a necklace (as if strangling) · noun, common masculine singular absolute
neck
מִצַּוְּרֹנָֽיִךְmi.tza.ve.ro.Na.yikh
H6677
the back of the neck (as that on which burdens are boun… · preposition + noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix, 2nd person feminine 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
Proverbs 5:19-20 Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love.
Song of Solomon 4:12 A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.
Song of Solomon 5:1-2 I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse: I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drun…
Song of Solomon 7:5-6 Thine head upon thee is like Carmel, and the hair of thine head like purple; the king is held in the galleries.
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…
2 Corinthians 11:2 For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.
Psalms 45:9 Kings’ daughters were among thy honourable women: upon thy right hand did stand the queen in gold of Ophir.
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 4:9
Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse,.... Here another new title is given to the church, "my sister", with the repetition of the former, my "spouse": for one and the same person, with the Hebrews, might be sister and spouse; see 1 Corinthians 9:5. And this may be used in a love strain, and so not improper in a love poem, as this was (g); see Sol 8:8; likewise the church may be called Christ's sister, because of his incarnation, in virtue of which he is not ashamed to call his people his brethren, and so his sisters, Hebrews 2:11; and on account of their adoption; in which respect, he that is Christ's Father is theirs; and which is evidenced in regeneration; when they, through gr…
my treasure (literally my sister): The man calls the woman his sister to emphasize their relationship as loving companions and his role as her protector. This sounds strange to modern ears, but it does not suggest an incestuous relationship. Ancient Near Eastern love poetry often uses the language of brother and sister to refer to two people in love.
Rashi on Song of Solomon 4:9
You captured my heart. You have drawn My heart to you.
With but one of your eyes. Of the many good characteristics that you possess, if you had only one, I would love you dearly, and all the more so with all of them. And similarly, “with one necklace of your necklaces,” with but one of the chains of your necklaces. These are the adornments of commandments through which the [Bnei] Yisroel are distinguished. Another explanation of “בְּאַחַד עֲנָק,” with one of your forefathers, [the one] referred to as, “was one,”58Yechezkeil 33:24. the one singled out, and this is Avrohom, who is called עֲנָק [=a giant], “the greatest man among the giants בַּעֲנָקִים.”59Yehoshua 14:15.
You should not grieve that you are destitute of those bodily eyes which ants, flies and creeping things have as well as do people. Rather you should rejoice that you possess that eye of which it is said in the Song of Songs, "You have ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse; you have ravished my heart with one of your eyes." This is the eye with which God is seen and to which Moses refers when he says, "I will now turn aside and see this great sight."
You have wounded my heart, my sister, etc. This statement can be understood simply, as he might have wished to express the greatness of the love he has toward the Church through the remembrance of the wounded heart. He rightly calls her his sister and bride, because he has joined her to himself with the bond of the heavenly bedchamber, and because he himself deigned to become a man and naturally exist as her brother. It can also be according to what Isaiah said: But he was wounded for our iniquities, he was bruised for our transgressions (Isaiah 53). He then subsequently explains what is the chief cause of receiving this wound, saying:
Flee, he says, from the lions' dens, flee from the pride of devils, that when you have been consecrated to me, I may be able to say unto you, "You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride, you have ravished my heart with one of your eyes, with one chain of your neck." What he says is something like this—I do not reject marriage: you have a second eye, the left, which I have given to you on account of the weakness of those who cannot see the right. But I am pleased with the right eye of virginity, and if it is blinded, the whole body is in darkness. And that we might not think he had in view carnal love and bodily marriage, he at once excludes this meaning by saying, "You have ravished my heart, my bride, my sister." The name sister excludes all suspicion of unhallowed love. "How fair are your breasts with wine," those breasts concerning which he had said above, my beloved is mine, and I am his: "between my breasts shall he lie," that is, in the princely portion of the heart where the Word of God has its lodging.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Forest — Heb. ya’ar, meaning a dense wood, from its luxuriance. Thus all the great primeval forests of Syria (Eccl. 2:6; Isa. 44:14; Jer. 5:6; Micah 5:8). The most extensive was the trans-Jordanic forest of…
Spouse — (Cant. 4:8-12; Hos. 4:13, 14) may denote either husband or wife, but in the Scriptures it denotes only the latter.
Bridegroom · General references — General references
Love Of Christ, The · To his church — — To his church —
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).
