What Does Song of Solomon 7:3 Mean?
Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle.
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
Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins.THE KEY
The word translated “twins” also names things coupled together, so the image holds two distinct forms in deliberate correspondence.
THE MEANING
Your breasts are described as a matched pair, like two young gazelles born together. The comparison holds likeness and aliveness together: each is distinct, yet the pair is the image.
THE ROOT
תְּאוֹמִים
te’omim
GROWS FROM
תאם
tʾm
To be twinned, paired, or corresponding.
English “twins” names the resemblance; the Hebrew also carries the sense of things paired or coupled. The root makes the image one of matched aliveness: two distinct forms held in correspondence.
ALSO GROWS
te’omim: Twins
תְּאוֹמִים
Genesis uses the same word for twins in the womb, making the pairing one of shared origin as well as likeness.
to’amim: Coupled together
תֹּאֲמִם
In Exodus, the related form describes paired boards, showing how the root can name two parts joined in a corresponding arrangement.
THE PATTERN
Scripture makes a pair meaningful through the correspondence between its two members or through what their joining forms.
And when the days of her birthing were filled, look, there were twins in her womb.And they shall be joined together beneath, and they shall be joined together above its head, unto one ring; thus shall it be for them both; they shall be for the two corners.So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What God has yoked together, let no one pull apart.THE THREAD
And they shall be joined together beneath, and they shall be joined together above its head, unto one ring; thus shall it be for them both; they shall be for the two corners.The Hebrew word translated “coupled together” comes from the same root as “twins” here. In both verses, the root reveals pairedness: two forms correspond to one another while remaining two.
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