1. Song of Solomon 5:3 (ESV)
  2. Exposition

Why does the young woman say that she has put off her garment and washed her feet?

Song of Solomon 5:3 (ESV)

3 I had put off my garment; how could I put it on? I had bathed my feet; how could I soil them?

The young woman is expressing her hesitancy to accept her husband’s request for sexual intimacy.

She has made all the usual preparations to go to bed and cannot be bothered to go through that routine again. The tragic opposite of burning love is not necessarily fierce hatred; it can be a simple bored indifference to the desires and needs of the loved one.1