This refrain is repeated the second time just before a picture of Solomon’s glory, shaded by a suggestion that all is not brightness even around this Prince of Peace. The ladies of the seraglio are summoned to look out and see the passing of the King in state, seated on his palanquin of purple and gold, but escorted by armed men “because of fear in the night.” In immediate contrast with that scene, we see Shulamith going off with her humble lover, now his bride, to his field and to her vineyard, and singing a beautiful song of love, strong as death, flame-tipped arrow of a god, unquenchable, unpurchaseable.
Though according to the revised version of vi. 12 her relatives are princely, and it may be they who invite her to return (vi. 13), she says, “I am my beloved’s.” With him she will go into the field and lodge in the village (vii. 10, 11). She finds her own little garden and does not envy Solomon.
“Solomon hath a vineyard at Baalhamon;
He hath let out the vineyard to keepers;
Each for the fruit thereof was to bring a thousand pieces of silver:
My vineyard, which is mine, is before me:
Thou, O Solomon, shall have the thousand,
And those that keep the fruit thereof two hundred.”
There was, as we see in Koheleth, a prevailing tradition that Solomon felt the hollowness of his palatial life. “See life with a woman thou lovest.” The wife is the fountain: