Bibelkommentare

She gives herself to him, and he has accepted her, and now celebrates the delight of possession and enjoyment.

1 I am come into my garden, my sister-bride;

Have plucked my myrrh with my balsam;

Have eaten my honeycomb with my honey;

Have drunk my wine with my milk -

Eat, drink, and be drunken, ye friends!

If the exclamation of Solomon, 1 a, is immediately connected with the words of Shulamith, Song of Solomon 4:16, then we must suppose that, influenced by these words, in which the ardour of love and humility express themselves, he thus in triumph exclaims, after he has embraced her in his arms as his own inalienable possession. But the exclamation denotes more than this. It supposes a union of love, such as is the conclusion of marriage following the betrothal, the God-ordained aim of sexual love within the limits fixed by morality. The poetic expression בּאתי לגנּי points to the אל eht ot בּוא , used of the entrance of a man into the woman's chamber, to which the expression (Arab.) dakhal bihā (he went in with her), used of the introduction into the bride's chamber, is compared. The road by which Solomon reached this full and entire possession was not short, and especially for his longing it was a lengthened one. He now triumphs in the final enjoyment which his ardent desire had found. A pleasant enjoyment which is reached in the way and within the limits of the divine order, and which therefore leaves no bitter fruits of self-reproach, is pleasant even in the retrospect. His words, beginning with “I am come into my garden,” breathe this pleasure in the retrospect. Ginsburg and others render incorrectly, “I am coming,” which would require the words to have been בּא אני ( הנּה ). The series of perfects beginning with באתי cannot be meant otherwise than retrospectively. The “garden” is Shulamith herself, Song of Solomon 4:12, in the fulness of her personal and spiritual attractions, Song of Solomon 4:16; cf. כּרמי , Song of Solomon 1:6. He may call her “my sister-bride;” the garden is then his by virtue of divine and human right, he has obtained possession of this garden, he has broken its costly rare flowers.

ארה (in the Mishna dialect the word used of plucking figs) signifies to pluck; the Aethiop. trans. ararku karbê , I have plucked myrrh; for the Aethiop. has arara instead of simply ארה . בּשׂמי is here שׂבּם deflected. While בּשׂם , with its plur. besâmim , denotes fragrance in general, and only balsam specially, bāsām = (Arab.) bashâm is the proper name of the balsam-tree (the Mecca balsam), amyris opobalsamum, which, according to Forskal, is indigenous in the central mountain region of Jemen (S. Arabia); it is also called (Arab.) balsaman ; the word found its way in this enlarged form into the West, and then returned in the forms בּלסמון , אפּופלסמון , אפּלרלסמא (Syr. afrusomo ), into the East. Balsam and other spices were brought in abundance to King Solomon as a present by the Queen of Sheba, 1 Kings 10:10; the celebrated balsam plantations of Jericho ( vid., Winer's Real-W.), which continued to be productive till the Roman period, might owe their origin to the friendly relations which Solomon sustained to the south Arab. princess. Instead of the Indian aloe, Song of Solomon 4:14, the Jamanic balsam is here connected with myrrh as a figure of Shulamith's excellences. The plucking, eating, and drinking are only interchangeable figurative descriptions of the enjoyment of love.

“Honey and milk,” says Solomon, Song of Solomon 4:11, “is under thy tongue.” יער is like יערה , 1 Samuel 14:27, the comb ( favus) or cells containing the honey, - a designation which has perhaps been borrowed from porous lava.

(Note: Vid., Wetstein in the Zeitsch. für allgem. Erdkunde, 1859, p. 123.)

With honey and milk “under the tongue” wine is connected, to which, and that of the noblest kind, Song of Solomon 7:10, Shulamith's palate is compared. Wine and milk together are οἰνόγαλα , which Chloe presents to Daphnis (Longus, i. 23). Solomon and his Song here hover on the pinnacle of full enjoyment; but if one understands his figurative language as it interprets itself, it here also expresses that delight of satisfaction which the author of Psalms 19:6 transfers to the countenance of the rising sun, in words of a chaste purity which sexual love never abandons, in so far as it is connected with esteem for a beloved wife, and with the preservation of mutual personal dignity. For this very reason the words of Solomon, 1 a, cannot be thought of as spoken to the guests. Between Song of Solomon 4:16 and Song of Solomon 5:1 the bridal night intervenes. The words used in 1a are Solomon's morning salutation to her who has now wholly become his own. The call addressed to the guests at the feast is given forth on the second day of the marriage, which, according to ancient custom, Genesis 29:28; Judges 14:12, was wont to be celebrated for seven days, Tob. 11:18. The dramatical character of the Song leads to this result, that the pauses are passed over, the scenes are quickly changed, and the times appear to be continuous.

