The bride

2 I’m asleep, but my heart is awake.

A sound—my dearest is knocking.

The groom

“Open to me, my girlfriend, my darling, my dove, my perfect one,

because my head is full of dew—

my hair is wet with the night dampness.”

The bride

3 “I’ve already undressed—do I have to get dressed again?

I’ve washed my feet—won’t I get them dirty now?”

4 My dearest stretched out his hand through the hole

and my stomach tightened when I saw him.

5 I got myself up to open to my dearest and my hands dripped with myrrh.

My fingers dripped with flowing myrrh on the arm of the bolt.

6 I opened the door to my dearest,

but my dearest had turned and gone.

My stomach sunk because he’d left.

I searched for him, but I couldn’t find him.

≈I called him, but he didn’t answer me.

7 The guards going about in the city found me.

They beat me and wounded me.

The guards of the walls took my shawl off me.

8 I adjure you, young women of Yerushalem:

if you find my dearest, what will you tell him?

Tell him that I’m sick with love.

Yerushalem’s young women

9 Most beautiful among women, how is your dearest better than another darling?

What is your dearest more than another, that you adjure us like that?

The bride

10 My dearest is dazzling and red—

→he would stand out among ten thousand.

11 His head is gold, refined gold.

≈His hair is wavy, and black like the raven.

12 His eyes are like doves beside streams of water,

≈bathing in milk, sitting beside the pools.

13 His cheeks are like a bed of spices—like towers where aromatic herbs are hung.

≈His lips are lilies—dripping with flowing myrrh.

14 His arms are rods of gold mounted with topaz stones.

≈His belly is a plate of ivory covered with sapphires.

15 His thighs are pillars of alabaster set on bases of refined gold.

≈His appearance is like Lebanon—as attractive as the cedar trees.

16 His mouth is most sweet,

≈and all of him is most desirable.

This is my dearest, and this is my friend,

young women of Yerushalem.

6 Yerushalem’s young women

6 Where did he go, your dearest, most beautiful woman among women?

Where did he turn, your dearest—let us join you in looking for him.

The bride

2 My dearest went down to his garden, to the beds of spices,

→in order to graze in the gardens and in order to gather lilies.

3 I belong to my dearest, and my dearest belongs to me.

He grazes among the lilies.