Armenia in comments -- Book: Song of Solomon (Canticles) (tSong) Երգ Երգոց
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tSong 4:1 1a Lo, thou art fair, my friend! yes, thou art fair!
Thine eyes are doves behind thy veil.
The Gr. Venet. translates, after Kimchi, "looking out from behind, thy hair flowing down from thy head like a mane." Thus also Schultens, capillus plexus; and Hengst., who compares πλέγμα, Ti1 2:9, and ἐμπλοκὴ τριχῶν, Pe1 3:3, passages which do not accord with the case of Shulamith; but neither צמם, Arab. ṣmm, nor ṭmm signifies to plait; the latter is used of the hair when it is too abundant, and ready for the shears. To understand the hair as denoted here, is, moreover, inadmissible, inasmuch as מבעד cannot be used of the eyes in relation to the braids of hair hanging before them. Symm. rightly translates צמה by κάλυμμα veil (in the Song the lxx erroneously renders by σιωπήσεως behind thy silence), Isa 47:2. The verb צמם, (Arab.) ṣmam, a stopper, and (Arab.) alṣamma, a plaid in which one veils himself, when he wraps it around him.
(Note: Regarding this verbal stem and its derivatives, see The's Schlafgemach der Phantasie, pp. 102-105.)
The veil is so called, as that which closely hides the face. In the Aram. צמם, Palp. צמצם, means directly to veil, as e.g., Bereshith rabba c. 45, extr., of a matron whom the king lets pass before him it is said, פניה צימצמה. Shulamith is thus veiled. As the Roman bride wore the velum flammeum, so also the Jewish bride was deeply veiled; cf. Gen 24:65, where Rebecca veiled herself (Lat. nubit) before her betrothed. בּעד, constr. בּעד, a segolate noun, which denotes separation, is a prep. in the sense of pone, as in Arab. in that of post. Ewald, sec. 217m, supposes, contrary to the Arab., the fundamental idea of covering (cogn. בגד); but that which surrounds is thought of as separating, and at the same time as covering, the thing which it encompasses. From behind her veil, which covered her face (vid., Bachmann, under Jdg 3:23), her eyes gleam out, which, without needing to be supplemented by `עיני, are compared, as to their colour, motion, and lustre, to a pair of doves.
From the eyes the praise passes to the hair.
1b Thy hair is like a flock of goats
Which repose downwards on Mount Gilead.
The hair of the bride's head was uncovered. We know from later times that she wore in it a wreath of myrtles and roses, or also a "golden city" (עיר שׁל זהב), i.e., an ornament which emblematically represented Jerusalem. To see that this comparison is not incongruous, we must know that sheep in Syria and Palestine are for the most part white; but goats, for the most part, black, or at least dark coloured, as e.g., the brown gedi Mamri.
(Note: Burns, the Scottish poet, thinking that goats are white, transfers the comparison from the hair to the teeth:
"Her teeth are like a flock of sheep,
With fleeces newly washen clean,
That slowly mount the rising steep;
And she's twa glancin', sparklin' een.")
The verb גּלשׁ is the Arab. jls, which signifies, to rest upon; and is distinguished from the synon. q'd in this, that the former is used of him who has previously lain down; the latter, of one who first stands and then sits down.
(Note: Ḳ'ad cannot be used of one who sits on the bed farash; in jalas lies the direction from beneath to above; in ḳ'ad (properly, to heap together, to cower down), from above to beneath.)
The nejd bears also the name jals, as the high land raising itself, and like a dome sitting above the rest of the land. One has to think of the goats as having lain down, and thus with the upper parts of their bodies as raised up. מן in מהר is used almost as in מדּלי מר, Isa 40:15. A flock of goats encamped on a mountain (rising up, to one looking from a distance, as in a steep slope, and almost perpendicularly), and as if hanging down lengthwise on its sides, presents a lovely view adorning the landscape. Solomon likens to this the appearance of the locks of his beloved, which hang down over her shoulders. She was till now a shepherdess, therefore a second rural image follows: Song of Solomon (Canticles) 4:2 tSong 4:4 4 Like the tower of David thy neck,
Built in terraces;
Thereon a thousand shields hang,
All the armour of heroes.
The tower of David, is, as it appears, "the tower of the flock," Mic 4:4, from which David surveyed the flock of his people. In Neh 3:25. it is called the "tower which lieth out from the king's high house," i.e., not the palace, but a government house built on Zion, which served as a court of justice. But what is the meaning of the ἁπ. λεγ. תּלפּיּות? Grtz translates: for a prospect; but the Greek τηλωπός, of which he regards תל as the Heb. abstr., is a word so rare that its introduction into the Semitic language is on that account improbable. Hengst. translates: built for hanging swords; and he sees in the word a compound of תּל (from תּלה, with which forms such as יד = jadj, שׁד = shadj, שׁל, Sa2 6:7, are compared) and פּיּות; but this latter word signifies, not swords, but edges of the (double-edged) sword; wherefore Kimchi (interpreting תּל as the constr. of תל, as אל, in בּצלאל, is of צל) explains: an erection of sharp-cornered stones; and, moreover, the Heb. language knows no such nmm. comp. appellativa: the names of the frog, צפרדּע, and the bat, עטלּף (cf. the Beth in [Arab.] sa'lab, fox, with the added Pe), are not such; and also tsalmāveth, the shadow of death, is at a later period, for the first time, restamped
(Note: Cf. regarding such double words belonging to the more modern Semitic language, Jesurun, pp. 232-236.)
as such from the original tsalmuth (cf. Arab. zalumat = tenebrae). Gesen. obtains the same meanings; for he explains לתל by exitialibus (sc.,, armis), from an adj. תּלפּי, from תּלף = Arab. talifa, to perish, the inf. of which, talaf, is at the present day a word synon. with halak (to perish); (Arab.) matlaf (place of going down) is, like ישׁמון, a poetic name of the wilderness. The explanation is acceptable but hazardous, since neither the Heb. nor the Aram. shows a trace of this verb; and it is thus to be given up, if תלף can be referred to a verbal stem to be found in the Heb. and Aram. This is done in Ewald's explanation, to which also Bttcher and Rdig. give the preference: built for close (crowded) troops (so, viz., that many hundreds or thousands find room therein); the (Arab.) verb aff, to wrap together (opp. nashar, to unfold), is used of the packing together of multitudes of troops (liff, plur. lufuf), and also of warlike hand-to-hand conflicts; תלף would be traced to a verb לפה synon. therewith, after the form תּאניּה. But if תלף were meant of troops, then they would be denoted as the garrison found therein, and it would not be merely said that the tower was built for such; for the point of comparison would then be, the imposing look of the neck, overpowering by the force of the impression proceeding from within. But now, in the Aram., and relatively in the Talm. Heb., not only לפף and לוּף occur, but also לפי (Af. אלפי), and that in the sense of enclosure, i.e., of joining together, the one working into the other, - e.g., in the Targ.: of the curtain of the tabernacle (בּית לופי, place of the joining together = חברת or מחבּרת of the Heb. text); and in the Talm.: of the roofs of two houses (Bathra 6a, לוּפתּא, the joining)
(Note: The Arab. lafa, vi., proceeding from the same root-idea, signifies to bring in something again, to bring in again, to seek to make good again.).
Accordingly לתלף, if we interpret the Lamed not of the definition, but of the norm, may signify, "in ranks together." The Lamed has already been thus rendered by Dderl.: "in turns" (cf. לפת, to turn, to wind); and by Meier, Mr.: "in gradation;" and Aq. and Jerome also suppose that תלף refers to component parts of the building itself, for they understand
(Note: Vid., also Lagarde's Onomastica, p. 202: Θαλπιὼθ ἐπάλξη (read εἰς) ἤ ὑψηλά.)
pinnacles or parapets (ἐπάλξεις, propugnacula); as also the Venet.: εἰς ἐπάλξεις χιλίας. But the name for pinnacles is פּנּהּ, and their points, שׁמשׁות; while, on the contrary, תלף is the more appropriate name for terraces which, connected together, rise the one above the other. Thus to build towers like terraces, and to place the one, as it were, above the other, was a Babylonian custom.
(Note: Vid., Oppert's Grundzge der Assyr. Kunst (1872), p. 11.)
The comparison lies in this, that Shulamith's neck was surrounded with ornaments so that it did not appear as a uniform whole, but as composed of terraces. That the neck is represented as hung round with ornaments, the remaining portion of the description shows.
