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THE MESSAGE

Song of Solomon 6:8

There's no one like her on earth, never has been, never will be. She's a woman beyond compare. My dove is perfection, Pure and innocent as the day she was born, and cradled in joy by her mother. Everyone who came by to see her exclaimed and admired her— All the fathers and mothers, the neighbors and friends, blessed and praised her:

Bible Study Resources

Dictionaries:

- Easton Bible Dictionary - Queen;   Fausset Bible Dictionary - Canticles;   ;   Holman Bible Dictionary - Virgin, Virgin Birth;   Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible - Song of Songs;   Virgin;   Morrish Bible Dictionary - Concubines;  

Encyclopedias:

- International Standard Bible Encyclopedia - Maid;   Queen;   Song of Songs;   Virgin;   Wisdom of Solomon, the;   The Jewish Encyclopedia - Abraham ben Elijah of Wilna;   AḥiḴar;   Hadassi, Judah ben Elijah Haabel;   Nations and Languages, the Seventy;   Numbers and Numerals;   Sifra;  

Parallel Translations

Christian Standard Bible®
There are sixty queensand eighty concubinesand young women without number.
Hebrew Names Version
There are sixty queens, eighty concubines, And virgins without number.
King James Version
There are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, and virgins without number.
English Standard Version
There are sixty queens and eighty concubines, and virgins without number.
New American Standard Bible
"There are sixty queens and eighty concubines, And young women without number;
New Century Version
There may be sixty queens and eighty slave women and so many girls you cannot count them,
Amplified Bible
"There are sixty queens and eighty concubines, And maidens without number;
World English Bible
There are sixty queens, eighty concubines, And virgins without number.
Geneva Bible (1587)
There are threescore Queenes and fourescore concubines & of the damsels without nober.
Legacy Standard Bible
There are sixty queens and eighty concubines,And maidens without number;
Berean Standard Bible
There are sixty queens and eighty concubines, and maidens without number,
Contemporary English Version
What if I could have sixty queens, eighty wives, and thousands of others!
Complete Jewish Bible
There are sixty queens and eighty concubines, as well as young women beyond number;
Darby Translation
There are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, And virgins without number:
Easy-to-Read Version
There might be 60 queens and 80 slave women, and young women too many to count,
George Lamsa Translation
There are sixty queens and eighty concubines and virgins without number.
Good News Translation
Let the king have sixty queens, eighty concubines, young women without number!
Lexham English Bible
Sixty queens there are, eighty concubines, and maidens beyond number.
Literal Translation
Sixty of them are queens, and eighty concubines, and virgins without number.
Miles Coverdale Bible (1535)
There are thre score quenes, foure score concubynes, and yonge weme without nombre.
American Standard Version
There are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, And virgins without number.
Bible in Basic English
There are sixty queens, and eighty servant-wives, and young girls without number.
JPS Old Testament (1917)
There are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, and maidens without number.
King James Version (1611)
There are threescore Queenes, and fourescore concubines, and virgins without number.
Bishop's Bible (1568)
There are threescore queenes, fourescore wiues, and damselles without number.
Brenton's Septuagint (LXX)
My dove, my perfect one is one; she is the only one of her mother; she is the choice of her that bore her. The daughters saw her, and the queens will pronounce her blessed, yea, and the concubines, and they will praise her.
English Revised Version
There are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, and virgins without number.
Wycliffe Bible (1395)
Sixti ben queenys, and eiyti ben secundarie wyues; and of yong damesels is noon noumbre.
Update Bible Version
There are sixty queens, and eighty concubines, And virgins without number.
Webster's Bible Translation
There are sixty queens, and eighty concubines, and virgins without number.
New English Translation
There may be sixty queens, and eighty concubines, and young women without number.
New King James Version
There are sixty queens And eighty concubines, And virgins without number.
New Living Translation
Even among sixty queens and eighty concubines and countless young women,
New Life Bible
There are sixty queens, and eighty women kept who act like wives, and there are too many young women to number who have never had a man.
New Revised Standard
There are sixty queens and eighty concubines, and maidens without number.
J.B. Rotherham Emphasized Bible
Threescore, are the queens, and, fourscore, are the concubines, - and, virgins, there are, without number.
Douay-Rheims Bible
(6-7) There are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, and young maidens without number.
Revised Standard Version
There are sixty queens and eighty concubines, and maidens without number.
Young's Literal Translation
Sixty are queens, and eighty concubines, And virgins without number.
New American Standard Bible (1995)
"There are sixty queens and eighty concubines, And maidens without number;

