Bible Strands
Song of Solomon 2:5
Sustain me with raisins; refresh me with apples, for I am faint with love.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The speaker addresses her beloved, requesting physical sustenance during a moment of romantic exhaustion. The request occurs immediately after a description of being brought to a banquet hall under his banner of love and before an embrace.
The words — The imperative סַמְּכ֙וּ/נִי (sa.me.Khu./ni) commands "sustain me," while חוֹלַ֥ת (cho.Lat) describes the speaker as faint or weak. These terms frame the lover’s physical depletion as a direct result of אַהֲבָ֖ה ('a.ha.Vah), love.
The thread — The motif of love causing physical weakness appears in Song of Solomon 5:8, where the speaker declares herself sick with love. The specific offering of raisin cakes recurs in 2 Samuel 6:19 as part of communal provisions.
Why it lands — The text demands acknowledgment of love’s tangible, draining effect rather than treating it as purely abstract. It requires the reader to accept physical vulnerability as a legitimate response to romantic devotion.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.
Cross-references
- Song of Solomon 5:8 O daughters of Jerusalem, I adjure you, if you find my beloved, tell him I am sick with love.
- 2 Samuel 6:19 Then he distributed to every man and woman among the multitude of Israel a loaf of bread, a date cake, and a raisin cake. And all the people departed, each to his own home.
- Hosea 3:1 Then the LORD said to me, “Go show love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress. Love her as the LORD loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love to offer raisin cakes to idols.”
- 2 Samuel 13:1 After some time, David’s son Amnon fell in love with Tamar, the beautiful sister of David’s son Absalom.
- Psalms 4:6 Many ask, “Who can show us the good?” Shine the light of Your face upon us, O LORD.
- Psalms 42:1 For the choirmaster. A Maskil of the sons of Korah. As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul longs after You, O God.
- Psalms 63:1 A Psalm of David, when he was in the Wilderness of Judah. O God, You are my God. Earnestly I seek You; my soul thirsts for You. My body yearns for You in a dry and weary land without water.
- Psalms 63:8 My soul clings to You; Your right hand upholds me.
- Psalms 119:130 The unfolding of Your words gives light; it informs the simple.
- Song of Solomon 7:8 I said, “I will climb the palm tree; I will take hold of its fruit.” May your breasts be like clusters of the vine, the fragrance of your breath like apples,