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Song of Solomon

Song of Songs

About this book
Chapter 7

1 The Lover to His Beloved: How beautiful are your sandaled feet, O nobleman’s daughter! The curves of your thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a master craftsman. 2 Your navel is a round mixing bowl—may it never lack mixed wine! Your belly is a mound of wheat, encircled by lilies. 3 Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle. 4 Your neck is like a tower made of ivory. Your eyes are the pools in Heshbon by the gate of Bath Rabbim. Your nose is like the tower of Lebanon overlooking Damascus. 5 Your head crowns you like Mount Carmel. The locks of your hair are like royal tapestries—the king is held captive in its tresses!⁠ 6 How beautiful you are! How lovely, O love, with your delights! 7 The Lover to His Beloved: Your stature is like a palm tree, and your breasts are like clusters of grapes. 8 I want to climb the palm tree and take hold of its fruit stalks. May your breasts be like the clusters of grapes, and may the fragrance of your breath be like apples! 9 May your mouth be like the best wine, flowing smoothly for my beloved, gliding gently over our lips as we sleep together. 10 The Beloved about Her Lover: I am my beloved’s, and he desires me! 11 The Beloved to Her Lover: Come, my beloved; let us go to the countryside; let us spend the night in the villages. 12 Let us rise early to go to the vineyards, to see if the vines have budded, to see if their blossoms have opened, if the pomegranates are in bloom—there I will give you my love. 13 The mandrakes⁠ send out their fragrance; over our door is every delicacy, both new and old, which I have stored up for you, my lover.

Texts in conversation

Compare Genesis 30:14 and Song of Solomon 7:13

Hebrew Bible

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Summary

Genesis describes the mandrake plants Reuben gathers, which Rachel uses in the hope of having children. The Song of Solomon references the same plant as an aid to fertility, the only other place the Hebrew Bible mentions mandrakes.

Passages

Genesis 30:14

Hebrew Bible
13 Leah said, “How happy I am, for women will call me happy!” So she named him Asher. 14 At the time of the wheat harvest Reuben went out and found some mandrake plants in a field and brought them to his mother Leah. Rachel said to Leah, “Give me some of your son’s mandrakes.” 15 But Leah replied, “Wasn’t it enough that you’ve taken away my husband? Would you take away my son’s mandrakes too?” “All right,” Rachel said, “he may go to bed with you tonight in exchange for your son’s mandrakes.”
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Genesis

Song of Solomon 7:13

Hebrew Bible · Song of Songs
11 The Beloved to Her Lover: Come, my beloved; let us go to the countryside; let us spend the night in the villages. 12 Let us rise early to go to the vineyards, to see if the vines have budded, to see if their blossoms have opened, if the pomegranates are in bloom—there I will give you my love. 13 The mandrakes send out their fragrance; over our door is every delicacy, both new and old, which I have stored up for you, my lover.
300–201 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in the Song of Solomon

References

“... The author also explained what mandrakes are—“fragrant apples that the land of Aram produces”—since the word for mandrakes (duda’im) is rarely found in the Bible (apart from this story, only in Canticles 7:14). That they grow “on a high place below a watery ravine” is surely a mistake: how can a “high place” be below a ravine? The original text must have said something like “on a high place, with a watery ravine below” or simply “above a watery ravine.” ...”
James L. Kugel, “The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs,” in Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture, ed. Louis H. Feldman, James L. Kugel, and Lawrence H. Schiffman (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2013), 1772.

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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Genesis 30:14 and Song of Solomon 7:13

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