What Does Song of Solomon 4:3 Mean?
Your lips are like a thread of scarlet, and your mouth is lovely; your temples are like a pomegranate split open behind your veil.
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
Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely: thy temples are like a piece of a pomegranate within thy locks.THE KEY
In Hebrew, “speech” shares its root with “word” and “matter,” so the beauty praised here has substance you can see.
THE MEANING
Your lips are like a scarlet thread, your speech is lovely, and your temples show like a piece of pomegranate through your hair. The praise gathers voice, face, and half-veiled fruit into one image of beauty that is both spoken and seen.
THE ROOT
מִדְבָּרֵךְ
midbarekh
GROWS FROM
דבר
dābar
to speak; word, matter, thing
“mouth” in this verse is midbarekh. The word for “your speech” grows from דבר, which also gives דָּבָר (dābār, word or matter). The verse treats speech as something substantial enough to take visible form in its images of scarlet thread and pomegranate.
ALSO GROWS
dābār: word; matter or thing
דָּבָר
This noun makes the root’s connection between speaking and substance explicit: a word is also a matter.
dibbēr: to speak; to say
דִּבֶּר
This verb names the act carried by the beloved’s speech, tying the praise to the same root as “word” and “matter.
שִׂפְתֹתַיִךְ
siftotayikh
GROWS FROM
שפה
safah
lip; language; edge or bank
שפה names both a lip and a language, and can also name an edge. The verse keeps the speaking body in view: the lips are the threshold where voice becomes audible.
ALSO GROWS
sāfāh: lip; language
שָׂפָה
The same word can mean the body’s lip or language itself, joining the beloved’s visible lips to her speech.
sefat hayyām: shore, literally the lip of the sea
שְׂפַת־הַיָּם
The word can name an edge or boundary; here the lips form the bodily edge from which speech emerges.
פֶּלַח
pelaḥ
GROWS FROM
פלח
pālaḥ
to split or cleave; a divided portion
“a pomegranate split open” in this verse is pelaḥ. פֶּלַח describes a slice or segment of pomegranate, so the image is of a piece whose interior can be seen. The verse’s beauty appears partly through the covering of the hair, like the fruit revealed in a cut section.
ALSO GROWS
pelaḥ: slice; segment or portion
פֶּלַח
This noun names the pomegranate as a visible portion, not an undivided whole.
pālaḥ: to cleave; to split
פָּלַח
The verb shares the root consonants and connects the pictured segment with the act of dividing or opening.
THE PATTERN
Speech takes visible form because words carry substance into another person’s hearing.
A word spoken upon its wheels is like apples of gold in frames of silver.A man has joy in the answer of his mouth, and a word in its season, how good it is!Let no rotten word come out of your mouth, but whatever is good for building up where there is need, that it may give favor to those who hear.THE THREAD
A word spoken upon its wheels is like apples of gold in frames of silver.Song’s מִדְבָּרֵךְ (midbarekh, your speech) and Proverbs’ דָּבָר דָּבֻר (dābār dābūr, a word spoken) both grow from דבר (dābar, speech or word). Proverbs gives that same root a visible setting in gold and silver, opening Song’s scarlet thread and pomegranate as images of speech made seen.
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