TEXT [Commentary]

  XV.   Fifteenth Love Poem: An Army with Banners (6:4-10)

Young Man

4 You are beautiful, my darling,

like the lovely city of Tirzah.

Yes, as beautiful as Jerusalem,

as majestic as an army with billowing banners.

5 Turn your eyes away,

for they overpower me.

Your hair falls in waves,

like a flock of goats winding down the slopes of Gilead.

6 Your teeth are as white as sheep

that are freshly washed.

Your smile is flawless,

each tooth matched with its twin.[*]

7 Your cheeks are like rosy pomegranates

behind your veil.

8 Even among sixty queens

and eighty concubines

and countless young women,

9 I would still choose my dove, my perfect one—

the favorite of her mother,

dearly loved by the one who bore her.

The young women see her and praise her;

even queens and royal concubines sing her praises:

10 “Who is this, arising like the dawn,

as fair as the moon,

as bright as the sun,

as majestic as an army with billowing banners?”

NOTES

6:5 overpower. The verb is a hiphil from rahab [TH7292, ZH8104] and can mean “overpower,” “excite,” or “unsettle” (see NIDOTTE 3:1063-1066).

6:7 Your cheeks are like rosy pomegranates. The verse in Heb. describes the woman’s temples (the likely meaning of the Heb. raqqah [TH7541, ZH8377]), not her cheeks, as like pomegranates, though the NLT is likely right in implying that the reference to the fruit is a comment on the woman’s complexion. The adjective “rosy” is not found in the Heb., but is added in the translation to help modern readers get a sense of what the comparison with pomegranates is intended to communicate. See note on 4:3.

COMMENTARY [Text]

In the fifteenth love poem of the collection, the man praises the woman for her outstanding beauty. Through a series of metaphors, as well as a short section of a “descriptive song” (wasf), the man tells his beloved that she far surpasses any other woman in his eyes.

The man begins in this poem by simply stating that his darling is beautiful, and then compares her beauty to two cities. That the man chooses cities with which to compare the beauty of the woman at all is rather surprising. After all, throughout the Song there has been a theme wherein cities are contrasted with the cultivated countryside, the former being a locale that is hostile to intimacy and love, and the latter being conducive to it. However, in this case, cities are not the setting where love is developing; they are envisioned from a distance, and it is the physical attraction of the cities that is relevant. And who can deny it? Very few things rivet the attention as much as a city. Of course, modern cities are not quite like ancient cities, but since we have only the modern experience, we may start with an experience such as many of us have had. We are driving along the highway when a large city’s impressive skyline suddenly appears on the horizon. You might think of New York or Seattle or imagine passengers in a plane at take-off getting a beautiful aerial view of San Francisco and its harbor with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. Although these experiences are not quite like the ancient one, they mirror the effect of taking the long walk to Jerusalem and coming over the Mount of Olives to see that magnificent city with its walls, Temple, and other massive public buildings. The view would indeed have been riveting, sending shivers up the spine.

Since we know little about Tirzah, we tend to focus our attention on Jerusalem. Tirzah was evidently a great and beautiful city in its own right—for a short period it was the capital of the northern kingdom. Some even think that this bit of information helps us date this particular poem to the time when Tirzah was the capital, which would be during the time of King Jeroboam in the tenth century BC (1 Kgs 14:17; 15:21, 33; 16:6, 8, 15, 17, 23), but there is not enough evidence to say this with confidence. The name Tirzah means “pleasant,” and perhaps that is explanation enough for its choice here, along with the fact that it may well have lived up to its name. In any case, we note that the actual progression in the verse is from Tirzah to Jerusalem, and this is a clear heightening within the parallel line. In Hebrew poetry, the second line almost always intensifies the idea expressed in the first.

By contrast, verse 4 climaxes not with the name of a third city but with another comparison, and one that is quite unexpected. The man compares the woman to an army with billowing banners. (For more about military imagery in love poetry, see Schroeder 1996 and Meyers 1986.) The banners are likely references to battle standards of some sort. The NLT makes explicit what the translators believe is the main point of the comparison: majesty. Indeed, an army assembled for war with banners at the lead is a picture of power. Such a display can elicit fear—not only from the enemy but also from all who look at it. The woman’s beauty captures the man’s attention in a way that makes his knees knock. (For a different view on this verse, see Long 1996.) That these images intend to express that the man is overcome by the woman’s beauty is stated plainly in 6:5. He cannot stand her gaze—not because it is repulsive but because it is just the opposite. As he looks into her eyes, he is overcome with her beauty. As we look into the eyes of another person, we not only see physical beauty, we also look into his or her soul.