Contextual Overview

4The Man Dear, dear friend and lover, you're as beautiful as Tirzah, city of delights, Lovely as Jerusalem, city of dreams, the ravishing visions of my ecstasy. Your beauty is too much for me—I'm in over my head. I'm not used to this! I can't take it in. Your hair 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 veiled cheeks are soft and radiant. 8There's no one like her on earth, never has been, never will be. She's a woman beyond compare. My dove is perfection, Pure and innocent as the day she was born, and cradled in joy by her mother. Everyone who came by to see her exclaimed and admired her— All the fathers and mothers, the neighbors and friends, blessed and praised her: 10 "Has anyone ever seen anything like this— dawn-fresh, moon-lovely, sun-radiant, ravishing as the night sky with its galaxies of stars?"

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

1 Kings 11:1, 2 Chronicles 11:21, Psalms 45:14, Revelation 7:9

Reciprocal: Judges 19:1 - a concubine Psalms 45:9 - Kings' Proverbs 31:10 - can Proverbs 31:29 - thou Song of Solomon 1:3 - the virgins Isaiah 7:15 - Butter Matthew 25:1 - ten Mark 2:19 - Can Revelation 14:4 - for

Cross-References

Genesis 6:17
"I'm going to bring a flood on the Earth that will destroy everything alive under Heaven. Total destruction.
Psalms 145:20
God sticks by all who love him, but it's all over for those who don't.
Proverbs 12:2
A good person basks in the delight of God , and he wants nothing to do with devious schemers.
Jeremiah 31:2
This is the way God put it: "They found grace out in the desert, these people who survived the killing. Israel, out looking for a place to rest, met God out looking for them!" God told them, "I've never quit loving you and never will. Expect love, love, and more love! And so now I'll start over with you and build you up again, dear virgin Israel. You'll resume your singing, grabbing tambourines and joining the dance. You'll go back to your old work of planting vineyards on the Samaritan hillsides, And sit back and enjoy the fruit— oh, how you'll enjoy those harvests! The time's coming when watchmen will call out from the hilltops of Ephraim: ‘On your feet! Let's go to Zion, go to meet our God !'"
Romans 4:4
If you're a hard worker and do a good job, you deserve your pay; we don't call your wages a gift. But if you see that the job is too big for you, that it's something only God can do, and you trust him to do it—you could never do it for yourself no matter how hard and long you worked—well, that trusting-him-to-do-it is what gets you set right with God, by God. Sheer gift.
Romans 11:6
The Loyal Minority Does this mean, then, that God is so fed up with Israel that he'll have nothing more to do with them? Hardly. Remember that I, the one writing these things, am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham out of the tribe of Benjamin. You can't get much more Semitic than that! So we're not talking about repudiation. God has been too long involved with Israel, has too much invested, to simply wash his hands of them. Do you remember that time Elijah was agonizing over this same Israel and cried out in prayer? God, they murdered your prophets, They trashed your altars; I'm the only one left and now they're after me! And do you remember God's answer? I still have seven thousand who haven't quit, Seven thousand who are loyal to the finish. It's the same today. There's a fiercely loyal minority still—not many, perhaps, but probably more than you think. They're holding on, not because of what they think they're going to get out of it, but because they're convinced of God's grace and purpose in choosing them. If they were only thinking of their own immediate self-interest, they would have left long ago.
1 Corinthians 15:10
But because God was so gracious, so very generous, here I am. And I'm not about to let his grace go to waste. Haven't I worked hard trying to do more than any of the others? Even then, my work didn't amount to all that much. It was God giving me the work to do, God giving me the energy to do it. So whether you heard it from me or from those others, it's all the same: We spoke God's truth and you entrusted your lives.
Titus 2:11
God's readiness to give and forgive is now public. Salvation's available for everyone! We're being shown how to turn our backs on a godless, indulgent life, and how to take on a God-filled, God-honoring life. This new life is starting right now, and is whetting our appetites for the glorious day when our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, appears. He offered himself as a sacrifice to free us from a dark, rebellious life into this good, pure life, making us a people he can be proud of, energetic in goodness.

