¹ Solomon's Song of Songs:

² BELOVED: Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for your love-making is sweeter than wine;

³ delicate is the fragrance of your perfume, your name is an oil poured out, and that is why girls love you.

⁴ Draw me in your footsteps, let us run. The king has brought me into his rooms; you will be our joy and our gladness. We shall praise your love more than wine; how right it is to love you.

⁵ BELOVED: I am black but lovely, daughters of Jerusalem, like the tents of Kedar, like the pavilions of Salmah.

⁶ Take no notice of my dark colouring, it is the sun that has burnt me. My mother's sons turned their anger on me, they made me look after the vineyards. My own vineyard I had not looked after!

⁷ Tell me then, sweetheart, where will you lead your flock to graze, where will you rest it at noon? That I may no more wander like a vagabond beside the flocks of your companions.

⁸ CHORUS: If you do not know this, O loveliest of women, follow the tracks of the flock, and take your kids to graze close by the shepherds' tents.

⁹ LOVER: I compare you, my love, to my mare harnessed to Pharaoh's chariot.

¹⁰ Your cheeks show fair between their pendants and your neck within its necklaces.

¹¹ We shall make you golden earrings and beads of silver.

¹² DUO: -While the king rests in his own room my nard yields its perfume.

¹³ My love is a sachet of myrrh lying between my breasts.

¹⁴ My love is a cluster of henna flowers among the vines of En-Gedi.

¹⁵ -How beautiful you are, my beloved, how beautiful you are! Your eyes are doves.

¹⁶ -How beautiful you are, my love, and how you delight me! Our bed is the greensward.

¹⁷ -The beams of our house are cedar trees, its panelling the cypress.

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The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) is a Catholic translation of the Bible published in 1985. The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) has become the most widely used Roman Catholic Bible outside of the United States. It has the imprimatur of Cardinal George Basil Hume.

Like its predecessor, the Jerusalem Bible, the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) version is translated "directly from the Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic." The 1973 French translation, the Bible de Jerusalem, is followed only "where the text admits to more than one interpretation." Introductions and notes, with some modifications, are taken from the Bible de Jerusalem.

Source: The Very Reverend Dom (Joseph) Henry Wansbrough, OSB, MA (Oxon), STL (Fribourg), LSS (Rome), a monk of Ampleforth Abbey and a biblical scholar. He was General Editor of the New Jerusalem Bible. "New Jerusalem Bible, Regular Edition", pg. v.

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