Song of Songs 8:8–12 (WEB)
We have a little sister.
She has no breasts.
What shall we do for our sister
in the day when she is to be spoken for?
If she is a wall,
we will build on her a turret of silver.
If she is a door,
we will enclose her with boards of cedar.
I am a wall, and my breasts are like towers.
Then I was in his eyes like one who found peace.
Solomon had a vineyard at Baal Hamon.
He leased out the vineyard to keepers.
Each was to bring a thousand shekels of silver for its fruit.
My own vineyard is before me.
The thousand are for you, Solomon;
two hundred for those who tend its fruit.
The Song has just reached its poetic summit. Love is strong as death, fierce as Sheol, blazing like fire, impossible for floods to extinguish, and completely beyond purchase. Then the poem does something characteristic of Song of Songs: rather than ending on its most quotable line, it changes subjects—or at least appears to.
Suddenly somebody has a little sister.
And apparently everyone is discussing what to do about the fact that she has no breasts.
For modern readers, the transition can feel almost comically abrupt. We have moved from “many waters can’t quench love” to a family conversation about a girl’s physical development. Yet the subject has not wandered as far as it initially appears. The previous passage told us what mature love is worth and why it should not be treated casually. These verses turn backward and ask what should happen before a young woman reaches the point where such love becomes possible.
The girl is plainly not yet physically mature. “She has no breasts” is not an insult or a judgment about her attractiveness. It identifies her stage of development. She is the younger sister of whoever is speaking, and the family anticipates a future “day when she is to be spoken for.” The precise social situation envisioned by that phrase can be debated, but marriage negotiations or romantic interest are naturally in view. She is not there yet. The family is thinking ahead to the day when she will be.
That immediately connects this strange little scene with one of the Song’s persistent concerns: timing.
Three times we heard:
“Do not stir up, nor awaken love, until it so desires.”
Now we meet someone for whom that warning is especially appropriate. She is not the Shulammite standing in the vineyards telling her beloved, “There I will give you my love.” She is a girl who has not yet reached physical maturity. The Song does not treat those stages as interchangeable.
The older siblings therefore ask, “What shall we do for our sister?”
That question can sound controlling to modern ears, particularly because the brothers of the Shulammite have not always appeared sympathetically. Back in chapter 1 she told us:
Song of Songs 1:5–6 (WEB)
I am dark, but lovely,
you daughters of Jerusalem,
like Kedar’s tents,
like Solomon’s curtains.
Don’t stare at me because I am dark,
because the sun has scorched me.
My mother’s sons were angry with me.
They made me keeper of the vineyards.
I haven’t kept my own vineyard.
We should remember that scene because vineyards are about to return prominently. Her brothers had exercised authority over her labor and sent her to guard vineyards belonging to others. Whatever caused their anger is never explained. The result, however, was that she could say, “My own vineyard I haven’t kept.”
Now, near the end of the Song, family members are again concerned about a younger sister and what should be done with her.
Their proposed response depends upon what kind of young woman she becomes:
“If she is a wall, we will build on her a turret of silver. If she is a door, we will enclose her with boards of cedar.”
The metaphors are not difficult at their basic level. A wall resists access. A door permits access. In the context of a girl approaching marriageable age, the contrast naturally concerns sexual availability or chastity. If she proves to be a wall—someone who maintains appropriate boundaries—her family will honor her, pictured as adorning the wall with silver. If she proves to be a door—too readily allowing access—they intend to restrict or protect her, pictured as enclosing the door with cedar.
There is a protective impulse in the language, although we should not automatically assume that every action imagined by the brothers provides a universal model for how families should supervise daughters. Song of Songs is poetry depicting people within an ancient social world, not a parental handbook prescribing architectural metaphors for teenage discipline.
The more important voice comes from the woman herself.
She answers:
“I am a wall.”
The family has been discussing what they might need to do to preserve the little sister’s boundaries. The mature woman speaks for herself.
She does not need to be made into a wall.
She is one.
That statement becomes especially significant after everything we have seen from the Shulammite. If this is her speaking—and the continuity with the vineyard imagery strongly favors hearing her voice here—being a wall clearly does not mean being sexually uninterested, frightened of intimacy, or permanently inaccessible.
We have spent ten studies listening to this woman.
She wanted kisses in chapter 1.
She became faint with love in chapter 2.
She searched the city for her beloved in chapter 3.
She invited him into the garden in chapter 4.
She described his body from head to foot in chapter 5.
She declared that she belonged to him in chapter 6.
