In the first article of this series, I presented Ahmed Deedat’s five arguments for finding Muhammad prophesied in the Bible. I did so without critique, attempting to give his position a fair hearing before evaluating it.
Now we begin the evaluation.
Deedat’s first and perhaps most striking claim is that Muhammad appears by name in the Hebrew Old Testament—specifically in Song of Solomon 5:16. If true, this would be remarkable. A prophet’s name embedded in Scripture centuries before his birth would constitute powerful evidence. But claims of this magnitude require evidence of equal weight.
Let us examine this argument with the care it deserves.
The Claim Restated
Deedat’s argument proceeds as follows:
The Hebrew text of Song of Solomon 5:16 contains the word Machmaddim. English translations render this as “altogether lovely,” but Deedat contends this is a translation of the word’s meaning rather than a transliteration of what is actually a proper name. The suffix -im, he explains, is a Hebrew “plural of respect”—similar to Elohim (God)—applied to convey majesty while referring to a single individual.
Therefore, according to Deedat, translators have committed a fundamental error. Proper names should never be translated. Just as you would not call “Mr. Black” by his name’s meaning in another language (“Mr. Swart” in Afrikaans, “Mr. Negro” in Spanish), so the name Muhammad should have been preserved rather than rendered by its definition.
The argument is clever. It sounds plausible to those unfamiliar with Hebrew. And it has persuaded many sincere people.
But it collapses under examination.
The Word Is a Common Noun, Not a Proper Name
The most fundamental problem with Deedat’s argument is that machmad is not a proper name at all. It is a common Hebrew noun meaning “desire,” “delight,” or “precious thing.”
This is not a matter of interpretation. It is a matter of lexical fact.
The word derives from the Semitic root ḥ-m-d (ḥeth-mem-dalet), which carries the semantic range of “desire,” “covet,” “take pleasure in,” or “delight.” This root appears throughout the Hebrew Bible. Most famously, it appears in the Ten Commandments: “You shall not covet (taḥmōd) your neighbor’s house” (Exodus 20:17).
If Deedat’s logic held—that this root intrinsically signifies the name “Muhammad”—then the Tenth Commandment would absurdly instruct Israel not to “Muhammad” their neighbor’s property.
Thirteen Occurrences, Thirteen Ordinary Meanings
The noun forms machmad (singular) and machmaddim (plural) appear thirteen times in the Hebrew Bible. In every instance, the word refers to something valued, cherished, or desired—never to a future Arabian prophet.
Consider a few examples:
Ezekiel 24:16 — God says to Ezekiel, “Behold, I am about to take from you the machmad [desire] of your eyes.” The context makes clear this refers to Ezekiel’s wife, who dies that evening. If machmad is the name Muhammad, then Ezekiel’s wife was named Muhammad—a conclusion no one, Muslim or Christian, would accept.
Hosea 9:6 — The prophet describes coming judgment: “Nettles shall possess their machmad [treasures].” Following Deedat’s method, we would have to conclude that weeds are possessing “their Muhammads.”
Lamentations 1:10 — Mourning Jerusalem’s destruction, the text states that the enemy has seized all her machmaddim [precious things]. On Deedat’s reading, the Babylonians seized Jerusalem’s “Muhammads.”
Joel 3:5 — The nations are condemned because “you have taken my silver and my gold and have carried my machmaddim [treasures] into your temples.”
2 Chronicles 36:19 — The Babylonians destroyed “all its machmaddim [precious vessels].”
The pattern is consistent and clear. In every occurrence, machmad and its plural form function as common nouns describing valued objects or beloved persons. The translators of Song of Solomon 5:16 rendered machmaddim as “altogether lovely” not to hide a name, but because they applied the same consistent meaning used in all twelve other instances.
