Old/New Testament
1 This song of songs, more wonderful than any other, was composed by King Solomon:
The Girl:[a] 2 “Kiss me again and again, for your love is sweeter than wine. 3 How fragrant your cologne, and how great your name! No wonder all the young girls love you! 4 Take me with you; come, let’s run!”
The Girl: “The king has brought me into his palace. How happy we will be! Your love is better than wine. No wonder all the young girls love you!”
The Girl: 5 “I am dark but beautiful, O girls of Jerusalem, tanned as the dark tents of Kedar.”
King Solomon: “But lovely as the silken tents of Solomon!”
The Girl: 6 “Don’t look down on me, you city girls,[b] just because my complexion is so dark—the sun has tanned me. My brothers were angry with me and sent me out into the sun to tend the vineyards, but see what it has done to me!”
The Girl: 7 “Tell me, O one I love, where are you leading your flock today? Where will you be at noon? For I will come and join you there instead of wandering like a vagabond among the flocks of your companions.”
King Solomon: 8 “If you don’t know, O most beautiful woman in all the world, follow the trail of my flock to the shepherds’ tents, and there feed your sheep and their lambs. 9 What a lovely filly you are,[c] my love! 10 How lovely your cheeks are, with your hair[d] falling down upon them! How stately your neck with that long string of jewels. 11 We shall make you gold earrings and silver beads.”
The Girl: 12 “The king lies on his bed, enchanted by the fragrance of my perfume. 13 My beloved one is a sachet of myrrh lying between my breasts.”
King Solomon: 14 “My beloved is a bouquet of flowers in the gardens of Engedi. 15 How beautiful you are, my love, how beautiful! Your eyes are soft as doves’. 16 What a lovely, pleasant thing you are, lying here upon the grass, 17 shaded by the cedar trees and firs.”
2 The Girl: “I am the rose of Sharon, the lily of the valley.”
King Solomon: 2 “Yes, a lily among thorns, so is my beloved as compared with any other girls.”
The Girl: 3 “My lover is an apple tree, the finest in the orchard as compared with any of the other youths. I am seated in his much-desired shade and his fruit is lovely to eat. 4 He brings me to the banquet hall, and everyone can see how much he loves me. 5 Oh, feed me with your love—your ‘raisins’ and your ‘apples’—for I am utterly lovesick. 6 His left hand is under my head and with his right hand he embraces me. 7 O girls of Jerusalem, I adjure you by the gazelles and deer in the park, that you do not awaken my lover.[e] Let him sleep!”
The Girl: 8 “Ah, I hear him—my beloved! Here he comes, leaping upon the mountains and bounding over the hills. 9 My beloved is like a gazelle or young deer. Look, there he is behind the wall, now looking in at the windows.
10 “My beloved said to me, ‘Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. 11 For the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. 12 The flowers are springing up and the time of the singing of birds has come. Yes, spring is here.[f] 13 The leaves are coming out,[g] and the grapevines are in blossom. How delicious they smell! Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.’
14 “My dove is hiding behind some rocks, behind an outcrop of the cliff. Call to me and let me hear your lovely voice and see your handsome face.
15 “The little foxes are ruining the vineyards. Catch them, for the grapes are all in blossom.
16 “My beloved is mine and I am his. He is feeding among the lilies! 17 Before the dawn comes and the shadows flee away, come to me, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or a young stag on the mountains of spices.”
3 The Girl: “One night my lover was missing from my bed. I got up to look for him but couldn’t find him. 2 I went out into the streets of the city and the roads to seek him, but I searched in vain. 3 The police stopped me, and I said to them, ‘Have you seen him anywhere, this one I love so much?’ 4 It was only a little while afterwards that I found him and held him and would not let him go until I had brought him into my childhood home, into my mother’s old bedroom. 5 I adjure you, O women of Jerusalem, by the gazelles and deer of the park, not to awake my lover. Let him sleep.”