She invited him away to the vineyards in chapter 7 and promised, “There I will give you my love.”
Whatever “I am a wall” means, it cannot mean I have no sexual desire.
It means her boundaries were real.
That distinction is enormously important. The Song has consistently refused to choose between sexual restraint and sexual desire. The woman who can say “I am a wall” is the same woman who can say “His desire is toward me.” Her sexuality is neither unavailable forever nor available indiscriminately.
She determines where the door opens.
Her next words make her maturity unmistakable:
“My breasts are like towers.”
The little sister had no breasts. This woman now describes hers as towers. The contrast marks development. She has become physically mature, but the architectural metaphor also continues the wall imagery. She is no longer the young girl whose family wonders what she might become. She can speak as an adult woman about what she has become.
Then she says:
“Then I was in his eyes like one who found peace.”
The Hebrew word behind “peace” is shalom.
And with that word, the Song may be playing with names again.
We have already encountered Solomon—Shelomoh—and the Shulammite— Shulammith. Both names or designations are related in sound to the Hebrew family of words built around shalom. Now the woman herself says that in his eyes she became “like one finding shalom.”
We should not force the wordplay into a secret code. But the clustering is difficult to ignore, especially this close to the end of the poem.
The woman who was once sent away to keep other people’s vineyards, who could say “my own vineyard I haven’t kept,” is about to speak about her vineyard again.
And this time she says something very different:
“My own vineyard is before me.”
That line brings us back almost to the first words the woman spoke about herself. In chapter 1 she had been placed under the authority of her brothers and made responsible for vineyards that were not her own:
Song of Songs 1:6 (WEB)
My mother’s sons were angry with me.
They made me keeper of the vineyards.
I haven’t kept my own vineyard.
Now listen to her near the end of the Song:
Song of Songs 8:11–12 (WEB)
Solomon had a vineyard at Baal Hamon.
He leased out the vineyard to keepers.
Each was to bring a thousand shekels of silver for its fruit.
My own vineyard is before me.
The thousand are for you, Solomon;
two hundred for those who tend its fruit.
The repetition of “my own vineyard” creates a strong connection between the passages. At the beginning, other people controlled where she worked, and her own vineyard had not been kept. At the end, she speaks with striking confidence: “My own vineyard is before me.” Whatever else the vineyard signifies in these verses, the language has changed from neglect under the demands of others to possession and control.
We should not reduce the vineyard to a single meaning every time it appears. Actual vineyards exist throughout the Song’s world, and the poem repeatedly moves between literal landscapes and metaphorical associations. Yet by chapter 8 the vineyard has accumulated an unmistakable connection with the woman’s body, sexuality, and love. In chapter 7 she invited her beloved into the vineyards and promised, “There I will give you my love.” The garden imagery of chapter 4 worked similarly. Her sexuality was pictured as enclosed, fruitful, desirable, and ultimately given to the beloved she chose.
That history makes “my own vineyard is before me” considerably more significant than a statement about agricultural management.
The contrast with Solomon sharpens it.
Solomon has a vineyard at Baal Hamon, a location otherwise unknown to us. Attempts have been made to identify it geographically, but the text does not give us enough information to do so confidently. What matters for the poem is what Solomon does with it. He leases the vineyard to keepers, and its fruit generates substantial revenue: a thousand pieces of silver from each keeper. Solomon’s vineyard belongs to an economic system.
It has keepers.
It produces revenue.
Its fruit has a price.
And once again, immediately after the Song has declared that love cannot be purchased with “all the wealth of his house,” we find Solomon standing beside a very large amount of money.
The repetition of one thousand is especially interesting because money and Solomon will appear together again almost immediately. In verse 12 the woman says, “The thousand are for you, Solomon; two hundred for those who tend its fruit.” There are different ways of understanding precisely how the financial arrangement works, and we should not pretend the accounting is clearer than it is. But the basic contrast is obvious enough: Solomon has a vineyard whose fruit can be assigned a monetary value.
The woman has a vineyard too.
“My own vineyard is before me.”
That declaration becomes particularly striking if the vineyard carries the sexual associations it has developed elsewhere in the Song. Solomon may possess vineyards that can be leased, managed, and monetized. Her vineyard does not belong to Solomon’s commercial system. She has already told us whom she desires and to whom she gives her love.
This is where some interpretations of Song of Songs see a much larger contrast between Solomon and the woman’s beloved. On that reading, Solomon represents royal wealth and accumulation while the Shulammite remains faithful to a shepherd lover whom she genuinely loves. The Song would therefore become, at least in part, a rejection of Solomon’s attempt to acquire a woman whose affection cannot be purchased.
