What Does Song of Solomon 8:11 Mean in the King James?
Solomon had a vineyard at Baal-hamon; he let out the vineyard unto keepers; every one for the fruit thereof was to bring a thousand pieces of silver.
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 Hebrew word for keepers echoes the speaker’s earlier admission that she did not keep her own vineyard, turning a measured return into the poem’s question of personal care.
THE MEANING
A cultivated place passes into others’ hands, and its fruit carries a concrete return: each keeper brings a thousand pieces of silver. Care and accounting stand together; what grows under tending becomes something that can be measured and shared.
THE ROOT
נֹטְרִים
nōṭərîm
GROWS FROM
נטר
to guard, keep, or watch over
The Hebrew word for keepers uses the same root as the speaker’s earlier words for keeping her own vineyard. That echo carries this measured account of a vineyard into the poem’s more personal question of what is guarded and whose fruit is gathered.
ALSO GROWS
nōṭērāh: A woman assigned to keep or guard
נֹטֵרָה
The speaker is called a keeper of vineyards in 1:6, showing the same root can name the person entrusted with watching over them.
nāṭartî: The speaker’s statement that she did not keep her own vineyard
נָטָרְתִּי
The same verb describes the care the keepers provide here, linking Solomon’s vineyard with the speaker’s own.
נָתַן
nātan
GROWS FROM
נתן
to give, set, or place
The action beneath the phrase let out is נָתַן (nātan, give or place), which holds the vineyard’s transfer into the keepers’ hands in view. The verse pairs that handoff with a specified return, keeping transfer and yield in one frame.
ALSO GROWS
netinah: The act of giving
נְתִינָה
This noun belongs to the same נתן (n-t-n) family, bringing the giving within the vineyard’s handoff into view.
nātûn: Something handed over or set in place
נָתוּן
This form from נתן (n-t-n) shows the other side of the transfer: what is placed into someone else’s care.
THE PATTERN
A cultivated place entrusted to care becomes legible through the fruit it yields and the return it brings.
And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?And when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits of it.THE THREAD
Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me: my mother’s children were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept.The keeper-word נֹטְרִים (nōṭərîm, keepers) comes from נטר (n-ṭ-r, guard or keep), the same root in the speaker’s נָטָרְתִּי (nāṭartî, I kept) in 1:6. There she says she did not keep her own vineyard; the shared root makes the keepers here resonate with the poem’s contrast between tending others’ vineyards and one’s own.
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