40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Song of Solomon 1:5-14 (Episode 432)

Episode Date: September 9, 2024

The bride is insecure about having her skin tanned by the sun. She wants the groom to tell her where he tends his sheep. And everything smells amazing.  Have a listen. Show Notes: Support 1517 Podcast Network 1517 Podcasts 1517 on Youtube 1517 Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts 1517 Academy - Free Theological Education What's New from 1517: ·      Junk Drawer Jesus by Matt Poppvits The Inklings: Apostles and Apologists of the Imagination with Sam Schuldheisz Hitchhiking with Prophets: A Ride Through the Salvation Story of the Old Testament by Chad Bird 30 Minutes in the NT on Youtube Remembering Rod Rosenbladt Encouragement for Motherhood Edited by Katie Koplin More from the hosts: Daniel Emery Price Chad Bird

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast and check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. While you're checking that stuff out, make sure you check out all the articles, the events, the videos, the academies, and, of course, the donate link. Check that donate link out. Just click on it and see what happens. I'll tell you what will happen. You'll go to a page, and you can become a supporter of 1517.

That's what will happen. And if you're somebody who does support the work, we appreciate it very much. If you would like to support the work, hit that link and join up. We would appreciate that very much. This is episode number two in the Song of Solomon, or the Song of Songs, which is Solomon, as the book starts with. We did not get very far. We kind of did a long introduction, got into the first couple verses.

Just to recap, you know, it's interesting, the Song of Solomon doesn't start with Solomon. He's not the first one speaking, no. he puts some words in the mouth of the bride. She's going to start out just hot. She comes right out of the gate, and she's like, I need those kisses of your mouth. Your love is better than wine. Hey, your anointing oils are fragrant. You smell good. Your name, I love saying it. It's like the best thing. I can't stop saying it. It's on my lips all the time. Everyone loves you. I I mean, every eligible maiden would love to be in my position right now. In fact, that's a little troublesome, so let's just rush off together.

We're just going to run off to the chambers. And that's kind of where we ended. The bride has not said a bunch yet, but she hasn't wasted any words, Chad. No, it's not a slow lead-in. She jumps right in with both feet. That's a really good summary of those first four verses, too. I mean, she is just, she is all about him, which is, you know, the way love songs work. Now, this one, not only is she all about him, but, you know, when you look at the big perspective,

either analogically or typologically or however you want to view it, this is also the bride of Christ talking to Christ. So this outpouring, this exuberant outpouring of adoration and love and desire, all of that's indicative of just how much she is in love with with him so that's yeah that's first first four and a half verses and then we have a kind of a half verse i guess 4b which is uh most of the time taken as like a like a chorus i suppose like the like the later later greek plays would have a chorus and so not always i mean there's some people interpret this we here as like the woman speaking to the man like we will exalt and rejoice in you but

even though that's possible i think it's better to wonder to understand this as not just this verse but there's some other ones as well it's like a third party maybe it's the daughters of jerusalem which we'll hear about in a minute maybe it's some other chorus but if you if you take this as kind of a dramatization as some people do then this would be you have your your man you have your woman, and you have this chorus which kind of joins on occasion, or in some cases also addressed by the woman. But here they're going to, if we take it as the chorus, they're going to say something about this love that they share. And here's what they say. This is 4b. We will exalt and rejoice in you. We will extol your love more than wine. Rightly do they love you. Those two verbs in

hebrew exalt and rejoice actually occur quite a bit as a pair in the psalms so these are just common expressions for in the psalms rejoicing over the lord exalting over him now in this case we would be this chorus if we take it that way are exalting and rejoicing over you that is in reference to the uh the man so we too she says you know everybody is in love with you and the everybody here represented by the chorus says yeah we're exalting rejoicing in you we're extolling your love more than wine i mean wine's great it's uh it's for rejoicing in some cases leaves you intoxicated well better than that is this kind of love intoxication your love is better than wine and so they conclude by saying rightly do they love you and i take this as