That reconstruction is possible, and these verses are among its strongest evidence.
But once again, the Song never narrates the proposed story explicitly.
We never receive a scene in which Solomon approaches the Shulammite with money and she rejects his marriage proposal in favor of a shepherd. The poem contains Solomon, a beloved who is sometimes described with pastoral imagery, queens and concubines, royal wealth, and now this remarkable contrast involving Solomon’s vineyard and the woman’s own vineyard. Those pieces invite interpretation, but we should distinguish the contrast the text actually gives us from the larger narrative we might construct to explain it.
The contrast itself is sufficient.
Solomon’s vineyard produces a thousand.
Her vineyard is hers.
That lands differently after 8:7:
“If a man would give all the wealth of his house for love, he would be utterly scorned.”
The proximity makes it difficult to treat the money in 8:11–12 as irrelevant. The poem has just declared love beyond purchase, then introduces a wealthy king whose vineyard generates enormous payments. Whatever the precise dramatic relationship between Solomon and the Shulammite, the juxtaposition reinforces a distinction the Song has been developing: economic value and relational value are not the same thing.
The woman can acknowledge Solomon’s thousand without surrendering what belongs to her. “The thousand are for you, Solomon.” Fine. Solomon can have his revenue.
She retains the right to speak about “my own vineyard.”
That also gives new depth to her earlier declaration, “I am a wall.” Her boundaries are not merely restrictions imposed upon her by brothers. She has grown into someone capable of exercising those boundaries herself. The little sister needed protection because she had not yet reached maturity. The adult woman can speak for her own vineyard.
And she has not protected it because she is afraid to love.
Quite the opposite.
She has protected it because love is worth giving deliberately.
This is the woman who has already said, “I am my beloved’s. His desire is toward me.” She knows exactly where her love is directed. She knows whom she wants. She has invited him into the garden and promised him the fruits she stored for him. Her sexual restraint and her sexual generosity arise from the same conviction: intimacy is valuable because it can be given particularly.
That is the difference between a wall and a prison.
A prison exists so that nobody gets out.
Her wall exists so that not everybody gets in.
The Song has been showing us that distinction from the beginning.
The contrast also helps us make sense of the brothers without making them either heroes or villains. In chapter 1, the woman’s reference to them was hardly affectionate: “My mother’s sons were angry with me. They made me keeper of the vineyards.” Here the family again imagines exercising authority over a younger sister. If she is a wall, they will decorate her; if she is a door, they will board her up. Their concern may be protective, but their proposed solution still comes from outside her. They intend to manage the situation for her.
The mature woman’s response shifts the center of responsibility:
“I am a wall.”
She has become capable of guarding what the brothers were worried about guarding. Her maturity is not merely physical, though the contrast between the little sister who “has no breasts” and the woman whose “breasts are like towers” certainly marks physical development. She has also become capable of exercising judgment over her own love.
That makes this passage a natural continuation of the refrain we just studied. “Do not stir up, nor awaken love, until it so desires” is wisdom for the period in which love must be guarded. But the goal of guarding love is not permanent dependence upon somebody else to control it. Eventually the little sister becomes a woman who must exercise wisdom herself.
Parents can establish boundaries for children. Older siblings can protect younger siblings. Families can teach what is wise and warn about what is dangerous. But eventually the child becomes an adult, and no external fence can substitute for internal wisdom. A young woman cannot spend her entire life being boarded up by her brothers. She must eventually be able to say for herself, “I am a wall.”
The same is true for young men, even though this particular image concerns a young woman. Sexual integrity that exists only because opportunity has been prevented is fragile integrity. Eventually there will be privacy, independence, attraction, and opportunity. Biblical maturity therefore cannot consist merely of constructing enough external restrictions to make wrongdoing impossible. Wisdom has to become something the person possesses.
The Shulammite is an especially good example because her self-control has never required the destruction of desire. She is perhaps the last biblical character anyone should use to argue that sexual maturity means becoming less interested in sex. She has been enthusiastically attracted to her beloved from the opening verses. The maturity is found in what she does with that desire.
She does not give everyone access simply because she possesses strong desire.
She gives herself particularly.
That is why the wall and the vineyard belong together. The wall describes her capacity to establish boundaries. The vineyard describes something valuable within those boundaries. If we focus only on the wall, chastity can begin to sound like deprivation: keep people out, resist desire, protect yourself, say no. But the vineyard reminds us what the boundary protects. There is something fruitful behind it that she intends to give.
