The Hebrew words for “navel” ( shorer ) and round ( sahar ) are each used only in Song of Songs 7:2a. That is no doubt partly for poetic reasons, since the word faintly alliterate, and both alliterate with the verb “lack” ( chasar ) in 7:2b.
Possibly there is another dimension to this. The closest equivalent to sahar (round) is sohar (a prison, a roundhouse, used only in Genesis 39-40). The round “navel” of the beloved imprisons the lover, but it is a delightful imprisonment in which he lacks nothing.
Letters
Joshua T. Katz’s (“Pure Episcopalianism,” May 2025) reason for a theologically conservative person joining a theologically liberal…
The Revival of Patristics
On May 25, 1990, the renowned patristics scholar Charles Kannengiesser, S.J., delivered a lecture at the annual…
The Enduring Legacy of the Spanish Mystics
Last autumn, I spent a few days at my family’s coastal country house in northwestern Spain. The…