Awesome as an Army with Banners
4 You are beautiful, my love, as Tirzah, lovely as Jerusalem, awesome as an army with banners. 5 Turn away your eyes from me, for they have overcome me. Your hair is like a flock of goats, that lie along the side of Gilead. 6 Your teeth are like a flock of ewes, which have come up from the washing, of which every one has twins; not one is bereaved among them. 7 Your temples are like a piece of a pomegranate behind your veil. 8 There are sixty queens, eighty concubines, and virgins without number. 9 My dove, my perfect one, is unique. She is her mother’s only daughter. She is the favorite one of her who bore her. The daughters saw her, and called her blessed. The queens and the concubines saw her, and they praised her. 10 Who is she who looks out as the morning, beautiful as the moon, clear as the sun, and awesome as an army with banners?
Her beauty is compared to two capitals and an army, the old praise returns unchanged after the failure, and the court itself concedes.
Beautiful as Tirzah, lovely as Jerusalem — he praises her by the two most splendid made things his world offered: cities, and specifically the twin capitals, Tirzah in the north and Jerusalem in the south. Then past cities to power itself: awesome as an army with banners. Her beauty does not merely please; it routs. The next line surrenders: turn your eyes away, for they overwhelm me.
Verses 5 to 7 then do something a first-time reader misses and the Hebrew makes measurable: they repeat the praise of the first great poem — the goats descending Gilead, the ewes coming up from the washing with none missing, the pomegranate temples Song of Solomon 4:1–3 — nearly word for word, one term changed. After her refusal at the door and everything it cost, he says the same words about her as before. Constancy is performed rather than claimed: the failure changed nothing in the inventory.
Then the arithmetic of the court. Sixty queens, eighty concubines, maidens beyond counting — and against the whole roster: my dove, my perfect one, is one. Not first in the ranking; outside it. Her mother's only one, and — the poem's quiet coup — the queens and concubines themselves saw her and praised her. The competition concedes the category.
Their words close the scene, climbing the sky as they go: who is she, looking forth like the dawn, fair as the moon, clear as the sun — and the army line returns, now in the harem's own mouth Song of Solomon 6:10.
settled What this mark means