What Does Song of Solomon 2:5 Mean?
Prop me up with raisin cakes, cushion me with apples, for I am sick with love.
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
Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.THE KEY
Love is felt as a bodily force here: it weakens her, and she asks for support and something soft to hold her.
THE MEANING
When love overwhelms you, this verse gives the intensity a bodily voice: you can feel weakened and need support. The speaker asks for food to sustain her and for comfort that reaches the body, so longing is not kept at a distance as an abstract feeling.
THE ROOT
חוֹלַת
ḥōlat
GROWS FROM
חלה
ḥ-l-h
To be sick or weak.
“sick with love” in this verse is ḥōlat. The word names love as a condition that has weakened the body, not just stirred the feelings. The same root appears in Proverbs’ picture of a heart made sick by deferred hope.
ALSO GROWS
ḥālāh: To be sick or grow weak.
חָלָה
The verb gives the physical force behind the speaker’s description of herself as sick with love.
ḥolî: Sickness or illness.
חֹלִי
This noun from the same root appears in Proverbs 13:12, where deferred hope makes the heart sick.
סַמְּכוּנִי
sammĕkhûnî
GROWS FROM
סמך
s-m-kh
To support, uphold, or lean upon.
“prop me up” in this verse is sammĕkhûnî. The request is for something to bear her up. Love has left her needing support, and the Hebrew gives that need the image of being upheld rather than simply paused or calmed.
ALSO GROWS
sāmakh: To support or uphold.
סָמַךְ
This is the root action in the request: she asks to be supported with the raisin cakes.
sōmēkh: One who upholds.
סוֹמֵךְ
Psalm 145:14 uses this form for one who upholds those who are falling, echoing the need for support voiced here.
רַפְּדוּנִי
rappĕdûnî
GROWS FROM
רפד
r-p-d
To spread or cushion, as with bedding.
“cushion me” in this verse is rappĕdûnî. The verb carries a tactile sense of cushioning or spreading something around the body. The comfort asked for here can be felt as physical softness, alongside the sustaining food.
ALSO GROWS
rāphad: To spread or cushion.
רָפַד
This root sense gives the request for comfort a bodily, cushioned quality.
rippadtî: I spread or made my bed.
רִפַּדְתִּי
Job 17:13 uses this form for making a bed in darkness, showing the root’s concrete connection to bedding and bodily rest.
THE PATTERN
Scripture gives longing a bodily grammar: desire can make the heart sick, the flesh faint, and appetite urgent.
Waiting drawn out sickens the heart; a craving that comes is a tree of life.My living soul pines, even runs out, for the courts of the LORD. My heart and my flesh ring out for the living God.And he said to them, I have longed with longing to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.THE THREAD
Waiting drawn out sickens the heart; a craving that comes is a tree of life.“Sick” in both verses comes from the Hebrew root חלה (ḥ-l-h), meaning to be sick or weak. Proverbs connects that sickness to hope deferred; Song of Solomon gives love itself a bodily intensity that leaves the speaker asking to be upheld.
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