Song of Solomon 1:5-6
My own vineyard I have not kept
5I am dark, but lovely, you daughters of Jerusalem, like Kedar’s tents, like Solomon’s curtains.
6Don’t stare at me because I am dark, because the sun has scorched me. My mother’s sons were angry with me. They made me keeper of the vineyards. I haven’t kept my own vineyard.
She reports plainly that she was made keeper of the vineyards and did not keep her own. A clear-eyed account of one's own neglect, offered without excuse and without self-punishment, which is the tone the Moral Audit is meant to be conducted in.
Song of Solomon 2:7
Do not awaken love until it so desires
7I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, or by the hinds of the field, that you not stir up, nor awaken love, until it so desires.
The book's recurring adjuration, repeated at 3:5 and 8:4. Love is described as having its own timing, which cannot be advanced by wanting it sooner. The Discipline of Gradualism stated about desire rather than about growth, and it is the only instruction the Song gives three times.
Song of Solomon 2:8-13
The winter is past; arise and come away
8The voice of my beloved! Behold, he comes, leaping on the mountains, skipping on the hills.
9My beloved is like a roe or a young hart. Behold, he stands behind our wall! He looks in at the windows. He glances through the lattice.
10My beloved spoke, and said to me, “Rise up, my love, my beautiful one, and come away.
11For, behold, the winter is past. The rain is over and gone.
12The flowers appear on the earth. The time of the singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.
13The fig tree ripens her green figs. The vines are in blossom. They give forth their fragrance. Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away.”
Delight in the created world catalogued item by item — the rain gone, the flowers up, the turtledove heard, the fig ripening. Attention to the ordinary world as a form of gladness rather than as evidence for anything, which is how C24 describes the landscape opening.
Song of Solomon 2:14-17
The little foxes; my beloved is mine
14My dove in the clefts of the rock, In the hiding places of the mountainside, Let me see your face. Let me hear your voice; for your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely.
15Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that spoil the vineyards; for our vineyards are in blossom.
16My beloved is mine, and I am his. He browses among the lilies.
17Until the day is cool, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be like a roe or a young hart on the mountains of Bether.
The threat named is not a predator but the little foxes that spoil vineyards in blossom. Small unattended damage treated as the real danger to a bond, which is the household's ordinary work rather than its crises.
Song of Solomon 3:1-5
By night I sought him whom my soul loves
1By night on my bed, I sought him whom my soul loves. I sought him, but I didn’t find him.
2I will get up now, and go about the city; in the streets and in the squares I will seek him whom my soul loves. I sought him, but I didn’t find him.
3The watchmen who go about the city found me; “Have you seen him whom my soul loves?”
4I had scarcely passed from them, when I found him whom my soul loves. I held him, and would not let him go, until I had brought him into my mother’s house, into the room of her who conceived me.
5I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, or by the hinds of the field, that you not stir up, nor awaken love, until it so desires.
Absence is met by getting up and going out to look rather than by waiting for the feeling to return. Sought, not found, sought again, found — a shape the road repeats elsewhere, though here it is a woman looking for a man and nothing in the text asks to be read as more than that.
Song of Solomon 4:12-16
A locked garden, a sealed fountain
12A locked up garden is my sister, my bride; a locked up spring, a sealed fountain.
13Your shoots are an orchard of pomegranates, with precious fruits: henna with spikenard plants,
14spikenard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with every kind of incense tree; myrrh and aloes, with all the best spices,
15a fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, flowing streams from Lebanon.
16Awake, 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.
Exclusivity described as the thing that makes the garden worth entering rather than as a restriction placed on it. Fidelity argued positively, as Proverbs 5:15-23 argues it — from the goodness of what is kept, not the danger of what is forbidden.
Song of Solomon 5:2-8
I was asleep, but my heart was awake
2I was asleep, but my heart was awake. It is the voice of my beloved who knocks: “Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled; for my head is filled with dew, and my hair with the dampness of the night.”
3I have taken off my robe. Indeed, must I put it on? I have washed my feet. Indeed, must I soil them?
4My beloved thrust his hand in through the latch opening. My heart pounded for him.
5I rose up to open for my beloved. My hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with liquid myrrh, on the handles of the lock.
6I opened to my beloved; but my beloved left; and had gone away. My heart went out when he spoke. I looked for him, but I didn’t find him. I called him, but he didn’t answer.
7The watchmen who go about the city found me. They beat me. They bruised me. The keepers of the walls took my cloak away from me.
8I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, If you find my beloved, that you tell him that I am faint with love.
He knocks; she hesitates over small comforts — the robe already off, the feet already washed — and by the time she opens he is gone. Delay costs the moment, and the excuses are trivial in exactly the way real ones are.
Song of Solomon 6:3
I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine
3I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine. He browses among the lilies,
Mutual possession stated in both directions and in that order, with the self given before the claim. The formula recurs at 2:16 and 7:10, each time balanced, which is the structure of the household C14 describes.
Song of Solomon 8:5-7
Set me as a seal upon your heart; love is strong as death
5Who is this who comes up from the wilderness, leaning on her beloved? Under the apple tree I aroused you. There your mother conceived you. There she was in labor and bore you.
6Set me as a seal on your heart, as a seal on your arm; for love is strong as death. Jealousy is as cruel as Sheol. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a very flame of Yahweh.
7Many waters can’t quench love, neither can floods drown it. If a man would give all the wealth of his house for love, he would be utterly scorned.
The summit of the book and the only place it stops describing love and defines it. Love is set against death and floods and finally against money — a man offering the whole wealth of his house would be utterly scorned. Fidelity that cannot be purchased is exactly what Unobligated Loyalty means, and this is its strongest statement anywhere in Scripture.
Song of Solomon 8:11-12
Solomon's vineyard, and my own before me
11Solomon had a vineyard at Baal Hamon. He leased out the vineyard to keepers. Each was to bring a thousand shekels of silver for its fruit.
12My own vineyard is before me. The thousand are for you, Solomon; two hundred for those who tend its fruit.
Solomon's leased vineyard with its thousand shekels is set beside her own, which is simply before her. A refusal of scale as the measure of worth, and the tenders are paid their portion without complaint — stewardship of what is actually yours rather than of what is largest.