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THE "Song of Songs "-from its Latin name, "canticum canticorum," known generally as Canticles-holds, without question, the first place among the puzzles of literature. Such uncertainty attaches to its subject, its purpose, its authorship, and even its form, that it would have occupied in any literature a place similar to that of Shakespeare's Sonnets in our own. Born on the sacred soil of Palestine, and appearing among the Holy Scriptures, it offers the greater difficulty of explaining its position. The history of the interpretation of the book from the earliest times has been a long apology to account for its place in the sacred Canon.

For from beginning to end there is not a single word in it which suggests any connection with religion. It presents itself as a page of secular literature that has become bound up with sacred. Of the rest of the Bible the forty-fifth Psalm is most naturally compared with it, since it has marriage for its theme, and is called in the inscription "A Song of Loves." But there in the space of seven verses the name of God occurs four times. Here it is not found at all. The word "Jah" indeed appears in the Hebrew (viii. 6), but only in its proverbial use as an expression of greatness. The forty-fifth Psalm, on the contrary, though on a secular subject, is as deeply religious in tone as any of those destined for Temple use. In the true Hebrew spirit everything is made subordinate to the master feelings of loyalty to the God Jehovah and reliance upon Him. In the Song of Songs not a trace of this feeling shows itself. There is not a single religious or spiritual sentiment of any kind, nor is there even the most distant allusion to any sacred rite or ordinance whatever. It is, only by the cabalistic method of the Rabbis that reference to the Mosaic system can be forced into the book. The Law, the Temple, the Sacrifices, are unknown. There is not the faintest echo of the worship of the sanctuary. The priest and Levite are silent, and the voice of the prophet is not heard.

Yet the absence of direct religious allusion is not the only, is not the principal, distinction which sets the Canticles in contrast with other parts of the Old Testament. Rather it is the absence of the religious intention which everywhere else controls Hebrew poetry. The poem stands alone as an instance of what Hebrew poetic genius could do when released from the religious purpose. Nature is no longer, as in the rest of sacred song, the veil of the Divine, admired and loved as the vesture, the dwelling of the Most High. The breath of spring, the flowers of the valley, the woods and hills, are here loved for their own sake. The universe is not now filled with the angels of Jehovah, "fulfilling His word." The winds blowing from the north or the south, the streams flowing from the mountains, the lightning flash," all are but ministers of love, and feed his sacred flame" (chaps. iv. 15, 16; viii. 6). The lessons of the lily, so dear to this poet, are not those of the Sermon on the Mount-it is to him only what the daisy was to Chaucer, a sweet emblem

of the "truth of womanhede." The grass is a verdant couch for him (chap. i. 16), not, as to the author of Psalm civ., a suggestion of a wide and beneficent providence, or, as to Isaiah, an emblem of human frailty. It is not because God has planted them that he recalls the cedars of Lebanon, nor because their majestic beauty humbles human pride, but because their branches form a shady bower for meetings with his love. Had we the whole literature of Palestine, doubtless there would be found among it many other specimens of poetry which in distinction from that which is directly religious in tone we call profane. Israel must have given birth to "bards of passion and of mirth." Love and wine no doubt had their praises sung in the gathering of the vintage and at the harvest festivals. The strangeness lies in the fact of the admission of a specimen of amatory poetry into the sacred collection. How did the vigilance of those who watched the formation of the Canon allow it?

The allegorical and typical methods of interpretation which began with the Talmud, and have continued in favour till comparatively recent times, supply one answer to this question. Modern criticism for the most part substitutes a profound moral purpose for a concealed sacred meaning, as the raison d'etre of the poem. This introduction will only set forth the plan and purpose of the book as it can be gathered, without hypothesis, from itself.

1. The subject of the book is the sentiment of love. 2. The language is like that of all love poetry, passionate, sensuous, voluptuous, in some cases with Oriental licence passing the bounds of the Western standards of sobriety and propriety.

3. The lovers whose mutual passion is sung are wedded. This is evident, not alone from the use of the word khallah-see note, chap. iv. 8-which, though its common employment is to designate a wife, might possibly in the language of love be employed (as sister in the same verse) as a term of strong endearment, but by quite a sufficient number of indications which, combined, leave no doubt on the point. (1) The deliberations of the heroine's family as to what shall be done with her when at a marriageable age are introduced in his own manner by the poet in one of the reminiscences of which the book is composed (viii. 8 seq., with note), and such a turn given as to show beyond question that she married the man of her choice. (2) There is impressed on the whole poem a feeling of the superiority of wedded love over concubinage, and of monogamy over polygamy. (3) The glowing pictures of Solomon's marriage (iii. 6 seq.) are introduced evidently either as a foil, to set off the simpler yet greater happiness of the poet, or because this very marriage is the actual subject of the poem. (4) Lastly, the only class of literature with which the poem can be naturally compared is the epithalamium. Many points of analogy with compositions of this class are noticed in the notes, and the one conjecture which is almost irresistible is that first started by Bossuet,

that it was actually composed for such a purpose, and was a specimen of a species of literature common in Palestine.

