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The Song of Solomon, Part 11b – The Cluster of Camphire, and the House of Cedar

[Study Aired October 3, 2026]

Preface

The bundle bound by old distress was left, in the study just closed, still in the reader’s own hands, Lord willing, to untie. Within the Song itself, no such delay is permitted. The instant her myrrh is named, the soliloquy turns — without warning, without bracketing, exactly as a mind moves when it is no longer performing for an audience — from what lies betwixt her breasts to the very colour and fragrance of the Beloved she has kept it for.

Son 1:14-17 My beloved is unto me as a cluster of camphire in the vineyards of Engedi. Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves’ eyes. Behold, thou art fair, my beloved, yea, pleasant: also our bed is green. The beams of our house are cedar, and our rafters of fir.

 Cluster of Camphire in the Vineyards of Engedi

Again, the narrative switches. Camphire, by its meaning, is best ascribed to a male.

In the King James Bible, camphire is an old word for the henna plant, Lawsonia inermis. The plant grows clusters of highly fragrant, sweet-smelling white or yellow flowers. In biblical times, people picked these blossoms in clusters and wore or carried them for their perfume; they also pressed an aromatic oil from them, called Oleum Cyprineum. The plant’s leaves, separately, are harvested, thoroughly dried, and ground into a fine powder, which, when mixed with a mild liquid such as water or lemon juice to form a thick paste, releases a rich reddish-orange dye. For thousands of years in the Middle East, people have used this paste to dye hair, skin, and nails.

Son 5:10  My beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand.

Ruddy — H122 adom
1. red, ruddy (of man, horse, heifer, garment, water, lentils)
From H119, to show blood in the face, that is, flushed or turned rosy: to be, or be made, red or ruddy.
The colour depicting mankind, made of red clay.

Adam — H121
Adam = red
1. first man.

Hence, the Bride’s beauty causes her husband’s ravishment to flush his skin.

Camphire — H3724 kopher
1. price of a life, ransom, bribe
2. asphalt, pitch (as a covering)
3. the henna plant
4. village
From H3722: properly a cover, that is literally a village (as covered in); specifically bitumen, as used for coating, and the henna plant, as used for dyeing; figuratively a redemption price: bribe, camphire, pitch, ransom, satisfaction, sum of money, village.

One word, four English glosses, and not one of them a coincidence: the price that covers a life, the pitch that covers a hull against the flood, the dye that covers skin in color, and the wall that covers a village against its enemies are, in Hebrew, the identical act performed on four different surfaces. To be covered by kopher is to be ransomed, sealed, adorned, and defended at once.

From those definitions, a cluster of camphire shows that the Bride recognizes her former nature was akin to her sister’s red Adamic flesh. She now sees that Solomon, as Christ is to the Elect, has symbolically ransomed, atoned, and redeemed her, sealing her with pitch impervious to the filthy water of Babylon’s lewd doctrines. A cluster directly connects to a bunch of grapes, which in turn connects to redemption and the wine of His vineyard in the New Covenant. 

Since Strong further elaborates on the meaning of a cluster, the far more grounded connection to agrarian life, animal husbandry, and the procreative ways of the times is evident in their earthy descriptions of the everyday realities of sexuality (Ecc 3:18-19… mankind are the same as beasts), and they would possibly be astonished at today’s contorted moral ideologies.

Cluster (root) — H810′ eshek
1. testicle
2. (in figurative extension) stone
From an unused root, probably meaning to bunch together.

An Old Covenant priest of God, containing imperfections in his body, was rejected. So, too, we are today: if we are to be kings and priests of Christ in co-rulership, we must become perfect as he is perfect.

Lev 21:21-20 And the LORD said unto Moses, Speak unto the priests the sons of Aaron, and say unto them, There shall none be defiled for the dead among his people… They shall be holy unto their God... Whosoever he be of thy seed in their generations that hath any blemish, let him not approach to offer the bread of his God… Or crookbackt, or a dwarf, or that hath a blemish in his eye, or be scurvy, or scabbed, or hath his stones broken;

Deu 23:1 He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD. 

That meaning further adds weight to the location of Solomon’s, and emblematically our Lord’s, feeling of the meaning of myrrh — distress, besieged, bound up like the Behemoth’s sinews of his stones, his walk cramped and afflicted by his many female enemies — is the very meaning of the root beneath myrrh itself.

Job 30:17 My bones are pierced in me in the night season: and my sinews take no rest.

