Go to Related Reading
About this book

Song of Solomon

Song of Songs

About this book
Chapter 4

1 The Lover to His Beloved: Oh, you are beautiful, my darling! Oh, you are beautiful! Your eyes behind your veil are like doves. Your hair is like a flock of female goats descending from Mount Gilead.⁠ 2 Your teeth are like a flock of newly shorn sheep coming up from the washing place; each of them has a twin, and not one of them is missing. 3 Your lips are like a scarlet thread; your mouth is lovely. Your forehead behind your veil is like a slice of pomegranate. 4 Your neck is like the tower of David built with courses of stones; one thousand shields are hung on it—all shields of valiant warriors. 5 Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of the gazelle grazing among the lilies. 6 Until the dawn arrives and the shadows flee, I will go up to the mountain of myrrh and to the hill of frankincense.⁠ 7 You are altogether beautiful, my darling! There is no blemish in you! 8 Come with me from Lebanon, my bride; come with me from Lebanon. Descend from the crest of Amana,⁠ from the top of Senir, the summit of Hermon, from the lions’ dens and the mountain haunts of the leopards. 9 You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride!⁠ You have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes, with one jewel of your necklace. 10 How delightful is your love, my sister, my bride! How much better is your love than wine; the fragrance of your perfume is better than any spice! 11 Your lips drip sweetness like the honeycomb, my bride; honey and milk are under your tongue.⁠ The fragrance of your garments is like the fragrance of Lebanon. 12 The Lover to His Beloved: You are a locked garden, my sister, my bride; you are an enclosed spring, a sealed-up fountain. 13 Your shoots are a royal garden full of pomegranates with choice fruits:⁠ henna with nard,⁠ 14 nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon⁠ with every kind of spice, myrrh and aloes with all the finest spices. 15 You are a garden spring, a well of fresh water⁠ flowing down from Lebanon. 16 The Beloved to Her Lover: Awake, O north wind; come, O south wind! Blow on my garden so that its fragrant spices may send out their sweet smell.⁠ May my beloved come into his garden and eat its delightful fruit!

Texts in conversation

How Song of Solomon Echoes the Sumerian Inanna and Dumuzi

Ancient Near East, Sumerian · Hebrew Bible

Share:

Summary

In the Song of Solomon, milk and honey are used as images of love and pleasure, similar to Sumerian and other ancient Near Eastern poems like the Courtship of Inanna and Dumuzi, where milk represents fertility and desire.

Passages

The Courtship of Inanna and Dumuzi

Ancient Near East, Sumerian · Inanna Prefers the Farmer
Inanna sang: “Make your milk sweet and thick, my bridegroom. My shepherd, I will drink your fresh milk. Wild bull Dumuzi, make your milk sweet and thick. I will drink your fresh milk. Let the milk of the goat flow in my sheepfold. Fill my holy churn with honey cheese. Lord Dumuzi, I will drink your fresh milk. My husband, I will guard my sheepfold for you. I will watch over your house of life, the storehouse, the shining quivering place which delights Sumer—the house which decides the fates of the land, the house which gives the breath of life to the people. I, the queen of the palace, will watch over your house.”
1900 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in The Courtship of Inanna and Dumuzi

Song of Solomon 4:11

Hebrew Bible · Song of Songs
9 You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride! You have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes, with one jewel of your necklace. 10 How delightful is your love, my sister, my bride! How much better is your love than wine; the fragrance of your perfume is better than any spice! 11 Your lips drip sweetness like the honeycomb, my bride; honey and milk are under your tongue. The fragrance of your garments is like the fragrance of Lebanon. 12 The Lover to His Beloved: You are a locked garden, my sister, my bride; you are an enclosed spring, a sealed-up fountain.
300–201 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in the Song of Solomon

References

"... The subtext is clear: the land flowing with milk and honey has been defiled; both products have become harbingers, not of promise and life, but of betrayal and death; fruitfulness gives way to corruption, nightmare comes in place of dream ... moreover, he may be making an oblique reference to Canaanite cultic practice. Driver relates that the Phoenicians honoured standing stones with libations of milk and honey. Milk and honey are among the gifts that the Sumerian deity Enlil offers for his bride Ninlil and they feature together as erotic metaphors in the important Sumerian composition ‘The Courtship of Inanna and Dumuzi’. The goddess Inanna-Ishtar sings of Dumuzi-Tammuz, her shepherd-king suitor ... They figure too as erotic metaphors in Song of Solomon 4:11 and 5:1 ..."
Robin Baker, Hollow Men, Strange Women: Riddles, Codes, and Otherness in the Book of Judges, BibInt 143 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 24.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

Your feedback

The Courtship of Inanna and Dumuzi and Song of Solomon 4:11

Leave a comment

Your questions and comments are welcome!

Comments

Glossary

Search the Library