Song of Solomon 6:4-13 – Part 12

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Song of Solomon 6:4-13 – Part 12

Until the Shulamite reversed – “I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit”. (Ecc 1:14)

As always, the Song of Solomon is Christ’s adoration speaking on behalf of his Bride for her love for him and his for her. Their praises for each other are almost identical, except where direct male or female biological differences are highlighted, which mostly to us portray a particular spiritual principle.

Solomon and His Bride Delight in Each Other

Son 6:4 Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners.
Son 6:5 Turn away thine eyes from me, for they have overcome me: thy hair is as a flock of goats that appear from Gilead.
Son 6:6 Thy teeth are as a flock of sheep which go up from the washing, whereof every one beareth twins, and there is not one barren among them.
Son 6:7 As a piece of a pomegranate are thy temples within thy locks.
Son 6:8 There are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, and virgins without number.
Son 6:9  My dove, my undefiled is but one; she is the only one of her mother, she is the choice one of her that bare her. The daughters saw her, and blessed her; yea, the queens and the concubines, and they praised her.
Son 6:10 Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?
Son 6:11 I went down into the garden of nuts to see the fruits of the valley, and to see whether the vine flourished, and the pomegranates budded.
Son 6:12 Or ever I was aware, my soul made me like the chariots of Amminadib.
Son 6:13 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.

Study

Son 6:4 Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, [phonetic: teer-tsaw’] comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners.

The exceedingly ‘comely Jerusalem’ is the heavenly Jerusalem above, the Bride of Christ. Old Jerusalem is earthy and is Egypt, Sodom and Babylon; comely for its purpose in its time but decaying and filthy for the people within, just as God-given witless for its stench as they are today.

Unashamedly, even “sick with love” for a particular nature of a “beautiful” woman for the Body is her “bright” personality for everyone, but particularly her intimate enthusiastic (bright) devotion to her husband. Such a woman is mesmerising, as Christ created for himself and is hidden in plain sight (Son 4:9).

The Hebrew for beautiful is plainly understood, and its origin is H3302 in Stong’s is “A primitive root; properly to be bright, that is, (by implication) beautiful: – be beautiful, be (make self) fair (-r), deck”.

Tirzah was a particular family or tribe of Manasseh noted for consistently fathering beautiful daughters (H7521 – “delightsomeness”). Manasseh was a distinguished descendant and tribe from Joseph and, subsequently, David, Solomon and Shulamite.

Some of us, no doubt, have joked about the “awful wedded wife”, a euphemism for lawful(ly) wedded wife, but a “terrible” war-like wife doesn’t seem too arousing for any husband; living in a corner on the rooftop seems a more peaceful option (Pro 21:9). Since “Shulamite” means peaceful, Solomon finally looked upon her, mused in deep prophetic pleasure her peace, compared to his marriage to his 1,000 wives in his “wide house”.

Son 6:13 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.

Even though Christ made his wife outwardly stunning above Job’s daughters and any woman ever imagined, her God-given spirit captivated him and identified as her most arousing attribute termed “beautiful”. What “terrible” characteristic identifies the Bride as beautiful to her Lord?

Here is the term “terrible in other Hebrew and Strong’s definitions:

The jest of the “awful wedded wife” is an unintentionally truthful statement since the Hebrew for “awe” is H6342 and means 1. to fear, tremble, revere, dread, be in awe or dread a. (Qal)  to be in dread 2. to be in awe b. (Piel) to be in great dread c. (Hiphil) to cause to dread.

Hab 1:5 Behold ye among the heathen, and regard, and wonder marvellously: for I will work a work in your days, which ye will not believe, though it be told you.

That “I will work a work in your days” that for the Elect of God does believe in the positive is the One-Thousand Year rule with the rod of iron. Yet, the 1,000 wives today certainly do not believe the esteemed Shulamite is given distinction over them.

The Christian Babylonians march throughout the earth, claiming salvation is theirs and that they are not widowed and have Christ as their husband. She is the Lord’s rejected wife, bitter and hastily claiming his name; she really was his ‘frightful, terrible and awful wedded wife’ for us to see that she was, is, and will be the Elect in its every application’s time and order!

Hab 1:6 For, lo, I raise up the Chaldeans, [Assyrians and Babylonians are collectively Chaldeans] that bitter and hasty nation, which shall march through the breadth of the land, to possess the dwellingplaces that are not theirs.
Hab 1:7 They are terrible and dreadful: their judgment and their dignity [Strong’s, H5375′ lift up; elevation; forgive] shall proceed of themselves.

