1. Song of Solomon 5:9 (ESV)
  2. Exposition

Why do the young women of Jerusalem ask her why her beloved is more than another beloved?

Song of Solomon 5:9 (ESV)

9 What is your beloved more than another beloved, O most beautiful among women? What is your beloved more than another beloved, that you thus adjure us?

In response to her request for help in Song of Solomon 5:8, the young women of Jerusalem pose two questions for the young bride, one here and one in Song of Solomon 6:1.

The first question they ask is literally, What is your beloved compared to another beloved? What makes him so special that you would want us to go to him for you? The solution to her painful searching is not to be found in something either they or even he can do for her; it is to be found in herself. She must recognize that she gave herself to him for a reason, that she is in fact deeply in love with him. He is, in her eyes, better than all other men.1