kind of like, as one commentator puts it, it's not surprising that every woman loves you. You're so lovely. You're so desirable. You're so perfect in every way. Of course, every woman is in love with you. So rightly do they love you. So this is kind of a confirmation, we might say, of everything that the female has been saying so far. she praises his love as better than wine and the chorus says we will extol your love more than wine and she talks about how the virgins love you and the chorus responds with yes of course rightly do do they love you so anyway that's the that's the first four verses we haven't gotten very far but each of these verses has so much so many details and and as i've discovered working my way through

this i mean there's they're just because it because it's poetry it tends to pack a lot more into a few verses into a few words and a lot of these are metaphors that uh are just unfamiliar to us or maybe they're familiar from other parts of the scripture but they're used a little bit differently here we're going to come across a lot of images from the animal world or images from the the the uh from plants and flowers and trees or in some cases different family groups like the the people of Kadar. So it just takes some time to kind of unpack this so you can appreciate the poetry

of what is being communicated. Well, in this next part, this response to what was just happening seems to that maybe there's an insecurity here, right? Where everybody loves this guy, and they're like, oh yeah, rightly, does everyone love him? I mean, it's almost involuntary.

I mean, it's uncontrollable. how could you not? And then you see her move into a thing where she talks about maybe some things that, and this doesn't hit us right at all, because this is very strange to us, but for this time, there's something about her that's very obvious, that's very external, that she would think would be a disadvantage for her in this maybe competition for this person's love. yeah yeah and insecurity i think is a good word for it in fact she's uh more than once going to use she kind of balances it but she kind of uses almost self-deprecating descriptions of herself she'll use it here in reference to the color of her skin the tone of her skin in chapter two she's

going to compare herself to just being i'm just one more flower in a whole field of flowers and And what's kind of cool is every time, well, not every time, but most of the time, when she kind of denigrates herself or expresses this insecurity, then her lover, the man, is going to come back and basically take what she says, but use it to demonstrate, oh, no, you're far more than that. So it's his way of taking her and uplifting her and showing her that she is actually gorgeous beyond description. Hey, you know what? Solomon might be the first guy that was like, I actually think a tan is a good thing. Yeah, this might be the first recorded instance of sun-kissed skin being desirable. No one could have thought there'd be a whole industry around trying to fake tan yourself, but Solomon was out in front of this. He thought this was a good thing. If there's not already a tan lotion named Solomon, definitely just putting it out there for someone who's in that field. Let me read 5-7.

So this is the woman speaking. I am very dark, but lovely, O daughters of Jerusalem, like the tents of Kadar, like the curtains of Solomon. do not gaze at me because I am dark because the sun has looked upon me my mother's sons were angry with me they made me keepers of the vineyards but my own vineyard I have not kept tell me you who my soul loves where you pasture your flock where you make it lie down at noon or why should I be like one who veils herself beside the flocks of your companions so I think the first thing you have to point out is that we can tell from the context that this is not a remark upon the color of her skin with regard to her race, but instead this is a sun-darkened color of her skin. And we know that

because, as she says in verse 6, the sun has looked upon me. And yeah, this is why this seems so strange to us, because culturally, I don't know if it's like this around the world today, but certainly in in our culture uh tan skin is considered to be more attractive than than pale skin but here it's the exact opposite now why would this be well because most of the time if you were part of the upper echelon of society if you if you were wealthy then you wouldn't be out you certainly wouldn't be on the beach tanning your skin no no would you have a job working in vineyards where of course because you're exposed to the skin the sun you're gonna have a tan so with her when she says i'm we would say i'm very tan i mean literally it's i'm very dark

