HEBREW WORD STUDY – MY UNCLE – DODI – דודי Daleth Vav Daleth Yod

Song of Solomon 1:15-16 “Behold, thou [art] fair, my love; behold, thou [art] fair; thou [hast] doves’eyes. (16) Behold, thou [art] fair, my beloved, yea, pleasant: also our bed [is] green.”

In our study verse, King Solomon is speaking to his beloved in verse 15 and in verse 16 she is responding to him. He says she is fair and repeats it. In Semitic languages when a word is repeated it is to show an emphasis so she is really really fair. But when she responds she says He is also fair but pleasant. King Solomon calls her his love which is ra’ah in Hebrew. Some render this as a friend or shepherdess. But in its Semitic root ra’ah has the idea of a consuming passion. So he calls her doubly fair and his consuming passion. She responds by simply saying he is  dodi. Dodi in Hebrew literally means uncle. Solomon says she is his consuming passion and she responds by calling him her uncle? Not very romantic and sounds like Solomon is on the losing end of the deal.

Why does she not respond by saying King Solomon is her ra’ah consuming passion? She repeats that fair business why not the consuming passion part? The word fair in Hebrew is yapah which means beautiful and/or handsome. It also means appropriate or fitting. Now keep in mind the context here. We have a king who is in love with a peasant woman who is not even a distant cousin three times removed. Kings often married members of their family. It was not unusual for a king to marry his sister to keep the bloodline or royalty pure. More often they would marry a distant cousin or relative. However, there is much debate over just who this Shulamite woman is and if she is really a Hebrew. One school of thought teaches that her name is linguistically related to Heshban which was an ancient Moabite city with such a surplus of freshwater that its pools were renowned. One of Heshbon’s gates was called Bath-rabbim; which is referenced in the Song of Solomon 7:4 as the Daughter Of Multitudes. I think this fits for the following reasons.

In our Hebrew Workshop class, we discussed this issue as to why the Shulamite woman would call her beloved her uncle. Now to be sure the word dodi means my beloved as well as uncle. However, the word originally was originally that of a word for an uncle and because an uncle is the closest relative to the immediate family he is usually beloved by the nephew and nieces since he is not responsible like his brother or sister for discipline so he is free to be that fun relative. He is also the most likely member of the family to take the children should something happen to his brother or sister. So, traditionally an uncle is usually beloved.

Well, that explains why the word for uncle picked up the idea of beloved. We also should note that the name David comes from the same root as dod which means one who is beloved and in this context beloved of God. That is all cool but why is the word used by the Shulamite woman when her beloved just finished calling her his ra’ah, his consuming passion?

One of the members of my workshop came up with, what for me, is the most plausible answer. She noted that we had just finished a study of the Book of Ruth where we learned that Boaz was really Ruth’s uncle (in-law). He was the younger brother of Elimelech Ruth’s father in-law. Ruth actually married her uncle and no one seems to have a problem with that, not even God. It was not a problem because of the picture that was being presented that Boaz was the kinsman-redeemer for Ruth. The picture we have in the Book of Ruth is a picture of Jesus represented as Boaz and Ruth represented as us and the picture of the redemptive work of Jesus.

Now here we have just a couple of generations later when the great-grandson of Ruth and her husband/uncle King Solomon in a sense repeats the love affair of his great grandparents. Where his great grandfather married a Moabite woman, King Solomon is in love and ready to marry a Shulamite woman who is most likely a Moabite. Not only that we learn she is forced to tend vineyards, so she is likely also a slave. King Solomon too will be a redeemer for he will purchase her from the Shepherd who either owns her or is betrothed to her. They did that in those days. Unfortunately, pagan influence was strong in Israel at this time and women did become a sort of property like the pagan cultures and a man could purchase his wife if she were betrothed to another if the future husband agrees to the price. Since Solomon was the richest man in the world, money was no object and the Shulamite was obviously not in love with this Shepherd.

So, we see a little wordplay here in the use of the word Dodi. King Solomon declares that the Shulamite woman is his ra’ah, his consuming passion and that their marriage will be appropriate because he will redeem her from her betrothal and she responds that the marriage is appropriate because he is her dodi, her beloved as well as her redeemer.

What we have is a beautiful picture of our relationship as the bride of Christ. We are the consuming passion of Jesus and he has declared we are yapah, that is not only beautiful, but our relationship is appropriate because He has purchased us away from that loveless relationship or slavery with the enemy whose price was very high, it was the blood of Jesus. In return, we declare that our relationship is appropriate because we love Him and He is our kinsman redeemer, out Dodi.

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