Job 40:17 He [Christ…the Behemoth] moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews [the entire surrounding anatomical assembly] of his stones are wrapped together.

Sinews H6207 – `araq – Phonetic: aw-rak ‘- Definition: 1. (Qal) to gnaw, chew.

Job 30:17 My bones are pierced in me in the night season: and my sinews [H6207] take no rest.

Why on earth would God mention his “stones” if his focus was only on the Behemoth’s walk?

In ancient Near Eastern literature, an untamable beast’s sexual, procreative energy—its virility—was viewed as the rawest, most chaotic, and terrifying force in nature. By saying “the sinews of his stones are wrapped together,” God is highlighting that this creature’s reproductive power is dense, structural, and fortified like steel cables.

God is essentially asking Job: “Can you master or contain this raw engine of generation? Can you control the very seed of the ground-dwelling world’s most formidable creature?” In it representing God the Father, the answer is, “No.” Only Christ can approach its hidden source of life and power and live.

The “stones” held the seed of future generations. It was the physical site of life-continuation. In the patriarchal era, men swore the most binding, solemn oaths by placing their hands directly under another’s thigh—specifically near the generative organs (as Abraham’s servant did in Genesis 24:2). The sinews being “wrapped together” (yesoragu in Hebrew) means they are interwoven like a basket or a dense rope—even as the tubules in a man’s singular “stone,” if laid out, are 600 meters in length, tightly packed into a bantam-egg-sized “stone”. Even in the deepest “myrrh” of suffering, humiliation, and constraint, the foundational core of Christ’s generative power (the power to bring forth many sons unto glory) is held fast, unbroken, and perfectly bound by the Father’s design. God mentions the “stones” to show Job that He governs not just the movement of life (the walk), but the very matrix and factory of life itself.

Furthermore, the Bride is like a small village, or even a tiny cloud on the horizon rising out of the sea (mankind), that Elijah’s servant ultimately observed, bringing forth a deluge. This imagery is akin to the Lord’s small flock, reminiscent of Lot and his two daughters fleeing the immense wealth of Sodom, fearing to remain in the modest village of Zoar, which was still near Sodom and ourselves, Babylon. They escape to the symbolic mountains of the Lord, as do the Elect today flee Babylon to the mountain of Christ, represented as Christ’s garden, his vineyard of Engedi—and the world to the temporal Lake of Fire.

Mar 13:14 But when ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not, (let him that readeth understand,) then let them that be in Judaea flee to the mountains:

Engedi — H5872′ Eyn Gediy
En-gedi = fount (the source) of the kid [goat]
1. a town in the wilderness of Judah on the western shore of the Dead Sea.
From H5869, eye: of the physical eye; as showing mental qualities; of mental and spiritual faculties (figuratively); and, secondarily, spring or fountain.

The same word supplies both eye and fountain because the ancient mind saw no real distance between the two: an eye is simply the fountain from which sight itself springs. 

Mat 6:22  The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. 
Mat 6:23  But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!

Engedi is therefore not merely a watering hole for young goats. By its very name, it is the place where a kid’s very capacity for design and failure to see originates.

1Co 9:7 Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock?

As we piece this together, the Bride’s atonement emerges like treasure buried beneath the soil. She is the spiritual counterpart of the Proverbs 31 woman, planting a vineyard heavy with fruit. Though she still stands within Babylon, the field of her captivity, Babylon no longer lives within her. She remains in its midst, yet she has forsaken its ways.

Pro 31:16 She considereth a field, and buyeth it: with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard [Of course, the very one she leaves]

Jer 29:4-5 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, unto all that are carried away captives, whom I have caused to be carried away from Jerusalem unto Babylon; Build ye houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them;

Jer 17:5 Thus saith the LORD; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD.

She was formerly, and figuratively, a kid goat, sleeping and dancing beside the false shepherd’s tents with her friends. Now, at her Lord’s hand, she has become a new vessel, the apple of his eye — not fed by the milk that signifies the immaturity of the flock or the goats, but by the strong meat of His word in perfect spiritual harmony with Him in His vineyard. She depicts an unblemished kid goat and the unblemished bullock, Christ, both on the altar, glorified by God, as the Temple of God. Notice that in the appointed order of the Feast of Tabernacles, there is only one kid goat for the daily sacrifice, signifying the Bride as Christ’s only wife dying daily to her sins.

