The Song of Solomon, 5

¹ “I have come into my garden, O my sister, [my] bride. I have plucked my myrrh along with my spice. I have eaten my honeycomb along with my honey; I have drunk my wine along with my milk.” “Eat, O companions! Drink and become drunk with expressions of endearment!”^*1

² “I am asleep, but my heart is awake. There is the sound of my dear one knocking!” “Open to me, O my sister, my girl companion, my dove, my blameless one! For my head is filled with dew, the locks of my hair with the drops of the night.”

³ “‘I have put off my robe. How can I put it back on? I have washed my feet. How can I soil them?’

⁴ My dear one himself pulled back his hand from the hole [of the door], and my inward parts themselves became boisterous within me.^*1

⁵ I got up, even I, to open to my dear one, and my own hands dripped with myrrh and my fingers with liquid^*1 myrrh, upon the hollows of the lock.^*2

⁶ I opened, even I, to my dear one, but my dear one himself had turned away, he had passed along. My very soul had gone out [of me] when he spoke. I sought him, but I did not find him. I called him, but he did not answer me.

⁷ The watchmen that were going about in the city found me. They struck me, they wounded me. The watchmen of the walls lifted my wide wrap off me.

⁸ “I have put YOU under oath, O daughters of Jerusalem, that, if YOU find my dear one, YOU should tell him that I am lovesick.”

⁹ “How is your dear one more than any other dear one, O you most beautiful one among women? How is your dear one more than any other dear one, that you have put us under such an oath as this?”

¹⁰ “My dear one is dazzling and ruddy, the most conspicuous^*1 of ten thousand.

¹¹ His head is gold, refined gold. The locks of his hair are date clusters. His black [hair] is like the raven.

¹² His eyes are like doves by the channels of water, which are bathing themselves in milk, sitting within the rims.

¹³ His cheeks are like a garden bed of spice, towers of scented herbs. His lips are lilies, dripping with liquid myrrh.

¹⁴ His hands are cylinders of gold, filled with chrysʹo·lite.^*1 His abdomen is an ivory plate covered with sapphires.

¹⁵ His legs are pillars of marble based on socket pedestals of refined gold. His appearance is like Lebʹa·non, choice like the cedars.

¹⁶ His palate is sheer sweetness, and everything about him is altogether desirable. This is my dear one, and this is my boy companion, O daughters of Jerusalem.”