Good Morning Yamon Ki Yesepar;

Song of Solomon 1:5 “I am black, but beautiful, Oh you daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.”

I once had a rabbi tell me that the most difficult book to translate out of the Hebrew is the Song of Solomon.  The constant grammatical changes in gender and number can make finding proper syntax a nightmare.  Then you add to that the discipline of Hebrew poetry and the deep pictures that Hebrew poetry present and you have a real task on your hand.

So, we come to Song of Solomon 1:5 where Solomon’s beloved says she is black but beautiful.  Is this talking about a skin color or something else.  Much of our early translations have strong cultural roots and there seems to be almost a feeling that because her skin color happens to be black, she should not be beautiful.  Yet, such attitudes is ancient times were quite the opposite. Foreign women with dark skin were prized as very beautiful, so to make the assumption that despite her skin color she is still beautiful would really not fit.

The word for black is “shachar.”  This does mean black, but in it’s primitive form, the word indicates early morning before the sun comes up, hence night, or black.  Let’s just assume for a moment that we use the primitive form of the word.  Solomon’s beloved is saying she is early but yet beautiful.  What does that mean.  Well, who looks beautiful in the morning before you have a chance to brush your hair, shower, and for a woman to put on her makeup.  Women who lived in the palace as a wife or concubine would spend hours adorning themselves. I mean what else did they have to do.  It was almost a full time job.  Yet we learn in this passage that Solomon’s beloved was forced to work the vineyards and as a result was “black.”   The most common assumption is that working in the sun gave her a deep tan.  My study partner insist she was weather beaten.  I tend to agree with this line of thinking, but would add that she had no time nor resources to beautify herself like the women of the royal court, yet she was still beautiful in the eyes of the king.

We then look at the parallelism of Hebrew poetry.  She is early morning or one who has not taken time to beautify her skin and appearance but is yet beautiful, like the tents of Kedar, but like the curtains of Solomon.  The tents of Kedar are the Bedouins tents.  The people of Kedar were herdsmen, living in a settlement just East of Jerusalem.  Their tents were subject to the harsh winds and weather of the desert.  These tents were not cleaned, nor cared for.  I mean who cared, a tent was shelter and what they looked like did not matter.  Solomon’s beloved then compares herself to the curtains of Solomon which were daily cleaned and pampered.  This is a way of restating the phrase, “I am black but beautiful.”

If we are now to make a personal application of us to Jesus, we have a really beautiful picture here.  We are weather beaten, too busy to make ourselves worthy of Jesus yet in His eyes we are beautiful.  We do not have make it a full time job serving him, taking on all the adornments of holiness to be attractive to Him.  He loves us just as we are and He will clean us up.   We do not have to be like the woman who cleans up her house before the maid arrives so the house looks presentable to her.  That is the maid’s job to make the house presentable.  So too, it is the job of Jesus to make us presentable.  Like the old hymn:
Just as I am, without one plea

But that they blood was shed for me.

And that thou bidst me come to thee

O’ lamb of God I come.

Your Friend