Listen, daughter, consider, and turn your ear. Forget your own people, and also your father’s house.
Parallel translations
- KJV Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear; forget also thine own people, and thy father’s house;
- BSB Listen, O daughter! Consider and incline your ear: Forget your people and your father’s house,
- NKJV Listen, O daughter, Consider and incline your ear; Forget your own people also, and your father’s house;
- NASB ¶Listen, daughter, look and incline your ear: Forget your people and your father’s house;
- NLT Listen to me, O royal daughter; take to heart what I say. Forget your people and your family far away.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
The bride is urged to listen and leave behind her own people and father's house. It matters because devotion to the king calls for wholehearted allegiance.
Overview
The poet counsels the bride to give her full loyalty to the king, leaving former ties. This pictures the costly, complete devotion fitting a royal marriage. So too the church is called to forsake all rival loyalties and give herself wholly to Christ, her Lord and Bridegroom.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 11
- Song 2:10–13My beloved spoke, and said to me, “Rise up, my love, my beautiful one, and come away.
- Gen 12:1Now Yahweh said to Abram, “Leave your country, and your relatives, and your father’s house, and go to the land that I will show you.
- Matt 19:29Everyone who has left houses, or brothers, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive one hundred times, and will inherit eternal life.
- Matt 10:37He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me isn’t worthy of me.
- 2 Cor 6:17Therefore “‘Come out from among them, and be separate,’ says the Lord. ‘Touch no unclean thing. I will receive you.
- Gen 2:24Therefore a man will leave his father and his mother, and will join with his wife, and they will be one flesh.
- Deut 21:13She shall take the clothing of her captivity off of herself, and shall remain in your house, and bewail her father and her mother a full month. After that you shall go in to her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife.
- Luke 14:26“If anyone comes to me, and doesn’t disregard his own father, mother, wife, children, brothers, and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he can’t be my disciple.
- Deut 33:9He said of his father, and of his mother, ‘I have not seen him.’ He didn’t acknowledge his brothers, nor did he know his own children; for they have observed your word, and keep your covenant.
- 2 Cor 5:16Therefore we know no one after the flesh from now on. Even though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know him so no more.
- Isa 55:1–3“Hey! Come, everyone who thirsts, to the waters! Come, he who has no money, buy, and eat! Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
Resources, by level
Commentaries & study tools
Free animated overview and word-study videos for this book.
Sermons and teaching on this passage from across YouTube.
Clear, readable, conservative exposition — the best free place to start on any passage.
Matthew Henry, Barnes, Gill, the Pulpit Commentary, Ellicott, Cambridge, and more — stacked on one page for this exact verse.
The beloved Puritan exposition of this whole book — warm, devotional, and verse by verse (free, CCEL).
Hebrew/Greek interlinear, word definitions, and cross-references for this verse.
Christ at the center
The Psalms are Christ's own prayer book and a gallery of his portraits — the suffering one of Psalm 22, the risen Lord of Psalm 16, the priest-king of Psalm 110, the Son to whom the nations are given.
How Psalms 45:10 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.