but more colloquial english we would say i'm i'm i'm very tan but lovely we would say i'm very tan and lovely but she says i'm very tan but nevertheless even though i have a tan a dark tan i'm i'm still lovely and then she's speaking here to the daughters of jerusalem which i think is important too because the daughter of jerusalem maybe are maybe she's maybe she's the country girl and the daughters of jerusalem of course are are those of the city and maybe this whether it's a real conversation or not really doesn't matter this poetry but like she's talking to the rich elite city girls who wouldn't have a tan and she's saying to them oh yes i've i've got a tan but uh but i'm i'm still i'm still pretty and she's like and then we have a two-fold comparison

like the tents of qadar like the curtains of solomon and i think here one is more of a simile compared to what her skin looks like and more and one is more of a simile that is talking about her beauty so the tents of qadar qadar is a uh the qadar were a bedouin tribe from northern arabia and probably their tents would have been like from the the hair of goats so that would have been black or dark tents there's a couple of in fact there's a couple different times i think the other one is uh what is that psalm 120 too long has my soul had its dwelling with those who had hate peace and he talks about dwelling in the tents of qadar so this is kind of a a picture of not only being away from israel but also of the color of of their tents so

my skin is like the tents of qadar that is it is it's it's dark but then the curtains of solomon would have been beautiful whether this was the curtains of solomon's of the of the temple or maybe something to do with his with his palace whatever it was these would have been of course exquisite curtains, and so she's saying, I'm dark like the tents of Gadar, but I'm lovely like the curtains of Solomon. And maybe there's an implication that she knows what those curtains look like. Yeah, it's very possible. You know, you daughters of Jerusalem might not know this, but my skin is dark like a tent, but I am actually very beautiful. I would compare it to, I don't know, the tents of Solomon.

You might not be familiar with those because you've never been in his house, but I have. I have, yeah. Solomon and I are very close, intimate even, you might say. So she continues, don't look at me,

or stop gazing at me, because I'm dark. And this is not the exact same Hebrew word that she uses above for very dark. It's like a diminutive form of that, but it's basically the same root of that word. Isn't this more like, don't stare at me? Yeah, yeah.

It's kind of like, yeah, you can imagine a bunch of girls in a room, and there's the daughters of Jerusalem, who according to the cultural standards of the day, you know, are looking beautiful because their skin is pale. And there she is, very tan, and they're kind of looking over at her at her and maybe not looking at her in an approving sort of way a little gawking a little gawking a little gawking going on i mean not that not that that ever happens uh of course but in this case it did that would never happen no yeah yeah stop staring at me uh because i'm dark

because i'm extremely tan because the sun has looked upon me okay and now we're finally going to get to the reason why. I mean, she hasn't been out on the beach, nor has she just been working kind of in general outside, but she's been working in a vineyard. So why was she working in a vineyard? Well, evidently, her brothers, whom she calls her mother's sons, and almost seems like a distancing of herself from them, right? Why would you refer to your brother as your mother's sons this is some wicked stepmother stuff going on who knows you might have some fairy tales like lifted right out of this thing as far as okay it's very much a cinderella kind of deal isn't it oh yeah like because you're like okay so we're gonna have this like beautiful peasant girl who doesn't

look like the rest of them because she doesn't you know because she has to work you know like and she has so she has to be outside and these other ones are you know if they go outside it's They have an umbrella and a fan, and they're going to make sure that the sun never touches their skin. Not her. She's got to be out there in the vineyards. Why does she have to go out there in the vineyards? Oh, well, my wicked stepmother, her sons were angry with me, so they just made me do all their work. And you're like, yeah, this is sounding very fairytale-ish.

Very, very fairytale-ish, yeah. And who knows? I mean, there are variations of the Cinderella story. a story i mean we're familiar with kind of the disney virgins but culturally speaking going way back there's all kinds of versions of of this so maybe this is uh there could have been versions of of that floating around already but already back then who knows there's a little play on words here so we got the sun of course as a major theme here but uh the the word for angry is uh hara in hebrew which literally means to be heated against someone.

