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Song of Solomon 4 · a question people ask

What do the likenesses of 4:1-5 mean?

In the text

The chapter gives them as likenesses and doesn't explain them. "Your eyes are like doves behind your veil" (4:1); "Your lips are like scarlet thread" (4:3); "Your neck is like David’s tower built for an armory" (4:4). It says what each part is like, and then it gives its own summary: "You are all beautiful, my love. There is no spot in you" (4:7). Some of the same likenesses come back in chapter 6: "Your hair is like a flock of goats" (6:5), and "Your temples are like a piece of a pomegranate behind your veil" (6:7), which is word for word the end of 4:3. These notes quote the likenesses as the WEB has them and don't explain them beyond what the lexicons say of each word, and they add nothing about goats, sheep, pomegranates or towers from outside the Bible.

The verses

“Turn away your eyes from me, for they have overcome me. Your hair is like a flock of goats, that lie along the side of Gilead. Your teeth are like a flock of ewes, which have come up from the washing, of which every one has twins; not one is bereaved among them. Your temples are like a piece of a pomegranate behind your veil.”
Song of Solomon 6:5-7 · World English Bible

From Favor's study of Song of Solomon 4

Song of Solomon 4: My sister, my bride

The Song calls her bride only in this part: six times, all between 4:8 and 5:1, four of them "my sister, my bride". And the chapter opens with every word of 1:15, then says to a woman, in almost the words 1:2 said to a man, "How much better is your love than wine" (4:10).

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Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Every answer cites the verses it rests on. What we believe · All Bible questions