Armenia in comments -- Book: Song of Solomon (Canticles) (tSong) Երգ Երգոց
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tSong 1:6 Shulamith now explains, to those who were looking upon her with inquisitive wonder, how it is that she is swarthy:
6a Look not on me because I am black,
Because the sun has scorched me.
If the words were בי (תּראינה) אל־תּראוּ, then the meaning would be: look not at me, stare not at me. But אל־תּראני, with שׁ (elsewhere כּי) following, means: Regard me not that I am blackish (subnigra); the second שׁ is to be interpreted as co-ordin. with the first (that ... that), or assigning a reason, and that objectively (for). We prefer, with Bttch., the former, because in the latter case we would have had שׁהשׁמשׁ. The quinqueliterum שׁחרחרת signifies, in contradistinction to שׁחור, that which is black here and there, and thus not altogether black. This form, as descriptive of colour, is diminutive; but since it also means id quod passim est, if the accent lies on passim, as distinguished from raro, it can be also taken as increasing instead of diminishing, as in יפיפה, הפכפּך. The lxx trans. παρέβλεπσέ (Symm. παρανέβλεπσέ) με ὁ ἣλιος: the sun has looked askance on me. But why only askance? The Venet. better: κατεῖδέ με; but that is too little. The look is thought of as scorching; wherefore Aquila: συνέκαυσέ με, it has burnt me; and Theodotion: περιέφρυξέ με, it has scorched me over and ov. שׁזף signifies here not adspicere (Job 3:9; Job 41:10) so much as adurere. In this word itself (cogn. שׁדף; Arab. sadaf, whence asdaf, black; cf. דּעך and זעך, Job 17:1), the looking is thought of as a scorching; for the rays of the eye, when they fix upon anything, gather themselves, as it were, into a focus. Besides, as the Scriptures ascribe twinkling to the morning dawn, so it ascribes eyes to the sun (Sa2 12:11), which is itself as the eye of the heavens.
(Note: According to the Indian idea, it is the eye of Varuna; the eye (also after Plato: ἡλιοειδέστατον τῶν περὶ τὰς αἰσθήσεις οργάνων) is regarded as taken from the sun, and when men die returning to the sun (Muir in the Asiatic Journal, 1865, p. 294, S. 309).)
The poet delicately represents Shulamith as regarding the sun as fem. Its name in Arab. and old Germ. is fem., in Heb. and Aram. for the most part mas. My lady the sun, she, as it were, says, has produced on her this swarthiness.
She now says how it has happened that she is thus sunburnt:
6b My mother's sons were angry with me,
Appointed me as keeper of the vineyards -
Mine own vineyard have I not kept.
If "mother's sons" is the parallel for "brothers" (אחי), then the expressions are of the same import, e.g., Gen 27:29; but if the two expressions stand in apposition, as Deut. 13:76, then the idea of the natural brother is sharpened; but when "mother's sons" stands thus by itself alone, then, after Lev 18:9, it means the relationship by one of the parents alone, as "father's wife" in the language of the O.T. and also Co1 5:5 is the designation of a step-mother. Nowhere is mention made of Shulamith's father, but always, as here, only of her mother, Sol 3:4; Sol 8:2; Sol 6:9; and she is only named without being introduced as speaking. One is led to suppose that Shulamith's own father was dead, and that her mother had been married again; the sons by the second marriage were they who ruled in the house of their mother. These brothers of Shulamith appear towards the end of the melodrama as rigorous guardians of their youthful sister; one will thus have to suppose that their zeal for the spotless honour of their sister and the family proceeded from an endeavour to accustom the fickle or dreaming child to useful activity, but not without step-brotherly harshness. The form נחרוּ, Ewald, 193c, and Olsh. p. 593, derive from חרר, the Niph. of which is either נחר or נחר (= נחרר), Gesen. 