6 The Young Women of Jerusalem: “O rarest of beautiful women, where has your loved one gone? We will help you find him.”

The Girl: ² “He has gone down to his garden, to his spice beds, to pasture his flock and to gather the lilies. ³ I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine. He pastures his flock among the lilies!”

King Solomon: ⁴ “O my beloved, you are as beautiful as the lovely land of Tirzah, yes, beautiful as Jerusalem, and how you capture my heart.^{[a] 5} Look the other way, for your eyes have overcome me! Your hair, as it falls across your face, is like a flock of goats frisking down the slopes of Gilead. ⁶ Your teeth are white as freshly washed ewes, perfectly matched and not one missing. ⁷ Your cheeks are matched loveliness^[b] behind your hair. ⁸ I have sixty other wives, all queens, and eighty concubines, and unnumbered virgins available to me; ⁹ but you, my dove, my perfect one, are the only one among them all, without an equal! The women of Jerusalem were delighted when they saw you, and even the queens and concubines praise you. ¹⁰ ‘Who is this,’ they ask, ‘arising as the dawn, fair as the moon, pure as the sun, so utterly captivating?’”^[c]

The Girl: ¹¹ “I went down into the orchard of nuts and out to the valley to see the springtime there, to see whether the grapevines were budding or the pomegranates were blossoming yet. ¹² Before I realized it, I was stricken with terrible homesickness and wanted to be back among my own people.”^[d]

The Young Women of Jerusalem: ¹³ “Return, return to us, O maid of Shulam. Come back, come back, that we may see you once again.”

The Girl: “Why should you seek a mere Shulammite?”

King Solomon: “Because you dance so beautifully.”^[e]