The Young Women of Jerusalem: 6 “Who is this sweeping in from the deserts like a cloud of smoke along the ground, smelling of myrrh and frankincense and every other spice that can be bought? 7 Look, it is the chariot[h] of Solomon with sixty of the mightiest men of his army surrounding it. 8 They are all skilled swordsmen and experienced bodyguards. Each one has his sword upon his thigh to defend his king against any onslaught in the night. 9 For King Solomon made himself a chariot from the wood of Lebanon. 10 Its posts are silver, its canopy gold, the seat is purple; and the back is inlaid with these words: ‘With love from the girls of Jerusalem!’”
The Girl: 11 “Go out and see King Solomon, O young women of Zion; see the crown with which his mother crowned him on his wedding day, his day of gladness.”
2 Then fourteen years later I went back to Jerusalem again, this time with Barnabas; and Titus came along too. 2 I went there with definite orders from God to confer with the brothers there about the message I was preaching to the Gentiles. I talked privately to the leaders of the church so that they would all understand just what I had been teaching and, I hoped, agree that it was right. 3 And they did agree; they did not even demand that Titus, my companion, should be circumcised, though he was a Gentile.
4 Even that question wouldn’t have come up except for some so-called “Christians” there—false ones, really—who came to spy on us and see what freedom we enjoyed in Christ Jesus, as to whether we obeyed the Jewish laws or not. They tried to get us all tied up in their rules, like slaves in chains. 5 But we did not listen to them for a single moment, for we did not want to confuse you into thinking that salvation can be earned by being circumcised and by obeying Jewish laws.
6 And the great leaders of the church who were there had nothing to add to what I was preaching. (By the way, their being great leaders made no difference to me, for all are the same to God.) 7-9 In fact, when Peter, James, and John, who were known as the pillars of the church, saw how greatly God had used me in winning the Gentiles, just as Peter had been blessed so greatly in his preaching to the Jews—for the same God gave us each our special gifts—they shook hands with Barnabas and me and encouraged us to keep right on with our preaching to the Gentiles while they continued their work with the Jews. 10 The only thing they did suggest was that we must always remember to help the poor, and I, too, was eager for that.
11 But when Peter came to Antioch I had to oppose him publicly, speaking strongly against what he was doing, for it was very wrong. 12 For when he first arrived, he ate with the Gentile Christians who don’t bother with circumcision and the many other Jewish laws.[a] But afterwards, when some Jewish friends of James came, he wouldn’t eat with the Gentiles anymore because he was afraid of what these Jewish legalists, who insisted that circumcision was necessary for salvation, would say; 13 and then all the other Jewish Christians and even Barnabas became hypocrites too, following Peter’s example, though they certainly knew better. 14 When I saw what was happening and that they weren’t being honest about what they really believed and weren’t following the truth of the Gospel, I said to Peter in front of all the others, “Though you are a Jew by birth, you have long since discarded the Jewish laws; so why, all of a sudden, are you trying to make these Gentiles obey them? 15 You and I are Jews by birth, not mere Gentile sinners, 16 and yet we Jewish Christians know very well that we cannot become right with God by obeying our Jewish laws but only by faith in Jesus Christ to take away our sins. And so we, too, have trusted Jesus Christ, that we might be accepted by God because of faith—and not because we have obeyed the Jewish laws. For no one will ever be saved by obeying them.”
17 But what if we trust Christ to save us and then find that we are wrong and that we cannot be saved without being circumcised and obeying all the other Jewish laws? Wouldn’t we need to say that faith in Christ had ruined us? God forbid that anyone should dare to think such things about our Lord. 18 Rather, we are sinners if we start rebuilding the old systems I have been destroying of trying to be saved by keeping Jewish laws, 19 for it was through reading the Scripture that I came to realize that I could never find God’s favor by trying—and failing—to obey the laws. I came to realize that acceptance with God comes by believing in Christ.[b]
20 I have been crucified with Christ: and I myself no longer live, but Christ lives in me. And the real life I now have within this body is a result of my trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 21 I am not one of those who treats Christ’s death as meaningless. For if we could be saved by keeping Jewish laws, then there was no need for Christ to die.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.