Eze 43:22 And on the second day thou shalt offer a kid of the goats without blemish for a sin offering; and they shall cleanse the altar, as they did cleanse it with the bullock.
Eze 45:23 And seven days of the feast he shall prepare a burnt offering to the LORD, seven bullocks and seven rams without blemish daily the seven days; and a kid of the goats daily for a sin offering.

Thou Hast Doves’ Eyes

She, representing the heavenly, peaceful Jerusalem above, is immersed in His love, where their closeness is noted by His observance and delight in the softness of doves’ eyes, seen in contrast to the fierce, predatory-looking black pupil and yellow iris of the goshawk’s eyes, emblematically as spiritually cunning as a hyperalert harlot’s eyes, figuratively eating her paramour alive, as eagles and goshawks do to their prey. They, too, and without remorse, wipe their beaks on the remnants of the prey or a branch where they have feasted.

Pro 30:20 Such is the way of an adulterous woman; she eateth, and wipeth her mouth, and saith, I have done no wickedness.

Dove — H3123 yonah
1. dove, pigeon
Strong’s notes this word as probably from the same root as H3196, apparently from the warmth of the bird’s mating [and reminiscent and meaning earlier of the colour red and both party’s flush of virginal coyness].
Wine — H3196 yayin
1. wine (as fermented)
From an unused root meaning to effervesce. 

The lexicon’s own uncertainty here is worth sitting inside rather than rushing past: it cannot say with confidence why dove and wine share a root, only that they very likely do, and offers the warmth of courtship as the most probable bridge between them. Effervescence, whether in a fermenting vat or a mating pair, is the same phenomenon in two different bodies — something once still now visibly, audibly alive. Her eyes, called doves’ eyes, are therefore not merely gentle. They carry, folded into their own name, the same effervescent warmth this Song has already declared better than wine in its opening verse. The meaning of dove signifies the New Heavenly Jerusalem’s [H3389] peaceful, anticipatory courtship flush and post-coital glow—incidentally, an eternal condition unsustainable in the flesh, which is precisely why it must finally be granted in a body no longer subject to the flesh’s own exhaustion from “tabering upon [our] breasts” their own ideologies (Nah 2:7—doves “taber” by puffing out their crop and with a warbling cooing strut their alluring stuff in matting display).

Rev 21:2 And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
Rev 21:3 And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.
Rev 21:4 And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

All men, principled and amoral, get rapidly disinterested and desensitised when saturated by today’s Babylonians’ hypersexualised, everyday, aggressive and impudent bodily portrayal. Compared to the Bride’s soft, dove-like eyes and pure white linen, this effervesces infinitely more elegant arousal in her Lord than her sister’s indelicate parade.

Fair, Pleasant, and Green

This is Solomon’s continuing poetic soliloquy. Note his utter delight in her signified fresh vitality that only a virgin expresses in the newness and breathless anticipation and knowledge that her Husband is so easily righteously ravished by her virtue. Hence, he sees her as green — not the yellow-green denoting the sickness of the Revelation pale horse, the advancement of flesh’s gangrenous decay, but a different green entirely.

Green — H7488 ra’anan
1. to be or grow luxuriant, fresh, or green; adjective: luxuriant, fresh.

The word describes foliage still drawing sap, still visibly alive in its color, as distinct from anything merely painted the color of life without possessing it.

Hence, the Bride’s virginal life vitality anticipates the newness and closeness of a powerful male’s headship, honor, and respect for their God—designedly from Eden and never actualised in Babylon—deeply arousing any female, as does her luxuriant green young woman’s freshness, which ravishes Him.

Son 4:9 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.

As with our former whorish ways in Babylon, green likewise denotes this Aholah and Aholibah-like, at least initially, virginity, freshness and vitality, now used negatively. Here, the woman, Old Israel, used her beauty to garner the leering eyes of her neighbors — a lust far more enduring than conquest — like the scantily clad women today who impudently walk with outstretched necks, pretending innocence, banking every man’s gaze: the very nature of carnal harlotry while still, technically, virginal—juxtaposed spiritually seen in our former ways of Orthodoxy’s sanctimony.

Isa 3:16 Moreover the LORD saith, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet:

Deu 12:2 Ye shall utterly destroy all the places, wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree:
Deu 12:3 And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place.

Likewise, Samson was bound with the symbolised green of Delilah’s machinations. When his hypersexual lusts grew weary, and he had scorned God’s word too far, he was bound by her false green allure, now negatively, gangrenously green.