So it's kind of a play on words here. Yeah, the sun has been heating up my skin. And the reason that happened is because my brothers were incensed, we might say in English would be a good translation for this. My brothers were hot toward me. They were angry with me. They made me keeper of the vineyard. So these mean brothers making her go out and work in the vineyard.

And then when she says this, but my own vineyard I have not kept, We probably need some quotes around Vineyard, because as we'll see as the song develops, Vineyard ends up becoming a metaphor for the human body. There's a lot of metaphors for the human body. In chapter two, she's going to talk about her lover is an apple tree, and she likes to be under his shade and eat of his fruit. and there's all sorts of imagery from uh trees to plants to uh flowers which are connected with the human body so it's kind of a she's talking about literally i got to work in the vineyard that's why i have this tan which isn't the the cultural norm for beauty and because i have this tan because i had to work to get this and i have this tan i i wasn't able to take care of my own

body to keep it from having a tan. That's what she's saying. So I couldn't keep, I couldn't protect my own vineyard, that is to say my own body, from becoming tan because my brothers made me work in the vineyard. So that is sort of a transition to the next verse, because here she's been talking to the daughters of Jerusalem, and now we have an abrupt shift where she's going to talk to her lover this is verse 7 where she says tell me you who my soul loves where you pastor your flock or you make it lie down at noon or why should i be like one who veils herself beside the flocks of your companions so having conversed back and forth with the daughters of jerusalem now she turns to her lover and says where are you basically and he is he's depicted here as as a

shepherd. So he is the one that she loves and she wants to know, Hey, where are you pasturing your flock? And where do you make it lie down at noon? So in this hot, the hot climate of that world, well at noon and probably for a little while after that, you find some shade. You're not going to be out there in the heat of say 12 to two o'clock or 12 to three o'clock or whatever it is trying to find, uh, some, some place to take your, your sheep. You're going to find some shade. So where are you were you at noon were you making your flock lie down because why should i be like one who veils herself beside the flocks of your companions why should i be one who's just basically out there looking for for you i'm going to this group into that group and i can't find

where you're at some people in fact actually quite a few commentators think that maybe if a woman was veiled out there like going from one group to another that she was a prostitute and the reason they say that is because way back in what was that genesis 38 yeah genesis 38 where you have the story of tamar who uh puts a veil on yeah and then when her father-in-law judah comes by she is uh she's hired by him to be to be a prostitute so maybe that's what's going on maybe not. If it is, then she's saying, you know, why do I need to be out here looking like I'm a prostitute when I would much rather be with you, knowing where you are, so I can take off my veil and be with you. Yeah, I think there's two things about this, two empty thoughts about it. Anyway,

one is the guy here, which we would say, of course, is Christ, and then the woman is church. not surprising that this guy's a shepherd okay all right so like jesus is a shepherd in this in this song great uh that all tracks right so just pointing that out in case you missed it there you go you got uh what does this guy do well he does some shepherding which of course uh he's probably the good shepherd chad i would say if if i had to say who this was i think he's this is the best of the shepherds uh that seems i would definitely go with that that seems to be what it is. Also, one of the things that kind of seems like is going on here is there's, as we talked about, there's this insecurity happening, and maybe even from these other daughters of

Jerusalem, maybe this idea that she is not good enough for him, which, by the way, of course, this also goes into the Church and Christ. The Church is not good enough for Christ, obviously. As a member of the Bride of Christ, I could say that definitively, in and of ourselves, we are not good enough for Jesus. He deserves better. But yeah, there seems to be some of that, and it seems that what she's saying is like, I have these insecurities already. There is this perception that I'm not good enough for you, that you could have anyone,

why would you want me? and having me roam around from pasture to pasture and from flock to flock looking for you is actually kind of degrading to me. People are like, well, why can't she not find him? Did he leave her? Can you just tell me where you are so I can be with you? Because I don't want to do this

because this also plays on all those insecurities and people are watching me do this and I don't want to do any of that. And so if you love me, do me this favor and tell me where you are so I can just be with you? Yeah, that's perfect. That's perfect.