She has already demonstrated that generosity. In chapter 4 she invited her beloved into the garden. In chapter 7 she told him, “There I will give you my love.” Being a wall did not prevent intimacy. It made intimacy particular.
This also gives us a healthier way to think about sexual purity than the unfortunate metaphors Christians have sometimes used. Purity has occasionally been taught as though a person’s sexual history determines whether they remain a complete object: a rose with petals pulled off, a piece of tape that no longer sticks, chewing gum that has already been chewed, or some other illustration in which sexual sin supposedly makes a human being permanently less valuable.
Those illustrations fail at the level of the gospel before they fail anywhere else.
Human beings are not disposable objects whose worth decreases through use. Sexual sin is genuinely sin, and Scripture does not need us to minimize it. But the Christian answer to sin is repentance, forgiveness, cleansing, and restoration—not the declaration that someone has become permanently damaged merchandise. The Shulammite’s wall is an image of wise boundaries, not a measurement of human worth.
That distinction is especially important for anyone reading this passage with a past they regret. “I am a wall” does not have to mean, I have never failed. It can describe what someone has become through wisdom and repentance. Biblical faithfulness is always lived from the present forward. A person cannot rewrite yesterday, but yesterday does not possess authority to dictate every decision tomorrow.
The woman herself speaks in the present tense.
“I am a wall.”
She knows where she stands now.
And because she does, the next phrase is not anxiety but peace:
“Then I was in his eyes like one who found peace.”
That shalom is a fitting result. Boundaries in the Song are not producing a woman terrified of intimacy. They have helped create the conditions in which intimacy can exist without indiscriminate access. She knows who her beloved is. She knows where his desire is directed. She knows where her own desire is directed. She can give her love without giving it to everyone.
The peace she finds is therefore not the peace of avoiding love.
It is the peace of love having somewhere to belong.
That brings us back to Solomon’s vineyard. His can be managed economically. Keepers work it, fruit is produced, and silver changes hands. The woman can acknowledge all of that without confusing its value with hers.
“The thousand are for you, Solomon.”
Whatever precisely is happening with those payments, she is capable of distinguishing Solomon’s vineyard from her own.
“My own vineyard is before me.”
At the beginning of the Song she could not say that. Her brothers had placed her in other vineyards, and hers had been neglected. Near the end, she speaks with possession, maturity, and confidence.
Her vineyard is before her.
Her love has awakened.
Her beloved has been chosen.
And no amount of silver changes who gets the fruit.
The financial language in verses 11–12 deserves one more careful look because it would be easy to make the contrast cleaner than the Hebrew actually allows. Solomon’s vineyard at Baal Hamon is leased to keepers, and “each was to bring a thousand shekels of silver for its fruit.” The woman then says that her own vineyard is before her, followed by “the thousand are for you, Solomon; two hundred for those who tend its fruit.” Exactly how the thousand and two hundred relate to one another is debated. The poem does not give us a lease agreement detailed enough to reconstruct the economics.
What it does give us is a deliberate concentration of ownership language. Solomon has his vineyard. Keepers are responsible for its fruit. Money is owed. Then the woman answers with “my vineyard, which is mine.” The Hebrew is emphatic: karmi shelli—my vineyard, mine. The repetition sounds almost redundant in English because that is precisely its force. She marks this vineyard as belonging particularly to her.
That takes us back again to chapter 1, but now the reversal becomes even clearer. There she said that her brothers had made her “keeper of the vineyards.” The Hebrew uses the same vineyard world we encounter here at the end. She had responsibility for what belonged to others while her own vineyard went unkept. By chapter 8, she no longer speaks as the young woman whose circumstances are being determined by angry brothers. She knows what is hers and can speak about it herself.
This does not mean the Song is teaching modern individualism or that the Shulammite is announcing complete independence from family, community, and marital obligation. She has spent the entire poem defining herself relationally: daughter, sister, beloved, lover, and eventually a woman who says “I am my beloved’s.” Her autonomy is not isolation. What has changed is that belonging to another person does not require losing possession of herself.
That distinction is worth lingering over because “I am my beloved’s” could otherwise be misunderstood as self-erasure. The same woman who says she belongs to him can say “my vineyard is mine.” Those statements coexist without tension in the poem. She gives herself to her beloved precisely because she possesses something capable of being given.