4. Certain obstacles that lay in the way of this union, and which constancy and devotion succeeded in surmounting, furnish the incidents of the piece.

5. There is a kind of unity in the book. The lovers are the same throughout, but the unity is of feeling, not of form. The poem has the appearance of a collection of scattered pieces. Certain marks of division are selfevident; e.g., at ii. 7, iii. 5, iv. 7, v. 1, and viii. 4. No commentator makes less than five breaks.

6. The poem does not consist of one continuous narrative, nor exhibit a plot progressively developed, but the same story of courtship is repeated again and again in different forms, with the same conclusion.* In one case the actual form is repeated with expansions (comp. iii. 1 seq. with v. 2 seq.). Descriptions, images, phrases, refrains, repeat themselves.

7. The story is varied by the use of dialogue. Different speakers can be plainly recognised; e.g., a bridegroom in the character of a shepherd (whether real or assumed, as in so much pastoral poetry, is uncertain), a bride, the Shulamite, as a shepherdess, various maidens, the brothers of the bride. Others are conjectured, and the poem has frequently been arranged as a drama, with regular acts and scenes. All that is certain is that the author, as a matter of form, puts his sentiments into the mouth of different persons, instead of writing in his own person, and that his work is thoroughly dramatic in feeling.

These seven indications are clear and apparently beyond conjecture. Whether the writer had a concealed purpose beyond that of telling his story, whether it is his own passion which he paints so feelingly, or only an ideal representation of love, whether the scenes described are actual or imaginary, the characters historical or fictitious, all this will continue to be a matter of dispute; but it will never be questioned that there is in the Song of Solomon the delineation of a true and passionate love, a constancy tempted and tried, but triumphant over all obstacles, and proof against all seduction, "strong as death, inexorable as Hades," and that the representation is given in verse of such exquisite melody and poetry of such blended sweetness and power, that

This may seem an arbitrary assumption in the face of the attempts of so many eminent scholars to present the poem as a regular drama, but the unsatisfactory nature of all such attempts is a sufficient testimony to the fact that they have overlooked the plain indications given by the book itself.

it must, apart from all other merits, rank by these alone among the highest lyric attempts of the world.

But it has assumed a place far higher. Not only has it a place in the sacred canon, but it has, in the mystic sense attached to it, been regarded as the most sacred book there. Its first commentator, R. Akiba, who lived in the first century of our era, said of it, “The whole world is not worthy of the day in which this sublime song was given to Israel; for all the Scriptures are holy, but this sublime Song is most holy." On the other hand, its latest commentator, E. Reuss (Le Cantique des Cantiques dit de Salomon, Paris, 1879), hesitates to include it in his commentary on the Bible, lest his readers should be shocked at a book so totally different from all the rest of Scripture, and conceived in a spirit, if not anti-religious, yet positively strange to all religious sentiments. It was no doubt the shock experienced by pious minds that first suggested the allegorical method of interpretation, which in spite of the uncompromising verdict of criticism will probably continue to keep its hold on the book. As Renan says, "the mystical sense is false philosophically, but it is true religiously. It corresponds to the great sanctification of love inaugu rated by Christianity. Association consecrates no less than dedication. Words, though in themselves indifferent, when set to sublime music partake of its inspiration. So the Canticles can never, under any interpretation, altogether lose the sacred power impressed upon them by generations of pious minds. But apart from an assumed religious character, the poem has its proper place in the Bible. The passion of love is ennobling according as it partakes of the moral sentiment. There have been writers on the Song who have been unable to discover any trace of this controlling influence, but from beginning to end only marks of folly, vanity, and looseness" (Whiston). Such a view loses sight of the Eastern origin of the poem, and neglects the undoubted contrast displayed throughout between the meretricious manners of the harem and the purity of a constant passion, between the evils of polygamy and the blessings attending the unalterable attachment of two loving souls. It is not a taint of voluptuousness that can rob of its principal worth such a representation of love as culminates in the magnificent description in verses 6 and 7 of chapter viii., and this representation is alone enough to justify the admission of the Song into the Canon; for, in the language of Bunsen, “There would be something wanting in the Bible, if there was not found there an expression of the deepest and the strongest of all human feelings."

