The metaphors of admiration need deciphered and decoded for us 3,000 years later.
Here is one way of understanding his descriptive comments of praise of his woman’s physical beauty.

• Eyes behind veil are doves = Even though her eyes are behind a veil they are communicating love or sexual arousal.
• Hair is like a flock of goats descending = A flock of goats jostling down a hill together look like moving, waving hair.
• Teeth are like a flock of sheep just shorn = the sheep are not shaggy and uneven, but white and tight like shorn sheep. And, clean.
• Each has its twin = no teeth are missing, a difficult thing to maintain without modern dentistry.
• Lips like scarlet ribbon = close enough to our use of lipstick to be understood
• Temples like halves of a pomegranate = pomegranates were a desirable, delicious fruit.
• Neck like the tower of David with a thousand shields = though she is beautiful and desirable, she will not be easy to conquer. She has self-respect. His reference to the shields of David’s might men tell her that he understands that she has been victorious in many previous battles against other “warriors” like himself, but she was able to hold her line of defense to protect her dignity and purity
• Breasts like two fawns browsing among lilies = reference to the fawns must speak of gentleness, youthfulness and innocence.

The young man now begins to speak of his intentions and offers her an invitation. The following all are an appeal for her to descend her lofty abode with its pleasant fragrances and beautiful view and join him. The reference to lions and leopards again speaks, in a good way, of the guarded protection she has built around herself.

• Mountain of myrrh
• Hill of incense  
• Come with me from Lebanon  
• Descend the crest of Amana (and Senir, Hermon, lions’ dens, etc.)

"Our compassion spends more in the streets than yours does in the temples!”
– Tertullian to the pagan critics in 197 AD

Cerastes is a serpent from Greek legend that is flexible because it has no spine and small horns above its eyes (Leonardo da Vinci says it had four horns that could move). Cerastes hides in the sand with only the small horns protruding out of the surface in order to deceive animals and birds to think it is much smaller and to approach the small horns that look like bugs or worms in the sand for food. When the animal approaches Cerastes.

Jacob’s prophecy about his son Dan and the tribe of Dan may allude to the practice of Cerastes when Jacob says:

“Dan will be a snake by the roadside, a viper along the path, that bites the horse’s heels so that its rider
tumbles backward.”
(Genesis 49:17)