Introduction: Praising the Soul Through Her Limbs
In chapter 4 of Shir HaShirim, the Supernal Beloved, the Holy One, blessed be He, praises the beloved maiden - the soul - limb by limb. Yet each limb is not physical, but rather a sign and an allusion to one of the faculties of the soul: the teeth correspond to the faculties of analytical contemplation, the lips correspond to the faculty of speech, the neck corresponds to the soul's dominion over the body, and the breasts correspond to the stimulating, awakening forces within man. Let us follow the order of the verses according to the commentary of the Malbim.
"Your Teeth Are Like a Flock of Evenly Shorn Sheep" - Thirty-Two Paths of Wisdom
שִׁנַּיִךְ כְּעֵדֶר הַקְּצוּבוֹת שֶׁעָלוּ מִן הָרַחְצָה שֶׁכֻּלָּם מַתְאִימוֹת וְשַׁכֻּלָה אֵין בָּהֶם׃ (ד, ב) - "Your teeth are like a flock of evenly shorn ewes coming up from washing, all of which are paired, and not one among them is bereaved." (4:2)
As explained, the teeth are a densification of the body's superfluities that emerge outward, and similarly here they serve to allude to the soul. When discussing the articulate soul - the speaking soul (nefesh ha-medabberet), the lower level that is attached to physical matter, as opposed to the divine soul within man - the Malbim explains that the intellect reveals itself through several traits and actions.
He explains that there are propositions and syllogisms that constitute the "wisdom of intellectual critique." There is no need to dwell on this at length, as the Malbim himself does not elaborate on it; he merely notes that the critique of reason refers to works written by ancient philosophers to analyze man's analytical capacity. Man constructs propositions through logical scrutiny, syllogisms, and drawing parallels between one concept and another (dimui milta le-milta). The "power of intellectual critique" refers to man's ability to examine matters, contemplate them, and internalize them. The ancients established thirty-two principles in this discipline. While we lack an in-depth understanding of them - nor does the Malbim enumerate them - and even if studied, it would likely be difficult to grasp those exact definitions, human logic is fundamentally rooted in thirty-two principles.
The Malbim states that this corresponds to the thirty-two teeth, which represent the thirty-two paths of wisdom. These thirty-two paths of wisdom channel and draw down the power of deep analysis, sound logic, the ability to draw conceptual parallels, and the examination of the origin of every matter. They are like conduits, thirty-two influxes of wisdom from which all human contemplation and study derive. Corresponding to them are the teeth: sixteen above and sixteen below.
"Coming up from washing" - because intellectual analysis examines every matter, scrutinizing and refining it so that it remains pure and clear. The thirty-two paths wash every subject, contemplating it and examining it in depth. "Like a flock of evenly shorn sheep" - free of any dross or blemish. "And not one among them is bereaved" - bereaved (shekhulah) denotes lack or loss, like a "bereaved bear" deprived of its cubs. There is no lack in them, but rather they reflect wisdom: wisdom that is full, complete, and holy, at the peak of precision and purity, like those emerging from the bath.
"Your Lips Are Like a Crimson Thread" - The Power of Speech
כְּחוּט הַשָּׁנִי שִׂפְתוֹתַיִךְ וּמִדְבָּרֵךְ נָאוֶה כְּפֶלַח הָרִמּוֹן רַקָּתֵךְ מִבַּעַד לְצַמָּתֵךְ׃ (ד, ג) - "Your lips are like a crimson thread, and your speech is pleasant; like a slice of pomegranate is your temple behind your veil." (4:3)
Now the Supernal Beloved praises the soul regarding her speech - the faculty of human speech, which is the spiritual power that distinguishes us from all animals. Animals do not possess speech; at most, they signal to one another with external cues. You will not find two lions sitting and chatting with each other, nor two monkeys. Nor is that a bad thing - better that they do not chat! But the ability to examine a matter, analyze, delve deeply, and speak about it is possessed by no animal. Even a parrot merely mimics what it hears; it does not understand or grasp what it is saying. Among animals, there is only minimalist communication through signals: warning of danger, pointing to food in a certain place, an approaching fire, and the like. It is the most rudimentary communication.
