What Does Song of Solomon 4:15 Mean?
A spring of gardens, a well of living waters, and dripping streams from Lebanon.
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
A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon.THE KEY
The beloved is pictured as the opening, the depth, and the outflow of water, the whole movement from hidden source to fertile abundance.
THE MEANING
You are pictured as a spring whose hidden source reaches gardens, a well of living waters, and streams flowing from Lebanon. Desire sees you as abundance in motion: life rising from within and flowing outward.
THE ROOT
מַעְיָן
maʿyan
GROWS FROM
עין
Eye; also a spring or source, an opening where water emerges.
“spring” in this verse is maʿyan. The word for fountain shares its root with the word for eye. The verse names the beloved as an opening from which what is hidden rises into view and flows outward.
ALSO GROWS
ʿayin: Eye; also a spring or source.
עַיִן
The shared word joins an opening of sight with an opening where water surfaces.
maʿyan: Spring, fountain.
מַעְיָן
This is the verse’s fountain: the point where water emerges, not merely a vessel holding it.
ʿenot: Springs, fountains.
עֵינוֹת
The plural preserves the image of openings where hidden water rises.
חַיִּים
chayyim
GROWS FROM
חיה
To live, be alive.
The word translated “living” comes from the root for being alive, so the waters carry life in their description. The same Hebrew pairing, “well of living waters,” appears in Genesis 26:19, linking this beloved to a source of life-bearing water.
ALSO GROWS
ḥay: Living, alive.
חַי
This adjective makes life itself part of the verse’s picture of water.
ḥayah: To live, revive.
חָיָה
The verb names the living condition that the waters embody.
chayyim: Life, living.
חַיִּים
This is the form used in the phrase “living waters,” placing the source and life together.
THE PATTERN
Life is pictured as water rising from a source and flowing outward to sustain what it reaches.
And Isaac's servants dug in the valley, and found there a well of living waters.But whoever drinks of the water I give never thirsts into the ages; the water I give becomes in him a spring of water leaping up into the life of the ages.The one who leans his weight into me, as the writing has said, rivers of living waters will flow from his belly.THE THREAD
And Isaac's servants dug in the valley, and found there a well of living waters.Genesis uses the same Hebrew phrase, בְּאֵר מַיִם חַיִּים (beʾer mayim ḥayyim, “well of living waters”), that appears here. The shared wording makes the beloved a source associated with water alive at its origin.
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