Come with Me from Lebanon
8 Come with me from Lebanon, my bride, with me from Lebanon. Look from the top of Amana, from the top of Senir and Hermon, from the lions’ dens, from the mountains of the leopards. 9 You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride. You have ravished my heart with one of your eyes, with one chain of your neck. 10 How beautiful is your love, my sister, my bride! How much better is your love than wine, the fragrance of your perfumes than all kinds of spices! 11 Your lips, my bride, drip like the honeycomb. Honey and milk are under your tongue. The smell of your garments is like the smell of Lebanon.
The word bride enters the book here and nowhere else, and she is called down from the heights where predators live.
The title arrives without warning: my bride. It occurs six times in the Song, all of them inside this one movement, from here to the garden's opening Song of Solomon 4:12 Song of Solomon 5:1, and never again. The book spends its wedding word all at once, exactly where the poem approaches the wedding's center.
And twice it is my sister, my bride — kinship doubled onto covenant. The point of the strange pairing is permanence: a sister is family by blood, unchangeably; a bride is family by choice. He names her family twice over, by the bond that cannot be dissolved and the bond that was freely made.
The geography is the far north at its wildest — Lebanon, the peaks of Amana, Senir, Hermon — and the company is dangerous: lions' dens, leopard mountains. Come with me from Lebanon — down from the beautiful, perilous heights, away from what hunts there, to him.
Then the confession of conquest running the other way: you have ravished my heart with one glance of your eyes, with one jewel of your necklace. The whole man undone by the smallest part. He borrows her own first praise and returns it — how much better is your love than wine Song of Solomon 1:2 — the lovers keep trading each other's lines. Her lips drip honeycomb; milk and honey are under her tongue — the land's own abundance-formula Exodus 3:8 applied to her kisses — and her garments carry the scent of Lebanon she was called away from. She left the mountains; the fragrance came with her.
settled What this mark means