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On the Greek text. The Greek follows the standard critical text of the Septuagint (Rahlfs-Hanhart in its main wording, itself an ancient, public-domain text); the distinctively copyrighted critical apparatus is not reproduced. Versification follows the LXX.

The Song of Songs (LXX) — Interlinear: Themes, Outlines & Translation Notes

A consolidated companion to the Song of Songs data set: every chapter of LXX Song of Songs (1-8) rendered as a six-tier Greek reverse-interlinear (Greek · gloss · parsing/case · syntax · semantic force · lexical note), with per-verse discourse analysis and a chapter argument-outline.

This document gathers the theme, the argument outline (the outline movements authored into each data file), and the translation / textual / exegetical notes (the text_note of each file, reproduced verbatim). Major translation and interpretive cruxes are handled within those notes rather than silently resolved. Song of Songs is the Bible's concentrated love poetry, a sequence of desire, praise, searching, invitation, mutual belonging, and climactic seal-language rendered in the Greek of the Septuagint with vivid bodily, garden, royal, and festive imagery. Its literal erotic speech has long invited theological reading, but the poem itself insists first on the intensity, exclusivity, timing, and delight of love. The Greek follows the standard critical text of the Septuagint (Rahlfs–Hanhart in its main wording, itself an ancient public-domain text); the distinctively copyrighted apparatus is not reproduced, and versification follows the LXX.

Scope

Chapter Verses Words annotated Outline movements
Song of Songs 1 17 242 3
Song of Songs 2 17 284 4
Song of Songs 3 11 221 3
Song of Songs 4 16 281 3
Song of Songs 5 16 298 3
Song of Songs 6 12 210 3
Song of Songs 7 14 218 3
Song of Songs 8 14 271 4
Total 117 2,025 26

Each annotated word carries Greek, a working gloss, color-coded grammatical case, parsing (Tense·Voice·Mood·Person·Number + lemma), a Wallace-style syntactic-function label, an aspectual semantic-force label (verbal forms), and a condensed lexical note. As translation Greek, the annotation additionally flags Hebraisms and the underlying Hebrew idiom where it illuminates the rendering.

The argument of the book

The macro-structure of the whole book — its major movements — under which the chapter-by-chapter detail below unfolds. Song of Songs moves by alternating voices, choral refrains, praise-poems, scenes of seeking and finding, and recurring garden imagery until the closing reflections on love's strength and cost. The annotation tracks the poem's repeated metaphors, speaker shifts, and its intertwining of bodily delight, delay, praise, and covenant-like exclusivity. (Section divisions are interpretive; the more common analysis is generally followed.)

Chapter-by-chapter

Song of Songs 1 — ΑΣΜΑ ΑΣΜΑΤΩΝ Α′

Theme. Desire, fragrance, dark beauty, and mutual praise establish the Song's opening world of longing and recognition.

Outline.

Translation & textual notes. The Greek text of Song of Songs 1 follows the standard critical text of the Septuagint as established in the Rahlfs-Hanhart edition (Septuaginta, rev. ed. 2006), an ancient and public-domain text; the critical apparatus is not reproduced. The chapter opens the Song with desire, fragrance, praise, and social tension. The woman's voice dominates: she longs for kisses, delights in the beloved's scent and name, acknowledges her darkened labor-worn appearance, and asks where he pastures his flock. The chapter moves between intimate praise and public setting, ending with reciprocal admiration amid images of perfume, vineyards, wood, and resting place. As throughout the Song, the language is erotic, lyrical, and imagistic rather than argumentative.

Song of Songs 2 — ΑΣΜΑ ΑΣΜΑΤΩΝ Β′

Theme. Mutual delight ripens into springtime invitation, vineyard watchfulness, and the first great declaration of belonging.

Outline.

Translation & textual notes. The Greek text of Song of Songs 2 follows the standard critical text of the Septuagint as established in the Rahlfs-Hanhart edition (Septuaginta, rev. ed. 2006), an ancient and public-domain text; the critical apparatus is not reproduced. The chapter interweaves self-description, mutual comparison, summons to delight, adjurations, and the springtime invitation of the beloved. The lovers speak in rapid alternation: the woman is flower among valleys, the beloved is fruit-bearing tree, love is banner and wound, and then the male voice breaks in with leaping gazelle imagery and a call to arise because winter has passed. The chapter closes with foxes in the vineyards, a pastoral claim of mutual belonging, and the request that the beloved return like a gazelle until the day breathes.

Song of Songs 3 — ΑΣΜΑ ΑΣΜΑΤΩΝ Γ′

Theme. Night-search yearning opens into reunion and then widens into Solomon's perfumed wedding procession.

Outline.

Translation & textual notes. The Greek text of Song of Songs 3 follows the standard critical text of the Septuagint as established in the Rahlfs-Hanhart edition (Septuaginta, rev. ed. 2006), an ancient and public-domain text; the critical apparatus is not reproduced. The chapter moves from nocturnal search to public royal spectacle. The woman's night-search for the one her soul loves gives way to encounter with city-watchmen, reunion, and a second adjuration to the daughters of Jerusalem. The latter half then shifts scenes dramatically to Solomon's procession, perfumed ascent from the wilderness, guarded couch, and wedding-day crown. The result is a chapter that joins yearning, successful finding, maternal-house imagery, and royal nuptial pageantry.

