How beautiful you are, my darling, how 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.
- BSB How beautiful you are, my darling! Oh, how very beautiful! Your eyes are like doves.
- 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.”
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 4:1Behold, you are beautiful, my love. Behold, you are beautiful. Your eyes are doves behind your veil. Your hair is as a flock of goats, that descend from Mount Gilead.
- Song 5:12His eyes are like doves beside the water brooks, washed with milk, mounted like jewels.
- Song 4:7You are all beautiful, my love. There is no spot in you.
- Eph 1:17–18that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him;
- 2 Cor 11:2–3For I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy. For I married you to one husband, that I might present you as a pure virgin to Christ.
- Song 5:2I was asleep, but my heart was awake. It is the voice of my beloved who knocks: “Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled; for my head is filled with dew, and my hair with the dampness of the night.”
- Song 1:8If you don’t know, most beautiful among women, follow the tracks of the sheep. Graze your young goats beside the shepherds’ tents.
- Song 4:10How beautiful is your love, my sister, my bride! How much better is your love than wine! The fragrance of your perfumes than all kinds of spices!
- Mal 2:14Yet you say, ‘Why?’ Because Yahweh has been witness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treacherously, though she is your companion, and the wife of your covenant.
- Song 7:6How beautiful and how pleasant you are, love, for delights!
- Song 2:10My beloved spoke, and said to me, “Rise up, my love, my beautiful one, and come away.
- Song 6:4You are beautiful, my love, as Tirzah, lovely as Jerusalem, awesome as an army with banners.
- Song 2:13The fig tree ripens her green figs. The vines are in blossom. They give out their fragrance. Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away.”
Resources, by level
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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.