Man possesses the power of speech, and when praising man for his unique stature, Targum Onkelos describes him as a ruach memallela (a speaking spirit), for it is from the spiritual soul that he received the power of speech. And now, the Beloved praises the soul for this: "Your lips are like a crimson thread" - referring to the words and intellectual concepts that emerge from the soul outward, enabling someone who has grasped an idea to transmit it to others through speech. A crimson thread was the string used to string pearls: there were many separate pearls, and the crimson thread came and bound them into a single strand. So it is with man: thousands of concepts may swirl wildly in his mind, and in a few sentences he arranges them clearly. This is the power of the intellect - drawing analogies, creating structures, bringing like ideas together, and distinguishing differences.
Once, an enlightened maskil came to the Vilna Gaon. It is well known that the maskilim were deeply preoccupied with Lashon HaKodesh - thank God today they have abandoned it, today it is just "hi" and "bye" and the like, but in the past they meddled with it extensively, laying their hands upon it and unfortunately defiling it with various coined expressions. We once mentioned several words that truly dirtied the Holy Tongue, among them agvaniyah (tomato), and a hint is enough for the wise. In any event, this man came to the Vilna Gaon with seventeen questions. It is a long story, recounted in the past, and there is no need to detail here how that man ended his day and what he wrote afterward. What is relevant as an example is that the Vilna Gaon glanced at the page and said: "There are really only three questions here." He analyzed all seventeen for him: question seventeen is actually question four, just with a different example; question three is question twelve, and also question fifteen. In short, he demonstrated that all the questions were subsumed within just three questions and no more.
This is "Your lips are like a scarlet thread": just as a scarlet thread strings together many pearls into a single necklace, so a person, through the power of speech, takes many scattered thoughts - a complete jumble - and brings order to them. In just a few sentences, the matter suddenly clicks. Previously, there was total confusion, dozens of concepts with no clear way to organize them, and in a few concise sentences, a person sets everything in order. This is the power of speech: through the power of the soul, it can string together entire discourses and concepts.
Not only this, but also "and your speech is lovely." The Malbim explains that midbarech refers to the speech that the soul utters in Torah and prophecy. Many mistakenly think midbarech means "your desert," but that is an error; according to all the commentators, midbarech signifies speech. "And your speech is lovely" - what you speak in Torah and prophecy is an aspect of a holy dwelling (neveh kodesh). Here we are speaking of holy utterances, and this is true beauty (noy), a true spiritual sanctuary (naveh).
"Your Temple Is like a Slice of Pomegranate" - The Essence of the Soul
After describing what emerges and becomes manifest from the soul - the concepts, sentences, and speech through which its power and greatness can be discerned - the verse comes to say: realize that the essence of the soul is great in and of itself, not only on account of what emerges from it. For speech is the outward expression of the soul, its external manifestation. As someone once said to his fellow: "Before you spoke, I thought you were not wise; now that you have spoken, I know I was right." Sometimes a person speaks when it would have been far better to remain silent. A person babbles on - and "in a multitude of words, transgression does not cease" - especially one eager to showcase all his knowledge in three minutes. When someone displays everything he knows in three minutes, you instantly realize that this truly is all he knows; he has emptied everything out. The wise person also knows how to keep silent, knows when not to speak, and on the contrary feels no need to constantly prove his wisdom or display his intellect.
Therefore Scripture says: the soul in its very essence, even without speech, is "like a slice of pomegranate is your temple" - full as a pomegranate. It is said that a pomegranate contains 613 seeds; this does not necessarily mean literally 613 seeds, but rather that it corresponds to the 613 mitzvot. In this way, the essence of the soul is full of lights, or in the Malbim's phrasing: divine intellectual illuminations. "Your temple" (rakatech) is related to the aspect of emptiness (reikanut): even though the soul occupies no physical space, and you cannot locate it, weigh it, measure it, or quantify it - nevertheless, it is like a slice of pomegranate, like a full pomegranate.
"Behind your veil" - we have already explained that tzamatech denotes a connection or binding. This soul is bound to the body, and we perceive only a fraction of its lights through the physical frame. Yet even from that slight glimpse, we sense the soul's powers, its greatness, and its vigor: that it is full and holy like a pomegranate, even though it is "your temple" (rakatech) - intangible and imperceptible, something you cannot examine, locate, or physically touch, seeming almost empty, yet holy and brimming like a pomegranate.