מגן signifies a shield, as that which protects, like clupeus (clypeus), perhaps connected with καλύπτειν and שׁלט, from שׁלט = (Arab.) shalita, as a hard impenetrable armour. The latter is here the more common word, which comprehends, with מגן, the round shield; also צנּה, the oval shield, which covers the whole body; and other forms of shields. המּגן אלף, "the thousand shields," has the indicative, if not (vid., under Sol 1:11) the generic article. The appositional כּל שׁלטי הגּ is not intended to mean: all shields of (von) heroes, which it would if the article were prefixed to col and omitted before gibborim, or if כּלם, Sol 3:8, were used; but it means: all the shields of heroes, as the accentuation also indicates. The article is also here significant. Solomon made, according to Kg1 10:16., 200 golden targets and 300 golden shields, which he put in the house of the forest of Lebanon. These golden shields Pharaoh Shishak took away with him, and Rehoboam replaced them by "shields of brass," which the guards bore when they accompanied the king on his going into the temple (Kg1 14:26-28; cf. Ch2 12:9-11); these "shields of David," i.e., shields belonging to the king's house, were given to the captains of the guard on the occasion of the raising of Joash to the throne, Kg2 11:10; cf. Ch2 23:9. Of these brazen shields, as well as of those of gold, it is expressly said how and where they were kept, nowhere that they were hung up outside on a tower, the tower of David. Such a display of the golden shields is also very improbable. We will perhaps have to suppose that 4b describes the tower of David, not as it actually was, but as one has to represent it to himself, that it might be a figure of Shulamith's neck. This is compared to the terraced tower of David, if one thinks of it as hung round by a thousand shields which the heroes bore, those heroes, namely, who formed the king's body-guard. Thus it is not strange that to the 200 + 300 golden shields are here added yet 500 more; the body-guard, reckoned in companies of 100 each, Kg2 11:4, is estimated as consisting of 1000 men. The description, moreover, corresponds with ancient custom. The words are עליו תּלוּי, not בּו תּלוּי; the outer wall of the tower is thought of as decorated with shields hung upon it. That shields were thus hung round on tower-walls, Ezekiel shows in his prophecy regarding Tyre, Eze 27:11; cf. 1 Macc. 4:57, and supra foris Capitolinae aedis, Pliny, Hist. Nat. xxxv. 3; and although we express the presumption that Solomon's imagination represented David's tower as more gorgeous than it actually was, yet we must confess that we are not sufficiently acquainted with Solomon's buildings to be able to pass judgment on this. These manifold inexplicable references of the Song to the unfolded splendour of Solomon's reign, are favourable to the Solomonic authorship of the book. This grandiose picture of the distinguished beauty of the neck, and the heightening of this beauty by the ornament of chains, is now followed by a beautiful figure, which again goes back to the use of the language of shepherds, and terminates the description: Song of Solomon (Canticles) 4:5 tSong 4:9 All that the king calls his, she now can call hers; for she has won his heart, and with his heart himself and all that is his.
9 Thou hast taken my heart, my sister-bride;
Thou hast taken my heart with one of thy glances,
With a little chain of thy necklace.
The Piel לבּב may mean to make courageous, and it actually has this meaning in the Aram., wherefore the Syr. retains the word; Symm. renders it by ἐθάρσυνάς με. But is it becoming in a man who is no coward, especially in a king, to say that the love he cherishes gives him heart, i.e., courage? It might be becoming, perhaps, in a warrior who is inspired by the thought of his beloved, whose respect and admiration he seeks to gain, to dare the uttermost. But Solomon is no Antar, no wandering knight.
(Note: A specimen of Bttcher's interpretation: "What is more natural than to suppose that the keeper of a vineyard showed herself with half of her head and neck exposed at the half-opened window to her shepherd on his first attempt to set her free, when he cried, 'my dove in the clefts of the rocks,' etc., and animated him thereby to this present bold deliverance of her from the midst of robbers?" We pity the Shulamitess, that she put her trust in this moonshiny coward.)
