She stops claiming him. The sentence she has been rearranging since chapter 2 loses its second half entirely, and what is left is the word Eve was given in the garden — pointing the other way.
A study in Song of Solomon 7 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 13 min read
O Prince’s Daughter
“How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince’s daughter!”
Song of Solomon 7:1
Go back to how this woman introduced herself.
“Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me: my mother’s children were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept.”
Song of Solomon 1:6
A field hand, put to work by her own family, embarrassed to be looked at. That is chapter 1.
Six chapters later she is a prince’s daughter, and the first thing praised about her is her shoes. The woman who was sent out to keep somebody else’s vineyard is now dressed like royalty, and nothing in the book says she worked her way there. She was told she was flawless in chapter 4, she failed in chapter 5, and she was described in identical terms afterwards in chapter 6. This is simply what she is now.
A brief word about the chapter, since this is the most physically frank passage in the book. What was said in Before You Begin still governs it: the relationship is the type; the anatomy is not. Paul takes this marriage into Ephesians 5 and decodes not one physical feature. So we will read what the chapter is doing — and what it is doing turns out to be remarkable.
This Time He Starts At Her Feet
This is the third time he has described her at length, and something has changed that you can only see by laying the three side by side.
- 4:1-5 — eyes, hair, teeth, lips, temples, neck. Downward, from the head.
- 6:5-7 — eyes, hair, teeth, temples. Downward again, from the head.
- 7:1-5 — feet, thighs, waist, neck, eyes, nose, head. Upward, from the ground.
The direction reverses. Twice he began at her face; here he begins at the part of her that touches the road, and works up.
And I do not think it is an accident that a book which has just watched this woman become a witness now opens its description of her at her feet. Consider what she did at the end of chapter 5 and the start of chapter 6: she was asked what made her beloved so special, she described him for seven verses, and a crowd of bystanders said “that we may seek him with thee” (6:1). Then she told them where he was.
The Bible has a settled way of talking about the feet of people who do that:
“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace… that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth!”
Isaiah 52:7
“How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!”
Romans 10:15
Let me be careful and say exactly what I am claiming, because it is easy to overreach here. The Song is not quoting Isaiah, and Isaiah is not quoting the Song; these are different Hebrew words in different centuries. What I am pointing at is that Scripture repeatedly calls feet beautiful for one particular reason — because of where they have carried good news — and that this book chooses, at exactly the point where its heroine has started telling people about him, to begin its praise of her at the ground.
Notice too that her feet have shoes on. In chapter 5 she was arguing that she had washed her feet and did not want to dirty them again. She is not lying in bed protecting her feet any more. She is shod, which is what you are when you are going somewhere.
The King Is Held In The Galleries
“Thine head upon thee is like Carmel, and the hair of thine head like purple; the king is held in the galleries.”
Song of Solomon 7:5
The king is held.
This is the third time the book has said something like this and each one is stronger than the last. In 4:9 she ravished his heart with one of her eyes. In 6:5 he asked her to turn away thine eyes from me, for they have overcome me. Here he is simply captive.
The one who has done all the travelling in this book — over mountains, through the night, standing at a locked door with his hair full of dew — is not going anywhere. He is caught, and the poem reports it as a pleasant fact.
For Delights
“How fair and how pleasant art thou, O love, for delights!”
Song of Solomon 7:6
If you take one verse out of this book and carry it around with you, it should probably be this one, because it says the thing almost nobody believes.
For delights.
Not for duty. Not for pity. Not for the sake of the covenant, or because he said he would, or because somebody has to. He is looking at her and using the word delight, and the sentence has no other business in it.
Here is the state of most Christians, and it is worth saying out loud. Most people can believe that God will forgive them; the cross is preached often enough that it lands eventually. A good many can believe He is patient with them, because they have needed a great deal of patience and are still here. Very few — almost none — can believe that God enjoys them.
And that is the gap this book was put in the Bible to close. It is not an argument that God tolerates His people. It is ninety-six verses of a man who cannot stop talking about somebody, and then the line how fair and how pleasant art thou, O love, for delights.
Remember also who he is saying it to and when. This is two chapters after she let him stand outside in the rain.
She Finishes His Sentence
“And the roof of thy mouth like the best wine for my beloved, that goeth down sweetly, causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak.”
Song of Solomon 7:9
Something happens in the middle of this verse that is easy to miss and delightful once you see it.
He is speaking. He has been speaking since verse 1. Then, mid-sentence, the words “for my beloved” appear — and my beloved is her word for him. It appears in twenty-three verses of this book and it is hers every time; he never once uses it of himself.