"Your Neck Is like the Tower of David" - The Soul's Dominion over the Body
כְּמִגְדַּל דָּוִיד צַוָּארֵךְ בָּנוּי לְתַלְפִּיּוֹת אֶלֶף הַמָּגֵן תָּלוּי עָלָיו כֹּל שִׁלְטֵי הַגִּבֹּרִים׃ (ד, ד) - "Your neck is like the tower of David, built as a fortress; a thousand shields hang upon it, all the bucklers of warriors." (4:4)
Until now, Scripture has depicted the soul as it operates within intellectual perceptions and wisdom. From this point onward, it describes how the soul rules over the body, guiding the entire human frame to fulfill its will rather than pursue physical desires.
The Malbim explains: Scripture now descends from the description of the skull, which is the dwelling place of the rational soul, to the torso, where the vital soul resides. The rational soul is concerned with intellectual perceptions; the vital soul is bound to the blood, animating the body physically. The neck serves as a kind of partition: there is the upper chamber - the intellect, the head, the brain, which is the primary part of the body - and there is the neck, acting as a barrier that separates the higher spiritual realm from the lower realm, between the cranium and the torso. It is as if the soul above in the cranium gives voice, radiating influence and asserting its dominion over the entire body through this partition, through the curtain of the neck that divides the upper chamber from the lower chamber.
Therefore, Scripture compares the neck to the Tower of David built as a fortress, upon which the warriors stood: "A thousand shields hang upon it, all the bucklers of warriors" - shelatim are shields. This means that from there, the soul exercises dominion over the entire body against the warfare of the evil inclination, against the "old and foolish king" who built siege works, bulwarks, and snares against it, and whom the soul must battle. From where does it wage this war? From there, from the Tower of David, from the neck. From the upper realm, it shoots its arrows, as it were, exerting its guidance down upon the whole body below. Just as in the Tower of David the warriors stood aloft and controlled what occurred below, so the soul in its upper realm influences and governs the lower part of man, where lusts, bodily drives, and the yetzer hara reside - that old king who laid sieges and traps - and it is the soul that reigns supreme.
This is what is meant by the verse: "Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city." Where is wisdom found? In the intellect. "A poor wise man" - small yet wise, positioned in the head, and through him he delivered the city. And the city, as mentioned several times, represents the body. Anyone who wishes can listen to the series on the Book of Yonah according to the Vilna Gaon's commentary, where this matter is explained at length.
The Malbim enumerates here various faculties within man: the stimulating faculty, the moving faculty, the directing faculty, the commanding moving faculty, and the completing moving faculty. Rather than delving into all these distinct faculties - which the Malbim details at greater length - let us turn to the next verse and understand how mastery is attained through the power of the soul.
Your Two Breasts - The Faculty of Desire and the Faculty of Anger
שְׁנֵי שָׁדַיִךְ כִּשְׁנֵי עֳפָרִים תְּאוֹמֵי צְבִיָּה הָרוֹעִים בַּשּׁוֹשַׁנִּים׃ (ד, ה) - "Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle, grazing among the lilies." (4:5)
Descending from the neck downward, one reaches the two breasts; in the allegory, these represent the faculty of desire and the faculty of anger. The early masters spoke extensively about these two core drives within man, and the Vilna Gaon himself explains them at length. The faculty of desire is the craving drive in man, through which he yearns for everything pleasant, sweet, and delightful; and the faculty of anger is the drive that brings a person to wrath and irritation over everything occurring around him.
The Malbim notes that both of these are "children of one mother" - they stem from a single source. He illustrates this with an analogy: a person covets a piece of food held by his fellow, and this craving stirs him to anger, driving a desire to seize and snatch it from him. Thus, the faculty of desire and the faculty of anger are two inseparable companions. Therefore, they are described as "twins of a gazelle" - like twins born of a single mother.
Through the governance of the divine soul, it exercises complete dominion over these two powers, so that they become "grazing among the lilies": they do not desire and are not aroused except toward spiritual matters, the service of Hashem and His mitzvot. When discussing the faculty of anger, it does not necessarily manifest strictly as rage; it can also be expressed through the assertive actions a person takes. Those two breasts, like two fawns, twins of a gazelle, which originate from an unruly drive - the soul governs them so that they graze among the lilies, preferring a pleasant fragrance. That is, these powers exert positive influences, unlike someone who allows them to run wild at will, whereupon they dominate him. On the contrary, the soul rules over them, and through this they come to prefer the sweet fragrance.