Jdg 16:7 And Samson said unto her, If they bind me with seven green withs that were never dried, then shall I be weak, and be as another man.
Jdg 16:8 Then the lords of the Philistines brought up to her seven green withs which had not been dried, and she bound him with them.

Our House of Cedar and Fir

Cedar and fir, as beams and rafters, are even shittim wood, a step up from a tabernacle made of badger skins or goats’ hair — wilderness dwellers’ materials denoting the impermanence of the flesh. Solomon, too, took pride in his wealth, which he much later saw as pure “vanity”, showing the “beams” and richness of the Lord’s Temple to the Queen of Sheba, likewise emblematic of Christianity’s pride in the grandeur of their churches and cathedrals—all unwittingly creating the proverbial “beam in their own eyes” (Mat 7:4-6).

Exo 25:4 And blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats’ hair,
Exo 25:5 And rams’ skins dyed red, and badgers’ skins, and shittim wood,

The tents of Kedar were highly likely made from black goats’ hair, woven raw with the natural animal oil as unprocessed weatherproofing. This goat-hair fabric was highly functional for nomadic desert life: when dry, the weave stayed porous enough to let heat escape and air circulate; but when it rained, the coarse fibres swelled and shrank together, making the tent completely waterproof. Interestingly, this indicates the Bride’s sisters’ God-given temporary condition for seven thousand years—their imperviousness to the rain of Christ’s word.

1Co 3:11 For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
1Co 3:12 Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble;
1Co 3:13 Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is.

1Co 3:16 Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the spirit of God dwelleth in you?

Cedar and fir do not repel the rain the way the goat-hair tent does. They are tested by it, and by fire besides, precisely because a house built to last must be a house built to be examined — unlike a tent whose entire engineering exists to keep every element that might test it safely on the outside.

Gen 1:30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

Rev 9:4 And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads.

Even the final plague reserved for the unsealed passes over every green and growing thing. What is genuinely alive, genuinely (Hebrew) ra’anan (green), is protected in that hour precisely because it was never the target. Only what has already died standing was ever in danger.

Closing: The Two Armies, and the House Still Being Tested

Solomon subliminally knew that the glory of his Bride’s creation had a massive hurdle to overcome—the institutional problem of the Two Armies, and the seeming impossibility of the First because of the curses from Eden. Without his own unseen instigation by the holy spirit, he could not have conceived how his Bride would be any different.

Ecc 7:28 Which yet my soul seeketh, but I find not: one man among a thousand have I found; but a woman among all those have I not found.
Ecc 7:29 Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.

He looked, and looked again, upon her, and wondered how he could circumvent the problem for his young creation — her unsullied pre-pubescence, which a later study in this Song will open fully. His wondering is not his alone. It is yours tonight, if you are honest about what you may still be carrying.

Return to the house just described — cedar and fir, tested by rain rather than merely shedding it, tested by fire rather than immaturely merely fearing it. Ask what you have actually built your own house from, starting today while it is yet called “today.” A tent of goat’s hair is not a sin; the symbolism lived is. It is simply built to repel every element that might have proven it. If your convictions have never once been rained on, never once brought within reach of the fire in 1 Corinthians 3, that is not evidence of the tent’s strength. It may be evidence that you retained it, released it alive into the Babylonian wilderness, as Jonah did, avoiding the test rather than being rightly glad to die in it.

Which of your present convictions have you not called on Christ’s strength, in engineered Laodicean-like indolence, whether you meant to or not, for your temple to stand — phrased so vaguely, held so privately, defended so rarely in the privacy of your own heart, that no rain has ever actually reached the beam to prove whether it is cedar or merely dried hide, and the same filth-laden tent mats containing the rank odor of a goat rather than spikenard or myrrh?

While it is called “today”, in your heart, quietly recall (judge within) one such conviction into the open, deliberately, where it can actually be rained on — wisely considered, spoken humbly to the Body who might disagree, tested against a passage you have avoided, exposed to the one honest question within you have been avoiding. If it is cedar, the rain will only prove it. If it was only ever goat’s hair arranged to look like a house, better to learn that now, while the fire in this age is still corrective, than to learn it in a later fire that will lick up and melt every element of the earth we vainly wish to retain.

Mat 10:34 Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. 

1Th 4:18 Wherefore comfort one another with these words.

A tent that has never once been rained on has not been spared. It has simply never been tested, and your every house, your Temple, which you built by the sweat of your deluded hands and left untested, still owes you an honest answer about what it is actually made of—and the fire will test that.

End of Part 11b

Next: Son 2:1-3