The Song of Songs was composed in a patricentric context, yet most scholars argue that it presents egalitarian love. Phyllis Trible argued that the Song of Songs represented a return to the Garden of Eden, where the man and woman lived in peace, harmony, and equality (Depatriarchalizing, 44–45). Trible’s interpretation has been adopted en masse. Richard Davidson considers egalitarianism a “fourth major facet in the Song’s theology of sexuality” (Flame, 569), wherein he quotes numerous adherents without a single dissenting voice. This position, however, reads the Song anachronistically by misinterpreting Old Testament patriarchy, the absence of the father in the Song, the sexual assertiveness of the woman, and the threefold refrain, “My beloved is mine, and I am his.” The properly ordered patricentric world of the Old Testament empowered the governed to flourish under a servant leader and encouraged the governed to live contentedly under their divinely ordained authority. Evidence presumably in favor of an egalitarian interpretation of the Song represents life in a properly ordered patricentric world. In the Song, the mother (7x) teaches the daughters of Jerusalem (7x) a theology of sexuality, which includes how to use their sexuality to live with wisdom in their patricentric culture. The egalitarian position fails to take seriously the reproof of the woman in Song 5, the military metaphors in the Song, and the apple tree metaphor. While the Song does promote a message of mutuality and reciprocity, this Edenic ideal is recreated, not through a presupposed equality, but through contented living in her husband’s provision and protection (under the apple tree, Song 2:3; 8:5).