Gill's Notes on the Bible

There are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, and virgins without number. In this verse and Song of Solomon 6:9 the church is commended as she stood related to others; and is compared with them, and preferred to them. The words may be considered either as an assertion, "there are", c. or as a supposition, "though there be", c. yet Christ's church is but one, and excels them all. "Queens" are principal and lawful wives of kings "concubines", secondary or half wives, as the word i signifies who were admitted to the bed, but their children did not inherit: "virgins", unmarried persons, maids of honour, who waited on the queen. The allusion is to the custom of kings and great personages, who had many wives, and more concubines, and a large number of virgins to wait on them; see 1 Kings 11:3; or to a nuptial solemnity, and the ceremony of introducing the bride to the bridegroom, attended with a large number of persons of distinction; and so Theocritus k speaks of four times sixty virgins attending the nuptials of Menelaus and Helena; see Psalms 45:9. By all which may be meant either the kingdoms and nations of the world; by "queens", the more large, rich and flourishing kingdoms; by "concubines", inferior states; and by "virgins without number", the vast multitudes of inhabitants that fill them; but all, put together, are not equal to the church; see Song of Solomon 2:2; or else false churches; by "queens", such who boast of their riches and number, as the church of Rome, Revelation 18:7; by "concubines", such as are inferior in those things, but equally corrupt, as Arians, Socinians, c. and by "virgins without number", the multitudes of poor, weak, ignorant people, seduced by them and what figure soever these make, or pretensions to be the true churches of Christ, they are none of his, his spouse is preferred to them all. Or rather true believers in Christ, of different degrees, are here meant; queens, those that have the greatest share of gifts grace, most nearness to Christ, and communion with him; by "concubines", believers of a lower class, and of a more servile spirit, and yet sometimes are favoured with, fellowship with Christ; and by "virgins", young converts, who have not so large an experience as the former; and this distribution agrees with 1 John 2:13; and the rather this may be the sense, since each of these are said to praise the church in Song of Solomon 6:9, who is preferable to them, and includes them all.

i פילגשים "secundariae uxores", Michaelis. k Idyll. 18. v. 24.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The section might be entitled, “Renewed declaration of love after brief estrangement.”

Song of Solomon 6:4

Tirzah ... Jerusalem - Named together as the then two fairest cities of the land. For Jerusalem compare Psalms 48:2. “Tirzah” (i. e., “Grace” or “Beauty “)was an old Canaanite royal city Joshua 12:24. It became again a royal residence during the reigns of Baasha and his three successors in the kingdom of the ten tribes, and may well therefore have been famed for its beauty in the time of Solomon.

Terrible as ... - Awe-inspiring as the bannered (hosts). The warlike image, like others in the Song, serves to enhance the charm of its assured peace.

Song of Solomon 6:5

Even for the king the gentle eyes of the bride have an awe-striking majesty. Such is the condescension of love. Now follows Song of Solomon 6:5-7 the longest of the repetitions which abound in the Song, marking the continuance of the king’s affection as when first solemnly proclaimed Song of Solomon 4:1-6. The two descriptions belong, according to some (Christian) expositors, to the Church of different periods, e. g. to the primitive Church in the splendor of her first vocation, and to the Church under Constantine; other (Jewish) expositors apply them to “the congregation of Israel” under the first and second temples respectively.

Song of Solomon 6:9

The king contrasts the bride with the other claimants for her royal estate or favor Song of Solomon 6:8. She not only outshines them all for him, but herself has received from them disinterested blessing and praise.

This passage is invaluable as a divine witness to the principle of monogamy under the Old Testament and in the luxurious age of Solomon.

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse Song of Solomon 6:8. There are threescore queens — Though there be sixty queens, and eighty concubines, or secondary wives, and virgins innumerable, in my harem, yet thou, my dove, my undefiled, art אצת achath, ONE, the ONLY ONE, she in whom I delight beyond all.


 
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