The plur. דּודים Hengst. thinks always designates “love” ( Liebe ); thus, after Proverbs 7:18, also here: Eat, friends, drink and intoxicate yourselves in love. But the summons, inebriamini amoribus , has a meaning if regarded as directed by the guests to the married pair, but not as directed to the guests. And while we may say רוה דדים , yet not שׁכר דו , for shakar has always only the accus. of a spirituous liquor after it. Therefore none of the old translators (except only the Venet.: μεθύσθητε ἔρωσιν ) understood dodim , notwithstanding that elsewhere in the Song it means love, in another than a personal sense; רעים and דח are here the plur. of the elsewhere parallels רע and דּוד , e.g., Song of Solomon 5:16, according to which also (cf. on the contrary, Song of Solomon 4:16) they are accentuated. Those who are assembled are, as sympathizing friends, to participate in the pleasures of the feast. The Song of Songs has here reached its climax. A Paul would not hesitate, after Ephesians 5:31., to extend the mystical interpretation even to this. Of the antitype of the marriage pair it is said: “For the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself ready” (Revelation 19:7); and of the antitype of the marriage guests: “Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Revelation 19:9).

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2 I sleep, but my heart keeps waking-

Hearken! my beloved is knocking:

Open to me, my sister, my love,

My dove, my perfect one;

For my head is filled with dew,

My locks (are) full of the drops of the night.

The partic. subst. clauses, Song of Solomon 5:2, indicate the circumstances under which that which is related in Song of Solomon 5:2 occurred. In the principal sentence in hist. prose ויּדפּק would be used; here, in the dramatic vivacity of the description, is found in its stead the interject. vocem = ausculta with the gen. foll., and a word designating

(Note: דּופק is knocking is not an attribute to the determinate דּודי my beloved which it follows, but a designation of state or condition, and thus acc., as the Beirut translation renders it: “hear my beloved in the condition of one knocking.” On the other hand, דוד דופק signifies “a beloved one knocking.” But “hear a beloved one knocking” would also be expressed acc. In classical language, the designation of state, if the subst. to which it belongs is indeterminate, is placed before it, e.g., “at the gate stood a beloved one knocking.”)

state or condition added, thought of as accus. according to the Semitic syntax (like Genesis 4:10; Jeremiah 10:22; cf. 1 Kings 14:6). To sleep while the heart wakes signifies to dream, for sleep and distinct consciousness cannot be coexistent; the movements of thought either remain in obscurity or are projected as dreams. ער = ‛awir is formed from עוּר , to be awake (in its root cogn. to the Aryan gar , of like import in γρηγορεῖν , ἐγείρειν ), in the same way as מת = mawith from מוּת . The שׁ has here the conj. sense of “ dieweil ” (because), like asher in Ecclesiastes 6:12; Ecclesiastes 8:15. The ר dag., which occurs several times elsewhere ( vid., under Proverbs 3:8; Proverbs 14:10), is one of the inconsistencies of the system of punctuation, which in other instances does not double the ר ; perhaps a relic of the Babylonian idiom, which was herein more accordant with the lingual nature of the r than the Tiberian, which treated it as a semi-guttural. קוצּה , a lock of hair, from קץ = קיץ , abscîdit, follows in the formation of the idea, the analogy of קציר , in the sense of branch, from קצר , desecuit; one so names a part which is removed without injury to the whole, and which presents itself conveniently for removal; cf. the oath sworn by Egyptian women, laḥajât muḳṣu̇si , “by the life of my separated,” i.e., “of my locks” (Lane, Egypt, etc., I 38). The word still survives in the Talmud dialect. Of a beautiful young man who proposed to become a Nazarite, Nedarim 9 a says the same as the Jer. Horajoth iii. 4 of a man who was a prostitute in Rome: his locks were arranged in separate masses, like heap upon heap; in Bereshith rabba c. lxv., under Genesis 27:11, קוּץ , curly-haired, is placed over against קרח , bald-headed, and the Syr. also has ḳauṣoto as the designation of locks of hair-a word used by the Peshito as the rendering of the Heb. קוצּות , as the Syro-Hexap. Job 16:12, the Greek κόμη . טל , from טלל (Arab. ṭll , to moisten, viz., the ground; to squirt, viz., blood), is in Arabic drizzling rain, in Heb. dew; the drops of the night ( רסיסי , from רסס , to sprinkle, to drizzle)

