3 The Girl: “One night my lover was missing from my bed. I got up to look for him but couldn’t find him. ² I went out into the streets of the city and the roads to seek him, but I searched in vain. ³ The police stopped me, and I said to them, ‘Have you seen him anywhere, this one I love so much?’ ⁴ It was only a little while afterwards that I found him and held him and would not let him go until I had brought him into my childhood home, into my mother’s old bedroom. ⁵ I adjure you, O women of Jerusalem, by the gazelles and deer of the park, not to awake my lover. Let him sleep.”

The Young Women of Jerusalem: ⁶ “Who is this sweeping in from the deserts like a cloud of smoke along the ground, smelling of myrrh and frankincense and every other spice that can be bought? ⁷ Look, it is the chariot^[a] of Solomon with sixty of the mightiest men of his army surrounding it. ⁸ They are all skilled swordsmen and experienced bodyguards. Each one has his sword upon his thigh to defend his king against any onslaught in the night. ⁹ For King Solomon made himself a chariot from the wood of Lebanon. ¹⁰ Its posts are silver, its canopy gold, the seat is purple; and the back is inlaid with these words: ‘With love from the girls of Jerusalem!’”

The Girl: ¹¹ “Go out and see King Solomon, O young women of Zion; see the crown with which his mother crowned him on his wedding day, his day of gladness.”