7:16

Notice the parallel parts that have similar meaning:

16a I have decked my bed with coverings,

16b
with colored linen from Egypt.

Notice that the first line is more general. The second line adds specific details.

7:16a–b

I have decked my bed with coverings, with colored linen from Egypt: In this verse and in 7:17, the woman goes on to tell him that she has prepared everything necessary for making love in luxurious surroundings.

bed: The word translated as bed refers to a bed frame on which rich people spread their bed coverings. (Poor people slept on mats on the floor.) It was not a “couch” (New Revised Standard Version) or sofa in the modern sense of a piece of furniture where people sit. In languages that do not have a word for bed, a more general expression like “sleeping place” may be used.

colored linen: The coverings that the woman had arranged on the bed were expensive woven material imported from Egypt. The cloth was probably multicolored, but scholars are not sure that it was linen. The New Living Translation (1996) clearly expresses the idea of luxury:

My bed is spread with colored sheets of finest linen imported from Egypt. (New Living Translation (1996))

The Contemporary English Version is an example of a translation that does not specify linen :

The sheets on my bed are bright-colored cloth from Egypt. (Contemporary English Version)

For languages that use parallelism, the NET Bible provides a good model. It also makes explicit the idea of luxury:

16a I have spread my bed with elegant coverings,

16b with richly colored fabric from Egypt. (NET Bible)

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