What Does Song of Solomon 1:8 Mean?
If you do not know, you fairest among women, go out in the footprints of the flock, and pasture your young goats beside the shepherds' tents.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
If thou know not, O thou fairest among women, go thy way forth by the footsteps of the flock, and feed thy kids beside the shepherds’ tents.THE KEY
The word for feeding is also the word for shepherding, so nourishment and guidance share one root.
THE MEANING
When you do not know the way, the verse points to a path already visible in the flock’s footsteps. Young life receives nourishment beside those who tend it, where care and direction meet.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that not knowing means having no way forward: the flock has left a trace, and the shepherds are near.
THE ROOT
רְעִי
re‘i
GROWS FROM
רעה
ra‘ah: to tend, feed, or shepherd
The verb “feed” (רְעִי, re‘i) and the noun “shepherds” (רֹעִים, ro’im) grow from the same root, רעה (ra‘ah, to tend, feed, or shepherd). The verse holds nourishment and guidance together: the young are fed in the shepherds’ presence, along a path marked by the flock.
ALSO GROWS
ro’im: shepherds
רֹעִים
This same-root word appears later in the verse, linking feeding the young with the shepherds’ care.
mir‘eh: pasture or grazing place
מִרְעֶה
The word for pasture carries the same root of tending, connecting nourishment with the place where the flock is cared for.
THE PATTERN
Care makes the way legible: nourishment and movement unfold together under a shepherd’s guidance.
He lays me down in green pastures; he leads me beside resting waters.When he drives out his own sheep, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they perceive his voice.THE THREAD
A Psalm of David. The LORD is my shepherd; I do not come up short.The “feed” and “shepherds” in Song of Solomon 1:8 share the root רעה (ra‘ah, to tend, feed, or shepherd); Psalm 23:1 uses that same root for “shepherd.” The root joins provision and guidance, opening the flock’s path as part of the shepherd’s care.
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