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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

Compare 1 Enoch 30:3 and Song of Solomon 4:14

Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses · Hebrew Bible

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Summary

The Song of Songs praises the beloved, compared to a garden of calamus, cinnamon, and a well of fresh water. 1 Enoch describes those same spices and a valley of water at the edge of the earth, reshaping that tradition into a cosmic setting.

Passages

1 Enoch 30:3

Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses
1 And beyond these, I traveled far to the east, and I saw another place, a valley full of water. 2 There, there was a tree, the color of fragrant trees such as the mastic. 3 Along the sides of those valleys, I saw fragrant cinnamon. And beyond these, I continued to the east.
300 BCE – 100 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in 1 Enoch

Song of Solomon 4:14

Hebrew Bible · Song of Songs
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!
300–201 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in the Song of Solomon

References

... The spices which follow, 'cypresses with nards, nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices' take us immediately to Exodus 30: 23 and 34, where the 'chief spices' are listed: myrrh, cinnamon, and calamus for the holy anointing oil, and stacte, onycha, galbanum, and frankincense for the holy perfume. But the list of spices in the Song also takes us to 1 Enoch and to his journeyings in paradise where he sees aromatic trees which exhale the fragrance of frankincense and myrrh, cinnamon, galbanum, and stacte. The text goes on: 'And after these fragrant odours . . . I saw seven mountains full of choice nard and fragrant trees and cinnamon and pepper.' Then Enoch comes to the Garden of Righteousness, the pardes kushta of the Aramaic fragments, where 'beyond those trees' he sees the tree of wisdom 'whereof they eat and know great wisdom.' ...
Edmée Kingsmill, The Song of Songs and the Eros of God: A Study in Biblical Intertextuality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 161.

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

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1 Enoch 30:3 and Song of Solomon 4:14

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