Song of Solomon 2:16

These verses close the springtime section of the Song that opens with the beloved’s arrival (Song of Solomon 2:8–17). He has already called her out into the new season, when the flowers appear and the birds sing: “Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away” (Song of Solomon 2:10–13). In verse 14 he speaks again and asks to see her. In verses 16 and 17 the bride answers, and we know it is her because she speaks of “my beloved” and calls him “he”. Verse 15 stands between them, and it may be spoken by either of the two. Its “us” and “our vines” make it a call made on behalf of both.

The Song is first a song of married love between a man and a woman, and this is how the Bible honours that love: two people, each belonging to the other, with a faithfulness that belongs to them alone. The New Testament calls Christ the Bridegroom (John 3:29), and Paul says that marriage speaks of Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:32). So in these verses we also hear the love between Christ and his people. The two readings belong together, and each sheds light on the other.

“O my dove” is a name of love. The Hebrew yôwnâh simply means a dove or pigeon, and the tenderness comes from the way he uses it: she is his dove. Doves nest in the cracks and caves of rocky hillsides, and that is where he pictures her, “in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs”. The word for clefts, chăgâv, means a rift in the rock, and Strong’s links it to a root meaning to take refuge. The secret places of the stairs are hidden nooks along the rocky paths, out of sight and hard to reach. She is safe there, and she is also hidden from him.

Her hiding can be read as shyness or modesty, as a playful hesitation after his call to come away, or simply as the safety of a private place where she feels at ease. Each of these fits the picture, and in each one he wants her to come out to him.

In Israel a vineyard was a precious thing, a family’s livelihood and a sign of God’s blessing on the land. Foxes and jackals were a known menace to vineyards, eating the young shoots and the forming fruit. The Hebrew word shûwʻâl covers both animals, the fox and the jackal.

“Take us the foxes” uses ʼâchaz, to grasp, seize or take hold of, often with the sense of keeping hold of what is caught. The foxes are to be caught and held, so that they do no more harm. “The little foxes” adds qâṭân, which means small or young, so these may be young foxes, or simply small ones that are easy to overlook. Either way, the verse names the little ones especially.

They “spoil the vines”. The verb châbal can mean to bind, and it also means to ruin or destroy, which is its sense here. The reason for haste comes at the end: “for our vines have tender grapes.” The word for tender grapes, çᵉmâdar, is the young fruit of the vine, still forming. Damage done now costs the whole harvest.

Set in the middle of the spring scene, this verse brings a note of care into the joy. Love in its early season is lovely and also easily harmed. In a marriage, little foxes are the small things left unattended: a misunderstanding never cleared up, a small offence never forgiven, a silence that grows. Catching them early means clearing up those misunderstandings, forgiving quickly and speaking honestly with each other, before resentment takes root.

The bride speaks now, and she says that she and her beloved belong to one another. The word for beloved, dôwd, means a beloved or a lover, and it can also mean love itself, or an uncle. In the Song it is her name for the man she loves. She states her claim on him first, “My beloved is mine”, and then his claim on her, “and I am his”. Neither belonging is one-sided, and that is where the security of their love rests.

The saying comes back later in the Song with its order reversed, “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine” (Song of Solomon 6:3), and again in a fuller form: “I am my beloved’s, and his desire is toward me” (Song of Solomon 7:10). Love that grows sure of itself rests more and more on belonging to the other.

The same mutual belonging lies at the heart of our salvation. God says to his people, “I have loved thee with an everlasting love” (Jeremiah 31:3), and Christ says that he knows his own and is known by them (John 10:14). He bought his people for himself, and by faith they give themselves to him. So believers are in Christ, made new (2 Corinthians 5:17), and Christ lives in them (Galatians 2:20). Jesus describes the same bond when he speaks of his people abiding in him and he in them (John 15:5).

The bride’s last words in this section look toward the dawn. “Until the day break, and the shadows flee away” points to the moment when night ends and the light comes. The verb for flee away, nûwç, means to flee, to vanish or to escape, and it pictures the shadows slipping away as the morning comes. Until then she asks, “turn, my beloved”. It is a plea for him to come back to her, or to stay close through the night.

She asks him to be “like a roe or a young hart”, a gazelle or a young stag. These animals are swift and graceful and cross rough hill country with ease, and the comparison praises his beauty and strength as well as his speed. The place she names is “the mountains of Bether”. Bether is the name of a place, and the word means division or separation. It may be a real range of craggy hills, and the name gives the picture its point. Whatever lies between the two lovers, she wants him to cross it as quickly and easily as a gazelle crosses the mountains. Love has its times of distance, and the Song knows it, for in the next chapter the bride goes out searching for her beloved (Song of Solomon 3).

In these four verses we see love from every side. The bridegroom seeks the one he loves and takes delight in her face and her voice. Together they guard what is growing between them, catching the small things that would ruin it. The bride rests in belonging to him, and she waits for him with hope through the night. The marriages God gives are meant to know this kind of love, and Christ shows it to his church in full. He seeks us out, he protects the young fruit of his work in us, he is ours and we are his, and he will come again when the day breaks.