68, An. 5; but the plur. of this נחר should, according to rule, have been נחרוּ (cf. however, נחלוּ, profanantur, Eze 7:24); and what is more decisive, this נחר from חרר everywhere else expresses a different passion from that of anger; Bttch. 1060 (2, 379). חרה is used of the burning of anger; and that נחרוּ (from נחרה = נחרה) can be another form for נחרוּ, is shown, e.g., by the interchange of אחרוּ and אחרוּ; the form נחרוּ, like נחלוּ, Amo 6:6, resisted the bringing together of the ח and the half guttural ר. Něhěrā (here as Isa 41:11; Isa 45:24) means, according to the original, mid. signif. of the Niph., to burn inwardly, ἀναφλέγεσθαι = ὀργίζεσθαι. Shulamith's address consists intentionally of clauses with perfects placed together: she speaks with childlike artlessness, and not "like a book;" in the language of a book, וישׂמוּני would have been used instead of שׂמני. But that she uses נטרה (from נטר, R. טר = τηρεῖν; cf. Targ. Gen 37:11 with Luk 2:51), and not נחרה, as they were wont to say in Judea, after Pro 27:18, and after the designation of the tower for the protection of the flocks by the name of "the tower of the nōtsrīm" the watchmen, Kg2 17:9, shows that the maid is a Galilean, whose manner of speech is Aramaizing, and if we may so say, platt-Heb. (= Low Heb.), like the Lower Saxon plattdeutsch. Of the three forms of the particip. נטרה, נוטרה, נוטרת, we here read the middle one, used subst. (Ewald, 188b), but retaining the long ē (ground-form, nâṭir). The plur. את־הךּ does not necessarily imply that she had several vineyards to keep, it is the categ. plur. with the art. designating the genus; custodiens vineas is a keeper of a vineyard. But what kind of vineyard, or better, vine-garden, is that which she calls שׁלּי כּרמי, i.e., meam ipsius vineam? The personal possession is doubly expressed; shělli is related to cǎrmī as a nearer defining apposition: my vineyard, that which belongs to me (vid., Fr. Philippi's Status constr. pp. 112-116). Without doubt the figure refers to herself given in charge to be cared for by herself: vine-gardens she had kept, but her own vine-garden, i.e., her own person, she had not kept. Does she indicate thereby that, in connection with Solomon, she has lost herself, with all that she is and has? Thus in 1851 I thought; but she certainly seeks to explain why she is so sunburnt. She intends in this figurative way to say, that as the keeper of a vineyard she neither could keep nor sought to keep her own person. In this connection cǎarmī, which by no means = the colourless memet ipsam, is to be taken as the figure of the person in its external appearance, and that of its fresh-blooming attractive appearance which directly accords with כּרם, since from the stem-word כּרם (Arab.), karuma, the idea of that which is noble and distinguished is connected with this designation of the planting of vines (for כּרם, Arab. karm, cf. karmat, of a single vine-stock, denotes not so much the soil in which the vines are planted, as rather the vines themselves): her kěrěm is her (Arab.) karamat, i.e., her stately attractive appearance. If we must interpret this mystically then, supposing that Shulamith is the congregation of Israel moved at some future time with love to Christ, then by the step-brothers we think of the teachers, who after the death of the fathers threw around the congregation the fetters of their human ordinances, and converted fidelity to the law into a system of hireling service, in which all its beauty disappeared. Among the allegorists, Hengstenberg here presents the extreme of an interpretation opposed to what is true and fine. Song of Solomon (Canticles) 1:7 tSong 1:9 Solomon, while he was absent during the first scene, is now present. It is generally acknowledged that the words which follow were spoken by him:
