What Does Song of Solomon 5:9 Mean?
What is your beloved more than another beloved, O fairest among women? What is your beloved more than another beloved, that you bind us so?
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
What is thy beloved more than another beloved, O thou fairest among women? what is thy beloved more than another beloved, that thou dost so charge us?THE KEY
The Hebrew root for “beloved” also names love itself, so the question is what makes this bond distinctive, not which label wins.
THE MEANING
The question reaches you: what makes your beloved different from another? The poem turns the familiar word “beloved” toward the particular bond that makes this person unmistakable.
THE ROOT
דּוֹדֵךְ
dōdēkh
GROWS FROM
דוד
Beloved; intimate affection.
English can make “beloved” sound like a status placed on someone. The Hebrew root also names love and its expressions, so the question reaches toward the bond itself, not just the person’s label.
ALSO GROWS
dodim: Loves, caresses; “love” in Song of Solomon 1:2.
דּוֹדִים
The same root names the affection between lovers, linking the beloved to the love that makes this bond particular.
David: David; a name carrying the sense “beloved.”
דָּוִד
The name echoes the same root, where being beloved is part of the nature expressed in the name.
THE PATTERN
A beloved becomes recognizable through a particular bond whose quality cannot be captured by the bare label “beloved.”
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for your love is better than wine.And look, a voice out of the heavens, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I have delighted.Now one of his disciples was reclining in the fold of Jesus' robe, the one whom Jesus loved.THE THREAD
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for your love is better than wine.The Hebrew word for “thy love” is דּוֹדִים (dodim, “loves” or “caresses”), from the same root as “thy beloved” here. The repeated root turns the question toward the love that makes this beloved distinct.
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