(Note: According to the primary idea: to break that which is solid or fluid into little pieces, wherefore רסיסים means also broken pieces. To this root appertains also the Arab. rashh , to trickle through, to sweat through, II to moisten ( e.g., the mouth of a suckling with milk), and the Aethiop. rasěḥa , to be stained. Drops scattered with a sprinkling brush the Arabs call rashaḥât ; in the mystical writings, rashaḥât el - uns (dew-drops of intimacy) is the designation of sporadic gracious glances of the deity.)

are just drops of dew, for the precipitation of the damp air assumes this form in nights which are not so cold as to become frosty. Shulamith thus dreams that her beloved seeks admission to her. He comes a long way and at night. In the most tender words he entreats for that which he expects without delay. He addresses her, “my sister,” as one of equal rank with himself, and familiar as a sister with a brother; “my love” ( רע ), as one freely chosen by him to intimate fellowship; “my dove,” as beloved and prized by him on account of her purity, simplicity, and loveliness. The meaning of the fourth designation used by him, תּמּתי , is shown by the Arab. tam to be “wholly devoted,” whence teim , “one devoted” = a servant, and mutajjam , desperately in love with one. In addressing her tmty, he thus designates this love as wholly undivided, devoting itself without evasion and without reserve. But on this occasion this love did not approve itself, at least not at once.

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3 I have put off my dress,

How shall I put it on again?

I have washed my feet,

How shall I defile them again?

She now lies unclothed in bed. כּתּנת is the χιτών worn next to the body, from כתן , linen (diff. from the Arab. ḳuṭun , cotton, whence French coton , calico = cotton-stuff). She had already washed her feet, from which it is supposed that she had throughout the day walked barefooted, - how ( איככה , how? both times with the tone on the penult.;

(Note: That it has the tone on the penult., like כּכה , e.g., Song of Solomon 5:9, is in conformity with the paragog. nature of . ה The tone, however, when the following word in close connection begins with , א goes to the ult., Esther 7:6. That this does not occur in איך אל , is explained from the circumstance that the word has the disjunctive Tifcha. But why not in איך אט ? I think it is for the sake of the rhythm. Pinsker, Einl. p. 184, seeks to change the accentuation in order that the penult. accent might be on the second איך , but that is not necessary. Cf. Psalms 137:7.)

cf. איכה , where ? Song of Solomon 1:7) should she again put on her dress, which she had already put off and laid aside ( פּשׁט )? why should she soil ( אטנּפם , relating to the fem. רגלי , for אטנפן ) again her feet, that had been washed clean? Shulamith is here brought back to the customs as well as to the home of her earlier rural life; but although she should thus have been enabled to reach a deeper and more lively consciousness of the grace of the king, who stoops to an equality with her, yet she does not meet his love with an equal requital. She is unwilling for his sake to put herself to trouble, or to do that which is disagreeable to her. It cannot be thought that such an interview actually took place; and yet what she here dreamed had not only inward reality, but also full reality. For in a dream, that which is natural to us or that which belongs to our very constitution becomes manifest, and much that is kept down during our waking hours by the power of the will, by a sense of propriety, and by the activities of life, comes to light during sleep; for fancy then stirs up the ground of our nature and brings it forth in dreams, and thus exposes us to ourselves in such a way as oftentimes, when we waken, to make us ashamed and alarmed. Thus it was with Shulamith. In the dream it was inwardly manifest that she had lost her first love. She relates it with sorrow; for scarcely had she rejected him with these unworthy deceitful pretences when she comes to herself again.

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4 My beloved stretched his hand through the opening,

And my heart was moved for him.

חוּר ,

(Note: Cf. the Arab. ghawr ( ghôr ), as a sinking of the earth, and khawr ( khôr ), as a breaking through, and, as it were, a piercing. The mouth of a river is also called khôr , because there the sea breaks into the riv.)

