Song of Solomon 3:11 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Song of Solomon 3:11
Go forth, O ye daughters of Zion, and behold king Solomon with the crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals, and in the day of the gladness of his heart.
to go (causatively · verb, qal imperative, 2nd person feminine plural
daughters
בְּנ֥וֹתbe.Not
H1323
a daughter (used in the same wide sense as other terms… · noun, common feminine plural construct
Zion
צִיּ֖וֹןtzi.Yon
H6726
Tsijon (as a permanent capital) · proper noun, a place name
behold
וּֽרְאֶ֛ינָהu.re.'Ei.nah
H7200
to see · conjunction + verb, qal imperative, 2nd person feminine plural
king
בַּמֶּ֣לֶךְba.Me.lekh
H4428
a king · preposition with the article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
Solomon
שְׁלֹמֹ֑הshe.lo.Moh
H8010
Shelomah · proper noun, a man's name
crown
בָּעֲטָרָ֗הba.'a.ta.Rah
H5850
a crown · preposition with the article + noun, common feminine singular absolute
mother
אִמּוֹ֙'i.Mo
H517
a mother (as the bond of the family) · noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
crowned
שֶׁעִטְּרָהshe.'i.te.rah-
H5849
to encircle (for attack or protection) · relative particle + verb, piel perfect, 3rd person feminine singular
day
בְּי֣וֹםbe.Yom
H3117
a day (as the warm hours) · preposition + noun, common masculine singular construct
espousals
חֲתֻנָּת֔וֹcha.tu.na.To
H2861
a wedding · noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
day
וּבְי֖וֹםu.ve.Yom
H3117
a day (as the warm hours) · conjunction + preposition + noun, common masculine singular construct
gladness
שִׂמְחַ֥תsim.Chat
H8057
blithesomeness or glee · noun, common feminine singular construct
heart
לִבּֽוֹli.Bo
H3820
the heart · noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Isaiah 62:5 For as a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons marry thee: and as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice…
Jeremiah 2:2 Go and cry in the ears of Jerusalem, saying, Thus saith the LORD; I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, w…
Hosea 2:19-20 And I will betroth thee unto me for ever; yea, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in lovingkindness, and in…
Psalms 9:14 That I may shew forth all thy praise in the gates of the daughter of Zion: I will rejoice in thy salvation.
Zephaniah 3:17 The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy ove…
Matthew 12:42 The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for she came from the uttermost parts of th…
Hebrews 13:13 Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach.
Revelation 1:7 Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail becaus…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
John Gill on Song of Solomon 3:11
Go forth, O ye daughters of Zion,.... The same with the daughters of Jerusalem; the reason of the variation is, because Christ, here so gloriously described, is King of Zion, and they his subjects; these the church observing, being intent on looking at the bed and chariot she had described, calls them from those objects to look at a more glorious one; to whom Solomon in all his glory, on his coronation or marriage day, to which the allusion is, was not equal; wherefore she invites them to "go forth" and look at him, as people are forward to go out of their houses to see a crowned king pass along the streets, especially on his coronation day; and men never see any glory and excellency in Chri…
This is the only explicit mention of a wedding in the Song. The woman is called a “bride” in 4:8-12; 5:1.
Rashi on Song of Solomon 3:11
Daughters of Tzion. Children who are distinguished מְצוּיָנִים=צֻיָּן as His, through circumcision, phylacteries, and ritual fringes. Upon the crown
with which his mother adorned him. The Tent of Meeting, which was adorned with hues of blue, purple, and scarlet. Rabbi Nechunya said, “Rabbi Shimon son of Yochai asked Rabbi Elazar the son of Rabbi Yose, ‘Perhaps you heard from your father what is meaning of “upon the crown with which his mother adorned him”?’ He replied, “This is a parable of a king who had an only daughter of whom he was very fond. He could not stop loving her until he called her “my daughter,” as it is stated, “listen daughter and see.”14Tehillim 45:11. He could not stop lo…
The church forged from the Gentiles says this: "Go forth and see." But what it calls the day of his wedding is the day of his passion, when he married the church by his blood.
In the diadem with which his mother crowned him. For this is clearly to say, "Behold the Lord in the humanity which, taken from the Virgin mother, he placed at the right hand of the paternal majesty." Indeed, his mother crowned him with a diadem when the blessed and undefiled virgin, conceiving by the Holy Spirit, provided to him from her flesh the material of that most holy flesh, in which appearing to the world and dwelling among us, he would destroy the reign of death by dying and restore life to us by rising again, and by ascending to the heavens, would exalt it with the glory of the everlasting kingdom. Therefore, the daughters of Zion, seeing King Solomon in his natural beauty, also marvel at the diadem with which his mother crowned him, because the elect, believing and confessing the glory of the Son of God equal to the Father and the Holy Spirit, also recognize the assumption of the human nature in which he overcame the dominion of death to be clarified forever, not by the power of his own substance, but by the work of the Word who assumed it, that is, the only Son of God; whose vision of the diadem, one of the daughters of Zion, herself most noble and already departing from the bounds of earthly desire, admiringly said, "But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death" (Hebrews 2).
Go forth, and see, daughters of Zion, King Solomon. The daughters of Zion are also the daughters of Jerusalem, that is, souls longing for the joys of the heavenly homeland. For Zion means watchtower, or the watchman, Jerusalem means vision of peace: both names fittingly apply to the inhabitants of the same heavenly city, where they enjoy eternal peace and always behold the face of their Creator. Therefore, go forth, he says, daughters of Zion, and see King Solomon. Go forth from the tumultuous life of the world so you may be able to see the King of Peace; go forth in mind and action from the midst of Babylon, you who desire to have a part in the heavenly Jerusalem, according to the command of that true Solomon, who says: Come out of her, my people, that you be not partakers of her sins; thus he himself, wishing to separate us from the company of the world and to provoke us to heavenly joys, willed to suffer outside the city walls for our sake, as the Apostle beautifully and fully explains, saying: Jesus, to sanctify the people through his own blood, suffered outside the gate, let us then go to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the one to come (Hebrews 13). And because our Lord Jesus Christ must be confessed to be not only the true Son of God but also the true Son of Man: the Son of God indeed eternally born before the ages; the Son of Man, in time made at the end of the ages, rightly, after it was said: See, daughters of Zion, King Solomon, it was immediately added.
Dictionary and topics
Crown — (1.) Denotes the plate of gold in the front of the high priest’s mitre (Ex. 29:6; 39:30). The same Hebrew word so rendered (ne’zer) denotes the diadem worn by Saul in battle (2 Sam. 1:10), and also…
Marriage · The bridegroom: Crowned with garlands — The bridegroom: Crowned with garlands
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).