had a little passed by them, I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him: and I will not let him go, till I bring him into my mother’s house, and into the chamber of her that bore me.

5 I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes and the harts of the fields, that you stir not up, nor awake my beloved, till she please.

6 Who is she that goeth up by the desert, as a pillar of smoke of aromatical spices, of myrrh, and frankincense, and of all the powders of the perfumer?

7 Behold threescore valiant ones of the most valiant of Israel, surrounded the bed of Solomon?

8 All holding swords, and most expert in war: every man’s sword upon his thigh, because of fears in the night.

9 King Solomon hath made him a litter of the wood of Libanus:

10 The pillars thereof he made of silver, the seat of gold, the going up of purple: the midst he covered with charity for the daughters of Jerusalem.

11 Go forth, ye daughters of Sion, and see king Solomon in the diadem, wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of the joy of his heart.

1 Then, after fourteen years, I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus also with me.

2 And I went up according to revelation and communicated to them the gospel which I preach among the Gentiles: but apart to them who seemed to be some thing: lest perhaps I should run or had run in vain.

3 But neither Titus, who was with me, being a Gentile, was compelled to be circumcised.

4 But because of false brethren unawares brought in, who came in privately to spy our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into servitude.

5 To whom we yielded not by subjection: no, not for an hour: that the truth of the gospel might continue with you.

6 But of them who seemed to be some thing, (what they were some time it is nothing to me, God accepteth not the person of man): for to me they that seemed to be some thing added nothing.

7 But contrariwise, when they had seen that to me was committed the gospel of the uncircumcision, as to Peter was that of the circumcision.

8 (For he who wrought in Peter to the apostleship of the circumcision wrought in me also among the Gentiles.)

9 And when they had known the grace that was given to me, James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship: that we should go unto the Gentiles, and they unto the circumcision:

10 Only that we should be mindful of the poor: which same thing also I was careful to do.

11 But when Cephas was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed.

12 For before that some came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles: but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them who were of the circumcision.

13 And to his dissimulation the rest of the Jews consented: so that Barnabas also was led by them into that dissimulation.

14 But when I saw that they walked not uprightly unto the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all: If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of the Gentiles and not as the Jews do, how dost thou compel the Gentiles to live as do the Jews?

15 We by nature are Jews: and not of the Gentiles, sinners.

16 But knowing that man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, we also believe in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by the faith of Christ and not by the works of the law: because by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified.

17 But if, while we seek to be justified in Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is Christ then the minister of sin? God forbid!

18 For if I build up again the things which I have destroyed, I make myself a prevaricator.

19 For I, through the law, am dead to the law, that I may live to God; with Christ I am nailed to the cross.

20 And I live, now not I: but Christ liveth in me. And that I live now in the flesh: I live in the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and delivered himself for me.

21 I cast not away the grace of God. For if justice be by the law, then Christ died in vain.