Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Song of Solomon · About this commentary
His Banner over Me Was Love
Song of Solomon 2:4-7
4 He brought me to the banquet hall. His banner over me is love. · WEB
The first refrain of restraint arrives exactly where desire runs highest, and the oath is sworn by wild creatures rather than by God.
He brings her to the banquet hall — literally the house of wine — and his banner over her is love. A banner is a public thing. It is raised to be seen from a distance, and it says whose company this is. Whatever else this love is, it is not hidden.
Verse 5 is the book at its most physically honest: sustain me with raisins, refresh me with apples, for I am faint with love. Desire in the Song is a real appetite with real effects. She asks for food the way the weak ask for it. Then the embrace, plain and unleering: his left hand under her head, his right arm around her. The book repeats the line late in its course Song of Solomon 8:3.
And exactly here, at the warmest point so far, the refrain: do not stir up or awaken love until it pleases. She swears the daughters of Jerusalem to it by the gazelles and the does of the field. The book says it three times Song of Solomon 3:5 Song of Solomon 8:4, and its placement is the argument. The counsel of patience is issued from inside the embrace, not from outside it. Love has its own timing, and the strongest oath in the Song guards it.
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