Song of Solomon 6

The Voice

6 Young Women of Jerusalem (to her): Where has your love gone,
        most beautiful of women?
    Do you know which direction he went
        so we can help you find him?

² Her: Women of Jerusalem, I know where my love is.
        My love has gone into his garden
    Among the beds of aromatic spices,
        like a gazelle grazing among his gardens
        and a gardener gathering the lilies.
³     I belong to my love, and my love to me.
        He feeds his flock among the lilies.

⁴ Him (to her): You are beautiful, my dear, as beautiful as Tirzah,
        as lovely as Jerusalem,
        as regal as an army beneath their banners.
⁵     Turn your eyes from me
        because they overpower me as always.
    Your hair moves as gracefully as a flock of goats
        leaping down the slopes of Mount Gilead.
⁶     Your teeth are pearl white like a flock of sheep shorn,
        fresh up from a wash.
    Each is perfect and paired with another;
        not one of them is lost.
⁷     Your cheeks are rosy and round beneath your veil,
        like the halves of a pomegranate.
⁸     There may be 60 queens and 80 concubines—
        there may be more virgins than can be counted—
⁹     But my dove, my perfect love is the only one for me,
        the only daughter of her mother,
        the pure and favored child to the one who bore her.
    The young women saw her and called her blessed;
        the queens and concubines praised her.

¹⁰ Young Women of Jerusalem: Who is this who looks down like the dawn,
        as radiant as the full moon, as bright as sunlight,
        as majestic as an army beneath their banners?

¹¹ Her: I went down to walk among a stand of walnut trees,
        to take in the new growth of the valley,
    To see if the vines had budded
        or the pomegranates were blooming.
¹²     Before I knew it, my passions set me before some chariots,
        those belonging to my noble people.^[a]

¹³ Young Women of Jerusalem: Come back, come back, O Shulammite!
        Come back, come back to us, so that we can look upon you.

Him: Why should you look upon the Shulammite,
        as you would stare at the dance of joyous victory at Mahanaim?