The Song of Solomon
8 “O that you were like a brother of mine,+ sucking the breasts of my mother!+ Should I find you outside, I would kiss you.+ People would not even despise me. 2 I would lead you, I would bring you into the house of my mother,+ who used to teach me. I would give you a drink of spiced wine,+ the fresh juice of pomegranates. 3 His left hand would be under my head; and his right hand—it would embrace me.+
4 “I have put YOU under oath, O daughters of Jerusalem, that YOU try not to awaken or arouse love [in me] until it feels inclined.”+
5 “Who is this woman+ coming up from the wilderness,+ leaning upon her dear one?”+
“Under the apple tree I aroused you.* There your mother was in birth pangs with you. There she that was giving birth to you experienced birth pangs.+
6 “Place me as a seal upon your* heart,+ as a seal upon your arm; because love is as strong as death is,+ insistence on exclusive devotion+ is as unyielding as Sheʹol* is. Its blazings are the blazings of a fire, the flame of Jah.*+ 7 Many waters themselves are not able to extinguish love,+ nor can rivers themselves wash it away.+ If a man* would give all the valuable things of his house for love, persons would positively despise them.”*
8 “We have a little sister+ that does not have any breasts. What shall we do for our sister on the day that she will be spoken for?”
9 “If she should be a wall,+ we shall build upon her a battlement of silver; but if she should be a door,+ we shall block her up with a cedar plank.”
10 “I am a wall, and my breasts are like towers.+ In this case I have become in his eyes like her that is finding peace.
11 “There was a vineyard+ that Solʹo·mon happened to have in Baʹal-haʹmon. He gave the vineyard over to the keepers.+ Each one would bring in for its fruitage a thousand silver pieces.*
12 “My vineyard, which belongs to me, is at my disposal.* The thousand belong to you, O Solʹo·mon, and two hundred to those keeping its fruitage.”
13 “O you who are dwelling in the gardens,+ the partners are paying attention to your* voice. Let me hear it.”+
14 “Run away, my dear one, and make yourself* like a gazelle or like a young one of the stags upon the mountains of spices.”+