Old/New Testament
The young women of Jerusalem:
6 Tell us this, most beautiful of all women.
Where has your lover gone?
Which way did he go?
Tell us, so that we can look for him with you.
The young woman:
2 My lover has gone down to his garden.
He has gone to his garden of spice trees.
He has gone there to walk in the gardens
and to pick lilies.
3 My lover belongs to me,
and I belong to him.
He moves among the lilies with his sheep.
The young man:
4 My dear friend, you are as beautiful as Tirzah.
You are as lovely as Jerusalem.[a]
You are as wonderful as an army that is waving its flags.[b]
5 Turn your eyes away from me.
They give me pleasure that is too strong for me!
Your hair is like a group of goats
that are coming down from Mount Gilead.
6 Your teeth are very white
like a group of clean sheep that is coming from the pool of water.
Each tooth is one of a pair.
Not one of them is alone.
7 The sides of your face are beautiful,
like the halves of a pomegranate.
I see them through your veil.
8 A king may have 60 queens.
He may have 80 slave wives.
He may have many other young women too.
There may be too many for him to count![c]
9 But there is only one woman that I want.
Nobody is like her in any way.
She is my perfect one, as lovely as a dove.
She is the special daughter of her mother.
Her mother loves her best among all her children.
The young women saw her and they praised her.
The queens and the slave wives also praised her.
10 They said, ‘She is like the light that appears at dawn.
She is as beautiful as the moon.
She is as bright as the sun.
She is as wonderful as the stars that shine brightly in their places.’
11 I went down to the garden of walnut trees.[d]
I wanted to see the new plants that were growing in the valley;
to see if the vines had new leaves now;
to see if the pomegranate trees had flowers.
12 I became so happy
that I did not understand what was happening.
I knew that I wanted to be with her.
I felt that I was riding with the king's men in their chariots.
The young women of Jerusalem:
13 Come back, come back, young woman from Shulam![e]
Yes, come back,
so that we can look at you again.
The young man:
Why do you want to look at the young woman from Shulam?
Do not look at her as if she is dancing the dance of Mahanaim.[f]
A beautiful woman
The young man:
7 How beautiful are your feet in sandals,
my princess![g]
Your round hips are as beautiful as jewels
that a clever worker has made.[h]
2 Your navel is like a round bowl
that is always full of good wine.[i]
Your stomach is like a round heap of wheat
with lilies around the edge.
3 Your breasts are like two young gazelles
that are twins.
4 Your neck is like an ivory tower.
Your eyes shine like the pools in Heshbon
that are near the Bath Rabbim gate.[j]
Your nose is like the tower of Lebanon
that looks towards Damascus.[k]
5 Your head stands tall on you, like Mount Carmel.[l]
Your long hair hangs down like a royal cloth.
It is so beautiful that it can make the king its prisoner!
6 You are very beautiful, my dear friend,
and I love you.
You give a lot of pleasure to me.
7 You stand like a tall palm tree.
Your breasts are like bunches of fruit that hang from the tree.[m]
8 I said, ‘I will climb the palm tree.
I will take hold of its fruit.’
For me, your breasts are like bunches of grapes.
Your breath is like the sweet smell of apples.
9 For me, your mouth has the taste of the best wine.
The young woman:
May the wine pour out for my lover.
May it pour over his lips and his teeth.
10 I belong to my lover,
and he wants to be with me!
11 Come with me now, my lover!
Let us go and walk through the fields.
We can stay in the villages for the night.
12 We can get up early in the morning
and go to the vineyards.
We can see if the vines have started to make new leaves.
We can see if their flowers have opened.
We can see if the pomegranate trees have flowers.
When we are there
I will give my love to you.
13 The mandrake plants send out their sweet smell.
At our door, there are many good things to eat.[n]
I have stored many good things that are both old and new.
I have kept them all for you, my lover.
The young woman:
8 I would like it if you were my brother
who drank milk from my mother's breasts!
If you were my brother,
if I found you outside, I could kiss you.
Nobody would think that I was doing something wrong.
2 I would lead you to my mother's house.
She is the one who has taught me.
I would give you wine with spices to drink,
the juice from my pomegranates.
3 His left hand is under my head.
His right hand brings me near to him.
4 Promise this to me, young women of Jerusalem:
Do not cause our love to wake up.
Do not cause it to become too strong
until the time is right.
The young women of Jerusalem:
5 Who is this who is coming from the desert?
Her head is on her lover's shoulder.
The young woman:
Under the apple tree,
I caused your love to wake.
That is the place where your mother became pregnant.
In that place too, your mother gave birth to you in pain.
6 Keep me near to you, like a seal over your heart.[o]
Keep me like a seal on your arm.
Keep me there always,
because love is as powerful as death.
It keeps hold of people as strongly as the grave does.
Love burns like a hot fire.
It burns with bright flames.
7 Even a flood of water cannot stop the flames.
Rivers of water cannot carry it away.
A man might try to give all his riches
to buy a woman's love.
