Discovery BoxThe Song of Songs 4:6 
Contextand the shadows flee,
I will go up to the mountain of myrrh,
and to the hill of frankincense.
The Song of Songs 4:12
ContextThe Lover to His Beloved:
4:12 You are a locked garden, 2 my sister, my bride;
you are an enclosed spring, a sealed-up fountain.
The Song of Songs 6:6
Context6:6 Your teeth are like a flock of sheep
coming up from the washing;
each has its twin;
not one of them is missing.
The Song of Songs 7:13
Context7:13 The mandrakes 3 send out their fragrance;
over our door is every delicacy, 4
both new and old, which I have stored up for you, my lover.
1 tn Heb “until the day breathes.”
2 sn The twin themes of the enclosed garden and sealed spring are highlighted by the wordplay (paronomasia) between the Hebrew expressions גַּן נָעוּל (gan na’ul, “a garden locked up”) and גַּל נָעוּל (gal na’ul, “an enclosed spring”).
3 sn In the ancient Near East the mandrake was a widely used symbol of erotic love because it was thought to be an aphrodisiac and therefore was used as a fertility drug. The unusual shape of the large forked roots of the mandrake resembles the human body with extended arms and legs. This similarity gave rise to the popular superstition that the mandrake could induce conception and it was therefore used as a fertility drug. It was so thoroughly associated with erotic love that its name is derived from the Hebrew root דּוֹד (dod, “love”), that is, דּוּדָאִים (duda’im) denotes “love-apples.” Arabs used its fruit and roots as an aphrodisiac and referred to it as abd al- sal’m (“servant of love”) (R. K. Harrison, “The Mandrake and the Ancient World,” EQ 28 [1956]: 188-89; Fauna and Flora of the Bible, 138-39).
4 sn Her comparison of their love to fruit stored “over our door” reflects an ancient Near Eastern practice of storing fruit on a shelf above the door of a house. In the ancient Near East, fruits were stored away on shelves or cupboards above doorways where they were out of reach and left to dry until they became very sweet and delectable. The point of comparison in this figurative expression seems to be two-fold: (1) She was treasuring up special expressions of her sexual love to give to him, and (2) All these good things were for him alone to enjoy. See M. H. Pope, The Song of Songs [AB], 650.
