From a Kiss to Fragrance — Song of Songs 1:3
“The fragrance of your perfume is pleasing;
your name is like perfume poured out.
Therefore the young women love you.”
It begins with:
יִשָּׁקֵנִי
“Let him kiss me.”
Immediately after that:
מִנְּשִׁיקוֹת פִּיהוּ
“with the kisses of his mouth”
Here, the body comes into view.
him👉his mouth
Then:
כִּי־טוֹבִים דֹּדֶיךָ
“For your love is…”
The “him” who was spoken of in the third person suddenly becomes “you,”
the second person.
him👉his mouth👉 you
Then comes verse 3:
לְרֵיחַ שְׁמָנֶיךָ
“the fragrance of your perfumes”
From a kiss to fragrance.
If we follow the sensory imagery:
Verse 2 — mouth, kisses, wine to be tasted.
Verse 3 — fragrance, perfume.
From a kiss to fragrance.
Even the sensory landscape begins to change.
At the end of verse 3, we find:
עֲלָמוֹת אֲהֵבוּךָ
“the young women love you”
Now the young women appear.
The scene expands from the intimacy of “me,” the one longing to be kissed,
to the young women who also love “you.”
The landscape is beginning to open up.
him👉his mouth👉you 👉 your perfume
The Song has not yet introduced this man to us by name, yet through the senses,
“he” seems to draw closer little by little.
יִשָּׁקֵנִי
Let him kiss me
👇
פִּיהוּ
his mouth
👇
דֹּדֶיךָ
your love
👇
שְׁמָנֶיךָ
your perfume
👇
שְׁמֶךָ
your name
And then there is something else:
שֶׁמֶן
(shemen) = oil, perfume
שֵׁם
(shem) = name
Even the sounds echo each other.
Shemen … shem.
That is fascinating.
At first, he was simply “him.”
As the longing for his kiss draws him nearer, “him” becomes “you.”
Then the Song moves further into what belongs to “you”:
love 👉 perfume 👉 name
until finally we arrive at his name.
A “name” is not a part of the body.
It points to the person himself.
We have moved beyond simply saying, “He smells good.”
“Your name is like perfume poured out.”
For the first time, it seems that the text itself is beginning to draw us a little closer to the question we started with:
Who is he?
him 👉 you 👉 your name
This is fascinating too.
Him.
You.
Your love.
Your name.
We have reached the word “name,” and yet we still have not heard the name itself.
In verses 2 and 3,
the woman never calls him by name.
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