The Nut Garden and the Shulamite

The speaker descends to a nut garden to inspect vines and pomegranates, then the text becomes difficult: an abrupt chariot line leads into repeated calls, “Return, return, O Shulamite.” The final phrase, rendered in the KJV as “the company of two armies,” is also commonly associated with Mahanaim.

This is one of the Song’s most textually and interpretively difficult transitions. The identity of the Shulamite is not explained anywhere else. Her title could relate to a place, a name, or a literary play on Solomon/peace, and the options should be graded rather than collapsed into certainty.