Besides, the first effect of love is different: it influences those whom it governs, not as encouraging, in the first instance, but as disarming them; love responded to encourages, but love in its beginning, which is the subject here, overpowers. We would thus more naturally render: "thou hast unhearted me;" but "to unheart," according to the Semitic and generally the ancient conception of the heart (Psychol. p. 254), does not so much mean to captivate the heart, as rather to deprive of understanding or of judgment (cf. Hos 4:11). Such denomin. Pi. of names of corporeal members signify not merely taking away, but also wounding, and generally any violent affection of it, as זנּב, גּרם, Ewald, 120c; accordingly the lxx, Venet., and Jerome: ἐκαρδίωσάς με, vulnerasti cor meum. The meaning is the same for "thou hast wounded my heart" = "thou hast subdued my heart" (cf. Psa 45:6). With one of her glances, with a little chain of her necklace, she has overcome him as with a powerful charm: veni, visa sum, vici. The Kerı̂ changes באחד into בּאחת; certainly עין is mostly fem. (e.g., Jdg 16:28), but not only the non-bibl. usus loq., which e.g., prefers רעה or רע עין, of a malignant bewitching look, but also the bibl. (vid., Zac 3:9; Zac 4:10) treats the word as of double gender. ענק and צוּרנים are related to each other as a part is to the whole. With the subst. ending n, the designation of an ornament designed for the neck is formed from צוּאר, the neck; cf. שׂהרון, the "round tires like the moon" of the women's toilet, Isa 3:18. ענק (connected with אחד ענק, cervix) is a separate chain (Aram. עוּנקתא) of this necklace. In the words ענק אחד, אחד is used instead of אחד, occurring also out of genit. connection (Gen 48:22; Sa2 17:22), and the arrangement (vid., under Psa 89:51) follows the analogy of the pure numerals as נשׁים שׁלשׁ; it appears to be transferred from the vulgar language to that used in books, where, besides the passage before us, it occurs only in Dan 8:13. That a glance of the eye may pierce the heart, experience shows; but how can a little chain of a necklace do this? That also is intelligible. As beauty becomes unlike itself when the attire shows want of taste, so by means of tasteful clothing, which does not need to be splendid, but may even be of the simplest kind, it becomes mighty. Hence the charming attractive power of the impression one makes communicates itself to all that he wears, as, e.g., the woman with the issue of blood touched with joyful hope the hem of Jesus' garment; for he who loves feels the soul of that which is loved in all that stands connected therewith, all that is, as it were, consecrated and charmed by the beloved object, and operates so much the more powerfully if it adorns it, because as an ornament of that which is beautiful, it appears so much the more beautiful. In the preceding verse, Solomon has for the first time addressed Shulamith by the title "bride." Here with heightened cordiality he calls her "sister-bride." In this change in the address the progress of the story is mirrored. Why he does not say כּלּתי (my bride), has already been explained, under Sol 4:8, from the derivation of the word. Solomon's mother might call Shulamith callathi, but he gives to the relation of affinity into which Shulamith has entered a reference to himself individually, for he says ahhothi callaa (my sister-bride): she who as callaa of his mother is to her a kind of daughter, is as callaa in relation to himself, as it were, his sister. Song of Solomon (Canticles) 4:10 tSong 4:13 13 What sprouts forth for thee is a park of pomegranates,
With most excellent fruits;
Cypress flowers with nards;
14 Nard and crocus; calamus and cinnamon,
With all kinds of incense trees;
Myrrh and aloes,
With all the chief aromatics.
The common subject to all down to Sol 4:15 inclusive is שׁלחיך ("what sprouts for thee" = "thy plants"), as a figurative designation, borrowed from plants, of all the "phenomena and life utterances" (Bttch.) of her personality. "If I only knew here," says Rocke, "how to disclose the meaning, certainly all these flowers and fruits, in the figurative language of the Orient, in the flower-language of love, had their beautiful interpretation." In the old German poetry, also, the phrase bluomen brechen to break flowers was equivalent to: to enjoy love; the flowers and fruits named are figures of all that the amata offers to the amator. Most of the plants here named are exotics; פּרדּס (heaping around, circumvallation, enclosing) is a garden or park, especially with foreign ornamental and fragrant plants - an old Persian word, the explanation of which, after Spiegel, first given in our exposition of the Song, 1851 (from pairi = περί, and dêz, R. diz, a heap), has now become common property (Justi's Handb. der Zendsprache, p. 180). מגדים פּרי (from מגד, which corresponds to The Arab. mejd, praise, honour, excellence; vid., Volck under Deu 33:13) are fructus laudum, or lautitiarum, excellent precious fruits, which in the more modern language are simply called מגדים (Shabbath 127b, מיני מגדים, all kinds of fine fruits); cf. Syr. magdo, dried fruit. Regarding כּפר, vid., under Sol 1:14; regarding מר, under Sol 1:13; also regarding נרדּ, under Sol 1:12. The long vowel of נרדּ corresponds to the Pers. form nârd, but near to which is also nard, Indian nalada (fragrance-giving); the ē is thus only the long accent, and can therefore disappear in the plur. For נרדים, Grtz reads ירדים, roses, because the poet would not have named nard twice. The conjecture is beautiful, but for us, who believe the poem to be Solomonic, is inconsistent with the history of roses (vid., under Sol 2:1), and also unnecessary. The description moves forward by steps rhythmically.
