What Does Song of Solomon 6:4 Mean in the King James?
Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The beloved’s beauty is not softness alone; it is the wholeness of a city and the unmistakable force of a bannered company.
THE MEANING
Your beauty is like a whole city and a formed company beneath its standards: it is both inviting and formidable. You are seen as beloved and awe-inspiring, with a presence that gathers attention like a banner.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the assumption that being beloved means being merely soft or harmless: here beauty carries a force that commands awe.
THE ROOT
כַּנִּדְגָּלוֹת
kannidgalot
GROWS FROM
דגל
To raise or display a banner, making a group recognizable beneath its standard.
The Hebrew says “like the bannered ones,” compressing the image that English unfolds as an army with banners. The beloved is not only beautiful: she has the visible, ordered presence of a company whose standard makes its identity unmistakable.
ALSO GROWS
degel: Banner or standard.
דֶּגֶל
The standard makes a gathered group’s shared identity visible.
nidgol: “We will set up our banners” (Psalm 20:5).
נִדְגֹּל
The same root turns the banner into a public declaration of whose name the people gather under.
יְרוּשָׁלַ
Yerushalayim
GROWS FROM
שלם
To be whole or complete.
“Jerusalem” in this verse is Yerushalayim. Yerushalayim carries shalom, wholeness, within its name. The beloved is compared not only to a beautiful city but to wholeness made visible, placed beside the unmistakable force of a bannered company.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness.
שָׁלוֹם
This is the fullness carried within the city’s name and the comparison.
shalem: Whole, complete.
שָׁלֵם
It shows the root’s sense of completeness beneath the image of Jerusalem.
THE PATTERN
A visible standard gathers people into a recognizable shared identity.
Every man of the children of Israel shall pitch by his own standard, with the ensign of their father’s house: far off about the tabernacle of the congregation shall they pitch.He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.THE THREAD
He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.Here the beloved is like the bannered companies; there, love itself is the banner over the beloved. The shared image shows love as both a gathering presence and a force that commands awe.
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