How beautiful you are, my darling! Oh, how very beautiful! Your eyes are like doves.
Parallel translations
- WEB Behold, you are beautiful, my love. Behold, you are beautiful. Your eyes are doves.
- KJV Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves’ eyes.
- NKJV Behold, you are fair, my love! Behold, you are fair! You have dove’s eyes. The Shulamite
- NASB ¶“How beautiful you are, my darling, How beautiful you are! Your eyes are like doves.”
- NLT How beautiful you are, my darling, how beautiful! Your eyes are like doves.
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 beloved repeats that she is beautiful, praising her dove-like eyes. It conveys his tender, delighted admiration.
Overview
He twice calls her beautiful and likens her eyes to doves, suggesting gentleness, purity, and devotion. The repetition underlines genuine delight. So the Lord beholds His people as lovely, not by their own worth but as those made fair in His sight (Song 4:7; Eph. 5:27).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 13
- Song 4:1How beautiful you are, my darling—how very beautiful! Your eyes are like doves behind your veil. Your hair is like a flock of goats streaming down Mount Gilead.
- Song 5:12His eyes are like doves beside the streams of water, bathed in milk and mounted like jewels.
- Song 4:7You are altogether beautiful, my darling; in you there is no flaw.
- Eph 1:17–18that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in your knowledge of Him.
- 2 Cor 11:2–3I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. For I promised you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ.
- Song 5:2I sleep, but my heart is awake. A sound! My beloved is knocking: “Open to me, my sister, my darling, my dove, my flawless one. My head is drenched with dew, my hair with the dampness of the night.”
- Song 1:8If you do not know, O fairest of women, follow the tracks of the flock, and graze your young goats near the tents of the shepherds.
- Song 4:10How delightful is your love, my sister, my bride! Your love is much better than wine, and the fragrance of your perfume than all spices.
- Mal 2:14Yet you ask, “Why?” It is because the LORD has been a witness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have broken faith, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant.
- Song 7:6How fair and pleasant you are, O love, with your delights!
- Song 2:10My beloved calls to me, “Arise, my darling. Come away with me, my beautiful one.
- Song 6:4You are as beautiful, my darling, as Tirzah, as lovely as Jerusalem, as majestic as troops with banners.
- Song 2:13The fig tree ripens its figs; the blossoming vines spread their fragrance. Arise, come away, my darling; come away with me, my beautiful one.”
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 poetry of covenant love between bride and bridegroom pictures, at its highest, the love of Christ for his church — the Bridegroom who gave himself for his bride.
How Song of Songs 1:15 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.