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Messianic Prophecies

Song of Solomon 5:16

This passage comes from the wider catalog — a broader, more lightly curated list than the core set. Both readings are shown as peers; GEBible takes no side.

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Song of Solomon 5:16

His mouth is sweetness; yes, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, and this is my friend, daughters of Jerusalem.

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His head is like the purest gold. His hair is bushy, black as a raven.

His eyes are like doves beside the water brooks, washed with milk, mounted like jewels.

His cheeks are like a bed of spices with towers of perfumes. His lips are like lilies, dropping liquid myrrh.

His hands are like rings of gold set with beryl. His body is like ivory work overlaid with sapphires.

His legs are like pillars of marble set on sockets of fine gold. His appearance is like Lebanon, excellent as the cedars.

His mouth is sweetness; yes, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, and this is my friend, daughters of Jerusalem.

The fulfillment reading

How this passage is read as pointing to the Messiah.

On the messianic-fulfillment reading, the beloved described as 'altogether lovely' in Song of Solomon 5:16 foreshadows the incomparable person of Christ. Advocates draw on a long allegorical tradition — Jewish readings of the Song as God and Israel, Christian readings as Christ and the Church — and argue that the book's canonical status points to a significance beyond human romance. They connect the Song's love language to the New Testament's bridegroom imagery for Christ (Matthew 25:1-13; Ephesians 5:25-32; Revelation 19:7-9), treating the beloved's beauty as a type of the divine grace expressed in John 1:17.

The counter-reading

How this passage is read within its own context.

The critical reading classifies Song of Solomon 5:16 as erotic love poetry, part of a wasf — a head-to-foot catalogue of the beloved's physical beauty common in ancient Near Eastern love literature. On this view the phrase describes the lover's desirability within the genre's celebration of human romance, and the book contains no oracle, messianic reference, or prediction. It holds that reading the verse as a statement about divine grace in John 1:17 depends on an allegorical hermeneutic originating in later rabbinic and patristic interpretation rather than on anything the text asserts.

How the New Testament uses this passage

Each entry names how the New Testament author draws on the passage — a direct quotation, an allusion, an echo, or a typological reading. An echo or an allusion is not the same as a prediction; the label says which is which.

  • John 1:17 Not cited by the New Testament

    John 1:17 makes no quotation of or allusion to Song of Solomon 5:16; the connection rests entirely on a later allegorical interpretive tradition.