Oh That You Were as My Brother
1 Oh that you were like my brother, who nursed from the breasts of my mother! If I found you outside, I would kiss you; yes, and no one would despise me. 2 I would lead you, bringing you into the house of my mother, who would instruct me. I would have you drink spiced wine, of the juice of my pomegranate. 3 His left hand would be under my head. His right hand would embrace me. 4 I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, that you not stir up, nor awaken love, until it so desires.
The wish is for a love that could be public without cost, and the final refrain of patience arrives with its oath formula gone.
Oh that you were like my brother, who nursed at my mother's breasts. The wish sounds strange until its purpose is read. If he were her brother, she could kiss him in the street, and no one would despise her. She is not wishing for a different love but for a different world — one where affection need not calculate its audience. The Song has been honest throughout that this love has watchers: daughters, watchmen, brothers, sixty queens. Here the bride simply says what every pair under observation has thought.
The mother's house returns Song of Solomon 3:4 — she would teach me. Now the bride is the host in it, serving spiced wine and her own pomegranate juice. The girl whose brothers once ordered her to the vineyards Song of Solomon 1:6 presides over the household's hospitality.
The embrace refrain returns word for word: his left hand under her head, his right arm around her Song of Solomon 2:6. The book's way of showing constancy is repetition without revision.
Then, for the third and last time: do not stir up or awaken love until it pleases Song of Solomon 2:7 Song of Solomon 3:5. But the gazelles and does of the oath are gone. On its final repetition the formula sheds its ceremony. By now the daughters need no oath, and the rule stands bare. Three times, in a poem this full of wanting, the most repeated command is patience.
settled What this mark means