Dual Panel1WHERE HAS your beloved gone, O you fairest among women? [Again the ladies showed their interest in the remarkable person whom the Shulammite had championed with such unstinted praise; they too wanted to know him, they insisted.] Where is your beloved hiding himself? For we would seek him with you.
2[She replied] My beloved has gone down to his garden, to the beds of spices, to feed in the gardens and to gather lilies.
3I am my beloved's [garden] and my beloved is mine! He feeds among the lilies [which grow there].
4[He said] You are as beautiful as Tirzah [capital of the northern kingdom's first king], my love, and as comely as Jerusalem, [but you are] as terrible as a bannered host!
5Turn away your [flashing] eyes from me, for they have overcome me! Your hair is like a flock of goats trailing down from Mount Gilead.
6Your teeth are like a flock of ewes coming from their washing, of which all are in pairs, and not one of them is missing.
7Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate behind your veil.
8There are sixty queens and eighty concubines, and virgins without number;
9But my dove, my undefiled {and} perfect one, stands alone [above them all]; she is the only one of her mother, she is the choice one of her who bore her. The daughters saw her and called her blessed {and} happy, yes, the queens and the concubines, and they praised her.
10[The ladies asked] Who is this that looks forth like the dawn, fair as the moon, clear {and} pure as the sun, {and} terrible as a bannered host?
11[The Shulammite replied] I went down into the nut orchard [one day] to look at the green plants of the valley, to see whether the grapevine had budded and the pomegranates were in flower.
12Before I was aware [of what was happening], my desire [to roam about] had brought me into the area of the princes of my people [the king's retinue].
13[I began to flee, but they called to me] Return, return, O Shulammite; return, return, that we may look upon you! [I replied] What is there for you to see in the [poor little] Shulammite? [And they answered] As upon a dance before two armies {or} a dance of Mahanaim.