But she would refuse to accept what he offers to her.
The young woman's brothers:
8 We have a younger sister.
Her breasts have not yet grown.
What will we do to help her
when it is the time for her to marry?
9 If she is a wall,
we will use silver to build towers on her.
But if she is a door,
we will use boards of cedar wood to keep the door shut.
The young woman:
10 I am a wall.
My breasts are like strong towers.
So my lover is happy when he looks at me.
11 King Solomon had a vineyard in Baal Hamon.
He allowed other people to take care of it.
They each paid him 1,000 silver coins for its fruit.
12 But my own vineyard belongs to me alone.
I take care of it myself.
You may keep the 1,000 silver coins, Solomon.
And I will give 200 silver coins to those who take care of the fruit.
The young man:
13 You have been staying in the garden
with your friends who are listening to you.
Let me too hear your voice!
The young woman:
14 Come quickly to me now, my lover!
Run like a gazelle or a young deer.
Come to the mountains that have sweet spices!
Paul explains about sons
4 I will say it like this. Think about a son who will one day receive what belongs to his father. While he is still a child, he is like a slave in the family. That is true, even though all his father's things really belong to him. 2 He has to wait until the time that his father has decided. Until then, the son has to obey his teachers and the guides who take care of him. 3 In the same way, we were children like that in God's family. We were slaves to the bad spirits that rule this world. 4 But when the time that God had decided arrived, he sent his Son into the world. A human mother gave birth to him. He was born a Jew, under the authority of God's Law. 5 In that way, he made us free from the authority of the Law. Before that, we were like slaves under the Law. But God's Son paid our debt, so that God would accept us as his true children. 6 Because we are his children, God has sent his Son's Spirit to live inside us. His Spirit causes us to call God, ‘Father, my Father’. 7 So you are not slaves any more, but you are God's children. And because of that, you will receive all the good things that God has promised.
Continue to trust Christ
8 Before, when you did not know God, you served false gods. They were not gods at all, but you were their slaves. 9 But now you do know God. Or really, I should say that God knows you. So you must not turn back to serve those weak spirits that rule this world. Why do you want to obey their useless rules and become their slaves again? 10 You say that certain days, or months, or seasons, or years are special. That is how you want to please God. 11 I am afraid about you. I worked very much to help you. I do not want my work to have no results.
12 My Christian friends, please become like me! I ask you to do this, because when I was with you, I became like you. You did not then do anything wrong to me. 13 You must remember that I first came to you because I was ill. That was when I first told God's good news to you. 14 I caused trouble for you because I was ill. But you did not insult me. You did not tell me to go away. But you were kind to me. You took care of me as if I were an angel from God, or even Christ Jesus himself. 15 But now you do not seem to be happy with me any more. I can say that you would have pulled out your own eyes to help me. You would have given them to me, if that had been possible. 16 But now I seem to have become your enemy! Is that because I am telling you God's true message?
17 Those false teachers try very much to please you. But they do not really want what is good for you. They want to make you turn away from me. Then you will only want to listen to them. 18 It is good for someone to try to please other people if they really want to help them. That is true all the time, not only when I am there with you. 19 My children, I feel like a mother who is giving birth to you again. I will continue to feel that kind of pain until you become more completely like Christ. 20 I want very much to be there with you now. Then I would know better how to speak to you. As it is, I do not know what to think about you.
A picture of Hagar and Sarah
21 I say this to you people who want God's Law to have authority over you. Think carefully about what that Law really says. 22 The Bible says that Abraham had two sons. The mother of one of them was a slave. The mother of the other son was a free woman. 23 Hagar was a slave. Her son was born as a result of what Abraham himself decided. But Abraham's wife, Sarah, gave birth to the other son. That son was born as a result of what God had promised to Abraham.[a]
24 These two women are like pictures of two agreements that God made with his people. Hagar is like the agreement that God made on Sinai mountain.[b] That agreement causes people to become slaves. 25 Hagar is like a picture of Sinai mountain in Arabia.[c] Also, she is like the city of Jerusalem here on earth now, because that city and its people are slaves under the authority of God's Law.
26 But Abraham's wife, Sarah, is a picture of the new Jerusalem that is above. Sarah was a free person, not a slave, and she is like our mother. 27 It says in the Bible:
‘Be happy, you woman who could not have any children!
You have never known the pain of a child's birth.
But now shout loudly because you are so happy!
Yes, be happy, because the lonely woman now has more children
than the woman who has a husband.’[d]
28 You, my Christian friends, are like Sarah's son, Isaac. Like him, you became God's children as a result of God's promise. 29 Isaac was born because of God's Spirit. The son who was born in the human way gave much trouble to Isaac at that time. You who are believers receive the same kind of trouble now. 30 But this is what it says in the Bible: ‘Send away the woman who is a slave and her son. That woman's son will never receive anything from his father. The son of the free woman will receive all those good things.’[e] 31 So then, my Christian friends, we are not children of the woman who is a slave. No, we are children of the free woman.
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