The THIRD section (ch. iii. 6, v. i.) relates the second unsuccessful effort of Solomon to gain the Shulamite’s affections. The King, determined to gain his purpose, takes the damsel, with great pomp, into the capital (ch. iii. 6–11), in the hope of dazzling her with his great splendour; but he is again disappointed. In the midst of the imposing magnificence, the damsel tells her beloved shepherd, who has followed her thither, and obtained an interview with her, and expressed his delight at seeing her again (ch. iv. 1–5), that she is anxious to quit the palace for her rural home (6). Her beloved, on hearing this, offers his assistance to effect an escape (7, 8), and praises her constancy and charms (9–16); whereupon they both manifest their mutual attachment in so affecting a manner that even some of the court-ladies are moved (ch. iv. 16, v. 1), with whose expression of sympathy the section concludes. The bearing which this section has upon the whole plan is, in the first place, to develop the progress of the history itself, inasmuch as it records the conveyance of the Shulamite from her rural home into the royal capital; and, in the second place, to relate her faithfulness in resisting another temptation, in which the grandeur of the procession which elicited so much admiration from the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the splendour of the court, which dazzled the eyes and fed the vanity of so many of its inmates, had far less charms for her than the presence of her shepherd in a humble home.