In the high valleys of Shunem, overlooking the broad plain of Jezreel where armies once clashed and prophets once walked, the vineyards clung to terraced hillsides like the faithful to an ancient promise. The soil was red and stubborn, yielding its fruit only to patient hands. Here lived the maiden whom the world would know as the Shulammite—dark of eye and hair, swift of foot, her spirit restless as the wind that swept down from Mount Gilboa.
Her brothers, hardened by loss and labor, had set her as keeper of the vines. "The sun has scorched you," they chided when she returned at dusk, her arms laden with clusters heavy as hearts. "Look not upon me," she would reply in silence, veiling her face, for she carried a secret shame: the daughters of the city were ivory-pale, sheltered in courts, while she bore the mark of the fields upon her skin.
Yet beneath that shame burned something deeper, a longing that no toil could quench. It rose in her like sap in spring, unbidden and fierce. In the heat of midday she would sling stones at the thieving birds, her arm strong from years of drawing water from the deep cisterns. The air hummed with cicadas; the scent of fermenting grapes clung to her coarse woolen garments. But when the sun reached its zenith, she sought the great fig tree at the vineyard's edge—its broad leaves a canopy of mercy, its roots drinking from hidden springs
There, in the cool shadow that recalled the Garden long lost, she would loosen her veil and speak the hidden words of her soul. Not to any man she knew—for the youths of the village were rough and predictable—but to One whose face she had never seen yet felt nearer than breath.
"Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth," she whispered, the words trembling like leaves in breeze, "for thy love is better than wine."
The confession startled even her. It was bold, almost profane, yet it carried the innocence of first creation. She tasted the phrase again, slowly: better than the new wine pressed in her brothers' vats, better than the spiced draughts of kings. A flush rose beneath her darkened skin—not from sun now, but from the fire within. For this love she craved was not mere desire of flesh; it was a homesickness for something eternal, a soul's cry for the Bridegroom who would one day seek His own in the vineyards of the world.
One evening the sky turned the color of crushed pomegranates, heavy with unseasonal rain. She lingered longer beneath the fig, unwilling to return to the dim house where her brothers grumbled over ledgers of debt. The first drops fell—cool, merciful—washing the dust from leaves and the ache from her heart. She lifted her face to them, laughing softly, tears mingling with heaven's grace.
"Draw me after thee," she prayed now, bolder still. "We will run."
In that moment, beneath the ancient tree where Eden's memory lingered, she felt herself already running—toward a love that would ravish the heart yet heal every wound, a love strong as death, jealous as the grave.
As the rain quickened and thunder rolled distant over Jezreel, she gathered her basket and walked homeward. But the words remained, echoing like a canticle yet to be fully sung:
"Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine."
Shall we proceed now to Chapter 2, enriched in the same spirit?