9 To a horse in the chariot of Pharaoh Do I compare thee, my love.
10 Beautiful are thy cheeks in the chains, Thy neck in the necklaces.
11 Golden chains will we make for thee, With points of silv.
Till now, Shulamith was alone with the ladies of the palace in the banqueting-chamber. Solomon now comes from the banquet-hall of the men (Sol 1:12); and to Sol 2:7, to which this scene extends, we have to think of the women of the palace as still present, although not hearing what Solomon says to Shulamith. He addresses her, "my love:" she is not yet his bride. רעיה (female friend), from רעי (רעה), to guard, care for, tend, ethically: to delight in something particularly, to take pleasure in intercourse with one, is formed in the same way as נערה; the mas. is רעה (= ra'j), abbreviated רע, whence the fem. rǎ'yāh (Jdg 11:37; Chethı̂b), as well as rē'āh, also with reference to the ground-form. At once, in the first words used by Solomon, one recognises a Philip, i.e., a man fond of horses, - an important feature in the character of the sage (vid., Sur. 38 of the Koran), - and that, one fond of Egyptian horses: Solomon carried on an extensive importation of horses from Egypt and other countries (Ch2 9:28); he possessed 1400 war-chariots and 12, 000 horsemen (Kg1 10:26); the number of stalls of horses for his chariots was still greater (Kg1 5:6) [4:26]. Horace (Ode iii. 11) compares a young sprightly maiden to a nimble and timid equa trima; Anacreon (60) addresses such an one: "thou Thracian filly;" and Theocritus says (Idyl xviii. 30, 31):
"As towers the cypress mid the garden's bloom,
As in the chariot proud Thessalian steed,
Thus graceful rose-complexioned Helen moves."
But how it could occur to the author of the Song to begin the praise of the beauty of a shepherdess by saying that she is like a horse in Pharaoh's chariot, is explained only by the supposition that the poet is Solomon, who, as a keen hippologue, had an open eye for the beauty of the horse. Egyptian horses were then esteemed as afterwards the Arabian were. Moreover, the horse was not native to Egypt, but was probably first imported thither by the Hyksos: the Egyptian name of the horse, and particularly of the mare, ses-t, ses-mut, and of the chariot, markabuta, are Semitic.
(Note: Eber's Aegypten u. die B. Mose's, Bd. I pp. 221f. 226; cf. Aeg. Zeitschr. 1864, p. 26f.)
סוּסה is here not equitatus (Jerome), as Hengst. maintains: "Susah does not denote a horse, but is used collectively;" while he adds, "Shulamith is compared to the whole Egyptian cavalry, and is therefore an ideal person." The former statement is untrue, and the latter is absurd. Sūs means equus, and susā may, indeed, collectively denote the stud (cf. Jos 19:5 with Ch1 4:31), but obviously it first denotes the equa. But is it to be rendered, with the lxx and the Venet., "to my horse"? Certainly not; for the chariots of Pharaoh are just the chariots of Egypt, not of the king of Israel. The Chirek in which this word terminates is the Ch. compag., which also frequently occurs where, as here and Gen 49:11, the second member of the word-chain is furnished with a prep. (vid., under Psa 113:1-9). This i is an old genitival ending, which, as such, has disappeared from the language; it is almost always accented as the suff. Thus also here, where the Metheg shows that the accent rests on the ult. The plur. רכבי, occurring only here, is the amplificative poetic, and denotes state equipage. דּמּה is the trans. of דּמה, which combines the meanings aequum and aequalem esse. Although not allegorizing, yet, that we may not overlook the judiciousness of the comparison, we must remark that Shulamith is certainly a "daughter of Israel;" a daughter of the people who increased in Egypt, and, set free from the bondage of Pharaoh, became the bride of Jahve, and were brought by the law as a covenant into a marriage relation to Him.