The positive nature of the spiritually terrible woman is a frightening army dressed in dazzling white and the royal standard and colours is rejoicing in salvation and is given the dignity of royalty and rulership in Christ. Another outstanding characteristic of her in the negative is that she was the Beast coming up out of the sea ~ she was and is a “terrible” and frightening army as the sand of the sea proud of her banners of doctrinal lies.

Rev 13:1 And I [John] stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. Babylonian Christianity and the world within and without.
Rev 13:2 And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.

Hab 1:8 Their horses also are swifter than the leopards, and are more fierce than the evening wolves: and their horsemen shall spread themselves, and their horsemen shall come from far; they shall fly [attack] as the eagle that hasteth to eat. 
Hab 1:9 They shall come all for violence: their faces shall sup up [gather up – as sand dunes blown up by the wind] as the east wind, and they shall gather the captivity as the sand. Reminiscent of the world, Gog and Magog, at the end of the One Thousand Years, gathered around the camp of the Lord’s Elect in imagined captivity for equally imagined destruction.
Hab 1:10 And they shall scoff at the kings, and the princes shall be a scorn unto them: they shall deride every strong hold; for they shall heap dust, and take it.

At the end of the Christ’s rule with a rod of iron, and following the no doubt forced phenomenal wealth and health of the nations without Satan; yet, and upon Satan’s release, the Beast will be given to change his mind and reclaim his eminence as god, sitting in the temple of God, showing that he is god.

Hab 1:11 Then shall his mind change, and he shall pass over, and offend, imputing this his power unto his god. His first father, Satan.

Rev 20:7 And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, 
Rev 20:8 And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. 
Rev 20:9 And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: [heavenly Jerusalem, Christ’s wife] and fire came down from God out of heaven, [from Christ and his ‘terrible’ and awful wife] and devoured them. 
Rev 20:10 And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever [G166- ‘aionian’ – age lasting].

Son 6:5 Turn away thine eyes from me, for they have overcome me: thy hair is as a flock of goats that appear from Gilead.

Solomon is so staggered by his Bride’s beauty that he cannot take his eyes off her; such is our Lord’s captivation for his Bride. He is so smitten that inwardly he hopes she averts her eyes. The passionate recurrent loop of Song of Solomon 4:9 is played again; Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse; thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck. 

The virgin Shulamite would be naturally engagingly coy about her status and beauty and would likewise find the admiring gaze from her fiancé a little overwhelming, further amplifying her God-given beauty. That submissive and humble nature is a repetitive and powerful theme of her identity, and she knows that she didn’t acquire it of her own accord. As such, she is more likely to demurely turn her eyes away from him than a brazen Jezabel-like assessment that revels in her lewd power over a man. 

Solomon seems distracted by her beauty, possibly deflecting his deep inspection and focus on the meaning of “Shulamite”.

Son 6:6 Thy teeth are as a flock of sheep which go up from the washing, whereof every one beareth twins, and there is not one barren among them. 
Son 6:7 As a piece of a pomegranate [to be exalted] are thy temples within thy locks.

Solomon repeats his imagery of chapters 4:1 and 2 regarding the glory of his Bride’s hair and perfect teeth corresponding to her Lord’s glory as her head. The reference to “a piece of pomegranate” could be crescent loops of gold chains embedded with clusters of rubies gracefully adorning her temples between her locks, thus looking like gleaming pomegranate seeds.

The Shulamite distantly recalls that she once paraded her beauty unrighteously as the ‘first army’ of the two, and now she is presented righteously, adorned with her Lord’s fair jewels.

Eze 16:14 And thy renown went forth among the heathen for thy beauty: for it was perfect through my comeliness, which I had put upon thee, saith the Lord GOD. 
Eze 16:15 But thou didst trust in thine own beauty, and playedst the harlot because of thy renown, and pouredst out thy fornications on every one that passed by; his it was.
Eze 16:16 And of thy garments thou didst take, and deckedst thy high places with divers colours, and playedst the harlot thereupon: the like things shall not come, neither shall it be so.
Eze 16:17 Thou hast also taken thy fair jewels of my gold and of my silver, which I had given thee, and madest to thyself images of men, and didst commit whoredom with them,
Eze 16:18 And tookest thy broidered garments, and coveredst them: and thou hast set mine oil and mine incense before them.

In the Shulamite, the Bride of Christ, all of her unrighteousness is reversed. Spiritual wisdom graces her temples, possibly in the form of rubies, rough-cut startingly identical to pomegranate seeds.

Isa 61:10 I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels.

Job 28:18 No mention shall be made of coral, [to rise; Strong’s, to be lifted up] or of pearls: for the price of wisdom is above rubies.

