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Your neck is like a tower made of ivory.[a]
Your eyes are the pools in Heshbon
by the gate of Bath Rabbim.[b]
Your nose is like the tower of Lebanon
overlooking Damascus.

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Footnotes

  1. Song of Solomon 7:4 tn Alternately, “the ivory tower.” The noun הַשֵּׁן (hashen, “ivory”) is a genitive of composition, that is, a tower made out of ivory. Solomon had previously compared her neck to a tower (Song 4:4). In both cases the most obvious point of comparison has to do with size and shape, that is, her neck was long and symmetrical. Archaeology has never found a tower overlaid with ivory in the ancient Near East and it is doubtful that there ever was such a tower. The point of comparison might simply be that the shape of her neck looks like a tower, while the color and smoothness of her neck was like ivory. Solomon is mixing metaphors: her neck was long and symmetrical like a tower; but also elegant, smooth, and beautiful as ivory. The beauty, elegance, and smoothness of a woman’s neck is commonly compared to ivory in ancient love literature. For example, in a piece of Greek love literature, Anacron compared the beauty of the neck of his beloved Bathyllus to ivory (Ode xxxix 28-29).
  2. Song of Solomon 7:4 sn It is impossible at the present time to determine the exact significance of the comparison of her eyes to the “gate of Bath Rabbim” because this site has not yet been identified by archaeologists.