Song of Solomon 6

World English Bible 84 include this book

1 Where has your beloved gone, you fairest among women? Where has your beloved turned, that we may seek him with you?

2 My beloved has gone down to his garden, to the beds of spices, to pasture his flock in the gardens, and to gather lilies.

3 I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine. He browses among the lilies.

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?

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.

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2 places named in this chapter.

Where this was written

Jerusalem disputed Associated with Solomon's court; the setting is literary rather than documentary.

When this was written

Traditions differ. Each position is shown rather than one asserted as settled.

Traditional: 970 BC–931 BC Solomon
Ascribed to Solomon by the text's own superscription.
Critical: 450 BC–200 BC Anonymous
Language and vocabulary, including Persian and possibly Greek influence, point to a much later composition.

Elsewhere in the world

Events overlapping the period this book is dated to (970 BC–200 BC).

1200 BC–400 BC Olmec civilisation Mesoamerica
The earliest major Mesoamerican civilisation, known for colossal stone heads and an early calendar.
1200 BC–600 BC Zoroaster teaches in Persia Persia
Founder of Zoroastrianism, whose dating is disputed by as much as six centuries. His teaching on a cosmic struggle between good and evil later touched Jewish and Christian thought.
1070 BC–350 AD The kingdom of Kush Africa
A Nubian power on the upper Nile that ruled Egypt itself as its twenty-fifth dynasty.
1050 BC–800 BC The Phoenician alphabet spreads Levant
A compact consonantal alphabet that became the ancestor of Greek, Latin and Hebrew scripts.
776 BC First recorded Olympiad Greece
The traditional starting point of Greek historical chronology.
753 BC Traditional founding of Rome Rome
The legendary date of Rome's founding, later used as the anchor of the Roman calendar.
745 BC–609 BC Neo-Assyrian empire at its height Mesopotamia
Assyria dominated the Near East, deporting conquered populations as policy, including the northern kingdom of Israel.
620 BC–560 BC Coinage invented in Lydia Anatolia
Stamped electrum coins of guaranteed weight, an idea that spread across the ancient world within a century.

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