The transition to Sol 1:10 is mediated by the effect of the comparison; for the head-frame of the horse's bridle, and the poitral, were then certainly, must as now, adorned with silken tassels, fringes, and other ornaments of silver (vid., Lane's Modern Egypt, I 149). Jerome, absurdly, after the lxx: pulchrae sunt genae tuae sicut turturis. The name of the turtle, תּוּד, redupl. turtur, is a pure onomatopoeia, which has nothing to do with תּוּר, whence דּוּר, to go round about, or to move in a circle; and turtle-dove's cheeks - what absurdity! Birds have no cheeks; and on the sides of its neck the turtle-dove has black and white variegated feathers, which also furnishes no comparison for the colour of the cheeks. תּורים are the round ornaments which hang down in front on both sides of the head-band, or are also inwoven in the braids of hair in the forehead; תּוּר, circumire, signifies also to form a circle or a row; in Aram. it thus denotes, e.g., the hem of a garment and the border round the eye. In נאווּ (vid., at 5a) the Aleph is silent, as in לאמר, אכל. חרוּזים are strings of pearls as a necklace; for the necklace (Arab. kharaz) consists of one or more, for the most part, of three rows of pearls. The verb חרז signifies, to bore through and to string together; e.g., in the Talm., fish which one strings on a rod or line, in order to bring them to the market. In Heb. and Aram. the secondary sense of stringing predominates, so that to string pearls is expressed by חרז, and to bore through pearls, by קדח; in Arab., the primary meaning of piercing through, e.g., michraz, a shoemaker's awl.
After Sol 1:11, one has to represent to himself Shulamith's adorning as very simple and modest; for Solomon seeks to make her glad with the thought of a continued residence at the royal court by the promise of costly and elegant ornaments. Gold and silver were so closely connected in ancient modes of representation, that in the old Aegypt. silver was called nub het, or white gold. Gold derived its name of זהב from its splendour, after the witty Arab. word zahab, to go away, as an unstable possession; silver is called כּסף, from כּסף, scindere, abscindere, a piece of metal as broken off from the mother-stone, like the Arab. dhuḳrat, as set free from the lump by means of the pickaxe (cf. at Psa 19:11; Psa 84:3). The name of silver has here, not without the influence of the rhythm (Sol 8:9), the article designating the species; the Song frequently uses this, and is generally in using the art. not so sparing as poetry commonly is.
(Note: The art. denoting the idea of species in the second member of the st. const. standing in the sing. without a determining reference to the first, occurs in Sol 1:13, "a bundle of (von) myrrh;" Sol 1:14, "a cluster of (von) the cyprus-flower;" Sol 4:3, "a thread of (von) scarlet," "a piece of pomegranate;" Sol 5:13, "a bed of balm" (but otherwise, Sol 6:2), Sol 7:9, "clusters of the vine;" Sol 7:3, "a bowl of roundness" (which has this property); Sol 7:10, "wine (of the quality) of goodness;" cf. Sol 8:2, "wine the (= of the) spicing." It also, in cases where the defined species to which the first undefined member of the st. const. belongs, stands in the pl.: Sol 2:9, Sol 2:17; Sol 8:14, "like a young one of the hinds;" Sol 4:1; Sol 6:5, "a herd of goats;" Sol 4:2, "a flock of shorn sheep;" Sol 6:6, "a flock of lambs," i.e., consisting of individuals of this kind. Also, when the second member states the place where a thing originates or is found, the first often remains indeterminate, as one of that which is there found, or a part of that which comes from thence: Sol 2:1, "a meadow-saffron of Sharon," "a lily of the valleys;" Sol 3:9, "the wood of Lebanon." The following are doubtful: Sol 4:4, "a thousand bucklers;" and Sol 7:5, "a tower of ivory;" less so Sol 7:1, "the dance of Mahanaim." The following are examples of a different kind: Gen 16:7, "a well of water;" Deu 22:19, "a damsel of Israel;" Psa 113:9, "a mother of children;" cf. Gen 21:28.)
עם makes prominent the points of silver as something particular, but not separate. In נישׂה, Solomon includes himself among the other inhabitants, especially the women of the palace; for the plur. majest. in the words of God of Himself (frequently in the Koran), or persons of rank of themselves (general in the vulgar Arab.), is unknown in the O.T.
They would make for her golden globules or knobs with (i.e., provided with ...; cf. Psa 89:14) points of silver sprinkled over them, - which was a powerful enticement for a plain country damsel. Song of Solomon (Canticles) 1:12