■ 16
The lover is sweet to the taste and pleasing to the eye. As in 4:7, a summation
of all the parts of the body, every part
of him, concludes the Body Description. But this summation is a bit
different from 4:7. That verse summed up the woman’s beauty, which had just
been described in detail. Our verse goes beyond the visual description of the
man to the sensual pleasure that he affords the woman.
mouth. חיק,
“palate,” is the locus of taste and of speech. This could mean that his speech
is sweet, that he speaks sweet words, but more likely it refers to the taste of
his mouth when the lovers kiss (cf. 2:3). “Sweets,” a plural noun = sweet
drinks or sweet wine (Neh 8:10), is paralleled by the plural noun מחמדים, “delights.” His kisses are sweeter than
wine (1:2; 7:10). It may seem out of place to mention his mouth or palate here
rather than earlier, along with his head, eyes, and cheeks. But that is because
it is not part of the Body Description. After she has finished describing what
he looks like, she imagines kissing him. Here and in 2:3 the woman is tasting
the man, but the phrasing is different. In 2:3, the man tasted good to the woman’s mouth (she is tasting all of
him), whereas here it is the man’s mouth that tastes good to the woman,
that is, she is tasting the inside of his mouth and it tastes like candy (also
in 7:10). Then she expands the image to every part of him, which she finds
delightful.
This is my truelove. You, Jerusalem women, asked what makes my
lover so special and now I have told you. This
is my dearest. She uses the masculine form, רֵעִי,
that matches his frequent appellation for her, רַעְיָתִי (1:9, 15; 2:2, 10, 13; 4:1, 7; 5:2; 6:4). (Adele
Berlin, Song of Songs: A Commentary [Hermeneia: A Critical and Historical
Commentary on the Bible; Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 2025], 138)