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Verse 1 contains the title of the book: literally, A song of the songs (Heb., Shir hashirim), which to Solomon, i.e., of which Solomon is author. This has been understood as meaning "one of Solomon's songs," with allusion to the 1,005 songs (1 Kings iv. 32) which that monarch composed. But when in Hebrew a compound idea is to be expressed definitely, the article is prefixed to the word in the genitive. So here not merely "a song of songs" (comp. holy of holies), i.e., “a very excellent song," but "The song of songs," i.e., the most excellent or surpassing song. For the question of authorship and date of poem, see Excursus I.

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(2) Love.-Marg., loves, i.e., caresses or kisses, as the parallelism shows. The LXX., followed by the Vulg., read breasts (probably dadaï instead of dôdaï), the origin of many fanciful interpretations: e.g., the two breasts the two Testaments which breathe love, the first promising, the second revealing Christ. The reading is condemned by the obvious fact that the words are not spoken to but by a woman, the change of persons, from second to third, not implying a change of reference or speaker, but being an enallage frequent in sacred poetry. (Comp. Deut. xxxii. 15; Isa. i. 29, &c.) Instead of "let him kiss me," many prefer the reading "let him give me to drink," which certainly preserves the metaphor (comp. chap. vii. 9), which is exactly that of Ben Jonson's:

"Or leave a kiss but in the cup,
And I'll not ask for wine."

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(3) Because of the savour.-The general sense of this verse is plain, though grammatical difficulties render the literal translation doubtful. It should be divided into three clauses, not into two only, as in the Authorised Version: "Because of their odour (or, with regard to their fragrance) thy ointments (are) sweet." There is no authority for taking riach : sense of smell, or we should naturally translate the smell thy ointments are sweet." The rendering of the next clause, " thy name is (like) oil poured forth," is to be preferred, though it necessitates making either shemen = oil, or shem = name, feminine, for which there is no example, since the alternative, which takes tûrak: poured forth, second masculine instead of third feminine, is harsh: "Thou art poured forth like oil with regard to thy naine." The image is

The king hath brought me into his chambers:

We will be glad and rejoice in thee, We will remember thy love more than wine:

2 The upright love thee.

(5) I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem,

As the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.

an obvious one (comp. Eccles. vii. 1). There is a play on words in shemen and shemka.

Virgins.-Heb., alamôth; young girls. (See Note, chap. vi. 8.) Those who understand Solomon to be the object of the desire expressed in these verses understand by alamoth" the ladies of the harem." In the original these three verses plainly form a stanza of five lines.

(4) The king hath brought me.-The dramatic theory of the poem (see Excursus II.) has been in a great measure built up on interpretations given to this verse. We understand it as a repetition, in another form, of the protestation of love made in verses 1-3. Like them, it forms a stanza of five lines. The clause, "the king hath brought," &c., is-in accordance with a common Hebrew idiom, where an hypothesis is expressed by a simple perfect or future without a particle (comp. Prov. xxii. 29, xxv. 16)—to be understood, Even should the king have brought me into his chambers, yet our transport and our joys are for thee alone; even then we would recall thy caresses, those caresses which are sweeter than wine."

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The upright love thee.-Marg., they love thee uprightly; Heb., meysharim, used in other places either (1) in the abstract, “righteousness," &c., Ps. xvii. 2, xcix. 4; Prov. viii. 6 (so LXX. here); or (2) adver bially, Ps. lviii. 2, lxxv. 3 (and chap. vii. 9 below; but there the Lamed prefixed fixes the adverbial use). The Authorised Version follows the Vulg., Recti diligunt te, and is to be preferred, as bringing the clause into parallelism with the concluding clause of verse 3: "Thou who hast won the love of all maidens by thy personal attractions, hast gained that of the sincere and upright ones by thy character and thy great name."

(5) As the tents of Kedar-i.e., Dark as the Kedareen tents of black goats' hair, beautiful as the royal pavilions with their rich hangings. For a similar style of parallelism, comp. Isa. xv. 3: “ On her housetops, and to her open streets, every one howleth, descendeth with weeping." For Kedar, see Gen. xxv. 13.

As the poet puts this description of the lady's complexion into her own mouth, we must understand it as a little playful raillery, which is immediately redeemed by a compliment. It also prepares the way for the reminiscence of an interesting passage in her early life. See next verse.

(6) Look not. . .-i.e., with disdain, as in Job xli. 34 (Heb. 26).

Black.-Literally, blackish.