And especially what you said at the beginning where she's unworthy of his love. I mean, that tracks not only with the rest of all, you know, in Scripture as well as our own lives. But I know that I looked at this,

it's been probably two or three years ago now, but I was interested in that verse about being dark but lovely. And if you look at all of the medieval commentators who treated this allegorically, i mean they made a lot out of that simply because it fits with fits with the church's life you know

we are unattractive in the sense that in and of ourselves we have as they might have said we have been tanned by all the dark forces of of this world but i mean besides the allegory i mean it does fit the it's not like christ came down from heaven and he looked around and he chose as his own this group of morally just beautifully righteous people you know the the best of the best no that's not the way this works he uh he came for sinners and that fits with her own self-description as one who has been exposed to the Son, and so also we ourselves don't match the beauty of what we'd expect that Christ would be looking for.

Yeah, it's the fact that the Church is not loved because it is lovely. It is made lovely because it is loved by Christ. Yeah, I don't remember who said this first, but the idea that even before christ looked at us he loved us yeah you know it's different it's different than i mean every guy knows this you know you're looking for someone who's lovely in your eyes at least and you don't know that until you see the woman right and like oh she's attractive she's beautiful she's lovely so we look and then we see beauty and we're attracted to that and with christ it's the opposite even before he looks he uh he loves and then his love actually

makes the beloved beautiful yeah and we're finally going to get to him now so he's gonna he's gonna have something to say she's been doing all the talking besides the chorus and now we finally get to hear from from him and here's what he says this is going to be uh eight nine and ten so this is a response to her she's basically saying hey let me know where you're at I want to be with you. I don't be wandering around looking for you. And he says this, if you don't know, oh, most beautiful among women, follow in the tracks of the flock and pasture your young goats beside the shepherd's tents. I compare you, my love, to a mare among Pharaoh's chariots. Your cheeks are lovely with ornaments, your neck with a string of jewels.

It's almost, I don't know if this is right or not, but it almost kind of sounds teasing as he starts out. He first of all says, of course, you are the most beautiful among women. I don't mean teasing there. But when he says, follow in the tracks of the flocks and pasture your young goats beside the shepherd's tents, almost as if to say, oh, come on, you can find me. All you have to do is follow the tracks and you'll figure out where I'm at.

So I don't know what, anyway, that's the way it strikes me. But either way, he's telling her, you can find me. Just follow the tracks of the flock. I mean, it's not hard to follow. You don't have to be like some sort of Native American tracker who can put his nose to the ground and say, oh, someone was here five days ago. You can track.

You can follow the flock, and then you'll know where I'm at. I love the way it begins, though, because she's been talking about her skin and why it is the way it is. and he then turns around by affirming her beauty he doesn't just say if you don't know oh beautiful woman he says if you don't know oh most beautiful among women so he right away he's elevating her to this highest level of beauty and then following that up following that compliment up was saying here's the way that you can find where i'm at yeah and then he makes a comparison go ahead oh so i actually really I really love verse uh eight uh I did a a talk of you know years and years and

years ago uh called I think it was called the the old roads uh but it's basically just a talk about um the the ancient paths to God and uh and this is actually one of the the verses that I used in and there's this, just as if you take this as the Bride of Christ, saying, where do I find you? He simply says, don't you know where to find me? You just follow the tracks where the sheep have always gone, right? And I think this is how this works. If we're asking ourselves as the Bride of Christ, where do we find you? It's like, well, follow the sheep. Where do they go, right? And this, what I was talking about, I was talking about going to the places where God has said,

where he's found, which is in the church, you know, in baptism, in the Lord's Supper, in the preaching of the Word, but it's just, well, don't try to, don't you know? Like, the sheep have gone, have walked this path many a time. This is well-trodden. Follow the rest of the sheep, and you'll find me. I'm where the sheep are. yeah which is which is good that is perfect that is perfect it also reminds me of uh kind of this exchange like you should you should be able to know where i'm at reminds me of john 14

when uh jesus says you know the way i'm going yeah and thomas is like we don't even know where you're going how can we know the way yeah and i always i always see this as one of those like Jesus looks like right into Thomas's eyes. I am the way, the truth, and the life. It's not hard to find me. You're looking at the way right here. Yeah. Yeah, that's perfect.

I mean, he is the way. You follow the path of the sheep. That's exactly how you find where Christ is. Well, Jesus, God's answer to like, where are you is, I feel like, always the same. It's like, where I said I'd be. yeah it's it that is one of the beautiful things about uh old testament and new testament god does not play hide and seek he's not he's not difficult to find he's always like it's always like to say especially with the old testament you uh you ask any israelite where god

is and they should be able to tell you the precise location yeah not just zip code but like address oh he's right over there that that tent that's where god is or that temple that's that's where god is there's no none of this well he's he's somewhere up in the hills deep inside a dark cave and if you search long and hard enough you can find him now he's like conspicuous he's always where you know he is to be to be found yeah and then uh so having said that verse nine he makes a comparison that i have to say my uh this sounds like my dad my dad would make this kind of comparison my my dad this is how your dad this is how your dad roped your mother in right here chad this is how it happened yeah uh he laid eyes on her and dropped this line yep pun intended

actually yeah my dad was always my so my dad was born with a a love of horses it was like in his dna so he was born in 1941 and i don't know what they were making recordings on back then but my grandparents still possessed this recording of my dad and he could not have been more than three or four years old and he was talking non-stop about horses and they had no horses it wasn't like he was raised in a family of of horse people they didn't have any but he loved horses uh from the time he was uh you know the youngest kid to the to his to his dying day and he would he would always make comparisons between horses and women which he didn't mean it derogatorily it just it's just what he did so this would have been a a verse that my dad would

definitely have identified with where where solomon says i compare you my love to a mare among pharaoh's chariots uh now i think a couple of things are going on here number one of course pharaoh's chariots is is pointing toward egypt and egypt was known as like if you if you wanted a top quality horse in the ancient world you went to egypt i mean that was those that was the best of the best so if you got a horse from egypt then it was a top notch and the mare part here is significant so not just a horse and certainly not a stud but a mare among pharaoh's chariots a couple things could be going on here number one of course she's a female so if you're going to compare her to a horse then you compare her to a mare but also another thing that might

be happening here is he's saying that you're so beautiful, you're so attractive, that you tend to catch the eye and almost be a distraction to all the guys who are around you. I can't remember which Pharaoh it was, but there was a battle in Egypt where the Pharaoh took a mare who was in heat and released her among the uh the chariot forces of the enemy and this mayor in heat just messed everything up because all the studs were pulling the chariots were just completely distracted by by the mayor so either he's just comparing her to like the most beautiful of horses or he's also saying you are a distraction to every man that you're around because you're you're so beautiful i don't mean i don't know exactly what horses are pulling pharaoh's

chariots but uh it seems like at the very least the implication here is that you stand out right because that would stand you back what is this horse doing here yeah yeah you you stand i don't i i think i from what i ever read they use studs i guess they suppose they could have used gildings but anyway uh wouldn't they would not use marriage to pull the chariots. So yeah, she definitely stands out. We also have here the first occurrence of the, I don't know if term of endearment is right or romantic nickname or whatever you want to call it, but the man is going to call her Raya, which is translated here as love. So Raya is going to occur throughout the poem. This is just kind of his, you know,

whatever you call your spouse or your girlfriend or boyfriend whatever you call them you know beautiful or sweetheart or darling or whatever it is this is the word that he uses to describe her so Raya and her name for him is going to come up in a few more verses and she calls him Dode or Dodee which is usually translated as beloved so just two different ways in which he addresses her and then she addresses him so esv translates his address of her as my love and then her address of him as my beloved but this is the first occurrence of what he calls her and then he compares uh her cheeks as being lovely with ornaments and her neck with a with a string of jewels just one more of the ways in which he's describing her her beauty and then we have another

