“Your belly is a heap of wheat surrounded by lotuses,” says the lover in Song of Songs 7:3.  Shortly (7:7), he will change the image to say that the beloved is a palm tree that he wishes to climb to gather the clusters that are his beloved’s breasts.

Much of this imagery is tied to the temple, and particularly to the pillars Jachin and Boaz at the temple entrance.  The pillars’ capitals are “lily deign” (or “lotus,” shushan , root of “Susan”; 1 Kings 7:19), they have clusters of pomegranates (1 Kings 7:18, 20), and the pillars have “bellies” ( beten , 1 Kings 7:20; the same word used in Song of Songs 7:3).  ”Belly” often means womb, so the NASB’s “rounded projection” may be a decent translation of beten. It may imply that these pillars are not only bride, but mothers.

Hence:

Climbing the woman is climbing a tree is climbing a pillar; and, since the pillars are vertical representations of the temple itself, climbing the pillar is ascent into the inner chamber of the temple.  Solomon admires his beloved from head to toe, and, in a different key, admires the pillars and the house of Yahweh.  And behind all these is the ascent of the tree of life and/or the tree of knowledge to gather its fruit.

The bridal dimension of the pillar symbolism is important at the end of 2 Kings, where the writer describes the destruction and removal of the temple furnishings in some detail.  Israel is bride, and Israel’s adornments are being stripped away by Babylonian invaders; the bride is being reduced to a slave.  The temple is bride, and the violation of the temple is a kind of rape.  The pillars are actually cut into pieces (25:13, 17) before being shipped to Babylon.  The bridal pillars are dismembered, like sacrificial victims, like the Levite’s concubine at the end of judges.