Chapter Reflection

The beloved comes as one who has already filled the garden with feast and fragrance, yet the bride is found half-awake, hesitant, and then suddenly longing. Love here is not abstract: it knocks, waits, withdraws, and leaves the heart aching after a missed opening. The beauty of the beloved is then spoken in a rich cascade of images—gold, lilies, ivory, rivers, cedars—so that desire becomes praise, and praise becomes the way the beloved is truly known. The wound of delay is not the end of the chapter; even after absence and injury, the bride’s speech returns again and again to one truth: “he is altogether lovely.” What stands out is the delicate freedom of the human heart, able to resist, open, lose, seek, and be taught by absence what love is worth.

Desire and absenceFragrant unionWounded seekingBeauty unspeakableAwakening love

Song of Solomon 5

1I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse: I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk: eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved.

2I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.

3I have put off my coat; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them?

4My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him.

5I rose up to open to my beloved; and my hands dropped with myrrh, and my fingers with sweet smelling myrrh, upon the handles of the lock.

6I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone: my soul failed when he spake: I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer.

7The watchmen that went about the city found me, they smote me, they wounded me; the keepers of the walls took away my veil from me.

8I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved, that ye tell him, that I am sick of love.

9What is thy beloved more than another beloved, O thou fairest among women? what is thy beloved more than another beloved, that thou dost so charge us?

10My beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand.

11His head is as the most fine gold, his locks are bushy, and black as a raven.

12His eyes are as the eyes of doves by the rivers of waters, washed with milk, and fitly set.

13His cheeks are as a bed of spices, as sweet flowers: his lips like lilies, dropping sweet smelling myrrh.

14His hands are as gold rings set with the beryl: his belly is as bright ivory overlaid with sapphires.

15His legs are as pillars of marble, set upon sockets of fine gold: his countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars.

16His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.

Who God is

Who is this Beloved, whose coming is tender, whose beauty overflows every image, and whose nearness is both gift and summons to you?

The condition of man

Why does your heart sometimes delay what it most longs for, and how does your love for what is beautiful reveal both your hunger and your wound?