The text our metaphor is in.
15 “How beautiful you are, my darling,
How beautiful you are!
Your eyes are like doves.” Solomon’s Song of Songs 1:15
1 The text. 2 The general, main and immediate context of the verse. 3 Eyes for Jesus! Information about dove’s physical eyes. 4 Doves character in general. 5 Doves character as a couple. 6 Dove’s metaphors and uses other places in the Bible. 7 Dove as it is used other places in Solomon’s song of songs. 8 Clear and lively analogies. 9 Clear and lively from what she is thinking and feeling as he says her eyes are doves.
The context is that it is in the best love poem that Solomon wrote.
The main context
The poem describes 6 characteristics of love at the end of the poem. Those 6 characteristics of love, it’s extraordinary power, intense jealousy, sparks, flame above all others, unquenchable and inestimable value are seen throughout their courtship, engagement and marriage.
Naamah and Solomon meet at his first anointing. 1 Kings 1 with Song 1:1-4.
They meet she expresses her feelings to him. He takes her to his chambers where the daughters of Jerusalem are. She tells her testimony to them. She pleads to be with Solomon and not in the hot sun at noon. He tells her where to go. Then comes our text when he tells her the kind of eyes she has.
The immediate context is the time of their courtship.
She had doves’ eyes while thinking and feeling these things. She had love in her heart and eyes like doves.
When he is near her, she lets us know that he was close enough to smell her spikenard. She was thinking of how precious pleasing he was to her (“myrrh“). He is on her mind and close to her heart (“resting between my breasts“). As she thought of all she knew of him, everything about him was beautiful and put them together and he was (“like a cluster of henna blossoms“).
12 “While the king was near,
My perfume gave forth its fragrance.“
13 “My beloved is to me a pouch of myrrh
Which lies all night between my breasts.
14 “My beloved is to me a cluster of henna blossoms
In the vineyards of Engedi.”
15 “How beautiful you are, my darling,
How beautiful you are!
Your eyes are like doves.”
First, she tells us that he is near and her spikenard is going forth. Then she tells us what she is thinking and feeling about the king as he looks at her. She love in her eyes. He comments about he she looks as she is thinking about him and having holy delightful feelings towards him and says,
15 “How beautiful you are, my darling,
How beautiful you are!
Your eyes are like doves.”
It’s like the thoughts in her mind about him and the feelings she had for him caused her eyes to look like doves! This is so beautiful!!
3 I wonder what my eyes look like when I think about Jesus? Solomon was only a type of Jesus Christ. Like him in many ways. Yet, Jesus is more so. Jesus is more precious! Jesus is more beautiful. Jesus should be closer to our heart than any other!
Doves have “binocular vision”. Some say that this means that they can only focus on one thing at a time. Yes, when we use binoculars we do loose sight of the breadth of things and yet what is far becomes clearer.
Binocular vision is
“vision using two eyes with overlapping fields of view, allowing good perception of depth.” (Link).
Doves’ eyes are fashioned in a way that allow for two things. 1 Good perception 2 Good depth.
Yet, humans have binocular vision as well.
The metaphor should fit the context.
What is similar about her eyes and that of doves or doves’ eyes?
What is lively and not so lively a similarity?
Can he look into her eyes and see that she is feeling love?
Can he see by looking at her eyes that she is happy, joyful and at peace? Gal. 5:22.
Can he look into her eyes and see that she has good perception and depth of vision?
Is color the only clear similarity meant to be understood? The white color of the dove and the white of her eye. Or the dark part of her eye compared with the all dark doves eye.
Metaphors
As a term of endearment. Psalm 74:19.
Gentle landing.
Characteristics
By sight.
1 They look lovely. Adorable. Beautiful.
By character.
1 They fly. 2 They moan or get sad. 3 They fly to their lattices. 4 They are faithful, pure and innocent unless silly or without sense.
1 Doves fly. Are her eyes fluttering or seem to be flying? Not so lively a similarity to me.
2 Doves moan or cry.
Isaiah 59:11 “All of us growl like bears, And moan sadly like doves” I highly doubt she is feeling sad and he could see it in her eyes.
“Even when their survivors escape, they will be on the mountains like doves of the valleys, all of them mourning, each over his own iniquity.” Ez. 7:16. Nahum 2:7.
3 “Who are these who fly like a cloud
And like the doves to their lattices?” Is. 62:8. Returning to their lover. Going with their lover. Flying gently to the lattice?
4 Hosea 7:11 “So Ephraim has become like a silly dove, without sense; They call to Egypt, they go to Assyria.” Hosea 7:11.
Matthew 10:16 “Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves.”
5
6 Doves in Scripture
Solomon would have understood the role of doves in the sacrificial system of the Jews.
9 The look of love being in her eyes.
She is wanting to please him. Love in her heart is causing her to look at him in a way that shows she wants him to be happy.
She is also looking at him in a way that gives her the impression that he is precious to him. She is treasuring the thought of him being close to her heart.
She is looking at him, pleased with him and that everything he is and has done this far is absolutely beautiful like a cluster of henna blossoms.
Conclusion
Clearly Solomon is saying that when he looked at her eyes he knew she was feeling love. This is the most lively similarity. What other feelings come with love? Joy and peace Gal. 5:22.
She could easily be wearing a veil and him only seeing her eyes.
Sight
Is he compare the shape of the inner design of her eye like that of the feathers on a dove?
Color
Most doves have brown to grey when young, but as adults they get darker to even black. I think this next picture would have been perfect if you could see the sparkle and delight of love in her eyes as if she were in love.
12 “Kings of armies flee, they flee,
And she who remains at home will divide the spoil!”
13 When you lie down among the sheepfolds,
You are like the wings of a dove covered with silver“, Ps. 68:12-13
Love like a dove coming from the sweet glance of her eyes.
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