The “Plural of Respect” Does Not Apply to Human Names
Deedat acknowledges that machmaddim ends in -im, the Hebrew plural suffix. To explain why a singular person would bear a plural form, he appeals to the concept of a “plural of respect” or “plural of majesty”—the grammatical phenomenon by which Elohim (technically plural) refers to the one God.
This sounds learned. But it represents a misunderstanding of Hebrew grammar.
The pluralis majestatis in Biblical Hebrew has strict parameters. It applies to generic nouns denoting lordship, sovereignty, or deity: Elohim (God), Adonim (Lord/Master), Baalim (Owner/Lord). These nouns take plural forms to convey concentrated authority or majesty while referring to single entities.
Critically, there is no attested instance in the Hebrew Bible where a human proper name takes the plural suffix -im to denote respect.
If this were a standard Hebrew practice, we would expect to see it with Israel’s greatest figures:
- King David would be called “Davidim”
- Moses would be called “Moshim”
- Solomon would be called “Shlomohim”
- Abraham would be called “Avrahamim”
None of these occur. Not once. The “plural of respect for names” is not a documented feature of Biblical Hebrew grammar. It appears to be an invention serving this particular argument.
What the Plural Actually Signifies
So what does the -im ending mean in Song of Solomon 5:16?
In this context, it functions as an intensive or abstract plural—a grammatical construction that amplifies the quality being described. The verse reads: ve-khullo machmaddim — literally, “and all of him is delights” or “he is altogether desirableness.”
This parallels the word appearing earlier in the same verse: mamtaqqim, meaning “sweetnesses” (translated “sweet” in English). The woman is not saying her beloved has multiple sweet things; she is saying his mouth is sweetness itself. Similarly, she is not saying he possesses multiple Muhammads; she is saying he is desirability itself, loveliness through and through.
This is Hebrew poetry intensifying its praise through plural abstract nouns. It is a common literary device, not a hidden proper name.
The Literary Context: Erotic Poetry
Deedat’s argument requires extracting the word machmaddim from its immediate literary environment and treating it as an isolated prophecy. But words do not exist in isolation. Context determines meaning.
Song of Solomon is erotic poetry—a collection of love songs celebrating romantic and physical love between a man and a woman. Chapter 5, verses 10–16, constitutes what scholars call a wasf: a poetic form in which the beloved’s body is described feature by feature.
The woman describes her lover’s appearance: his head is like gold, his locks are wavy and black as a raven, his eyes are like doves, his cheeks are like beds of spices, his lips are lilies dripping liquid myrrh, his arms are rods of gold, his body is polished ivory, his legs are alabaster columns. Then she concludes: “His mouth is most sweet, and he is altogether lovely [machmaddim]. This is my beloved and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.”
To claim this is Muhammad requires placing the Prophet of Islam in the context of a woman’s sensual description of her lover’s physical beauty. It requires this woman—the Shulamite—to have been praising Muhammad’s arms of gold, his ivory body, his sweet mouth, in poetry intended to celebrate romantic love.
This is historically anachronistic (Song of Solomon predates Muhammad by roughly 1,500 years) and contextually inappropriate (the genre is love poetry, not prophetic oracle).
The Wine Problem
There is another contextual difficulty that deserves attention.
Just fifteen verses earlier, in Song of Solomon 5:1, the male figure is described drinking wine: “I have drunk my wine with my milk. Eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved.”
Deedat elsewhere presents Muhammad’s prohibition of alcohol as one of his greatest achievements—a “miracle” that succeeded where even American Prohibition failed. He argues that Islam’s solution to alcoholism is total abstinence.
But the figure in Song of Solomon drinks wine abundantly. If this is Muhammad, then the prophecy depicts him engaging in behavior that Islam strictly forbids. This creates an internal contradiction within Deedat’s broader argument.
The “Mr. Black” Analogy Fails
Deedat’s analogy about Mr. Black traveling abroad crystallizes his linguistic argument, so it deserves direct examination.
