And now her shepherd lover responds back:
11 Solomon had a vineyard at Baal-hamon;
he entrusted the vineyard to keepers;
each one was to bring for its fruit a thousand pieces of silver.
12 My vineyard, my very own, is for myself;
you, O Solomon, may have the thousand,
and the keepers of the fruit two hundred!
As I have said before, I think there are three characters: the woman, her shepherd lover, and Solomon, who is trying to woo the woman to his harem. She resists, and now he does too.
Solomon had all those women in his vineyard. Those women represented money to him.
“My vineyard,” an erotic allusion to the woman, the shepherd’s wife/lover, is “my very own” (he is devoted).
Now notice as he spurns Solomon’s lifestyle: “you, O Solomon, may have the thousand, and the keepers of the fruit two hundred!”
I’ll remain with my loving wife, the Shulamite woman.
He speaks again, summoning her:
O you who dwell in the gardens,
my companions are listening for your voice;
let me hear it.