Song of Songs שִׁיר הַשִּׁירִים

Shir HaShirim — the Song of Songs — is the love song of the Bible, and, in the synagogue's reading, far more: Rabbi Akiva taught that 'all the Writings are holy, but the Song of Songs is the holy of holies.' On its surface it is an eight-chapter dialogue of bride and beloved — vineyards and gazelles, night-searches and adjurations, praise-songs that move from the tents of Kedar to the pools of Heshbon. Read as the sages read it, and as Rashi's commentary unfolds verse by verse, it is the love between Hashem and Israel: the Beloved who brought His bride out of Egypt, the estrangements of exile, and the longing that survives them — 'for love is strong as death... many waters cannot quench it.' The book contains the Divine Name only once, hidden in a single burning word: shalhevetyah, 'a very flame of Hashem' (8:6). It is read in the synagogue on Pesach, the festival of the Exodus, when the springtime of the Song — 'the winter has passed... the time of singing has come' — is the springtime of Israel's redemption.

This edition presents each verse word by word: the Hebrew, its transliteration, its root, its gematria, and a form-true English gloss, beneath a complete modern English translation adapted from the public-domain Jewish Publication Society version of 1917. The translation stays literal; the allegory lives in the commentary. Six classical commentators accompany the text — Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Sforno, the Alshich (Shoshanat HaAmakim), Metzudat David, and Metzudat Zion — so that the plain sense and the love it carries can be studied on a single page. May the Beloved of Israel make haste, upon the mountains of spices.