World English Bible · The united kingdom
Song of Songs 4
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Behold, you are beautiful, my love. Behold, you are beautiful. Your eyes are like behind your . Your hair is as a goats, that descend from Mount . Your teeth are like a newly shorn flock, which have come up from the washing, where every one of them has twins. None is bereaved among them. Your are like scarlet thread. Your is lovely. Your temples are like a piece of a pomegranate behind your . Your neck is like tower built for an armory, on which a thousand shields hang, all the shields of the . Your two breasts are like two fawns that are twins of a roe, which feed among the lilies. Until the day is cool, and the shadows flee away, I will go to the mountain of myrrh, to the hill of . You are all beautiful, my love. There is no spot in you. Come with me from , my , with me from . Look from the top of Amana, from the top of Senir and Hermon, from the lions' dens, from the mountains of the leopards. You have ravished , my sister, my . You have ravished with one of your eyes, with one chain of your neck. How beautiful is your love, my sister, my ! How much better is your love than , the fragrance of your perfumes than all kinds of spices! Your , my , drip like the honeycomb. Honey and milk are under your . The smell of your garments is like the smell of . My sister, my , is a locked up garden; a locked up spring, a sealed fountain. Your shoots are an orchard of pomegranates, with precious fruits, henna with spikenard plants, spikenard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with every kind of tree; myrrh and aloes, with all the best spices, a fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, flowing streams from . Awake, north wind, and come, you south! Blow on my garden, that its spices may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and taste his precious fruits.
A public domain modern English translation, free to read and share. Notes and cards are EKLI’s own.
The world at this moment · The united kingdom, 1050 BC to 931 BC ›
Saul, David, and Solomon. A rare window when both Egypt and Mesopotamia are weak, which is how a small kingdom in the corridor between them could briefly become a regional power.
- The power vacuum
- This is the whole political explanation for the united kingdom. Egypt is fragmented, Assyria is recovering but still local, the Hittites are gone, and nobody is in a position to object to a strong state in the corridor. It lasts about a century, and Israel's golden age fits exactly inside it.
- Phoenicia
- Tyre under Hiram is the commercial power of the coast, and supplies the cedar, the craftsmen, and the shipping for Solomon's building programme. The alliance is trade, not charity: Israel had grain and a land route, Tyre had timber and ships.
- Egypt
- Weak enough that a pharaoh gives a daughter in marriage to an Israelite king, which is the opposite of Egyptian practice in stronger centuries. Late in the era it recovers under a new house, and Shishak will invade within five years of Solomon's death.
- Further afield
- Greece is still in its dark age but beginning to recover, and will adopt the Phoenician alphabet within a century or two. Carthage is founded by settlers from Tyre by tradition in 814 BC. In the Americas the Olmec centre shifts to La Venta.