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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 Song of Solomon 4:16 and 3 Enoch 23:18

Hebrew Bible · Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses

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Summary

In Song of Songs, the woman asks the winds to spread her garden's fragrance. In 3 Enoch, the winds carry that fragrance to the righteous in Eden, interpreting the lovers' garden as a promise of future happiness.

Passages

Song of Solomon 4:16

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

3 Enoch 23:18

Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses · Hebrew Book of Enoch
day". And in the midst of the Garden they join together and blow from one side to the other and are perfumed with the spices of the Garden even from its remotest parts, until they separate from each other, and, filled with the scent of the pure spices, they bring the odour from the remotest parts of Eden and the spices of the Garden to the righteous and godly who in the time to come shall inherit the Garden of Eden and the Tree of Life, as it is written (Cant. iv. 16): "Awake, O north wind; and come, you south; blow upon my garden, that its spices may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden and eat his precious
400–600 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in 3 Enoch

References

“... Interestingly, too, the lengthy passage that describes the winds (3 Enoch 23, §35)59 does not make use of the metrological imagery that I noted to be sig- nificant in the Parables; rather, it brings together an array of biblical texts that speak of the winds and combines their imagery. In fact, there is only one point in 3 Enoch where scales/balance imagery is used, in 18:20 (§27): Why is his name called Šoqedḥozi? Because he weighs men’s merits in scales in the presence of the Holy One, blessed be he. So, while there appears to be more entanglement with the content of Parables of Enoch and 2 Enoch than is seen in the biblical material or even in b.Ḥagigah, ...”
Grant Macaskill, The Entangled Enoch: 2 Enoch and the Cultures of Late Antiquity (Leiden: Koninklijke Brill BV, 2024), 138.

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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Song of Solomon 4:16 and 3 Enoch 23:18

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