Note again how closely this verse is tied to the previous verse. Them refers back to the night watchmen, of course, but even more striking is the immediate repetition of the verb “find” and the phrase “the one whom my soul loves.”

In Hebrew this verse is poetic and rhythmic; the sounds i, t, and sh are prominent throughout. We also find parallel structures, based on similar adverbial prepositions.

Note how the adverbial clauses surround two independent clauses that present the most important part of the message, “I held him and I would not let him go.”

The introductory adverb Scarcely describes the passing of a very short distance and time. We can say “just after,” “as soon as” (as in Good News Translation), as well as “hardly,” “scarcely.”

Had I passed them indicates that she walked on beyond them. Good News Translation reads “as soon as I left them,” and New American Bible is similar. New English Bible suggests “left them behind.”

When I found him whom my soul loves: on found see comments on verse 3. Here, however, the verb is not used figuratively. Comments on verse 1 above refer to the phrase him whom my soul loves.

I held him uses the verb found before in 2.15. A good phrase in English that conveys the force of the action here is “I threw my arms around him.”

And would not let him go: the Hebrew verb form suddenly changes from a perfect to an imperfect. This change suggests that she held on to him and refused to let him go. Note that these are parallel lines; both mean the same, though one expresses the idea positively and the other negatively. The repetition conveys the young woman’s intense emotion. Most languages will appreciate this literary feature, which can be easily rendered in the translation.

Revised Standard Version follows the Hebrew form rather closely. The translator must find the most natural way to relate these events. This may be by using two independent clauses: “I passed them. Right after that, I found….” But in many languages the first clause will be better expressed as a subordinate one, with the second clause remaining independent: “Having just passed them, I found…,” or “Just after I left them, I found my lover.”

Until I had brought him tells the reader why she refused to let go. Her plan was to take him home with her; another reason is no doubt her longing to be close to him. Rendering the verb here as a past perfect (“had brought”) may indicate that she succeeded in taking him home. However, at this point she seems still to be out in the town, so we can indicate her situation more accurately as “Until I could bring him….”

Into my mother’s house: commentators have a variety of suggestions as to the meaning of this phrase. Fox notes, however, that my mother’s house seems to be a typical expression for an unmarried woman’s home. He cites examples in Gen 24.28 and Ruth 1.8, and shows Egyptian parallels. Its meaning is well indicated by “my home.”

Into the chamber of her that conceived me is grammatically parallel to the previous clause:
to [the] house [of] my mother
to [the] room [of] my conceiving

At first glance it seems that these are equivalent expressions (“house” equals “room”; “mother” equals “the one conceiving me”). This is the meaning adopted by Revised Standard Version and many others (Jerusalem Bible, New International Version, New Jerusalem Bible). If we accept this approach, then we can if necessary condense the lines into one, merely saying “until I could take him home” or “until I could take him home to my mother.” However, there is another element here. The second parallel line builds on the first line. “House” in line 1 becomes “room” in line 2. The sense is then “… bring him home, in fact to the room….”

A major problem for interpreters is to explain why the young woman is taking her young man home, and especially (if this is the meaning) into her mother’s bedroom. If they are young lovers, as we suppose, and given the secret nature of their relationship, this seems an odd thing to do. Some translations go even further in the interpretation. Bible en français courant claims that it is not just the mother’s room but the room where the daughter was actually conceived. Good News Translation states that this is “the room where I was born.”

There are further complications. It is important to note that the Hebrew form “my conceiving” is ambiguous: it can mean the mother conceives the daughter (as Revised Standard Version has rendered), but it can also mean the daughter herself is conceiving. Since there is no time marker on this verb form to tell whether it is past, present, or future, the text can mean then “until I conceive” or “until I get pregnant.” The young woman would hold on to her lover until she could take him home and actually conceive a child. With this interpretation we can translate as “[I vowed] I would never let him go until I could take him home, to the room where I could conceive.”

There is still another possibility. “The room of my conceiving” can be a euphemism referring to the young woman’s womb. She can be saying that she won’t let her lover go until he makes love to her. This interpretation makes sense in the context, especially since nowhere else in the Song do fertility or children seem to be a concern. If the expression is a euphemism, it can be rendered by a euphemism in the translation. In English we may say “until I could take him home, where we could really become one.”

These last solutions do raise one problem, however. It is that most scholars see this last line as merely completing a parallel line in the poem. The grammatical parallelism perhaps suggests that they should be parallel in meaning as well. It is possible that the poet meant this line to be ambiguous, with one meaning having a hidden sexual sense.

These suggestions leave us with several possibilities for translation. We can follow the more traditional rendering, retaining the parallelism (“the one conceiving me”), in which case we can reduce the two parallel lines:

• … I held him. I would not let him go!
Until I could take him home with me!

If we do decide to incorporate some of the nontraditional possibilities for interpretation, the traditional interpretation can be put in a footnote:

• Having just passed them,
I found the one I adore.
I held him! I wouldn’t let him go,
Until I could take him home with me,
Until he would be completely mine.*
Footnote: * Literally “until I could take him to my mother’s house, to the room of my conceiving.” “My conceiving” can mean “where my mother conceived me” or “where I will [or, can] conceive.”

Quoted with permission from Ogden, Graham S. and Zogbo, Lynell. A Handbook on the Book of Song of Songs. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1998. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .