Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament · Song of Songs Chapter 3

1 On my bed in the nights

I sought him whom my soul loveth:

I sought him, and found him not.

She does not mean to say that she sought him beside herself on her couch; for how could that be of the modest one, whose home-bringing is first described in the next act - she could and might miss him there neither waking nor sleeping. The commencement is like Job 33:15. She was at night on her couch, when a painful longing seized her: the beloved of her soul appeared to have forsaken her, to have withdrawn from her; she had lost the feeling of his nearness, and was not able to recover it. לילות is neither here nor at Song of Solomon 3:8 necessarily the categ. plur. The meaning may also be, that this pain, arising from a sense of being forgotten, always returned upon her for several nights through: she became distrustful of his fidelity; but the more she apprehended that she was no longer loved, the more ardent became her longing, and she arose to seek for him who had disappeared.

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2 So I will arise, then, and go about the city,

The markets, and the streets;

I will seek him whom my soul loveth! -

I sought him, and found him not.

How could this night-search, with all the strength of love, be consistent with the modesty of a maiden? It is thus a dream which she relates. And if the beloved of her soul were a shepherd, would she seek him in the city, and not rather without, in the field or in some village? No; the beloved of her soul is Solomon; and in the dream, Jerusalem, his city is transported close to the mountains of her native home. The resolution expressed by “I will arise, then,” is not introduced by “then I said,” or any similar phrase: the scene consists of a monologue which dramatically represents that which is experienced. Regarding the second Chatef-Pathach of ואס , vid., Baer's Genesis, p. 7. שׁוקים is the plur of שׁוּק (= shavḳ ), as שׁורים of שׁוּר (= shavr ); the root-word שוק (Arab. shaḳ ) signifies to press on, to follow after continuously; (Arab.) suwaḳ designates perhaps, originally, the place to which one drives cattle for sale, as in the desert; (Arab.) sawaḳ designates the place to which one drives cattle for drink (Wetzst.). The form אבקשׁה is without the Daghesh, as are all the forms of this verb except the imper.; the semi-guttural nature of the Koph has something opposing the simple Sheva.

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Shulamith now relates what she further experienced when, impelled by love-sorrow, she wandered through the city:

3 The watchmen who go about in the city found me:

“Have ye seen him whom my soul loveth?”

Here also (as in Song of Solomon 3:2) there is wanting before the question such a phrase as, “and I asked them, saying:” the monologue relates dramatically. If she described an outward experience, then the question would be a foolish one; for how could she suppose that the watchmen, who make their rounds in the city (Epstein, against Grהtz, points for the antiquity of the order to Psalms 127:1; Isaiah 62:6; cf. Isaiah 21:11), could have any knowledge of her beloved! But if she relates a dream, it is to be remembered that feeling and imagination rise higher than reflection. It is in the very nature of a dream, also, that things thus quickly follow one another without fixed lineaments. This also, that having gone out by night, she found in the streets him whom she sought, is a happy combination of circumstances formed in the dreaming soul; an occurrence without probable external reality, although not without deep inner truth:

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4 Scarcely had I passed from them,

When I found him whom my soul loveth.

I seized him, and did not let him go

Until I brought him into the house of my mother,

And into the chamber of her that gave me birth.

כּמעט = paululum , here standing for a sentence: it was as a little that I passed, etc. Without שׁ , it would be paululum transii ; with it, paululum fuit quod transii , without any other distinction than that in the latter case the paululum is more emphatic. Since Shulamith relates something experienced earlier, אחזתּי is not fitly rendered by teneo , but by tenui ; and ארפּנּוּ dna ;iune לאו , not by et non dimittam eum , but, as the neg. of וארפנו , et dimisi eum , - not merely et non dimittebam eum , but et non dimisi eum . In Genesis 32:27 [26], we read the cogn. שׁלּח , which signifies, to let go (“let me go”), as הרפּה , to let loose, to let free. It is all the same whether we translate, with the subjective colouring, donec introduxerim , or, with the objective, donec introduxi ; in either case the meaning is that she held him fast till she brought him, by gentle violence, into her mother's house. With בּית there is the more definite parallel חדר lellar , which properly signifies ( vid., under Song of Solomon 1:4), recessus , penetrale ; with אמּי , the seldom occurring (only, besides, at Hosea 2:7) הורה , part.f. Kal of הרה fo la , to conceive, be pregnant, which poetically, with the accus., may mean parturire or parere . In Jacob's blessing, Genesis 49:26, as the text lies before us, his parents are called הורי ; just as in Arab. ummâni , properly “my two mothers,” may be used for “my parents;” in the Lat. also, parentes means father and mother zeugmatically taken together.

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The closing words of the monologue are addressed to the daughters of Jerusalem.

5 I adjure you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem,

By the gazelles or the hinds of the field,

That ye awake not and disturb not love

Till she pleases.