This is also the underlying concept of the altar: a person must ensure that the power of the soul is capable of dominating the flesh, the physical body, so that the body lies subdued beneath the authority of the soul, and the soul, on the contrary, "consumes" the flesh. Through this metaphorical consumption of the flesh, all of physicality and all physical activities are elevated to the service of the Creator. This is precisely the nature of a korban.
"Until the Day Breathes" - Cleaving Through the Beit HaMikdash
עַד שֶׁיָּפוּחַ הַיּוֹם וְנָסוּ הַצְּלָלִים אֵלֵךְ לִי אֶל הַר הַמּוֹר וְאֶל גִּבְעַת הַלְּבוֹנָה׃ (ד, ו) - "Until the day breathes and the shadows flee, I will betake me to the mountain of myrrh and to the hill of frankincense." (4:6)
How long can this close bond between the Beloved and the bride endure? "Until the day breathes." This implies that when the forces of matter and physicality reassert themselves, the soul would seemingly be expected to detach from the divine connection and cease clinging to it. All of this would indeed have been the case before the Beit HaMikdash existed; but once the Beit HaMikdash stands, the resting of the Shechinah is brought down below through the sacrificial service. By virtue of this reality, we saw that "King Solomon made himself a palanquin," where the Holy One, blessed be He, rests upon Solomon's soul even while it remains within the physical body.
The Malbim explains: when a spiritual bond is interrupted by physical matter, it naturally cannot endure, because physicality stands in opposition to it. This is not so with the service of the Beit HaMikdash, which is continuous and conducted through tangible, physical items: sacrifices can continually be offered, libations can continually be poured, and meal-offerings can continually be brought. In contrast, if one had to achieve this connection entirely on one's own, it could only occur through constant intellectual contemplation and uninterrupted spiritual cleaving - and who can sustain that? Who can remain permanently in pure intellect and constant spiritual attachment, attaining perpetual prophecy? It is simply impossible. Moshe Rabbeinu attained forty days and forty nights completely detached from physicality, but naturally, at some point, the physical body must assert its needs. However, when the connection is forged not through pure disembodied spirituality alone but through the physical world - through the Beit HaMikdash, where offerings are continually brought - the attachment can endure. The libations and sacrifices serve, as it were, as sustenance for the spiritual realm, so that the Shechinah, connecting in the Mikdash, connects to Solomon as well.
The Malbim explains: Just as physical food is the cause that keeps the soul within us - for if a person were to decide not to eat for two weeks, the soul would also go on strike and decide this place is no longer suitable for it - so too the choicest parts offered on the altar fires were the cause for the resting of the Shechinah. Just as eating causes the soul to dwell within you, so in the Beis HaMikdash, when offerings are brought, the Shechinah dwells within it. One corresponds to the other, and we have seen that there are many more parallels between man and his soul, and the Shechinah and the Beis HaMikdash.
And this is the meaning of "I will go to the mountain of myrrh." What is myrrh? The Malbim explains: It is the purest and choicest of animal products. Myrrh is musk - a very unique fragrance derived from the blood of an animal in India. And what is the "hill of frankincense"? Frankincense is the purest and choicest part of the plant kingdom, a very special fragrance. Notice: we have spoken here of two types of fragrance, one from animal life and one from plant life. What does this signify? That the Holy One, blessed be He, accepts offerings from both animal and vegetable: from the animal realm come the animal sacrifices, and from the plant realm come the meal offerings and libations. There, in the Beis HaMikdash, offerings are brought from both animal and plant life.
And why is the frankincense called a "hill"? The Malbim explains: Because a hill is smaller than a mountain, just as the stature of plant life is lower than that of animal life. If we consider what is loftier, offering an ox is greater than offering a meal offering; therefore, it is termed a "hill," a lower level compared to a "mountain." "I will go to the mountain of myrrh" corresponds to the animal realm, like myrrh which comes from an animal; "and to the hill of frankincense" corresponds to the plant realm, like frankincense which comes from plants.
Through this - "until the day breathes": even when the day wanes, even when the soul cannot reach lofty intellectual comprehensions on its own and through its own clinging to the Divine realm, "and the shadows flee," a state where the shadow is departing and receding - still, "I will go to the mountain of myrrh." My connection will be through the mountain of myrrh and the hill of frankincense, through the Beis HaMikdash, the place where the Holy One, blessed be He, causes His Shechinah to dwell. Shlomo's soul connects from there, and even if it is not in a state of continuous comprehension, there is nonetheless a Divine connection because the Holy One, blessed be He, descends and causes His Shechinah to rest here in this lower world.
