What Does Song of Solomon 6:13 Mean?
Turn, turn, O Shulammite; turn, turn, that we may gaze upon you. What will you see in the Shulammite? As the whirling dance of two camps.
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
Return, return, O Shulamite; return, return, that we may look upon thee. What will ye see in the Shulamite? As it were the company of two armies.THE KEY
The fourfold call to return ends in an image that will not hold still: the Shulamite appears as a dance between two camps.
THE MEANING
The desire to look at the Shulamite is spoken aloud, but the text does not leave her as a still object of that gaze. The question turns the gaze back on the watchers, and the answer is motion: a dance of two camps. The image keeps the encounter doubled and unresolved.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that being seen means being reduced to a still, fully knowable object; here, the Shulamite is seen through an image of movement that resists being fixed.
THE ROOT
שׁוּבִי
shūvî
GROWS FROM
שׁוּב
shuv
Turn back, return, restore.
“Turn” in this verse is shūvî. The four calls use the same feminine singular command, pressing the movement of return. From this root, turning back can also branch into being brought back or restored, so the summons holds both arrival and renewal.
ALSO GROWS
teshuvah: Return, turning.
תְּשׁוּבָה
This noun keeps the verse’s repeated summons connected to the larger movement of turning back.
heshiv: Bring back, restore.
הֵשִׁיב
This causative form shows how the root’s return can mean more than coming back on one’s own: something can be brought back into wholeness.
הַשּׁוּלַמִּית
ha-Shulammith
GROWS FROM
שׁלם
sh-l-m
Be whole or complete.
The consonants of Shulamite echo שָׁלוֹם (shalom, wholeness) and שָׁלֵם (shalem, whole or complete). That sound lets wholeness hover around the beloved’s name, without making Shulamite a direct synonym for shalom.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness, well-being.
שָׁלוֹם
Its shared consonants let the name carry an echo of wholeness as the Shulamite returns to view.
shalem: Whole, complete.
שָׁלֵם
This branch brings the sense of completeness close to the name while preserving the poem’s mystery about her identity.
הַמַּחֲנָיִם
hamachanayim
GROWS FROM
חנה
chanah
Encamp, pitch a camp.
מַחֲנַיִם (machanayim) is the dual form: two camps. Just before it stands מְחֹלַת (mecholat, dance), so the phrase evokes a dance of two camps; the words echo in sound but do not share the same root.
ALSO GROWS
machaneh: Camp, encampment.
מַחֲנֶה
This singular form makes the doubled image concrete: the verse presents two camps, not one.
machanayim: Two camps; a dual form of camp.
מַחֲנַיִם
The dual keeps the final image in paired motion, giving the dance its twofold shape.
THE PATTERN
Return makes presence visible again and turns separation into encounter.
Turn back, Israel, to the LORD your God, for you have stumbled in your crookedness.Turn us again, O God, and cause your face to shine, and we will be delivered.And he rose and came to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him, and his inward parts were moved, and he ran and fell upon his neck and kissed him.THE THREAD
Turn back, Israel, to the LORD your God, for you have stumbled in your crookedness.Hosea uses the Hebrew root שׁוּב (shuv, turn or return), the root heard four times in this verse. It opens “return” beyond a summons to reappear before a gaze: the same movement can turn a whole person back toward God.
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