This is what makes the Song’s language of mutual belonging so different from ownership in the economic sense. Solomon can own a vineyard as property. He can lease it to tenants, establish the return he expects, and receive silver from its produce. The woman’s beloved does not relate to her that way. He receives what she repeatedly and enthusiastically offers him.
The distinction between possession and gift has been present since the garden scene. The woman was a “locked up garden, a locked up spring, a sealed fountain” in 4:12. Her beloved praised what was enclosed; he did not break the enclosure. Then she herself said:
Song of Songs 4:16 (WEB)
Awake, north wind, and come, you south!
Blow on my garden, that its spices may flow out.
Let my beloved come into his garden,
and taste his precious fruits.
Notice what happens even within that single verse. At first she calls it “my garden.” Then, as she invites her beloved to enter, she calls it “his garden.” The change does not mean he seized ownership from her. It expresses the gift she has just made. What is hers becomes his to enjoy because she welcomes him.
Chapter 8 gives us the other side of the same truth. After all that giving, she can still say “my vineyard is mine.” Mutual belonging has not abolished personhood. Sexual union has not turned her body into an impersonal resource to which someone else holds commercial rights. She remains a person capable of choosing, guarding, giving, and loving.
That makes the family’s earlier wall-and-door discussion more interesting as well. The brothers imagine two possible responses to the little sister based upon how she behaves. If she guards herself, they will honor her; if she allows inappropriate access, they will restrict her. Their concern assumes that her sexuality requires protection while she is immature.
The Shulammite’s answer shows us what maturity looks like when that protection has accomplished its purpose. The mature woman does not require brothers permanently standing guard around her sexuality. She has learned to govern it herself. She can be a wall when access should be denied and open the garden when love has reached its proper place.
That is a far more complete picture of chastity than simply saying no.
Maturity knows both how to refuse and how to give.
The little sister has not yet reached that stage. Her family therefore asks what should be done for her “in the day when she is spoken for.” The Shulammite answers from the other side of that development. She has grown. Her breasts are like towers. She has experienced desire without allowing desire to make every decision for her. She has chosen a beloved and discovered the pleasure of being chosen by him.
And the result she names is shalom.
That word deserves its full biblical weight without turning it into a hidden allegory. Shalom can describe peace, welfare, wholeness, well-being, or things being as they ought to be. Here the woman says that in her beloved’s eyes she became “like one who finds peace.” After the wall comes peace, not frustration. After guardedness comes delight, not regret.
The Song’s sexual ethic has therefore come remarkably close to completing a circle. Early in the poem the woman had desire but also frustration: she was working other people’s vineyards while her own went unkept. Throughout the Song she repeatedly warned against awakening love prematurely. As the relationship matured, the garden remained locked until she invited her beloved inside. Eventually she could say that his desire was toward her and freely promise him her love.
Now, looking backward, she can describe herself simply:
“I am a wall.”
Looking at her relationship, she can say:
“I found peace.”
Looking at what belongs to her, she can say:
“My vineyard is mine.”
Those are not three unrelated claims. Together they describe a woman whose sexuality has matured without being either suppressed or surrendered indiscriminately. She possesses herself, gives herself particularly, and finds peace in the love she has chosen.
Solomon can keep his thousand pieces of silver.
She has something that cannot be priced.
The passage also gives us an opportunity to distinguish protection from possession, because the difference matters throughout these verses. The family looks at the little sister and asks what they should do for her when the possibility of marriage arrives. Their concern is understandable: she is young now, but she will not remain young forever. Their responsibility toward her includes preparing and protecting her rather than pretending adulthood will never come.
But protection has a destination.
If the little sister eventually becomes like the mature woman speaking in verse 10, the goal has been reached. She has become capable of guarding herself. The family that once needed to ask, “What shall we do for our sister?”
should not need to answer that question for her indefinitely. She has developed judgment, boundaries, desires, and the ability to make commitments of her own.
That is important because protection can easily become control when people forget what it is for. Parents can become so invested in preventing their children from making mistakes that they never prepare them to make wise decisions without parental supervision. Churches can do something similar by supplying increasingly detailed rules while neglecting to develop judgment. The result may produce outward compliance for a season without producing someone capable of saying, with understanding, “I am a wall.”
The Shulammite’s maturity is especially compelling because she has not simply internalized other people’s restrictions. She understands the value of what she guards. Her wall surrounds a vineyard, and the vineyard is fruitful. She has desires worth governing because she possesses something worth giving.
That brings the little-sister scene into direct contact with the Song’s repeated refrain. “Do not awaken love until it so desires” was never intended to create adults who remain frightened of awakened love. It was wisdom for bringing desire to maturity. The goal was always to reach the point at which love could wake without destroying what it promised to give.
