Song of Solomon 4:1The MessageYou’re so beautiful, my darling, so beautiful, and your dove eyes are veiled By your hair as it flows and shimmers, like a flock of goats in the distance streaming down a hillside in the sunshine. Your smile is generous and full— expressive and strong and clean. Your lips are jewel red, your mouth elegant and inviting, your veiled cheeks soft and radiant. The smooth, lithe lines of your neck command notice—all heads turn in awe and admiration! Your breasts are like fawns, twins of a gazelle, grazing among the first spring flowers. See the chapter |
This is God’s verdict on Judah’s royal palace: “I number you among my favorite places— like the lovely hills of Gilead, like the soaring peaks of Lebanon. Yet I swear I’ll turn you into a wasteland, as empty as a ghost town. I’ll hire a demolition crew, well-equipped with sledgehammers and wrecking bars, Pound the country to a pulp and burn it all up.
Shepherd, O God, your people with your staff, your dear and precious flock. Uniquely yours in a grove of trees, centered in lotus land. Let them graze in lush Bashan as in the old days in green Gilead. Reproduce the miracle-wonders of our exodus from Egypt. And the godless nations: Put them in their place— humiliated in their arrogance, speechless and clueless. Make them slink like snakes, crawl like cockroaches, come out of their holes from under their rocks And face our God. Fill them with holy fear and trembling. * * *
The families of Reuben and Gad had huge herds of livestock. They saw that the country of Jazer and Gilead was just the place for grazing livestock. And so they came, the families of Gad and of Reuben, and spoke to Moses and Eleazar the priest and the leaders of the congregation, saying, “Ataroth, Dibon, Jazer, Nimrah, Heshbon, Elealeh, Sebam, Nebo, and Beon—the country that God laid low before the community of Israel—is a country just right for livestock, and we have livestock.”