---
title: "Song of Songs 8 – Catholic Bible (CPDV) & Latin Vulgate"
url: https://blessbible.app/bible/song-of-songs/8/
description: "The love of the church to Christ: his love to her. Song of Songs 8 in the Catholic Public Domain Version, with the Latin Vulgate."
---

# Song of Songs 8

Song of Songs 8 is chapter 8 of 8 in the Song of Songs. Here are all 14 verses in the Catholic Public Domain Version, with the Latin of the Clementine Vulgate beside them.

> The love of the church to Christ: his love to her.
>
> — Bp. Richard Challoner, chapter summary

## Song of Songs 8 (Catholic Public Domain Version)

1. Bride to Groom: Who will give you to me as my brother, feeding from the breasts of my mother, so that I may discover you outside, and may kiss you, and so that now no one may despise me?
2. I will take hold of you and lead you into my mother’s house. There you will teach me, and I will give you a cup of spiced wine, and of new wine from my pomegranates.
3. His left hand is under my head, and his right hand shall embrace me.
4. Groom to Chorus: I bind you by oath, O daughters of Jerusalem, not to disturb or awaken the beloved, until she wills.
5. Chorus to Groom: Who is she, who ascends from the desert, flowing with delights, leaning upon her beloved?
6. Groom to Bride: Under the apple tree, I awakened you. There your mother was corrupted. There she who bore you was violated.
7. Set me like a seal upon your heart, like a seal upon your arm. For love is strong, like death, and envy is enduring, like hell: their lamps are made of fire and flames.
8. A multitude of waters cannot extinguish love, nor can a river overwhelm it. If a man were to give all the substance of his house in exchange for love, he would despise it as nothing.
9. Chorus: Our sister is little and has no breasts. What shall we do for our sister on the day when she is called upon?
10. If she is a wall, let us build a rampart of silver upon it. If she is a door, let us join it together with boards of cedar.
11. Bride to Chorus: I am a wall, and my breasts are like towers, since, in his presence, I have become like one who has discovered peace.
12. The peaceful one had a vineyard, in that which held the peoples. He handed it on to the caretakers; a man brought, in exchange for its fruit, a thousand pieces of silver.
13. Groom: My vineyard is before me. The thousand is for your peacefulness, and two hundred is for those who care for its fruit.
14. Bride to Groom: Your friends are attentive to those who have been dwelling in the gardens. Cause me to heed your voice. Flee away, my beloved, and become like the doe and the young stag upon the mountains of aromatic plants.

## Song of Songs 8 in Latin (Clementine Vulgate, 1592)

1. Quis mihi det te fratrem meum, sugentem ubera matris meæ, ut inveniam te foris, et deosculer te, et jam me nemo despiciat?
2. Apprehendam te, et ducam in domum matris meæ: ibi me docebis, et dabo tibi poculum ex vino condito, et mustum malorum granatorum meorum.
3. Læva ejus sub capite meo, et dextera illius amplexabitur me.
4. Adjuro vos, filiæ Jerusalem, ne suscitetis, neque evigilare faciatis dilectam, donec ipsa velit.
5. Quæ est ista quæ ascendit de deserto, deliciis affluens, innixa super dilectum suum? Sub arbore malo suscitavi te; ibi corrupta est mater tua, ibi violata est genitrix tua.
6. Pone me ut signaculum super cor tuum, ut signaculum super brachium tuum, quia fortis est ut mors dilectio, dura sicut infernus æmulatio: lampades ejus lampades ignis atque flammarum.
7. Aquæ multæ non potuerunt extinguere caritatem, nec flumina obruent illam. Si dederit homo omnem substantiam domus suæ pro dilectione, quasi nihil despiciet eam.
8. Soror nostra parva, et ubera non habet; quid faciemus sorori nostræ in die quando alloquenda est?
9. Si murus est, ædificemus super eum propugnacula argentea; si ostium est, compingamus illud tabulis cedrinis.
10. Ego murus, et ubera mea sicut turris, ex quo facta sum coram eo, quasi pacem reperiens.
11. Vinea fuit pacifico in ea quæ habet populos: tradidit eam custodibus; vir affert pro fructu ejus mille argenteos.
12. Vinea mea coram me est. Mille tui pacifici, et ducenti his qui custodiunt fructus ejus.
13. Quæ habitas in hortis, amici auscultant; fac me audire vocem tuam.
14. Fuge, dilecte mi, et assimilare capreæ, hinnuloque cervorum super montes aromatum.

## Catechism of the Catholic Church

Paragraph numbers and the Catechism's own section headings (never quoted); text at vatican.va.
- CCC ¶ 1611: Marriage in God's Plan ([vatican.va index](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM))
- cf. CCC ¶ 1040: The Last Judgment ([vatican.va index](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM))

## The saints

- “Love seeks no cause beyond itself and no fruit; it is its own fruit, its own enjoyment. I love because I love; I love in order that I may love.” — St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Song of Songs, 83, c. 1150 (On this verse: verse 7)

## Bishop Challoner's notes

Bp. Richard Challoner, notes on the Douay-Rheims (1750); they comment on its older wording.
- Verse 3: “His left hand” … Words of the church to Christ. His left hand, signifying the Old Testament, and his right hand, the New.
- Verse 5: The angels with admiration behold the Gentiles converted to the faith: coming up from the desert, that is, coming from heathenism and false worship: flowing with delights, that is, abounding with good works which are pleasing to God: leaning on her beloved, on the promise of Christ to his Church, that the gates of hell should not prevail against it; and supported by his grace conferred by the sacraments. Under the apple tree I raised thee up; that is, that Christ redeemed the Gentiles at the foot of the cross, where the synagogue of the Jews (the mother church) was corrupted by their denying him, and crucifying him.
- Verse 8: Mystically signifies the Jews, who are to be spoken to: that is, converted towards the end of the world: and then shall become a wall, that is, a part of the building, the church of Christ.

Source: Catholic Public Domain Version (Ronald L. Conte Jr., 2009), public domain; Latin: Clementine Vulgate (1592).