כּרוכם is the crocus stativus, the genuine Indian safran, the dried flower-eyes of which yield the safran used as a colour, as an aromatic, and also as medicine; safran is an Arab. word, and means yellow root and yellow colouring matter. The name כּרוכם, Pers. karkam, Arab. karkum, is radically Indian, Sanscr. kunkuma. קנה, a reed (from קנה, R. qn, to rise up, viewed intrans.),
(Note: In this general sense of "reed" (Syn. arundo) the word is also found in the Gr. and Lat.: κάνναι (κάναι), reed-mats, κάνεον κάναστρον, a wicker basket, canna, canistrum, without any reference to an Indo-Germ. verbal stem, and without acquiring the specific signification of an aromatic plant.)
viz., sweet reed, acorus calamus, which with us now grows wild in marshes, but is indigenous to the Orient.
קנּמנן is the laurus cinnamomum, a tree indigenous to the east coast of Africa and Ceylon, and found later also on the Antilles. It is of the family of the laurineae, the inner bark of which, peeled off and rolled together, is the cinnamon-bark (cannella, French cannelle); Aram. קוּנמא, as also the Greek κιννάμοομον and κίνναμον, Lat. (e.g., in the 12th book of Pliny) cinnamomum and cinnamum, are interchanged, from קנם, probably a secondary formation from קנה (like בּם, whence בּמה, from בּא), to which also Syr. qenûmā', ὑπόστασις, and the Talm.-Targ. קנּוּם קונם, an oath (cf. קים), go back, so that thus the name which was brought to the west by the Phoenicians denoted not the tree, but the reed-like form of the rolled dried bark. As "nards" refer to varieties of the nard, perhaps to the Indian and the Jamanic spoken of by Strabo and others, so "all kinds of incense trees" refers definitely to Indo-Arab. varieties of the incense tree and its fragrant resin; it has its name fro the white and transparent seeds of this its resin (cf. Arab. lubân, incense and benzoin, the resin of the storax tree, לבנה); the Greek λίβανος, λιβανωτός (Lat. thus, frankincense, from θύω), is a word derived from the Pheonicians.
אהלות or אהלים (which already in a remarkable way was used by Balaam, Num 24:6, elsewhere only since the time of Solomon) is the Semitized old Indian name of the aloe, agaru or aguru; that which is aromatic is the wood of the aloe-tree (aloxylon agallochum), particularly its dried root (agallochum or lignum alos, ξυλαλόη, according to which the Targ. here: אלואין אכסיל, after the phrase in Aruch) mouldered in the earth, which chiefly came from farther India.
(Note: Vid., Lassen's Ind. Alterthumsk. I 334f. Furrer, in Schenkel's Bib. Lex., understands אהלות of the liliaceae, indigenous to Palestine as to Arabia, which is also called alo. But the drastic purgative which the succulent leaves of this plant yield is not aromatic, and the verb אחל "to glisten," whence he seeks to derive the name of this aloe, is not proved. Cf. besides, the Petersburg Lex. under aguru ("not difficult"), according to which is this name of the amyris agallocha, and the aquilaria agallocha, but of no liliaceae. The name Adlerholz ("eagle-wood") rests on a misunderstanding of the name of the Agila tree. It is called "Paradiesholz," because it must have been one of the paradise trees (vid., Bereshith rabba under Gen 2:8). Dioskorides says of this wood: θυμιᾶται ἀντὶ λιβανωτοῦ; the Song therefore places it along with myrrh and frankincense. That which is common to the lily-aloe and the wood-aloe, is the bitter taste of the juice of the former and of the resinous wood of the latter. The Arab. name of the aloe, ṣabir, is also given to the lily-aloe. The proverbs: amarru min eṣ-ṣabir, bitterer than the aloe, and es-sabr sabir, patience is the aloe, refer to the aloe-juice.)
עם, as everywhere, connects things contained together or in any way united (Sol 5:1; cf. Sol 1:11, as Psa 87:4; cf. Sa1 16:12). The concluding phrase וגו כּל־ר, cum praestantissimis quibusque aromatibus, is a poet. et cetera. ראשׁ, with the gen. of the object whose value is estimated, denotes what is of meilleure qualit; or, as the Talm. says, what is אלפא, ἄλφα, i.e., number one. Ezek; Eze 27:22, in a similar sense, says, "with chief (ראשׁ) of all spices." Song of Solomon (Canticles) 4:15