Contemplating the man’s experience and taking into account the many allusions to the Garden of Eden in the Song (see the Introduction), we might remember here what happened in the Garden in Genesis 3: Because of their transgression, neither Adam nor Eve could stand freely in the gaze of the other. They quickly covered themselves. As Adam felt Eve looking at him, he became aware of his imperfections and sought to hide them from her. Perhaps as the poem reflects the common human experience of being uncomfortable in another person’s gaze, it picks up on this idea. However, we should not miss the main, positive point the man is making: her beauty is so great that he needs a break from it so that he does not faint from overexposure!

At this point, he describes her beauty in a short descriptive poem. Interestingly, this poem is virtually identical to 4:1-3, a portion of the longer descriptive poem found in 4:1-7. Since these sections are so similar, there will be an understandable overlap between my comments here and there.

The man begins by complimenting the woman’s hair. It is like a flock of goats streaming down Mount Gilead. Gilead refers to the region in central Transjordan around the Jabbok River gorge. Gilead is a stunningly beautiful area. The idea of a mountain suggests a head, and the goats that descend (probably having black coats) suggest hair. Although some mischievous readers have thought about single lines of sheep coming down the mountain and commented that the comparison suggests that she was balding, this is clearly not the intent of the compliment.

Verse 6, which turns attention to the woman’s teeth, also sounds humorous from a modern perspective, reminding us that we need to put ourselves in the position of the original readers to best understand the Song. That is, we must remember that ancient peoples did not have the same expertise in dental care that we have today. To compliment the woman’s white teeth is indeed a compliment and may be compared to the nineteenth-century English/American compliment about a person’s “pearly white teeth.” However, modern men should beware doing what the ancient Israelite lover literally does here—that is, say that none of his beloved’s teeth are missing (cf. 6:6, NLT mg). Indeed, a person giving such an ill-considered compliment may find some of his own teeth missing as a result! This simply reminds us that beauty is culturally bound, and furthermore, it is in the eye of the beholder.

We may also be a bit mystified by his comment about her temples (NLT “cheeks,” see note on 6:7). These are behind her veil, implying that the veil covers her entire face. The pomegranate is a reddish-orange fruit; and since women of the region were dark-skinned, the comparison probably indicates a desired skin color. Again, beauty is in the eye of the beholder; and in the eyes of the man, the woman’s skin was beautiful and enticing. The passage does not designate any skin color as the most beautiful but simply reflects the man’s appreciation of what God has created.

After the “descriptive poem,” the man proclaims in yet another way the woman’s incomparable beauty (6:8-9). The form of this compliment is foreign to modern readers. He says that she is outstanding in comparison to sixty queens, eighty concubines, and countless young women. In order to understand the force of this compliment, we must first of all realize that these three classes of women—queens, concubines, and young women—represent all the options available to a king. Queens are primary wives with the most rights, concubines are secondary wives, and then the Hebrew word for young women (‘almah [TH5959, ZH6625]) stands for all those women who are marriageable and therefore available to the king. Second, the modern reader needs to understand that this verse is built on an ancient form of poetry called numerical parallelism. We see it in Proverbs in the form x, x + 1, for instance: “There are three [= x] things that make the earth tremble—no, four [= x + 1] it cannot endure: a slave who becomes a king, an overbearing fool who prospers, a bitter woman who finally gets a husband, a servant girl who supplants her mistress” (Prov 30:21-23). The intention of the verse is not that there are exactly four things but that there are a large number. The same may be seen even more clearly in Amos (e.g., Amos 1:3), where the poet will condemn a city for three, yea four sins, but then list two. In other words, this compliment moves from sixty to eighty and then on to countless numbers of young women. This woman is number one out of all women of all classes.

We press the imagery too far if we take this reference in a literal way and say that the poet has to be Solomon, and the young Solomon at that—though we do know that at his height he had 700 queens and 300 concubines (1 Kgs 11:3). As we have already argued, the Song is not about Solomon or any actual king but uses royal imagery to enhance the prestige of the lovers. In modern Arab wedding poetry, the young bride and groom are king and queen for the day. Even in modern America, ordinary brides and grooms are transformed into something very special for their wedding day. Likewise, the man here does not actually have the many queens and concubines of a king (the references in 6:9 are similarly poetic).

The woman’s mother confirms the man’s choice (6:9). The mother is the one who has instructed her daughter in the ways of intimate relationship (see note on 8:2), and this girl has learned from the best. Not only that, but her rivals, mentioned in a different order—young women, queens, and concubines—actually acknowledge her superiority by praising her.

The poem climaxes with the type of rhetorical question that we saw in 3:6 and which we will revisit in 8:5. The question form grabs the attention of its hearers or readers and gets their minds involved. Who, indeed, is this? It is the woman, of course. She is described again by comparison. She arises like the dawn, bringing light to the darkness. She is the one who renews all things with hope. She is like the moon and the sun that dominate the night and day sky, respectively, with their brilliance. Finally, the poem ends as it began with the military comparison to a majestic army with its billowing banners.