We are thus obliged apparently to think of the daughters of Jerusalem as being present during the relation of the dream. But since Shulamith in the following Act is for the first time represented as brought from her home to Jerusalem, it is more probable that she represented her experience to herself in secret, without any auditors, and feasting on the visions of the dream, which brought her beloved so near, that she had him by herself alone and exclusively, that she fell into such a love-ecstasy as Song of Solomon 2:7; and pointing to the distant Jerusalem, deprecates all disturbance of this ecstasy, which in itself is like a slumber pervaded by pleasant dreams. In two monologues dramatically constructed, the poet has presented to us a view of the thoughts and feelings by which the inner life of the maiden was moved in the near prospect of becoming a bride and being married. Whoever reads the Song in the sense in which it is incorporated with the canon, and that, too, in the historical sense fulfilled in the N.T., will not be able to read the two scenes from Shulamith's experience without finding therein a mirror of the intercourse of the soul with God in Christ, and cherishing thoughts such, e.g., as are expressed in the ancient hymn:

Quando tandem venies, meus amor?

Propera de Libano, dulcis amor!

Clamat, amat sponsula: Veni, Jesu,

Dulcis veni Jesu !

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6 Who is this coming up from the wilderness

Like pillars of smoke,

Perfumed with myrrh and frankincense,

With all aromatics of the merchants?

It is possible that זאת and עלה may be connected; but עני זה , Psalms 34:7 (this poor man, properly, this, a poor man), is not analogous, it ought to be העלה זאת . Thus zoth will either be closely connected with מי , and make the question sharper and more animated, as is that in Genesis 12:18, or it will be the subject which then, as in Isaiah 63:1; Job 38:2, cf. below Song of Solomon 7:5, Jonah 4:11, Amos 9:12, is more closely written with indeterminate participles, according to which it is rightly accented. But we do not translate with Heiligst. quid est hoc quod adscendit , for mī asks after a person, mā after a thing, and only per attract. does mī stand for mā in Genesis 33:8; Judges 13:17; Micah 1:5; also not quis est hoc (Vaih.), for zoth after mi has a personal sense, thus: quis ( quaenam ) haec est . That it is a woman that is being brought forward those who ask know, even if she is yet too far off to be seen by them, because they recognise in the festal gorgeous procession a marriage party. That the company comes up from the wilderness, it may be through the wilderness which separates Jerusalem from Jericho, is in accordance with the fact that a maiden from Galilee is being brought up, and that the procession has taken the way through the Jordan valley (Ghôr); but the scene has also a typical colouring; for the wilderness is, since the time of the Mosaic deliverance out of Egypt, an emblem of the transition from a state of bondage to freedom, from humiliation to glory ( vid., under Isaiah 40:3; Hosea 1:11; Psalms 68:5). The pomp is like that of a procession before which the censer of frankincense is swung. Columns of smoke from the burning incense mark the line of the procession before and after. תּימרות ( תּים ) here and at Job 3 ( vid., Norzi) is formed, as it appears, from ימר , to strive upwards, a kindred form to אמר ; cf. Isaiah 61:6 with Isaiah 17:6, Psalms 94:4; the verb תּמר , whence the date-palm receives the name תּמר , is a secondary formation, like תּאב to אבה . Certainly this form תּימרה (cf. on the contrary, תּולדה ) is not elsewhere to be supported; Schlottm. sees in it תמּרות , from תּמרה ; but such an expansion of the word for Dag. dirimens is scarcely to be supposed. This naming of the pillars of smoke is poet., as Jonah 3:3; cf. “a pillar of smoke,” Judges 20:40. She who approaches comes from the wilderness, brought up to Jerusalem, placed on an elevation, “like pillars of smoke,” i.e., not herself likened thereto, as Schlottm. supposes it must be interpreted (with the tertium comp. of the slender, precious, and lovely), but encompassed and perfumed by such. For her whom the procession brings this lavishing of spices is meant; it is she who is incensed or perfumed with myrrh and frankincense. Schlottm. maintains that מקטּרת cannot mean anything else than “perfumed,” and therefore he reads מקּטרת (as Aq. ἀπὸ θυμιάματος , and Jerome). But the word mekuttěrěth does not certainly stand alone, but with the genit. foll.; and thus as “rent in their clothes,” 2 Samuel 13:31, signifies not such as are themselves rent, but those whose clothes are rent (Ewald, §288 b, compare also de Sacy, II §321), so וגו מקט can also mean those for whom (for whose honour) this incense is expended, and who are thus fumigated with it. מר .t , myrrh, (Arab.) murr ( vid., above under Song of Solomon 1:13), stands also in Exodus 30:23 and Psalms 45:9 at the head of the perfumes; it came from Arabia, as did also frankincense levōnā , Arab. lubân (later referred to benzoin); both of the names are Semitic, and the circumstance that the Tôra required myrrh as a component part of the holy oil, Exodus 30:23, and frankincense as a component part of the holy incense, Exodus 30:34, points to Arabia as the source whence they were obtained. To these two principal spices there is added ממּל (cf. Genesis 6:20; Genesis 9:2) as an et cetera. רוכל denotes the travelling spice merchants (traders in aromatics), and traders generally. אבקה , which is related to אבק as powder to dust (cf. abacus, a reckoning-table, so named from the sand by means of which arithmetical numbers were reckoned), is the name designating single drugs ( i.e., dry wares; cf. the Arab. elixir = ξηρόν ).

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