What Does Song of Solomon 4:7 Mean?
You are all fair, my companion; there is no blemish in you.
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
Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee.THE KEY
The Hebrew makes beauty total: the beloved is not praised for one feature, because all of her is called fair.
THE MEANING
You are addressed as wholly beautiful, beloved, with no blemish in you. The praise reaches the whole person rather than selecting one trait.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that one flaw can define the whole beloved loses its hold here: the line sees her as wholly fair.
THE ROOT
יָפָה
yāfāh
GROWS FROM
יפה
y-p-h
To be beautiful or fair.
“fair” in this verse is yāfāh. The phrase כֻּלָּךְ (kullakh, “all of you”) places יָפָה (yaphah, “beautiful”) over the beloved’s entirety. The same root gives יֹפִי (yofi, “beauty”), so the verse names beauty as a quality of the whole person, not a single feature.
ALSO GROWS
yofi: Beauty.
יֹפִי
This noun grows from the same root as “fair,” connecting the beloved’s being fair with beauty itself.
yafeh: Beautiful, fair.
יָפֶה
This related adjective shares the verse’s root and shows that the praise rests on the Hebrew word for beauty.
THE PATTERN
The gaze of love names its beloved as whole, leaving no blemish to define the person.
Look, you are fair, my love; look, you are fair; your eyes are doves.That he might stand her beside himself as a weighty assembly, having no stain or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she be set apart and without blemish.Now to him who is able to guard you from stumbling, and to make you stand unstained before the face of his weight in leaping joy,THE THREAD
Look, you are fair, my love; look, you are fair; your eyes are doves.The word translated “fair” comes from the same Hebrew root in both verses. Here the praise covers the beloved entirely; in Song 1:15, that same word turns toward her eyes.
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