from the verb חוּר , in the sense of to break through (R. חר , whence also חרז , Song of Solomon 1:10, and חרם , Arab. kharam , part. broken through, e.g., of a lattice-window), signifies foramen, a hole, also caverna (whence the name of the Troglodytes, חרי , and the Haurân, חורן ), here the loophole in the door above (like khawkht , the little door for the admission of individuals in the street or house-door). It does not properly mean a window, but a part of the door pierced through at the upper part of the lock of the door (the door-bolt). מן־החור is understood from the standpoint of one who is within; “by the opening from without to within,” thus “through the opening;” stretching his hand through the door-opening as if to open the door, if possible, by the pressing back of the lock from within, he shows how greatly he longed after Shulamith. And she was again very deeply moved when she perceived this longing, which she had so coldly responded to: the interior of her body, with the organs which, after the bibl. idea, are the seat of the tenderest emotions, or rather, in which they reflect themselves, both such as are agreeable and such as are sorrowful, groaned within her, - an expression of deep sympathy so common, that “the sounding of the bowels,” Isaiah 63:15, an expression used, and that anthropopathically of God Himself, is a direct designation of sympathy or inner participation. The phrase here wavers between עליו and עלי (thus, e.g., Nissel, 1662). Both forms are admissible. It is true we say elsewhere only naphshi 'ālai , ruhi 'ālai , libbi 'ālai , for the Ego distinguishes itself from its substance (cf. System d. bibl. Psychologie, p. 151f.); meai 'alai , instead of bi ( בּקרבּ ), would, however, be also explained from this, that the bowels are meant, not anatomically, but as psychical organs. But the old translators (lxx, Targ., Syr., Jerome, Venet.) rendered עליו , which rests on later MS authority ( vid., Norzi, and de Rossi), and is also more appropriate: her bowels are stirred, viz., over him, i.e., on account of him (Alkabez: בעבורו ). As she will now open to him, she is inwardly more ashamed, as he has come so full of love and longing to make her glad.

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5 I arose to open to my beloved,

And my hands dropped with myrrh,

And my fingers with liquid myrrh,

On the handle of the bolt.

The personal pron. אני stands without emphasis before the verb which already contains it; the common language of the people delights in such particularity. The Book of Hosea, the Ephraimite prophet's work, is marked by such a style. עבר מור , with which the parallel clause goes beyond the simple mōr , is myrrh flowing over, dropping out of itself, i.e., that which breaks through the bark of the balsamodendron myrrha, or which flows out if an incision is made in it; myrrha stacte, of which Pliny (xii. 35) says: cui nulla praefertur , otherwise דּרור מר , from דּרר , to gush out, to pour itself forth in rich jets. He has come perfumed as if for a festival, and the costly ointment which he brought with him has dropped on the handles of the bolts ( מנעוּל , keeping locked, after the form מלבּוּשׁ , drawing on), viz., the inner bolt, which he wished to withdraw. A classical parallel is found in Lucretius, iv. 1171:

“At lacrimans exclusus amator limina saepe

Floribus et sertis operit postesque superbos

Unguit amaracino” ...

Böttch. here puts to Hitzig the question, “Did the shepherd, the peasant of Engedi, bring with him oil of myrrh?” Rejecting this reasonable explanation, he supposes that the Shulamitess, still in Solomon's care, on rising up quickly dipped her hand in the oil of myrrh, that she might refresh her beloved. She thus had it near her before her bed, as a sick person her decoction. The right answer was, that the visitant by night is not that imaginary personage, but it is Solomon. She had dreamed that he stood before her door and knocked. But finding no response, he again in a moment withdrew, when it was proved that Shulamith did not requite his love and come forth to meet it in its fulness as she ought.

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6 I opened to my beloved;

And my beloved had withdrawn, was gone:

My soul departed when he spake -

I sought him, and found him not;

I called him, and he answered me not.

As the disciples at Emmaus, when the Lord had vanished from the midst of them, said to one another: Did not our heart burn within us when He spake with us? so Shulamith says that when he spake, i.e., sought admission to her, she was filled with alarm, and almost terrified to death.

Love-ecstasy ( ἐκστῆναι , as contrast to γενέσθαι ἐν ἑαυτῷ ) is not here understood, for in such a state she would have flown to meet him; but a sinking of the soul, such as is described by Terence ( And. I 5. 16):

“Oratio haec me miseram exanimavit metu.”

The voice of her beloved struck her heart; but in the consciousness that she had estranged herself from him, she could not openly meet him and offer empty excuses. But now she recognises it with sorrow that she had not replied to the deep impression of his loving words; and seeing him disappear without finding him, she calls after him whom she had slighted, but he answers her not. The words: “My soul departed when he spake,” are the reason why she now sought him and called upon him, and they are not a supplementary remark (Zöckl.); nor is there need for the correction of the text בּדברו , which should mean: (my soul departed) when he turned his back (Ewald), or, behind him (Hitz., Böttch.), from דּבר = (Arab.) dabara , tergum vertere , praeterire , - the Heb. has the word דּביר , the hinder part, and as it appears, דּבּר , to act from behind (treacherously) and destroy, 2 Chronicles 22:10; cf. under Genesis 34:13, but not the Kal דּבר , in that Arab. signification. The meaning of חמק has been hit upon by Aquila ( ἔκλινεν ), Symmachus ( ἀπονεύσας ), and Jerome ( declinaverat ); it signifies to turn aside, to take a different direction, as the Hithpa. Jeremiah 31:22: to turn oneself away; cf. חמּוּקים , turnings, bendings, Song of Solomon 7:2. חבק and אבק (cf. Genesis 32:25), Aethiop. ḥaḳafa , Amhar. aḳafa (reminding us of נקץ , Hiph. הקּיף ), are usually compared; all of these, however, signify to “encompass;” but חמק does not denote a moving in a circle after something, but a half circular motion away from something; so that in the Arab. the prevailing reference to fools, aḥamḳ , does not appear to proceed from the idea of closeness, but of the oblique direction, pushed sideways. Turning himself away, he proceeded farther. In vain she sought him; she called without receiving any answer. ענני is the correct pausal form of ענני , vid., under Psalms 118:5. But something worse than even this seeking and calling in vain happened to her.

