Song of Solomon 6:4

In this part of Song of Solomon 6 the lovers have come back together after a time apart. The bride has searched the city for him by night and then described him at length to the daughters of Jerusalem (Song of Solomon 5:2–16). They ask where he has gone, and she answers that he is in his garden and that “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine” (Song of Solomon 6:1–3). Now the king speaks, and his praise answers hers. The love in this book runs both ways, as it has since Song of Solomon 1, and each of them delights to tell the other what they see.

Much of what he says here he has said before. Her hair like goats from Gilead (Song of Solomon 4:1), her teeth like washed sheep that bear twins (4:2) and her temples like a piece of pomegranate (4:3) all come back in nearly the same words. Hebrew poetry often repeats in order to affirm, and the repetition tells her that his delight has lasted. What captivated him at first captivates him still, after the separation and the search, and it finds fresh joy in what is familiar.

He calls her “O my love”, raʻyâh, his tender name for her, and he tells her she is “beautiful”, yâpheh, a word for an appearance that is fair and pleasing to the eye.

Then he compares her to two cities. Tirzah was an old Canaanite city that later became a royal city of the northern kingdom of Israel (1 Kings 14:17), and it was prized for its pleasant setting and fertile land. Jerusalem was the city of David and the place of the temple, the city a psalm calls “Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth” (Psalm 48:2). The word for “comely”, nâʼveh, means seemly, becoming, fitting and lovely. Tirzah brings the charm of a lovely place, and Jerusalem adds dignity, splendor and the settled strength of a city “builded as a city that is compact together” (Psalm 122:3–4). To the king his bride has both.

“Turn away thine eyes from me, for they have overcome me” is the cry of a man overwhelmed by love. The word for eyes, ʻayin, is the ordinary word for the eye, and it is used also of a person’s outward look and of a fountain. Here it means her gaze. “Overcome” is râhab, which Strong’s defines as to urge severely, to importune, to embolden or to capture. Her eyes press in on him and take him captive.

People ask whether he is displeased when he asks her to look away. He is delighted, and the request is a lover’s exaggeration. One look from her is more than he can bear, and he tells her so to show how strongly she moves him. The awe of verse 4 has become personal. It is good for a husband to be held this way by his wife, and Proverbs tells him, “be thou ravished always with her love” (Proverbs 5:19).

The women of verse 9 praised her, and verse 10 gives their words. They ask, “Who is she?” in wonder at the sight of her. “Looketh forth” is shâqaph, which means to lean out of a window, to look down or out, and so to come into view. She appears the way the dawn breaks.

The pictures grow brighter as they go. She comes “as the morning”, fresh and full of promise, with the first light that drives back the dark. She is “fair as the moon”, with its soft and lovely glow, and “clear as the sun”, in full, unclouded brightness. Then comes the phrase from verse 4, “terrible as an army with banners”, in the same words, ʼâyôm and dâgal. What the king said to her alone, these women now say aloud, and in her gentle loveliness and overwhelming majesty belong together. He once told her, “Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee” (Song of Solomon 4:7), and here others agree. Scripture uses the same lights for another woman in glory, “a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet” (Revelation 12:1).

This passage is first of all a husband’s praise of his wife, and the love it celebrates is God’s good gift. Scripture also calls the church Christ’s bride, and many believers hear in these verses Christ’s love for his people, or God’s love for Israel. Believers differ on how far to press the details. Some see the washed sheep as a picture of cleansing and the bannered army as the church standing against darkness, and others keep to the main lines of delight, devotion and faithfulness. Paul joins the two loves in one sentence: “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:25–27).

The beauty Christ sees in his church is beauty he has given. “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21), and “ye are complete in him” (Colossians 2:10). The flock with every ewe bearing pictures the whole and fruitful life he works in his people, as Scripture makes “the man of God” “perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Timothy 3:16–17).

She is “but one”, and so is his church. “So we, being many, are one body in Christ” (Romans 12:5), chosen in him “before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4), the church of God “which he hath purchased with his own blood” (Acts 20:28). As the moon shines with the sun’s light, the church shines with the light of her Lord, and we “are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Her strength as an army is spiritual: “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds” (2 Corinthians 10:4–5). Christ has promised that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18), and he has already “spoiled principalities and powers” (Colossians 2:15).

The king’s delight in his bride echoes God’s delight in his people. “He will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing” (Zephaniah 3:17), and “So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty” (Psalm 45:11). As the queens praised the bride, all heaven will one day see the beauty of the people the Lamb has redeemed and sing, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain” (Revelation 5:12). Then “the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready” (Revelation 19:7–8), and the holy city comes down “prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Revelation 21:2). Our love for him is the answer to his: “We love him, because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

The king’s praise is specific. He names her eyes, her hair, her teeth and her temples, and he tells her what each one does to him. Husbands and wives can learn from him to notice what they love in each other and to say it plainly, and to say it again years later, as he repeats his earlier praise. Delight spoken aloud nourishes a marriage.

He also holds his bride above every comparison. A whole court of queens and concubines counts for less with him than the one woman he loves, and a husband or wife who treasures their spouse as “but one” lives out God’s pattern for marriage. The queens show how to meet another person’s honor: they see her, bless her and praise her. And the beauty Scripture prizes most lies deep in the heart: “But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price” (1 Peter 3:3–4).

If you belong to Christ, he looks on you with this same delight. The beauty he sees in you is the beauty of his own grace, and he will present you to himself without spot.