“Your lips are like a scarlet thread,
And your mouth is lovely.” Solomon’s Song of Songs 4:3
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Overall, she was beautiful and fair. The most beautiful woman. Literally. She was “altogether beautiful.” 4:7
Every part of her did its job in making her beautiful. Solomon praises the overall beauty of his wife 8x, other body parts 2-4 times and her lips 2x. Once in the context of external beauty and the other time her “lips drip honey” 4:11 speaking of the loving words she said that delighted his heart.
The context is that it’s in a Love poem. The day of their wedding. They are alone.
What can we say about her lips?
Is there just one similarity or multiple? What is clearly similar, lively and more obvious?
1 The Color. 2 The texture. 3 Value. 4 How he uses simile rather than saying beautiful over and over again. 5 See the reflected Beauty of God. 6 Praise God for beauty wherever we see it.
1 The Color. He chooses a simile that illustrate the color of her lips. He compared them to scarlet thread. This has to do with color. What we see. Her lips were beautifully red. Solomon doesn’t outright say they are beautiful. But compares them to thread that is.
2 The texture. Soft and tender like scarlet thread. Both the scarlet thread and her lips were soft and tender.
3 Value. Scarlet thread back then was rare and valuable. Usually only the very rich had it. This makes her lips valuable to him. They are precious. Precious lips. She is more precious than gold. There is great value in having lips that are beautiful.
Proverbs 31:10 “An excellent wife, who can find? For her worth is far above jewels.”
Summing it up then, her lips were beautiful, fair, lovely, soft and gentle, valuable and red.
4 Solomon’s use of simile is romantic. He doesn’t say, “Your are beautiful, your eyes, lips, mouth, hair, temples and breasts.” He skillfully uses simile.
He sets the bar quite high for most of us with lesser wisdom.
To your spouse you say, “Your lips are like scarlet thread beautiful in color”.
She smiles. Knowing it’s not like you to compliment her by way of comparison.
You say to her, “I learned from Solomon in his love poem”. A spark, a fire starts kindlin in her heart as she thinks of the sweetness rolling from your lips and asks, “What more do you have?”
(Be genuine and sincere because she will know). Then say, “Your lips are also soft and tender like scarlet thread” As you give her a gentle loving kiss.
Now with love and sincerity in your heart continue on and say, “You know what else about your lips?”
With anticipation she says, “What”.
You answer, “Your lips are also precious and valuable like scarlet thread…”
Remember back at the beginning of the love poem in Song 1:4 she said “Draw me after you. Let us hurry” Do you think that when Solomon with a pure sincere fire in his heart said “Your lips are like scarlet thread” to his wife and she knew the use of the similes that his sweet and tender words would draw her closer to him? Of course, yes! Do you think that complimenting her like that would strengthen the bond between the two. Be intimate and poetic with your words.
5 See the beauty of God reflected in the beauty of your spouse. The Beauty of God is a moral beauty. God is morally flawless therefor Beautiful and Holy. She is flawless in appearance specifically and generally. God is flawless and every way. Infinitely holy, without spot or shifting shadows.
Are flawed lips beautiful? No, why? No agreement of parts. There is more of distortion rather than order.
Still red, precious and soft. But beautiful to the eye? Not so much so.
Shadows of love
Natural beauties are shadows of love. Meaning that when we see and taste or sense in the heart, beauty, then we get a better idea of God. God is infinitely Beautiful. The nature and essence of God is love. The beauty of God is the mutual love of the Father and Son. The Holy Spirit. The Spirit of Love.
Would you think that a being or woman would be beautiful if on the outside they were absolutely and stunningly beautiful yet acted the devil. If the soul and mind is not ordered right could you say that person was beautiful? No. True beauty is in the heart. Dark she was but lovely in her heart. You can see physical beauty but moral beauty is in someone’s actions and words.
If you get pleasantness of mind when beholding a beauty it is because that external beauty is a shadow of love. Love being the Moral Excellency and Beauty of God. Love. God’s Love of Himself. God’s idea of Himself is His Son who is the Personification of Beauty.
As bodies, the objects of our external senses, are but the shadows of beings, that harmony wherein consists sensible excellency and beauty is but the shadow of excellency; that is, it is pleasant to the mind because it is a shadow of love. When one thing sweetly harmonizes with another, as the notes in music, the notes are so conformed and have such proportion one to another that they seem to have respect one to another, as if they loved one another. So the beauty of figures and motions is, when one part has such consonant proportion with the rest as represents a general agreeing and consenting together; which is very much the image of love in all the parts of a society united by a sweet consent and charity of heart. Therein consists the beauty of figures, as of flowers drawn with a pen, and the beauty of the body, and of the features of the face. JE
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