Return, O Shulammite
11 I went down into the nut tree grove, to see the green plants of the valley, to see whether the vine budded, and the pomegranates were in flower. 12 Without realizing it, my desire set me with my royal people’s chariots. 13 Return, return, Shulammite! Return, return, that we may gaze at you. Lover Why do you desire to gaze at the Shulammite, as at the dance of Mahanaim?
The book's most obscure verse sits here, and the woman's one title appears — a feminine echo of the king's own name.
She goes down to the nut orchard to check the valley's growth — had the vine budded, were the pomegranates in flower? The Song's lovers keep inspecting the spring Song of Solomon 2:11–13 Song of Solomon 7:12. Their love keeps time by the farm year. Its milestones are blossoms.
Verse 12 is the most obscure sentence in the book. The English translations cannot be reconciled: a desire setting her among royal chariots, a soul making her like the chariots of a man named Amminadib, chariots of a princely people. No reading commands confidence, and the sentence keeps its secret. The little that is sure is still worth saying.
Then the calling voices — return, return, that we may gaze at you — and with them her one title in all of Scripture: the Shulammite H7759. The form is feminine. Its consonants answer to Solomon's own name: as Shelomoh is built on shalom, peace, so is Shulammit. Some hear a hometown in it. Whatever its derivation, the book lands her story on the word itself, when she stands at the end as one who finds peace Song of Solomon 8:10. The peace-king and the peace-woman, named from the same root.
The watchers want a spectacle — why gaze at her as at the dance of Mahanaim, the two-camps place of Jacob's naming Genesis 32:2? The next poem answers by taking the gazing away from them. The praise that follows is his alone.
held with reason What this mark means