Song of Songs 4 — ΑΣΜΑ ΑΣΜΑΤΩΝ Δ′

Theme. The beloved's praise turns the woman's body into an enclosed garden of beauty, fragrance, and invitation.

Outline.

Translation & textual notes. The Greek text of Song of Songs 4 follows the standard critical text of the Septuagint as established in the Rahlfs-Hanhart edition (Septuaginta, rev. ed. 2006), an ancient and public-domain text; the critical apparatus is not reproduced. The chapter is a sustained blazon of the bride, moving from eyes, hair, teeth, lips, neck, and breasts to a wider landscape of mountain, Lebanon, gardens, fountains, spices, and flowing waters. The beloved is called 'bride' repeatedly, and the poem mingles bodily praise with enclosed-garden imagery that suggests exclusivity, fecundity, and delight. The chapter culminates in the invitation that the garden's aromas flow and that the beloved come down into his garden and eat its good fruits.

Song of Songs 5 — ΑΣΜΑ ΑΣΜΑΤΩΝ Ε′

Theme. Garden union gives way to delay, loss, wounding, and a love-sick praise that keeps desire alive through absence.

Outline.

Translation & textual notes. The Greek text of Song of Songs 5 follows the standard critical text of the Septuagint as established in the Rahlfs-Hanhart edition (Septuaginta, rev. ed. 2006), an ancient and public-domain text; the critical apparatus is not reproduced. The chapter opens with apparent consummation in the garden, then turns abruptly into nocturnal delay, missed encounter, searching, public wounding, and renewed praise. The beloved's knock meets hesitation; when the woman opens, he has withdrawn. The city watchmen strike and shame her, but she remains love-sick and describes the beloved in one of the Song's most elaborate portrait hymns. The chapter therefore holds together union, loss, seeking, and the sustaining power of remembered beauty.

Song of Songs 6 — ΑΣΜΑ ΑΣΜΑΤΩΝ Ϛ′

Theme. The lovers rediscover one another in garden imagery, singular praise, and dawnlike splendor before communal wonder.

Outline.

Translation & textual notes. The Greek text of Song of Songs 6 follows the standard critical text of the Septuagint as established in the Rahlfs-Hanhart edition (Septuaginta, rev. ed. 2006), an ancient and public-domain text; the critical apparatus is not reproduced. The chapter begins with the daughters of Jerusalem taking the woman's longing seriously and asking where the beloved has gone. Her answer re-establishes mutual belonging and leads into renewed praise, now stressing singularity among queens and maidens. The latter verses return to garden imagery, dawn imagery, and sudden movement into royal or martial splendor. The chapter keeps the Song's pattern of absence answered by recollected presence and communal recognition of incomparable beauty.

Song of Songs 7 — ΑΣΜΑ ΑΣΜΑΤΩΝ Ζ′

Theme. A full wasf of the Shulammite ripens into reciprocal desire, harvest imagery, and the lovers' shared initiative.

Outline.

Translation & textual notes. The Greek text of Song of Songs 7 follows the standard critical text of the Septuagint as established in the Rahlfs-Hanhart edition (Septuaginta, rev. ed. 2006), an ancient and public-domain text; the critical apparatus is not reproduced. The chapter is a sustained wasf of the woman, moving from a repeated summons to the Shulammite into an elaborate praise of her body from feet upward, and then into the speaker's own voiced desire and shared invitation. Architectural, agricultural, and royal images overlap: sandals, towers, wheat, lilies, palm, vine, mandrakes, and stored fruits all make beauty feel both cultivated and abundant. The latter movement is especially important, because admiration does not remain static or merely descriptive; it turns into mutual belonging, planned departure into the fields, and anticipated gift. The chapter therefore binds praise, desire, ripeness, and initiative into one of the Song's richest scenes of mature, reciprocal delight.

Song of Songs 8 — ΑΣΜΑ ΑΣΜΑΤΩΝ Η′

Theme. The Song closes by gathering longing, exclusivity, family guardianship, vineyard imagery, and love's unquenchable fire.

Outline.

Translation & textual notes. The Greek text of Song of Songs 8 follows the standard critical text of the Septuagint as established in the Rahlfs-Hanhart edition (Septuaginta, rev. ed. 2006), an ancient and public-domain text; the critical apparatus is not reproduced. The final chapter gathers many of the Song's major motifs into a closing sequence: longing for unconstrained affection, the repeated adjuration not to awaken love before its will, public recognition of the lovers, the seal-on-heart declaration, the incomparable force of love, protective family deliberation, vineyard imagery, and the final call across the mountains of spices. Particularly memorable is the saying that love is strong as death and unquenchable by many waters; here the poem gives its most concentrated theology of desire as exclusive, costly, and not subject to purchase. The chapter also balances maturity and guarding: the little sister must be prepared, but the speaker herself now stands as wall, peace, and possessed vineyard. The book ends not with settled stillness but with one last motion-filled appeal for the beloved's swift, fragrant coming.

How the data set is organized

The interpretive tiers (syntactic function, semantic force, discourse structure, and the proposed argument outlines) are interpretive by nature; where readings legitimately differ, the more common analysis was generally chosen, and the lexical notes are condensed orientation rather than a substitute for a lexicon (e.g. LEH / Muraoka) or a full commentary.