1O that thou wert as my brother, that sucked the breasts of my mother! when I should find thee without, I would kiss thee; yea, I should not be despised.
2I would lead thee, and bring thee into my mother’s house, who would instruct me: I would cause thee to drink of spiced wine of the juice of my pomegranate.
3His left hand should be under my head, and his right hand should embrace me.
4I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, until he please.
5Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved? I raised thee up under the apple tree: there thy mother brought thee forth: there she brought thee forth that bare thee.
6Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.
7Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.
8We have a little sister, and she hath no breasts: what shall we do for our sister in the day when she shall be spoken for?
9If she be a wall, we will build upon her a palace of silver: and if she be a door, we will inclose her with boards of cedar.
10I am a wall, and my breasts like towers: then was I in his eyes as one that found favour.
11Solomon had a vineyard at Baal–hamon; he let out the vineyard unto keepers; every one for the fruit thereof was to bring a thousand pieces of silver.
12My vineyard, which is mine, is before me: thou, O Solomon, must have a thousand, and those that keep the fruit thereof two hundred.
13Thou that dwellest in the gardens, the companions hearken to thy voice: cause me to hear it.
14Make haste, my beloved, and be thou like to a roe or to a young hart upon the mountains of spices.
About this edition & resources
Optional section headings follow the King James Bible Online book outlines, credited there to OpenBible. Overlapping parent headings are omitted in favour of more specific passages. Headings are editorial aids, separate from Scripture. Every verse remains available; gaps in the source outline show a reference without an invented title. Source, reference corrections and selection rule.
The KJV text follows the 1769 tradition. Text and verse-linked Strong’s tags are provided by Scrollmapper / CrossWire KJV. Historical KJV text is public domain in many countries; publication rights in the United Kingdom are administered under the Crown’s prerogative.
The optional 1611 text preserves the original spelling and wording in the aruljohn/Bible-kjv-1611 transcription. Its 66-book, 31,102-verse structure has been validated against this reader’s references.
Treasury of Scripture Knowledge: historical cross-references credited to SoulLiberty / MetaV in the digital source edition. The imported references preserve the source’s direction and are shown using this reader’s KJV text. Attribution and source notice · Download reference data.
Strong’s dictionaries: James Strong (1890); digital editions by Open Scriptures and Ulrik Petersen, licensed CC BY-SA as described in the original notices. The transformed lexicon and verse tags are available in the dictionary dataset and verse-tag dataset. Dictionary text is preserved; application import normalizes numeric IDs and groups words by verse.
Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary: historical text, digital source Lyteword (CC0). Commentary is organized into verse ranges. Source manifest & verification counts. Curated topics and stories are navigation aids, not additional Scripture.
The Pulpit Commentary and Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers: public-domain editions digitized by SermonIndex. Edition sources and import notes. Historical commentary is distinct from Scripture; source passage ranges and chapter introductions are preserved.
The digital KJV/Strong’s source declares GPL licensing; the original files and transformation script are available in the source-data archive. Dictionary digital editions retain their CC BY-SA licensing and original attribution. The missing 2 Kings 1 commentary chapter is supplied from CCEL’s historical Matthew Henry text.