Which is why many readers take verse 9 as the point where she interrupts and finishes his sentence for him. He says her mouth is like the best wine; she takes the metaphor out of his hands and says — yes, wine that goes down sweetly, for my beloved.
Remember that this is the woman who in chapter 1 spoke about him before she could bring herself to speak to him. She is now completing his sentences.
And look at the last clause, which is one of the strangest and best phrases in Scripture: wine “causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak.” Whatever else it means, it means something got into a sleeper and made them talk — which is exactly what happened to the woman who said, back in 5:2, I sleep, but my heart waketh.
His Desire Is Toward Me
“I am my beloved’s, and his desire is toward me.”
Song of Solomon 7:10
This is the summit of the book, and it is eleven words long.
Follow the sentence she has been rearranging since chapter 2:
- 2:16 — “My beloved is mine, and I am his.” Her claim first. Possession.
- 6:3 — “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.” Her belonging first. Still a claim attached.
- 7:10 — “I am my beloved’s, and his desire is toward me.” The claim is gone.
She does not say and he is mine any more. She does not need the second half. What she puts there instead is not something she owns at all — it is something he feels. She has stopped resting on her grip and started resting on his wanting her.
Possession, then belonging, then being desired. That is the spiritual life of this book in three sentences, and if you want to know where you are in it, notice which of the three comes most naturally out of your own mouth.
Now the part that should raise the hair on your arms.
The Hebrew word rendered desire here is a rare one. It occurs three times in the entire Old Testament. Two of them are in Genesis, and both are in the wreckage:
“Unto the woman he said… thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”
Genesis 3:16
“And if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.”
Genesis 4:7
The word enters Scripture in the sentence God speaks to Eve after the fall, and it appears again a chapter later, spoken to Cain about sin crouching at his door. Then it does not appear again anywhere in the Old Testament — until a woman in a love song says it, and says it pointing the other way.
In Genesis 3:16 the desire runs from the woman toward the man. In Song of Solomon 7:10 it runs from the man toward the woman. Same rare word, opposite direction, and the second one is spoken by a woman who is happy.
I want to state that carefully rather than dramatically, because it is the sort of claim that gets repeated badly. This is an observation about the distribution of one Hebrew word, and the Song does not announce that it is undoing Genesis 3. But the fact itself is checkable, and it is remarkable: the vocabulary of the curse turns up exactly once more in the Hebrew Bible, in the mouth of a bride, reversed.
Come, My Beloved, Let Us Go Forth
“Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field; let us lodge in the villages. Let us get up early to the vineyards; let us see if the vine flourish, whether the tender grape appear, and the pomegranates bud forth: there will I give thee my loves.”
Song of Solomon 7:11, 12
And now, for the first time in seven chapters, she leads.
Count the invitations in this book and you will find that every one of them until now has been his. Rise up, my love, and come away (2:10, 13). Come with me from Lebanon (4:8). She has answered, resisted, searched, and admired — but she has never once been the one to say let’s go.
Here she says it three times in two verses: let us go forth, let us lodge, let us get up early.
And where does she take him? To see if the vine flourish. Which is precisely where he went alone in 6:11 — “I went down into the garden of nuts… to see whether the vine flourished.” She has learned what he cares about, and she is taking him back to it.
There is also a quiet repair in verse 12 that is easy to walk past. Her whole complaint in chapter 1 was about vineyards: her family made her keep them, and “mine own vineyard have I not kept.” The vineyard was the site of her shame. Now she is going to a vineyard early in the morning, on purpose, with him, and calling it a good time.
“The mandrakes give a smell, and at our gates are all manner of pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for thee, O my beloved.”
Song of Solomon 7:13
Which I have laid up for thee. She has been storing things for him — new and old, put by over time, waiting at the gate. The woman who had nothing to offer but a sunburn and an unkept vineyard has a cupboard now.
Where This Chapter Sits
Chapter 6 turned the possessive around. Chapter 7 removes it.
She stops claiming him. 7:10 keeps only two things: whose she is, and that he wants her. Everything the book has been building toward lands in that half-verse.
She initiates. Every invitation in the book has been his until 7:11, and then she gives three in two verses.
She takes him where he already goes. The vineyard of 7:12 is his errand from 6:11 and her humiliation from 1:6, and she has made it a date.
And she has provisions. New and old, which I have laid up for thee.
Notice what has quietly disappeared: the anxiety. There is no searching in chapter 7, no watchmen, no locked door, no asking anyone where he is. She is not worried about losing him and she is not working to hold him. She simply belongs to him and knows he wants her, and on the strength of that she suggests they go out for the day.
That is what a person looks like when they have stopped trying to secure God’s affection and started living off it. One chapter remains, and in it she will stop describing love and define it.
