GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
SONG OF SOLOMON 4:1
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4 Look at you! You are beautiful, my darling!
Look at you! You are beautiful!
Your eyes behind your veil are doves.
Your hair is like a flock of goats
descending from Mount Gilead.
At last we have an answer to the problem that was raised in 3:6, namely, who was it who was coming up from the desert like a column of smoke? Since it was a woman who was coming (Hebrew pronouns are specific about their gender), it could not have been Solomon. Therefore, the final verses of chapter 3 are a kind of interlude: Just as we’re about to see the bride, the king’s limousine shows up, and we all stopped to look at it. Since it was, in fact, a figure of the Christian Church, we don’t begrudge the strange interlude, but now we return to that other picture of the church, the bride.
There is a common Hebrew word often translated “Behold!” It can obviously mean “Look!” or “See” or something along those lines. Here, it has a suffix that gives us a very sharp and direct, “Wow! Look at you!” such as a husband will say to his wife on any occasion. In marriage, the wife is everything that is attractive to her man, The longer they are married, the more he realizes that he only desires her, and he finds her to be the only woman who is truly beautiful to him. His love and desire are emphasized by the doubled “Look at you!”
In our spiritual relationship with our Lord, he finds true beauty and delight in us that we don’t expect. He praises us for what we think we don’t have, but which he has given to us. When he gazes on his holy people, he sees their faith and he counts it as righteousness. And while it surprises us that “the Lord rewards every man for his righteousness and faithfulness” (1 Samuel 26:23), that very righteousness is the crown “which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day” (2 Timothy 4:8). Our Confession reminds us: “The reconciled are accounted righteous and children of God not on account of their own purity but by mercy on account of Christ, if they grasp this mercy by faith. Thus the Scriptures testify that we are accounted righteous by faith” (Apology).
Your eyes behind your veil are doves. In the first five verses of this chapter, the husband praises seven physical features of his bride: his gaze travels generally from the top down: (1) her eyes, (2) hair, (3) teeth, (4) lips, (5) temples (or cheeks), (6) neck, and (7) breasts. In the corresponding part of the outline (6:4-10) only four of these reappear (eyes, hair, teeth and temples), but further on there is another list, this time of ten physical attributes, as his gaze travels from her feet upward: (1) feet, (2) legs, (3) navel, (4) waist, (5) breasts, (6) neck, (7) eyes, (8) nose, (9) head, and (10) hair (7:1-5), although her mouth is mentioned a little later as well (7:9) after the husband playfully addresses her breasts as a the fruit of a palm tree (7:7-8). This is all worth noticing on account of the specific number of features given at the three intervals: seven (a number usually suggesting holiness in the Bible), four (a number reminding us of the physical world created by God as the dwelling for man), and ten (the number of completeness and wholeness). The bride is holy, she is of this world, and she is complete and without flaw. She is truly God’s gift to her husband, as Eve was for Adam (Genesis 2:22).
A husband will say to his wife, “You have pretty eyes,” and he means it truthfully. We love to see and be seen by our spouse. We communicate as much with our eyes as we do with our words. We grow to love those eyes that see us; we long to see them more than anything else. They are veiled, and the veil can mean three things in the marriage. On the one hand, a veil can be the barrier of sin, or of some secret grief between the couple, but despite the veil, he loves her, and he tells her so. Or, the veil could very well mean the veil of propriety: She covers herself so that other men do not desire her or break the Tenth Commandment (something a beautiful wife should always keep in mind), but he knows how beautiful she is behind that veil, for she is his lover, his mistress, his darling wife, and she holds nothing back from him. But a third possibility is that the veil is the inevitable veil of the sinful human nature. In this way, despite the things that sometimes get in the way, such as misunderstanding, fatigue, failure to communicate, and other things, he does not hold those things to account against his love and devotion to her.
Spiritually, some of the same things could be said. Our Lord Jesus Christ loves us despite the veil of sin, but there is also the veil of propriety (Genesis 24:65) with which we hide ourselves from Satan and his ways. The less we deal with the evil one the better. But the veil can also be those things that make God inaccessible, which are opened to our eyes through careful study and through faithful preaching of God’s holy word.
Professor Gerhard (1582-1637) has a delightful observation comparing doves with the eyes of the Christian. “If food is set before a dove,” he writes, “it eats one grain after another, but after each grain, it always looks up. In the same way, the godly man who is rich in God lifts the eyes of his heart to God every time God blesses him and grants him a new gift.” In this way we do not set our hearts too firmly on worldly things, as Lot’s wife did looking back (Genesis 19:26). Jesus warns: “Remember Lot’s wife! Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.” (Luke 17:32).
Your hair is like a flock of goats descending from Mount Gilead.
The goats here are gizim, “she-goats,” walking an undulating path down the steep slopes of the mountains of Gilead to the east of the Sea of Galilee. Or they might have lain down in the hot sun for a while to rest, giving the mountainside (as one looks up from below) a beautiful appearance, like a woman’s lovely tresses. The long-haired goats of the land would make the whole mountain seem alive, or adorned with waving hair. A husband is delighted by his wife’s hair. Paul calls a woman’s long hair “her glory” (1 Corinthians 11:15), but we will be careful to remember that Paul’s comments about hair and head coverings in 1 Corinthians were about their particular culture and customs and not for the church for all time.
Spiritually, both the hair of the bride and its comparison to goats on Mount Gilead are a reminder of the blessings God gives, like a tree fully in leaf in the late spring, like a field of ripening grain in the late summer, like a net full of wriggling fish, like a quiver full of arrows (Psalm 127:4-5), or a womb delightfully swollen and bulging with a baby inside– such is a marriage filled with the blessings of God.
Count your blessings the way you count your spouse’s physical delights, or the way you count the stars on a clear night. Or the way you count goats descending the mountainside, or the delightfully floating and mesmerizing tips of each one of your wife’s lovely hairs as they rise and fall on the breeze of a gorgeous evening in the springtime of your love. Such are the countless blessings of God above.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
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Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – Song of Solomon 4:1 Look at you!