Song of Songs 8

¹ Ah, why are you not my brother, nursed at my mother’s breast! Then if I met you out of doors, I could kiss you without people thinking ill of me.

² I should lead you, I should take you into my mother’s house, and you would teach me! I should give you spiced wine to drink, juice of my pomegranates.

³ His left arm is under my head and his right embraces me.

⁴ I charge you, daughters of Jerusalem, not to stir my love, nor rouse it, until it please to awake.

⁵ Who is this coming up from the desert leaning on her Beloved?

⁶ Set me like a seal on your heart, like a seal on your arm. For love is strong as Death, jealousy relentless as Sheol.[*a] The flash of it is a flash of fire, a flame of Yahweh himself.

⁷ Love no flood can quench, no torrents drown.

⁸ Our sister is little: her breasts are not yet formed. What shall we do for our sister on the day she is spoken for?

⁹ If she is a rampart, on the crest we will build a battlement of silver; if she is a door, we will board her up with planks of cedar.

¹⁰ – I am a wall, and my breasts represent its towers. And under his eyes I have found true peace.

¹¹ Solomon had a vineyard at Baal-hamon. He entrusted it to overseers, and each one was to pay him the value of its produce, a thousand shekels of silver.

¹² But I look after my own vineyard myself. You, Solomon, may have your thousand shekels, and those who oversee its produce their two hundred.

¹³ You[*c] who dwell in the gardens, my companions listen for your voice; deign to let me hear it.

¹⁴ Haste away, my Beloved. Be like a gazelle, a young stag, on the spicy mountains.[*d]