the course verse 11 which is pretty short we will make for you ornaments of gold studded with silver this kind of piggybacking off of his description of her with ornaments and jewels and the chorus echoes this saying oh yeah we'll add to that we're going to make for you these golden ornaments that are studded with with silver okay we got time for a couple more let's let's give it a shot man all right so we'll do three more verses this is her speaking she says while the king was on his couch my nard gave forth its fragrance my beloved and this is her term of endearment for him so this is dode or dodi my beloved is to me a sachet of myrrh that lies between my breast my beloved is to me a cluster of henna blossoms in the vineyards of in get a so we go from there's three just three

descriptions of perfumes that are used here nard and then myrrh and then henna and in uh in order it's like the the hardest to get so nard and that's nard is actually uh almost a uh a transliteration of the hebrew naird is the hebrew there and this is not this this particular product comes from the himalayas i mean it's it's an exotic kind of perfume so would have been very expensive very very hard to get so the king is on a couch and kind of see him reclining there it's a love scene and she says that my nard gave forth his fragrance so she's you know of course developing the sense of smell here and then she compares him her dode or dodee my beloved is to me a sachet of of myrrh now myrrh is a little bit easier to get and of course we have

myrrh described uh in the in the new testament of course that's one of the gifts that the magi bring to jesus and myrrh is connected a lot of times with burials it's a little bit more difficult to get but not nearly as hard to get as nard is so she compares him to a sachet of myrrh that lies between her breasts. So you have this image of the two in this intimate embrace, and just like a sashay, a myrrh would hang down there between her breasts. Well, then that's where he is. He's lying there on her breast and presumably on the couch. And then she has one more comparison to make. She says, my beloved is to me a cluster of henna blossoms in the vineyards of En Gedi. and henna was very very common of course we mainly associate henna today with the

the tattoo-like figures that are drawn upon you know hands and whatnot but they also have a fragrance evidently i don't know what henna smells like but everything i read says it's kind of an earthy smell but henna was readily available in uh in the ancient near east and that's how she finishes this off like a cluster of henna blossoms in the vineyards of engedi engedi is a an oasis Ein Gedi, it means spring of the goat. And it's an oasis on the western shore of the Dead Sea. I was there a couple of years ago when we went to Israel. Just a beautiful place.

Like you're in the middle of complete desert. And there's this water that just comes cascading down off the mountains. And there's deer everywhere. There's all sorts of plant growth. So it's like this just beautiful oasis in the midst of the desert. And we know that dating is as far back as we can tell, that there were vineyards there, there were all kinds of things that were grown there as far as fruit trees and whatnot. So that's how she compares him to this cluster of henna blossoms in the vineyards of En Gedi. So it's an image that's connected with smell and with feel and with sight in which she describes in these various ways how precious he is to her.

Yeah, it seems like everything's smelling very good in this situation, of course. This is good. So she's whipped out the most expensive, best-smelling thing that she possesses for this occasion, this date at the king's house. Do you think there's anything to this, as you have, like, my beloved is like a sachet of myrrh that lies between my breasts? Is there, because of what myrrh is, there is a sort of commitment unto death kind of enveloped in that language? Like when you say, like, this is something I'm committed to this thing until the end, right? Like, this is how I'm going to die like this. Yeah, and that would certainly fit with one of the more famous lines of the Song of Songs, that, you know, love is stronger than death.

So there is this idea that a power greater than death itself has bonded us together. and yeah the myrrh would would fit with that with that theme yeah all right man well we have got to leave it there we are out of time we still this this might take longer than we anticipated there might be more going on and we're trying to lots to talk about trying to dissect the poetry here but uh we'll be back next episode and uh we will get into chapter two after we wrap up this this first chapter chad i'll see you then all right see you then We'll see you next time.