Song of Songs, Chapter Five, verse one: I am come into my garden, my sister, [my] spouse: I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk: eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved.
I already mentioned the repeated possessive in the first part of this verse. The odd thing is that spouse does not have the possessive. Bride (or spouse, callah) is the only word in that sentence that doesn't end in a yud. In fact, the fellow in the Song of Songs never uses the possessive for spouse. The six times the word appears, it is always the plain unadorned spouse, before which the King James boys helpfully fix [my]. Why does he not say my spouse? Particularly here? It's conspicuous, here, where every thing else is his: his garden, his sister, his myrrh, his spice, his honeycomb, his honey, his wine, his milk. But not his bride. Is he implying that she is her own person, that she is not his the way wine and honey is his? or is there something else going on?
Chapter Five, verse two: I sleep, but my heart waketh: [it is] the voice of my beloved that knocketh, [saying], Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, [and] my locks with the drops of the night.
By the way, the end of the previous chapter had a switch from his voice to hers; this chapter opens with his voice again, and then switches to hers for an extended bit. Actually, I think the last bit of 5:1 is the chorus again, the daughters of Jerusalem urging the Shepherd to drink abundantly. Anyway, it's an odd structural choice, but then once the text is in place, I don't know that I would have put the chapter break anywhere else.
Anyway, we're back in our Babe's bedchamber, with once again her beloved knocking on the door and calling from outside. While I'm on about the possessive, here again we have a slew of them, with my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled. In Hebrew, it's something like pat'chili (open to me, yud at the end indicating not possession but action towards self, much the same thing, really) achoti rayiti yoniti tamiti. Then why not callati or whatever the possessive of bride is? I'll also draw attention to his wetness, although of course here I think we are talking about literal dew (and his actual head).
Chapter Five, verse three: I have put off my coat; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them?
I think here feet means feet, but sometimes feet means genitals. I assume that the poet knows that sometimes feet means genitals, and that any use of feet at this point is not entirely innocent of that knowledge, but I think our attention is supposed to be to her nakedness, her readiness for bed.
Chapter Five, verse four: My beloved put in his hand by the hole [of the door], and my bowels were moved for him.
The hole of the door. Not that the text says anything about a door. But what else could it possibly mean?
Chapter Five, verse five: I rose up to open to my beloved; and my hands dropped [with] myrrh, and my fingers [with] sweet smelling myrrh, upon the handles of the lock.
Man, she is just dripping. With myrrh. Stop sniggering, this is Scripture.
No, of course I'm sniggering. But I'm not sniggering because I've found some totally accidental word choice that sounds a bit rude if you read it like a thirteen-year-old boy. I'm sniggering because I'm supposed to be sniggering, at a deliberate word choice that sounds completely obscene if you read it, well, like anybody would read it if they weren't trying desperately not to see anything sexy in it at all.
Chapter Five, verse six: I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had withdrawn himself, [and] was gone: my soul failed when he spake: I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer.
...and he's gone. Again. If he was ever there. Again, this is something like a dream or a fantasy. I prefer my breath failed; nephesh is breath and by extension soul, but the more direct meaning of finding it suddenly difficult to breathe seems more appropriate here. Oh, and in verse four her bowels moving could be her kidneys moving, but in the sense that kidneys were considered the seat of the emotions, much the way we would say her heart moved within her, not to refer to the blood-pumping circulatory muscle but to the container of emotions. Of course, emotions are contained in neither the heart nor the kidney, but there you are, translation is tricky.
Chapter Five, verse seven: The watchmen that went about the city found me, they smote me, they wounded me; the keepers of the walls took away my veil from me.
The last time we went through this ... dream? The watchmen are less hostile. Why do they assault her this time? If you go back and read 3:1-4, the first time through the scene, going back to 2:8-9 with the first time him calling to her from the street, I think this iteration of the story is heightened in every way, more dreamlike but also more intense. She is more passionate, more vulnerable, more naked, more open. Is she punished for that? Or is it a dream, and the violence of it emphasizes her vulnerability? I don't know. I find this verse disturbing, not only because of the image of the suddenly hostile watchmen beating this poor woman, but because it's the end of the scene. Unlike in Chapter Three, she does not find him and sleep with him. Whether he was there or not, now he is certainly gone, and she is bereft.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus:,
-Vardibidian.
“my belly trembled”?
Or even, to keep the literal, anatomical sense,
“my bowels were moved” -> “my gut was shook”?