Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Song of Solomon · About this commentary
My Vineyard Is My Own
Song of Solomon 8:11-14
11 Solomon had a vineyard at Baal Hamon. He leased out the vineyard to keepers. Each was to bring a thousand shekels of silver for its fruit. · WEB
Solomon's leased vineyard is set beside the one vineyard that cannot be rented, and the book ends with the lovers still calling each other onward.
Solomon had a vineyard at Baal Hamon — a place whose name means something like lord of a multitude, and the arrangement matches it: leased to keepers, a thousand silver pieces each for its fruit. Wealth by delegation, love of increase managed by contract. The verse states it without complaint; it is simply how kings hold vineyards.
Her answer is the book's last argument: my vineyard, my very own, is before me. The thousand is yours, Solomon. The vineyard is herself — the book opened with her forced to keep others' vines while her own went untended Song of Solomon 1:6, and it closes with that vineyard wholly hers and freely given, not for hire. Keep the money; what matters here was never on the market. It is the previous scene's verdict enacted Song of Solomon 8:7: all the wealth of a house, waved away with a king's own rent.
Then the last exchange. He asks — as he asked at the clefts of the rock Song of Solomon 2:14 — for her voice: companions are listening, let me hear it. And the final verse of the book is that voice, telling him to run: come away, my beloved, and be like a gazelle on the mountains of spices.
The Song ends on an imperative of motion. Not an arrival, not a settling — an invitation still in the air, desire still running and still welcome. The book closes the way it opened Song of Solomon 1:2: her voice, wanting — and after everything between, wanting the same one.
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