The claim is that the Hebrew word commonly transliterated maḥămaddîm in Song of Songs 5:16 is Muhammad's name and therefore a prediction of his coming. The resemblance can sound impressive when a listener is unfamiliar with Hebrew. A serious argument, however, must establish how the word functions within its sentence and within the poem.

The Christian response is straightforward: the passage praises the beloved's desirability. It does not introduce a new speaker, announce a future prophet, or identify a messenger by a proper name. That conclusion should be demonstrated from the poem rather than asserted on the authority of an English translation alone.

The woman has described longing for her beloved. Other women ask what makes him different from another beloved, and she answers with a sequence of poetic descriptions. His head, hair, eyes, cheeks, lips, hands, body, and legs are compared with beautiful or precious things. Verse 16 brings that sequence to its conclusion.

Reading a prophetic proper name into the final description changes the type of answer being given. The question concerns the beloved's attractiveness, and the response accumulates imagery explaining that attraction. The surrounding statements about her beloved and friend continue the same subject. The chapter gives no signal that it has suddenly shifted from praise of this figure to a prediction about an Arabian prophet.

The Hebrew form מַחֲמַדִּים is a masculine plural noun in the consulted parsing. Its ordinary semantic force concerns desirable things or delights. Here it functions within a description of the beloved as wholly desirable. The neighboring expression about sweetness reinforces that poetic reading.

A grammatical plural can express abundance or intensity in a description. That does not make its ending a personal honorific identifying a particular later individual. To reach a proper-name reading, one would need evidence beyond the observation that some consonants sound familiar. The proposed reading must explain the syntax, the semantic role, and the chapter's subject.

Personal names often have meanings. A name can resemble an ordinary word without every use of the word naming that person. An English sentence about grace does not necessarily predict a woman named Grace. The same principle applies more strongly when the proposed identification crosses languages and centuries.

This illustration does not by itself decide the Hebrew interpretation. It exposes the missing step in the argument: resemblance must be connected to reference. The poem's immediate subject and grammar provide positive evidence for an ordinary descriptive use. A listener should therefore ask for contextual evidence that the author intended a name, rather than treating similarity as self-authenticating prophecy.

A Muslim reader might answer that Christians also read the Song symbolically, relating its love imagery to Christ and the church. There is a difference between proposing a theological application of an entire poem and claiming that a particular Hebrew noun literally spells a historical person's name. The second is a linguistic assertion and must meet linguistic tests.

A Christian symbolic reading also requires explanation and should not be used to evade the poem's literary meaning. If someone wants to propose an Islamic allegory, that proposal can be evaluated as an allegory. It still does not establish that the original sentence names Muhammad or that an ordinary translation has concealed a proper name. Changing the kind of claim changes the evidence required.

Song of Songs 5:16 gives no convincing textual basis for identifying Muhammad by name. The chapter's dialogue, its sustained poetic description, and the Hebrew word's function point toward praise of the beloved. This is a limited conclusion about one proposed proof text. It does not depend on ridiculing Arabic names or dismissing every question about biblical prophecy.

The wider lesson is methodological: a claim about an ancient language must be tested by usage and context. Sound resemblance can invite investigation; it cannot carry the whole argument. A Christian defense of Scripture gains clarity when it makes that standard explicit and applies it to its own linguistic claims as well.