Song of Solomon 4:11-13, 16 " 11 With comb honey your lips keep dripping, O [my] bride. Honey and milk are under your tongue, and the fragrance of your garments is like the fragrance of Leb´a·non. 12 A garden barred in is my sister, [my] bride, a garden barred in, a spring sealed up. 13 Your skin is a paradise of pomegranates, with the choicest fruits, henna plants along with spikenard plants [...] 16 Awake, O north wind, and come in, O south wind. Breathe upon my garden. Let its perfumes trickle. Let my dear one come into his garden and eat its choicest fruits.”
The "garden" refers to her vulva and vagina. When the lover says it is locked, he is saying it has never been entered; she is a virgin. Thus to describe his wife's vulva as a garden is to say it is beautiful to behold, like flowered gardens of the East.
The "spring sealed up" the precious liquid of the vagina is reserved for private use. Because water was scarce in the East, owners of fountains sealed the fountain with clay which quickly hardened in the sun. Thus, a walled fountain was shut against all impurity, no one could get water out of it except its rightful owner. The
"paradise of pomegranates" depicts the beauty and colortone of her vulva which abounds in delights to his senses. The
"choicest fruits" refer to her vagina is a source of sexual refreshment for him to experience. As a carefully cultivated Eastern garden yields delicious "fruit", so his bride's garden is a source of delicious fruit (sexual pleasure), when "cultivated." Furthermore, it is a source of fertility. To make love with her is like entering Paradise. Her pleasures are secret and hidden from all but her husband - the rightful owner of the garden. The Hebrew word (literally, "enter" or "come into") is used frequently of sexual penetration.
greendawn,
I do strongly agree with you that its not crude or vulgar porn, but from a fundamentalist point of view it is just that. Normal people can see him just describing the wonderful beauty of the sexual act, fundamentalists on the other hand cannot let these verses mean what they actually mean for fear of offending their own bigotted views. The original Hebrew version of this book is much more explicit in its meaning, but most Modern Bibles translate Song of Solomon to drain the colour out of the original meaning.
For example the original Hebrew version of Solomon 2:3b word-for-word is literally "I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste."... the NWT says " His shade I have passionately desired, and there I have sat down, and his fruit has been sweet to my palate."
Solomon 4:16 word-for-word says "Awake, O north wind; and come, you south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out." the NWT says: " Awake, O north wind, and come in, O south wind. Breathe upon my garden. Let its perfumes trickle .”
Solomon 5:4 is translated as " My dear one himself pulled back his hand from the hole [of the door], and my inward parts themselves became boisterous within me." Note the dredded square brackets. "[of the door]" is added just in case we mistakenly think its talking about vaginas... lol
... notice also the word "bowels"/"intestines" changed to "inward parts"... but least the verb " haw-maw" can be translated as either "move", "murmer" or "become boisterous" so thats no biggy.
Its not such a direct translation as the NWT authors would have you believe. Its merely a paraphrase, to obscure the sexual meaning. They're not big changes, but they change the meaning tremendously. Fortunately, the theme of the Song of Solomon is too strong to be completely over-ridden by dishonest changes.
