Song of Solomon 1 1-Song of Solomon 1 17
Solomon’s Most Excellent Love Song.Oh, how I wish youwould kiss me passionately! For your lovemaking is more delightfulthan wine.The fragrance of your colognes is delightful; your name is like the finest perfume. No wonder the young women adore you!Draw me after you; let us hurry! May the king bring me into his bedroom chambers! We will rejoice and delight in you; we will praise your love more than wine. The Beloved to Her Lover: How rightly the young women adore you!I am dark but lovely, O maidens of Jerusalem, dark like the tents of Qedar, lovely like the tent curtains of Salmah.Do not stare at me because I am dark, for the sun has burned my skin. My brothers were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyards. Alas, my own vineyard I could not keep!Tell me, O you whom my heart loves, where do you pasture your sheep? Where do you rest your sheep during the midday heat? Tell me lest I wander around beside the flocks of your companions!If you do not know, O most beautiful of women, simply follow the tracks of my flock, and pasture your little lambs beside the tents of the shepherds.O my beloved, you are like a mare among Pharaoh’s stallions.Your cheeks are beautiful with ornaments; your neck is lovely with strings of jewels.We will make for you gold ornaments studded with silver.While the king was at his banqueting table, my nard gave forth its fragrance.My beloved is like a fragrant pouch of myrrh spending the night between my breasts.My beloved is like a cluster of henna blossoms in the vineyards of En-Gedi.Oh, how beautiful you are, my beloved! Oh, how beautiful you are! Your eyes are like doves!Oh, how handsome you are, my lover! Oh, how delightful you are! The lush foliage is our canopied bed;the cedars are the beams of our bedroom chamber; the pines are the rafters of our bedroom.
Proverbs 1:1-31
The Proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel:To learn wisdom and moral instruction, and to discern wise counsel.To receive moral instruction in skillful living, in righteousness, justice, and equity.To impart shrewdness to the morally naive, and a discerning plan to the young person.( Let the wise also hear and gain instruction, and let the discerning acquire guidance!)To discern the meaning of a proverb and a parable, the sayings of the wise and their riddles.Fearing the LORD is the beginning of moral knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.Listen, my child, to the instruction from your father, and do not forsake the teaching from your mother.For they will be like an elegant garland on your head, and like pendants around your neck.My child, if sinners try to entice you, do not consent!If they say,“ Come with us! We will lie in wait to shed blood; we will ambush an innocent person capriciously.We will swallow them alive like Sheol, those full of vigor like those going down to the Pit.We will seize all kinds of precious wealth; we will fill our houses with plunder.Join with us! We will all share equally in what we steal.”My child, do not go down their way, withhold yourself from their path;for they are eager to inflict harm, and they hasten to shed blood.Surely it is futile to spread a net in plain sight of any bird,but these men lie in wait for their own blood, they ambush their own lives!Such are the ways of all who gain profit unjustly; it takes away the life of those who obtain it!Wisdom calls out in the street, she shouts loudly in the plazas;at the head of the noisy streets she calls, in the entrances of the gates in the city she utters her words:“ How long will you simpletons love naiveté? How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge?If only you will respond to my rebuke, then I will pour out my thoughts to you and I will make my words known to you.However, because I called but you refused to listen, because I stretched out my hand but no one paid attention,because you neglected all my advice, and did not comply with my rebuke,so I myself will laugh when disaster strikes you, I will mock when what you dread comes,when what you dread comes like a whirlwind, and disaster strikes you like a devastating storm, when distressing trouble comes on you.Then they will call to me, but I will not answer; they will diligently seek me, but they will not find me.Because they hated moral knowledge, and did not choose to fear the LORD,they did not comply with my advice, they spurned all my rebuke.Therefore they will eat from the fruit of their way, and they will be stuffed full of their own counsel.