"You Are All Beautiful, My Beloved" - Nullifying the Permanent Blemish
כֻּלָּךְ יָפָה רַעְיָתִי וּמוּם אֵין בָּךְ׃ (ד, ז) - "You are all beautiful, my beloved, and there is no blemish in you." (4:7)
Now that the connection has been described as constant, with both the animal and vegetative soul unifying in the Beis HaMikdash, and the Holy One, blessed be He, taking pleasure in them and receiving the offerings as a pleasing aroma - the Holy One, blessed be He, declares: "You are all beautiful, my beloved, and there is no blemish in you."
Until now, there was a permanent blemish in you. What was this permanent blemish? The animal and vegetative soul of man himself, our attachment to the body. Why is this considered a permanent blemish? Because the soul, as mentioned, cannot remain in continuous spiritual comprehension, and the physical body always pulls downward - which previously caused the connection to be severed. But now, says the Holy One, blessed be He: Now that the Beis HaMikdash exists, and "I will go to the mountain of myrrh and to the hill of frankincense," then "you are all beautiful, my beloved, and there is no blemish in you." We are done with that blemish that repeatedly caused the soul to decline and separate from its heavenly Beloved. You no longer possess this blemish; you can now connect to the Ein Sof, blessed be He, sustainably, and the physical forces no longer dominate you.
"With Me from Lebanon, My Bride" - From Betrothal to Marriage
אִתִּי מִלְּבָנוֹן כַּלָּה אִתִּי מִלְּבָנוֹן תָּבוֹאִי תָּשׁוּרִי מֵרֹאשׁ אֲמָנָה מֵרֹאשׁ שְׂנִיר וְחֶרְמוֹן מִמְּעֹנוֹת אֲרָיוֹת מֵהַרְרֵי נְמֵרִים׃ (ד, ח) - "With me from Lebanon, my bride, with me from Lebanon you shall come; gaze from the peak of Amana, from the peak of Senir and Hermon, from the dens of lions, from the mountains of leopards." (4:8)
The Holy One, blessed be He, says to her: From now on, I will not part from you. And why is she called a "bride" (kallah)? The Malbim explains: Because the Holy One, blessed be He, brought her in, so to speak, like a bride entering the chuppah. A bride who enters the chuppah resides with her husband permanently; previously, she was merely betrothed (arusah), meeting only from time to time - and that was Shlomo's prior state. But now, since the Beis HaMikdash stands, the bond between Shlomo's soul and the Holy One, blessed be He, is permanent.
And what is Lebanon? Lebanon refers to the Beis HaMikdash, which whitened (malbin) the blackness of the soul and cleansed the sins of Israel. The crimson thread in the Beis HaMikdash would turn white on Yom Kippur when the people of Israel were righteous - hence "Levanon." The Holy One, blessed be He, says: "With Me from Lebanon, my bride, with Me from Lebanon you shall come" - come and emerge from the confinement of the physical body, for the body no longer hinders you; come with Me, remain joined with Me in the spiritual abode, to the highest levels and the loftiest perceptions.
"Look from the top of Amana" - there, in the Beit HaMikdash, one acquires emunah; there is the revelation of the Shechinah, and there are perpetual miracles. "From the peak of Senir and Chermon" - just as at Senir and Chermon the Holy One, blessed be He, performed miracles for the people of Israel while they were in the desert, so too did the miracles continue in the Temple: no woman ever miscarried from the smell of the sacrificial meat, no fly was ever seen in the slaughterhouse, and the Lechem HaPanim remained warm for seven days until the day it was removed. All these were perpetual miracles in the Beit HaMikdash, through which one reaches emunah. "Look from the top of Amana" - gaze upon the Holy One, blessed be He, and connect to Him from the place that is the pinnacle of emunah.
"From the lions' dens, from the leopards' mountains" - the Malbim explains: the lion strikes fear into all animals through its might and power. The leopard, by contrast, does not have as much physical strength, but it possesses boldness - "Be bold as a leopard." The leopard makes more noise and bluster than its actual size warrants. When you see a lion, it is massive and imposing, and merely seeing it is enough to fill one with dread. A leopard is much smaller, but it is brazen and capable of attacking with sheer audacity. The verse comes to describe that by awakening the traits of strength and boldness for the service of Hashem, the body itself will not rebel against divine service. This is the meaning of "Be bold as a leopard, light as an eagle, swift as a deer, and strong as a lion to do the will of your Father in Heaven." When a person acts with all his might in the service of Hashem, the bodily forces - which seek to lull him to sleep, lead him into idleness and boredom, and keep him from holy labor - naturally surrender. When one moves and acts with full force, he succeeds in overcoming both the forces of the body and the physical reality that seeks to pull him down.
