![]() She reveals that this is a dream, seen on her "bed at night" and ends by again warning the daughters of Jerusalem "not to stir up love until it is ready". ![]() When she finds him she takes him almost by force into the chamber in which her mother conceived her. The woman again addresses the daughters of Jerusalem, describing her fervent and ultimately successful search for her lover through the night-time streets of the city. She uses imagery from a shepherd's life, and she says of her lover that "he pastures his flock among the lilies". The woman recalls a visit from her lover in the springtime. The section closes with the woman telling the daughters of Jerusalem not to stir up love such as hers until it is ready. The two compete in offering flattering compliments ("my beloved is to me as a cluster of henna blossoms in the vineyards of En Gedi", "an apple tree among the trees of the wood", "a lily among brambles", while the bed they share is like a forest canopy). A dialogue between the lovers follows: the woman asks the man to meet he replies with a lightly teasing tone. The poem proper begins with the woman's expression of desire for her lover and her self-description to the "daughters of Jerusalem": she insists on her sun-born blackness, likening it to the "tents of Kedar" (nomads) and the "curtains of Solomon". The introduction calls the poem "the song of songs", a construction commonly used in Scriptural Hebrew to show something as the greatest and most beautiful of its class (as in Holy of Holies). Observers describe the woman's beauty (6:13–8:4).The man describes his lover, who visits him (6:5–12).The woman addresses the daughters of Jerusalem (5:2–6:4).The man describes his lover's beauty (4:1–5:1).Sighting a royal wedding procession (3:6–11).The woman addresses the daughters of Zion (3:1–5).The woman recalls a visit from her lover (2:8–17).must therefore be taken as indicative, rather than determinative: ![]() Beyond this, however, there appears to be little agreement: attempts to find a chiastic structure have not been compelling, and attempts to analyse it into units have used different methods and arrived at differing results. There is widespread consensus that, although the book has no plot, it does have what can be called a framework, as indicated by the links between its beginning and end.
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