What Does Song of Solomon 7:9 Mean in the King James?
And the roof of thy mouth like the best wine for my beloved, that goeth down sweetly, causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak.
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 sweetness reaches past waking awareness: even sleeping lips are drawn into speech.
THE MEANING
The beloved’s mouth is like the finest wine, passing smoothly toward the beloved and stirring sleeping lips to speak. Even in sleep, desire reaches expression before the sleeper is awake.
THE ROOT
יְשֵׁנִים
yeshēnîm
GROWS FROM
י־ש־ן
y-sh-n
To sleep; to be asleep.
“those that are asleep” in this verse is yeshēnîm. The Hebrew names the sleepers with the same root used when the speaker says “I sleep” in Song of Solomon 5:2. Here sleep does not seal off a person from response: the beloved’s sweetness reaches into it and stirs speech.
ALSO GROWS
yāshēn: sleeping; asleep
יָשֵׁן
This form names the state the lips are in when the beloved’s wine stirs them.
shēnāh: sleep
שֵׁנָה
The sleepers carry the word for sleep into a living body, whose lips can still answer.
שִׂפְתֵי
siftê
GROWS FROM
ש־פ־ה
sh-p-h
Lip; edge or boundary; language.
The same Hebrew word family names lips and edges or shores. Lips are a boundary where what is within crosses into speech, and here that boundary moves even while the sleeper is asleep.
ALSO GROWS
sāphāh: lip; language
שָׂפָה
The lips in this verse are the place where the beloved’s sweetness becomes audible.
sefat-hayyām: the edge of the sea; seashore
שְׂפַת־הַיָּם
The shared word for lip and shore pictures speech as crossing from an inner place to an outer one.
לְמֵישָׁרִים
lə-mēshārîm
GROWS FROM
י־ש־ר
y-sh-r
To be straight, level, or upright.
The Hebrew phrase rendered “goeth down sweetly” carries the word-family of straightness and levelness. The wine’s pleasure is also pictured as an unhindered passage toward the beloved, reaching even the lips of sleepers.
ALSO GROWS
yāshār: straight; level; upright
יָשָׁר
This root sense adds the image of a course without obstruction to the wine’s smooth passage.
yōsher: straightness; uprightness
יֹשֶׁר
The word-family gives “sweetly” a further shade of evenness and direct movement.
mēshārîm: level places; straightness
מֵישָׁרִים
This form appears in the verse’s phrase for how the wine goes down.
THE PATTERN
What is received as sweetness can cross the boundary of the mouth and become speech.
Pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones.O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.THE THREAD
I 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.Both verses use the Hebrew root י־ש־ן (y-sh-n), meaning “sleep.” In 5:2 the speaker sleeps while the heart wakes to the beloved’s voice; here the beloved’s wine stirs sleeping lips into speech.
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