And this is what He tells her here: through awakening yourself to My service, "look from the top of Amana, from the peak of Senir and Chermon," you will thereby succeed in acting "from the lions' dens, from the leopards' mountains" - you will be able to direct your strength, which is the strength of a lion and a leopard, against the material forces. Furthermore, the holy Zohar teaches that "lions" refers to the Torah scholars who toil in the Torah - and the word Orayta (Torah) is itself related to Aryeh (lion). Through Torah scholars engaging in Torah, and through the power of Torah study itself, a person becomes mighty and gains the strength to triumph over the yetzer hara and the pull of the physical body.
"You Have Captured My Heart with One of Your Eyes" - The Service of the Heart Is Sufficient
לִבַּבְתִּנִי אֲחֹתִי כַלָּה לִבַּבְתִּנִי בְּאַחַת מֵעֵינַיִךְ בְּאַחַד עֲנָק מִצַּוְּרֹנָיִךְ׃ (ד, ט) - You have captured my heart, my sister, my bride; you have captured my heart with one of your eyes, with one strand of your necklace. (4:9)
The Malbim explains: until now, the bond between us was through intellectual comprehension in the mind. Now the Holy One, blessed be He, says that He desires it to be through the awakening of the soul and the service of the heart. "You have captured My heart" (Libavtini) - from the root lev (heart). The heart is the root of vitality in a person, the awakening power, the life force - a cleaving of heart to heart.
Until now, before the building of the Beit HaMikdash, we saw that it was necessary to perceive with two eyes: the eye of vision and contemplation of the Divine, and the eye of contemplating the Divine within the soul. As we explained: one eye to gaze upon the higher spiritual realms, the supernal chambers, and the holy Sefirot; and the second eye to contemplate the Divine presence within the soul. But now, the Holy One, blessed be He, says: you have captured My heart "with one of your eyes." There is no longer a need for speculative, theoretical grasp of the Creator's existence, the governance of the worlds, and the Sefirot. It is enough to look inward into the soul - that is, to master the microcosm, to master the body, its desires, appetites, and physicality. It is sufficient to exert mastery over the heart and mastery over the body by virtue of that single eye that gazes at the divine power dwelling within the physical form, without needing to contemplate His governance over the transcendent spiritual reality. There is no need for supernal spiritual contemplation, entering Pardes, and probing higher Sefirot - "with one of your eyes."
So too, "with one strand of your necklace." We have already seen that the neck symbolizes the control center from which the intellect directs conduct: the intellect sits above and transmits its directives to the body. The Holy One, blessed be He, says: it is enough to have one link of your neck ornaments, in the realm of practical intellect - where the intellect directs and demands of the body to fulfill the will of Hashem. There is no need for the theoretical intellect to attain lofty spiritual perceptions of Divinity to merit closeness to Hashem and to attain that sublime union of the bride with her Beloved.
In Summary:
In these verses, the Supernal Beloved praises the soul across all its powers: the teeth correspond to the thirty-two paths of wisdom, which examine and clarify every concept until no flaw remains; the lips represent the faculty of speech that strings together numerous concepts into a single chain, and "your speech is comely" in Torah and prophecy; the temple like a slice of pomegranate - the essence of the soul itself is filled with divine lights even though it cannot be grasped or physically sensed; the neck like the Tower of David - the control center of the soul's mastery over the body in the battle against the yetzer hara; and the two breasts - the faculties of desire and anger, twins of one mother, which the soul rules until they are "grazing among the lilies." From here on, once the Beit HaMikdash is built, the connection becomes permanent: "I will take Myself to the mountain of myrrh and to the hill of frankincense," a bond forged through animal and grain offerings, through which the chronic defect is abolished - "You are entirely beautiful, my beloved, and there is no blemish in you." And from now on, "Come with Me from Lebanon, bride," moving from betrothal to full marriage, where service of the heart and the practical intellect governing the body are sufficient - "You have captured My heart with one of your eyes, with one strand of your necklace."