Investigation: Geography as Poetry

Journey of a Passage

• Song of Songs 2:15–17: Little foxes, mutual belonging and the mountains of Bether →"Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines" (v. 15); "My beloved is mine, and I am his" (v. 16); "be thou like a roe… upon the mountains of Bether" (v. 17). The speaker of v. 15 is unmarked. "Bether" is kept as a name by the Vulgate, translated "ravines" by the library's Greek.
• Song of Songs 4:1–7: Praise from eyes to breasts: veil, goats, towers, fawns →The first praise poem (wasf): doves' eyes behind her tsammah (veil, or "locks" in the KJV), hair like goats on Gilead, teeth like shorn ewes, lips like scarlet thread, temples like pomegranate, neck like David's tower, breasts like twin fawns. The library's Greek and the Vulgate render tsammah as "what is hidden within." 4Q106 is reported to preserve parts of 4:1–7.
• Song of Songs 4:8: Lebanon, Amana, Senir and Hermon →"Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse… look from the top of Amana, from the top of Shenir and Hermon, from the lions' dens, from the mountains of the leopards." Lebanon and Hermon are secure; Senir is Hermon's Amorite name (Deuteronomy 3:9); Amana is uncertain. The library's Greek reads Amana as a word ("faith," amanah); the Vulgate reads tashuri ("look") as "you will be crowned." 4Q106 is reported to lack this verse (its text passes from 4:7 to 6:11).
• Song of Songs 6:4–10: Beautiful as Tirzah, terrible as an army with banners →"Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners." Tirzah was the early capital of the northern kingdom; the library's Greek ("good pleasure") and the Vulgate ("sweet") translate the name by its meaning. Sixty queens, eighty concubines, but "my dove… is but one"; the queens praise her: "Who is she that looketh forth as the morning?"
• Song of Songs 7:1–9 (Hebrew 7:2–10): From feet to hair: Heshbon, Damascus, Carmel and the palm →Praise rising from her sandaled feet to her hair; real places as images (the pools of Heshbon, the tower of Lebanon facing Damascus, Carmel); the palm tree and its clusters; and at the end of v. 9 the woman's voice breaking in. The last phrase of v. 9 differs: Hebrew "gliding over the lips of sleepers"; the library's Greek "pleasing to my teeth and my lips."
• Song of Songs 8:11–12: Solomon's vineyard at Baal-hamon →"Solomon had a vineyard at Baal-hamon; he let out the vineyard unto keepers; every one for the fruit thereof was to bring a thousand pieces of silver. My vineyard, which is mine, is before me." The Vulgate translates both names ("the peaceful one had a vineyard in that which has peoples"); Baal-hamon is otherwise unknown.