The analogy assumes what it seeks to prove—that machmaddim is a proper name to begin with. If a man named “Mr. Black” visits another country, you would indeed preserve his name rather than translating it. No one disputes this principle.
But machmad is not a proper name. It is a common noun. The situation is not analogous to “Mr. Black” at all.
Consider instead: if you were describing a car as “black” in a document translated from English to Dutch, you would translate the word into zwart so Dutch readers understand the car’s color. You are not concealing identity; you are conveying meaning.
Similarly, the translators of Song of Solomon encountered a common adjective meaning “desirable” or “lovely” and translated its meaning so English readers could understand the woman’s praise of her beloved. They were not hiding a name because there was no name to hide.
The analogy proves nothing because it begs the question. It only works if you have already accepted the contested premise—which the lexical and grammatical evidence contradicts.
A Note on Phonetic Similarity
Some readers may wonder: even if machmad is a common noun, isn’t the phonetic similarity to “Muhammad” significant? Could there not be a connection?
It is true that the names share a common Semitic root. “Muhammad” derives from the Arabic ḥ-m-d, cognate to the Hebrew ḥ-m-d, both carrying meanings related to praise and desire. This is unremarkable; Semitic languages share extensive vocabulary through common ancestry.
But phonetic similarity does not establish identity. “Muhammad” and machmad share a root the way “Smith” and “smithy” share a root in English—they are etymologically related but not the same word. One is a proper name in Arabic; the other is a common noun in Hebrew.
Moreover, the forms differ. Machmad would transliterate as “desirable one” or “precious thing,” not as the proper name Muhammad. The Arabic name Muhammad means “praised” or “praiseworthy” and follows Arabic nominal patterns distinct from the Hebrew noun form.
To argue that phonetic resemblance constitutes prophetic identification requires abandoning the standard methods of interpretation that make language meaningful. On such grounds, one could “find” almost any name in any ancient text.
What the Text Actually Says
When we attend to lexical definition, grammatical construction, and literary context, Song of Solomon 5:16 says exactly what translators have rendered for centuries: a woman describing her beloved tells the daughters of Jerusalem that he is altogether lovely, wholly desirable, completely delightful.
This is beautiful poetry. It celebrates human love with vivid imagery and emotional intensity. It has been treasured by Jewish and Christian readers as part of Scripture’s affirmation of romantic love—and, for many interpreters, as an allegory of the love between God and His people or Christ and the Church.
What it does not contain is the name of a prophet who would be born some fifteen centuries after its composition.
Conclusion: A Claim That Cannot Bear Its Own Weight
I have tried to examine Deedat’s argument fairly, attending to his actual claims rather than caricatures of them. His presentation is articulate and internally coherent. I understand why many find it persuasive.
But the evidence tells a different story:
Lexically, machmad is a common Hebrew noun appearing thirteen times in Scripture, always meaning “desire,” “treasure,” or “precious thing”—never a proper name.
Grammatically, the “plural of respect” is never applied to human proper names in the Hebrew Bible. The -im ending here functions as an intensive abstract plural, a standard poetic device.
Contextually, Song of Solomon is erotic poetry describing a lover’s physical beauty, not prophetic oracle predicting a future religious leader. The figure described drinks wine abundantly, contradicting Islamic teaching.
Analogically, the “Mr. Black” comparison fails because it assumes what it must prove—that machmad is a name rather than a common noun.
When a claim requires redefining a common noun as a unique proper name, inventing a grammatical rule that has no attestation in the language, and ignoring the immediate literary context, we are not discovering hidden truth. We are constructing it.
Christians can engage this argument with confidence—not triumphalistic confidence, but the quiet confidence that comes from careful examination. The claim that Muhammad is named in Song of Solomon 5:16 is creative, but it is not sustainable.
Next in this series: Part 3: Who Is the Comforter? — an examination of Deedat’s argument that Jesus’s promises about the Spirit of Truth refer to Muhammad rather than the Holy Spirit.