What Does Song of Solomon 5:12 Mean?
His eyes are like doves beside the channels of waters, washed in milk, sitting in their fullness.
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
His eyes are as the eyes of doves by the rivers of waters, washed with milk, and fitly set.THE KEY
Hebrew uses the same word for an eye and a spring, so his gaze is pictured beside water as though sight itself were a source.
THE MEANING
His gaze is gentle, lucid, and luminous: his eyes rest beside water like doves at a spring. Water, milk, and fullness gather in the image, making his eyes feel clear and alive.
THE ROOT
עֵינָיו
ʿeinav
GROWS FROM
עין
ʿayin
Eye; also spring or fountain.
The Hebrew noun for “eye” can also name a spring or fountain. Because his eyes are placed beside streams, the image lets gaze and water echo each other, as though sight itself were a source.
ALSO GROWS
ʿenayim: Eyes; the dual form for a pair of eyes.
עֵינַיִם
This form names the paired eyes at the center of the verse’s image.
ʿein: Spring; fountain.
עֵין
This noun names a water source, allowing the streams beside his eyes to echo the word for eyes.
מִלֵּאת
milleʾat
GROWS FROM
מלא
male
Fill; be full.
“sitting in their fullness” in this verse is milleʾat. Beneath the rendering “fitly set” is a word associated with filling and fullness. The image can suggest eyes seated in their setting, with fullness held in place beneath their beauty.
ALSO GROWS
male: Full; to be full or filled.
מָלֵא
Its sense of being filled gives depth to the fullness behind the eyes’ setting.
melo: Fullness; full measure.
מְלֹא
This noun makes the root’s sense of fullness explicit beside the verse’s image of eyes settled in place.
THE PATTERN
Scripture joins sight to the life, light, and fullness that sustain clear perception.
And the messenger of the LORD found her by the eye of the waters in the wilderness, by that eye on the road to Shur.For with you is the spring of life; in your light we see light.The lamp of the body is the eye. So if your eye is single, your whole body will be full of light.THE THREAD
And the messenger of the LORD found her by the eye of the waters in the wilderness, by that eye on the road to Shur.The Hebrew word for “eyes” in Song of Solomon can also mean “spring,” and the word behind “fountain” in Genesis 16:7 is that same noun. Read together, the verses let sight and flowing water occupy one verbal image: an eye can also be a spring.
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