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7 The watchmen who go about in the city found me,

They beat me, wounded me;

My upper garment took away from me,

The watchmen of the walls.

She sought her beloved, not “in the midbar ” (open field), nor “in the kepharim ” (villages), but בעיר , “in the city,” - a circumstance which is fatal to the shepherd-hypothesis here, as in the other dream. There in the city she is found by the watchmen who patrol the city, and have their proper posts on the walls to watch those who approach the city and depart from it (cf. Isaiah 62:6). These rough, regardless men, - her story returns at the close like a palindrome to those previously named, - who judge only according to that which is external, and have neither an eye nor a heart for the sorrow of a loving soul, struck ( הכה , from נכה , to pierce, hit, strike) and wounded ( פּצע , R. פץ , to divide, to inflict wounds in the flesh) the royal spouse as a common woman, and so treated her, that, in order to escape being made a prisoner, she was constrained to leave her upper robe in their hands (Genesis 39:12). This upper robe, not the veil which at Song of Solomon 4:1, Song of Solomon 4:3 we found was called tsammā , is called רדיד . Aben Ezra compares with it the Arab. ridâ , a plaid-like over-garment, which was thrown over the shoulders and veiled the upper parts of the body. But the words have not the same derivation. The ridâ has its name from its reaching downward, - probably from the circumstance that, originally, it hung down to the feet, so that one could tread on it; but the (Heb.) redid (in Syr. the dalmatica of the deacons), from רדד , Hiph., 1 Kings 6:32, Targ., Talm., Syr., רדד , to make broad and thin, as expansum, i.e., a thin and light upper robe, viz., over the cuttoněth , 3a. The lxx suitably translates it here and at Genesis 24:65 ( hatstsaiph , from tsa'aph , to lay together, to fold, to make double or many-fold) by θέριστρον , a summer overdress. A modern painter, who represents Shulamith as stripped naked by the watchmen, follows his own sensual taste, without being able to distinguish between tunica and pallium ; for neither Luther, who renders by schleier (veil), nor Jerome, who has pallium (cf. the saying of Plautus: tunica propior pallio est ), gives any countenance to such a freak of imagination. The city watchmen tore from off her the upper garment, without knowing and without caring to know what might be the motive and the aim of this her nocturnal walk.

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All this Shulamith dreamed; but the painful feeling of repentance, of separation and misapprehension, which the dream left behind, entered as deeply into her soul as if it had been an actual external experience. Therefore she besought the daughters of Jerusalem:

8 I adjure you, ye daughters of Jerusalem,

If ye find my beloved, -

What shall ye then say to him?

“That I am sick of love.”

That אם is here not to be interpreted as the negative particle of adjuration (Böttch.), as at Song of Solomon 2:7; Song of Solomon 3:5, at once appears from the absurdity arising from such an interpretation. The or. directa, following “I adjure you,” can also begin (Numbers 5:19.) with the usual אם , which is followed by its conclusion. Instead of “that ye say to him I am sick of love,” she asks the question: What shall ye say to him: and adds the answer: quod aegra sum amore , or, as Jerome rightly renders, in conformity with the root-idea of חלה : quia amore langueo ; while, on the other hand, the lxx: ὃτι τετροομένη ( saucia ) ἀγάπης ἐγώ εἰμι , as if the word were חללת , from חלל . The question proposed, with its answer, inculcates in a naive manner that which is to be said, as one examines beforehand a child who has to order something. She turns to the daughters of Jerusalem, because she can presuppose in them, in contrast with those cruel watchmen, a sympathy with her love-sorrow, on the ground of their having had similar experiences. They were also witnesses of the origin of this covenant of love, and graced the marriage festival by their sympathetic love.

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