ESTUDIO DEL VERSÍCULO
Song of Solomon 5:6 — The Beloved Withdraws
In Song of Solomon 5:6 the bride opens the door at last, but her beloved has already withdrawn, and her search and cry go unanswered.
Escritura
- 6.Abrí yo a mi amado; Pero mi amado se había ido, había ya pasado; Y tras su hablar salió mi alma. Lo busqué, y no lo hallé; Lo llamé, y no me respondió.I opened to my beloved; But my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone. My soul had failed me when he spake: I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer.
Qué significa este pasaje
The verse narrates a sequence of three actions: opening, wanting, and calling. The bride has finally risen and undid the bolt (cf. v. 5), but the parenthesis "had withdrawn himself, and was gone" tells the reader the beloved was already gone before the door moved. The perfect-tense withdrawal sets the tragedy of the verse: the moment of arrival is the moment of loss.
The middle line, "My soul had failed me when he spake," is a memory that frames the withdrawal. In the Hebrew idiom, the soul going out at the sound of his voice recalls the lover's approach in vv. 2 and 4; she swoons at his nearness. Yet that same nearness is now recalled as already past, so the failure of the soul is both cause and effect of the door's late opening.
The closing pair — "I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer" — deliberately reverses the lover's earlier seeking in 3:1-3. Where the watchmen there passed her by, here she passes through the city streets seeking. The repetition of the verbs without result marks the verse as a pivot: desire has not ceased, but the object of desire has left.
Contexto
Verses 2-5 set up the delay: the bride is asleep, hears the knock, hesitates over her garment and her washed feet (v. 3), her heart is moved when his hand touches the door (v. 4), and only then does she rise to open (v. 5). Verse 6 reports the failure of that opening. The chapter's note draws the lesson plainly: the loss of presence warns against letting intimacy slide.
Verses 7-9 follow directly: the watchmen of the city strike and wound her, and she adjures the daughters of Jerusalem to tell her beloved that she is "sick from love" (v. 8). The unanswered seeking in 5:6 thus opens the section that culminates in the long description of the beloved in vv. 10-16, where the bride's voice returns to declare, "This is my beloved, and this is my friend" (v. 16).
Preguntas frecuentes
Why is the beloved already gone when she opens the door?
The verse states the withdrawal as already past ("had withdrawn himself, and was gone") before the opening is completed. Read with vv. 3-5, his parting is the consequence of the delay between his knock in v. 2 and her rising in v. 5; the chapter frames the losing as something that happens because of hesitation, not because of his unreliability elsewhere in the song.
Does Song of Solomon 5:6 speak about a believer's relationship with the Lord?
The provided chapter note reads the passage that way: the loss of the beloved is set as a warning to guard intimacy with the Lord. Whether one reads the Song as a unified allegory or as a celebration of human love, the note supplied here makes the devotional application explicit. The verse itself does not name God; the application comes from the editor's framing, not from the verse's words.
How does 5:6 connect to the watchmen strike in 5:7?
The verse directly precedes the city scene. The bride, who has just searched and called without answer, steps out into the streets in v. 7 and is beaten by the watchmen. The unanswered seeking in 5:6 is what propels her into the public space where the wounding occurs, so the two verses are linked as cause and consequence within the same episode.