What Does Song of Solomon 5:8 Mean?
I bind you, daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved, that you tell him that 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
I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved, that ye tell him, that I am sick of love.THE KEY
Here, love is not an idea but an ache the body feels as illness while the beloved is absent.
THE MEANING
When the beloved is absent, love presses on the body as sickness. You name that longing plainly and ask others to carry your message to the one you love.
THE ROOT
חוֹלַת
ḥolat
GROWS FROM
חלה
ḥ-l-h
To become weak or ill.
The Hebrew calls her ḥolat ahavah, literally sick with love: longing has entered the body as weakness. The word gives the ache a bodily name, making lovesickness more than a poetic flourish.
ALSO GROWS
choleh: A sick or ill person.
חוֹלֶה
It shares the root’s language of bodily illness, showing how the verse gives longing a physical condition.
machalah: Illness or disease.
מַחֲלָה
This branch makes clear how directly the verse names the cost of absence: love is felt as an affliction.
אַהֲבָה
ahavah
GROWS FROM
אהב
ʾ-h-b
To love; love or affection.
The word for love belongs to a root that also forms words for the one who loves and the one who is loved. Here, love names the bond that makes absence hurt in the body.
ALSO GROWS
ohev: One who loves.
אֹהֵב
This branch keeps love active: the verse speaks from someone still turned toward the beloved.
ahuv: Beloved; one who is loved.
אָהוּב
It connects the speaker’s love to the person she longs for, joining the lover and beloved through the same root.
יְרוּשָׁלַיִם
Yerushalayim
GROWS FROM
שלם
sh-l-m
To be whole, complete, or intact.
“Jerusalem” in this verse is Yerushalayim. Yerushalayim carries an audible link to שָׁלוֹם (shalom, wholeness), holding the speaker’s bodily ache beside an image of wholeness. Her longing is spoken among the daughters of this place, where ache and wholeness meet in the same verse.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness.
שָׁלוֹם
The name’s echo of wholeness gives the speaker’s painful longing a larger setting.
shalem: Whole or intact.
שָׁלֵם
This branch places the felt sickness alongside the possibility of wholeness without denying the ache.
THE PATTERN
Love becomes bodily longing when the beloved is absent.
Prop me up with raisin cakes, cushion me with apples, for I am sick with love.To the chief Musician, Maschil, for the sons of Korah. As the hart pants upon the channels of waters, so my living soul pants toward you, O God.For God is my witness, how I ache for you all in the inward parts of Jesus the Anointed One.THE THREAD
And Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they were in his eyes like a few days, for the love he had for her.The Hebrew word translated love here and the word אַהֲבָה (ahavah, love) in Song of Solomon 5:8 share the root אָהַב (ʾ-h-b, to love). Jacob’s love makes years seem brief; here, that same root names a longing so embodied that absence feels like illness.
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