Son 6:8 There are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, and virgins without number. 
Son 6:9 My dove, my undefiled is but one; she is the only one of her mother, she is the choice one of her that bare her. The daughters saw her, and blessed her; yea, the queens and the concubines, and they praised her.

The number 6 (3×20) denotes the entirety of mankind, and 4 (4×20) the whole of the same, having gone into perdition and come out of that tribulation following the resurrection to judgement and having their clothes made white.

The grand total of humanity ever lived; the daughters of old Jerusalem will look back and understand that Christ and his undefiled wife went before them as their saviours. The Bride of Christ was the only (given to be) unblemished daughter who went into perdition before her sisters, and they all now look upon her in thunderstruck reverence and awe for the beauty of her ‘terribleness’ ~ and praise her.

Rev 3:9 Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee.

Rev 7:9 After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands; 
Rev 7:10 And cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.
Rev 7:11 And all the angels stood round about the throne, and about the elders and the four beasts, and fell before the throne on their faces, and worshipped God,
Rev 7:12 Saying, Amen: Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honour, and power, and might, be unto our God for ever and ever. Amen.
Rev 7:13 And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they?
Rev 7:14 And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

Son 6:10 Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?

With the humble serenity of Shulamite, the Elect of God know that they are she, ruling the moon that is her sisters, with the great authority of her Husband.

Rev 12:1 And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars: 

Son 6:11 I went down into the garden of nuts to see the fruits of the valley, and to see whether the vine flourished, and the pomegranates budded.

Repeatedly, Solomon goes down to his garden, expecting lush richness, just as our Lord knows he will find spiritual fruits in his Elect. Some of the associations with the name pomegranate are varied. One variation is H5884 with strong connections to “eye” or “eyes”, and means, 1. eye a. eye 1. of physical eye 2. as showing mental qualities 3. of mental and spiritual faculties (fig.) 2. spring, fountain.

Remembering that Solomon, though the wisest man to have ever lived, is musing and penning his Song from a physical standpoint. Upon his deep reflections on the physical, he could have had vexing anxiety about grasping the unknown spiritual connections with his physical poetry. Irritatingly coming so close to the epiphany of understanding yet utterly unable to crest the hump of understanding possibly bothered him with immense frustration. When considering the pomegranate flower in poetic language, its flush of delicate folds has strong sexual overtones for our physical source of life for the figurative “eye”. Since Solomon only ever could understand the physical, his sexual innuendos are gracefully obvious.

https://www.fromyourwindow.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Pomegranate-flowers.jpg

Son 6:12 Or ever I was aware, my soul made me like the chariots of Amminadib [H5993 – ‘my people are willing’. 1. a city given out of the tribe of Dan to the Levites, situated on the plain of Philistia, apparently not far from Joppa. 2. a town of the half-tribe of Manasseh located on the west side of the Jordan, assigned to the Levites]. 
Son 6:13 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.

From the two verses above, we understand that our Lord’s love for his Bride is like a conveyance (chariots) as unstoppable as Solomon’s heart was for the Shulamite.

The Bride of Christ emphatically will never return to her former ways, no matter the astonished wonderment by her sisters for her God-given royalty. She has moved on from the first army of Old Jerusalem and is becoming the second and eternal army of the heavenly Jerusalem above.

Solomon is especially enamoured by the Shulamite. He cannot restrain himself from incessant thinking about her outstanding beauty and constantly wants her to “return, return” to his deep reflections for the impossible task of understanding that dreadfully irksome niggling that there is more to her than he, with his wisdom, can see. It seems to restlessly bother him, and he feels that she represents something unidentifiably “terrible”. With relative ease, he has always found infinite wisdom in all his reflections upon life but cannot pin down the meaning of the unfathomable Shulamite, the meaning of the second army ~ unwitting in that age of the impenetrable spiritual.

1Pe 1:9 Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls. 
1Pe 1:10 Of which salvation the prophets [particularly for this application, Solomon] have enquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you:

“Return, return, that we may look upon thee” to diligently attempt to understand your beauty!

1Pe 1:11 Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in [Shulamite] them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow. 
1Pe 1:12 Unto [Shulamite, the Bride of Christ] whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into.

Mat 13:11 He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you [the Shulamite] to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them [Solomon – and the world] it is not given.

As always, Solomon defaults to the grim reality that all the days of man are vanity and chasing the wind.

Ecc 1:14 I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

He ultimately died not knowing the key to infinite wisdom, which is spiritual, the lynchpin of understanding.

Other related posts