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Israel Museum, Jerusalem/Photo by Robin Terry/Courtesy of Mali Doron

“Run away, my gazelle, my wild stag, on the hills of cinnamon,” the woman bids her lover in the last lines of the Song (8:14), inscribed in Hebrew in Israeli artist Zeev Raban’s 1930 edition of the poem. In the drawing, the fleeing man takes one last look at his love.

Throughout the poem, the poet records the back-and-forth movement of the couple, as they approach each other and then part. This last line does both—the woman sends the man away, but to the “hills of cinnamon,” a phrase that might refer to her own body.