Song of Solomon 6:11

The king has just praised the Shulamite at length, likening her to fine cities and calling her “terrible as an army with banners” (Song of Solomon 6:4–10). With verse 11 the scene moves from his words of praise to a quiet errand in a garden. The speaker is unnamed, and the most natural reading hears the Shulamite telling what happened to her, since verse 12 is plainly in her voice. Some take verse 11 as the beloved’s words, with him going down to the garden.

Gardens run all through the Song. The bridegroom says of his bride, “A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse” (Song of Solomon 4:12), and again and again the garden stands for the love the two share, private, cherished and fruitful. In Israel a garden was usually enclosed, it took steady work to keep, and it gave both food and a place to rest. So a walk into the garden to see how things are growing is a real errand in an Israelite spring, and in the Song it is also a picture of love being looked after.

“I went down into the garden of nuts.” The verb yârad simply means to go or come down. Here it most likely describes a walk from a home on higher ground, perhaps a palace or the city, down to the cultivated land below, a common journey in that landscape. The word for garden, ginnâh, is an enclosed, cultivated plot, and ginnat egoz is a garden of nut trees, most likely walnuts. It is a detail found only here in the Song.

She has come “to see the fruits of the valley.” The word behind “fruits”, ʼêb, means green growth, the fresh shoots and produce of the land. The valley is a nachal, a stream or wadi and the valley it runs through. Land along such streams was well watered and fertile, unlike the drier hillsides above.

The verb “to see”, râʼâh, comes twice in the verse. It covers plain sight and also looking in order to understand, and here it is a careful inspection. She wants to know two things, “whether the vine flourished, and the pomegranates budded.” The vine, gephen, is the grapevine. “Flourished” is pârach, a verb that means to bud, sprout, blossom and spread, and “budded” is nûwts, which in this verse means to bud. Pomegranates, rimmôwn, were prized fruit in Israel along with nuts and grapes, and all three stood for plenty, fruitfulness and blessing. She is looking at the first stage of growth, when the buds show whether the season will bring fruit.

Verse 12 is one of the most puzzling lines in the Song, though its main point is clear. Something came over the Shulamite suddenly. “Or ever I was aware” means before she knew it, and the verb is yâdaʻ, to know by seeing or by experience. Then “my soul made me like the chariots of Amminadib.” Her soul, nephesh, is her life and her very self, a word that first means a breathing creature. What moved her came from within her own heart. The comparison is implied in the Hebrew, and the KJV supplies the word “like”.

A chariot, merkâbâh, was an open vehicle used in war and for travel. In Solomon’s day chariots belonged to kings, commanders and men of rank, and they meant speed, power and splendour. To be made like a chariot is to be carried along fast and with force.

The voices that call to her are most likely the daughters of Jerusalem, the women of the court or the city who speak as a chorus throughout the Song, asking questions and admiring the bride. They call her back four times. The verb shûwb means to turn back or return, and the repeated cry shows how much they want her to come back into sight. Their reason is “that we may look upon thee.” The verb here, châzâh, is used of gazing at something at length, often with pleasure or wonder, and elsewhere of a prophet’s seeing.

Then comes a question, “What will ye see in the Shulamite?” It is most likely her own reply. She may be asking in humble surprise what they could find in her, or she may be asking them to say what draws them. Their answer is the striking picture that closes the verse.

The Song celebrates the love of a husband and wife, and Scripture also shows us Christ as the Bridegroom and the Church as his Bride, so these verses speak of him too. Believers differ on how far the Song’s details should be pressed in that direction, and the plain sense of the poem comes first.

The vine in the garden points to Jesus’ words, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman” (John 15:1), and “He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit” (John 15:5). The Lord looks for fruit in his people and tends them so that they bear it, filling them “with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God” (Philippians 1:11). His people grow together into “an holy temple in the Lord” (Ephesians 2:21), a dwelling kept for him alone, as the Song’s garden is kept for the beloved.

The bride’s soul carried her off before she knew it, and a believer’s love for Christ also begins in God’s own work. Jesus said, “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him” (John 6:44), and Paul writes that “it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13). The psalm says of the King’s people, “Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power” (Psalm 110:3), which suits the willing people in the name Amminadib. God draws his people “with cords of a man, with bands of love” (Hosea 11:4), and the soul he draws longs for him: “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God” (Psalm 42:1). At the last the Church goes out to meet her Lord, for “the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready” (Revelation 19:7).

The Bride’s beauty is his gift. Christ will present the Church to himself as “a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing” (Ephesians 5:27). We are changed into his likeness as we look at him: “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory” (2 Corinthians 3:18). When he comes from heaven he “shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body” (Philippians 3:20–21). The cry “Return, return” can be heard as the call to turn to Christ and look on him, who said, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me” (John 12:32).

The two camps fit the Church as well. She is the beloved Bride at peace with God, and she is also an army in a spiritual battle, clothed in “the whole armour of God” (Ephesians 6:10–18) and following a Lord who has already “spoiled principalities and powers” and triumphed over them (Colossians 2:15).

These verses give us love that is watched over, love that carries the whole heart, and a beauty that others long to see. They show a Lord who looks for fruit in his garden and gives the growth himself, who makes his people willing, and who makes his Bride both lovely and strong. The bride’s question about the vine and the pomegranates is a fair one for any life that God has planted, whether what he planted is coming into bud. And when a heart runs to him before it knows it, that eagerness is his own work in us, for his people are both the garden he tends and the company he leads.