The sun.. -The word translated looked upon occurs only twice besides (Job xx. 9, xxviii. 7). The "all-seeing sun" is a commonplace of poetry; but here with sense of scorching. The heroine goes on_to explain the cause of her exposure to the sun. dark complexion is accidental, and cannot therefore be used as an argument that she was an Egyptian princess, whose nuptials with Solomon are celebrated in the poem.

Her

Mother's children-i.e., brothers, not necessarily step-brothers, as Ewald and others. (Comp. Ps. 1. 20, lxix. 8.) The reference to the mother rather than the father is natural in a country where polygamy was practised.

Mine own vineyard. . .-The general sense is plain. While engaged in the duties imposed by her brothers, she had been compelled to neglect something -but what? Some think her beloved, and others her reputation; Ginsburg, literally, her own special vineyard. But the obvious interpretation connects the words immediately with the context. Her personal appearance had been sacrificed to her brothers' severity. While tending their vines she had neglected her own complexion.

(7) Where thou feedest. . . thy flock... For why should I be .. ?-The marginal reading, that s veiled, follows the LXX. in rendering the Hebrew iterally. But it has been found somewhat difficult to assign a meaning to a literal translation. The suggestions=unknown (Ewald), veiled as a harlot (Delitzsch, &c.; comp. Gen. xxxviii. 15), fainting (Gesenius), seem all wide of the mark, since the question only refers to the danger of missing her beloved through ignorance of his whereabouts. transposition of two letters would give a word with a sense required erring, wandering about, a sense, indeed, which old Rabbinical commentators gave to this word itself in Isa. xxii. 16 (Authorised Version, cover); and probably the idea involved is the obvious one that a person with the head muffled up would not find her way easily, as we might say, " Why should I go about blindfold ?"

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The Rabbinical interpretation of this verse is a good instance of the fanciful treatment the book has received: When the time came for Moses to depart, he said to the Lord, 'It is revealed to me that this people will sin and go into captivity; show me how they shall be governed and dwell among the nations whose decrees are oppressive as the heat; and where

for the Lost.

turneth aside by the flocks of thy companions?

(8) If thou know not, O thou fairest among women,

Go thy way forth by the footsteps of the flock,

And feed thy kids beside the shepherds' tents.

(9) I have compared thee, O my love,

To a company of horses in Pharaoh's chariots.

(10) Thy cheeks are comely with rows of jewels,

fore is it they shall wander among the flocks of Esau and Ishmael, who make them idols equal to thee as thy companions?""

(8) If thou know not.-With this verse one subsection of the poem plainly ends. Most of the supporters of the dramatic theory make verse 9 begin the second scene of Act I.; and many of them understand this reply to the heroine's question as an ironical allusion on the part of the court ladies to her low birth. We take it rather as one of the many playful ways in which the poet either recalls or arranges meetings with the object of his passion (comp. chap. ii. 10-14). In the first seven verses he imagines her sighing for him, and in his absence, fancying, as lovers do, causes which might keep them asunder or make him forsake her, such as the loss of her complexion, her abduction into a royal harem; and then in verse 8 shows how groundless her fears are by playfully suggesting a wellknown way of finding him.

(9) Company of horses.-So Vulg., equitatus, but Heb. susah more properly mare, as in LXX., 77 In μоυ. The ground of the comparison is variously understood. Some, offended at the comparison of female beauty to that of a horse, think the rich trappings of a royal equipage suggested it, while on the other hand, the mention of the caparisoned steed may have suggested the reference to the lady's ornaments. But Anacreon (60) and Theocritus (Idyll xviii. 30, 31), and also Horace (Ode iii. 11), have compared female with equine beauty; and an Arab chief would not hesitate to prefer the points of his horse to the charms of his mistress.

Chariots. The plural shows that the image is general, and with no reference to any one particular equipage. Pharaoh's teams are selected as pre-eminently fine by reputation. The supposition that there is a reference to some present from the Egyptian to the Israelite monarch is gratuitous. The kings of Israel bought their horses and chariots at a high price (1 Kings x. 29).

(10) Rows.-Heb., tôrim, from tûr went round; hence either circlets or strings of jewels, or the round beads themselves of which necklaces, &c., were made. Chains. Literally, perforated, i.e., beads, or possibly coins strung together. "Arab ladies, particularly the married, are extravagantly fond of silver and gold ornaments, and they have an endless variety of chains, bracelets, anklets, necklaces, and rings. It is also quite common to see thousands of piastres, in various coins, round the forehead and suspended from the neck, and covering a system of network, called suffa, attached to the back of the head-dress, which spreads over the