By chapter 8, the Shulammite can look backward from that maturity. Her own story has included attraction, waiting, longing, searching, frustration, vulnerability, sexual desire, and mutual delight. She knows why love required a wall, and she knows why the wall eventually needed a gate.
Her beloved was not entitled to enter merely because he wanted her. Yet once she wanted him and their love had found its proper place, she did not treat keeping him outside as a virtue. She invited him in.
That balance is one of the Song’s most consistent achievements. It never treats chastity as sexual indifference, and it never treats sexual desire as self-justifying. The woman is neither a commodity guarded for transfer nor an autonomous appetite for whom desire settles every moral question. She is a person capable of loving wisely.
That makes the reference to finding shalom especially appropriate. Biblical peace is not merely the absence of conflict. It describes wholeness, wellbeing, things rightly ordered. The woman finds peace not because desire has disappeared but because desire, belonging, boundaries, and love are no longer fighting one another. She knows whom she loves, knows that she is loved, and knows what she has chosen to give.
The vineyard comparison then places that personal wholeness beside Solomon’s economic abundance. Solomon possesses something enormously profitable. His vineyard produces silver. The keepers receive their share. The whole operation can be quantified.
The Shulammite’s vineyard belongs to another economy entirely.
This does not require us to identify Solomon as a villain in the poem. The text does not give us enough narrative information to establish that confidently. It does, however, allow us to see a contrast between two ways of speaking about valuable things. Solomon’s vineyard can be measured in silver. The woman’s love cannot.
That point lands with particular force because of what we have just heard in 8:7. A man could bring all the wealth of his house and still fail to purchase love. Immediately afterward Solomon appears with a vineyard worth a thousand pieces of silver. Whatever else the poet intends us to notice, money has now been placed very close to something the Song has explicitly declared money cannot obtain.
The woman can therefore acknowledge Solomon’s thousand without confusing it with the value of her own vineyard. The king can possess extraordinary resources and still encounter something royal power cannot manufacture: another person’s freely given love.
That may explain why the Song’s repeated references to Solomon never finally allow him to dominate the poem. His name appears. His wealth appears. His wedding procession appears. Queens and concubines appear. Yet the emotional center continually returns to two people calling each other “my beloved.” Royal magnificence remains in the background while particular love occupies the foreground.
The woman has no army of sixty warriors.
She has no carriage made from Lebanese wood, silver, gold, and purple.
She does not need one.
She has reached the end of her development able to say that she guarded what needed guarding, found peace in the eyes of the man she loves, and retained the ability to give what was hers to give.
That is enough to land this section.
Conclusion
Song of Songs 8:8–12 begins with an immature girl whose family wonders how she should be protected and ends with a mature woman who can speak for herself. The little sister has not yet reached the season for awakened love. The Shulammite has.
Her declaration “I am a wall” does not describe sexual repression. Everything else she has said makes that impossible. It describes boundaries belonging to a woman with intense desire who nevertheless understands that desire does not give everyone access to her.
Her vineyard makes the same point from another direction. At the beginning of the Song, other people had placed her in their vineyards while hers went unkept. Near the end she can say emphatically, “My own vineyard is before me.” She knows what belongs to her, and throughout the Song we have watched her choose the man with whom she wishes to share it.
Solomon’s vineyard can produce silver.
Her love cannot be priced.
The Song has therefore moved from protection to maturity, from restraint to giving, and from the vineyard she once neglected to the vineyard she now claims as her own. She has not reached maturity by ceasing to desire.
She has learned where her desire belongs.
Prayer
Father, give us wisdom to guard good things without teaching ourselves to fear them. Help parents and families protect children while preparing them for the day when they must exercise wisdom for themselves. May our goal be maturity rather than permanent dependence upon external rules. Teach us to recognize the dignity of our own bodies and the bodies of others. Keep us from treating sexuality as something to be purchased, demanded, manipulated, or taken. Give us the strength to establish boundaries where they are needed and the freedom to give ourselves faithfully where love has found its proper home.
Where we have failed, keep us from believing that our worth has been permanently diminished. Lead us through repentance into wisdom and renewed faithfulness.
Give husbands and wives the peace of knowing where their love belongs. Let their boundaries protect faithfulness rather than replace affection, and let their commitment create room for generosity, vulnerability, and delight.
Teach us to value what money cannot buy and power cannot command.
In Jesus’ name, amen.