(1) The knowledge displayed of plants and animals, and other productions of nature, which is in accordance with 1 Kings iv. 33.

(2) The evidence of wide acquaintance with foreign things, products of the East, &c., such as we know Solomon possessed; add to this the decidedly secular tone and feeling, a tone and feeling belonging only to this age.

(3) Similarity with certain parts of the Book of Proverbs. Comp. chap. v. 6, with Prov. i. 28-chap. iv. 12, with Prov. v. 15—chap. iv. 5, with Prov. v. 19— chap. viii. 7, with Prov. vi. 34, 35-chap. vi. 9, with Prov. xxxi. 28; also for analogies of diction comp. in the Hebrew, chap. iv. 9, with Prov. i. 9-chap. iv. 11, with Prov. v. 3—chap. i. 2, with Prov. xxvii. 6-chap. vii. 2, with Prov. xxv. 12—chap. iv. 14, with Prov. vii. 17. (4) The language is such as we should expect from the Solomonic age. It belongs to the flourishing period of the Hebrew tongue. Highly poetical, vigorous and fresh, it has no traces of the decay which manifested itself in the declining period of Israel and Judah. All the Aramean colouring it has can be explained by the hypothesis of a northern origin (see below).

No one of these indications is conclusive, and all together amount to no more than a strong probability in favour of a date not far removed from the Solomonic era. They certainly make against the extreme view of Grätz, who finding, as he thinks, in the book, a number of words of Greek origin, brings its date down to the third or second century before our era. Others, also on linguistic grounds, have referred it to the post-exile times.

II. The view most generally accepted at present is that the poem was the work of a poet in the northern kingdom, composed not long after the separation of the two kingdoms, probably about the middle of the tenth century before Christ.

The following are among the chief reasons for accepting such a view.

(1) In evidence of its northern birthplace, are the frequent and almost exclusive mention of localities in the north; the author's strongly expressed dislike of the luxury and expense of Solomon's court, which necessitated the exactions that so contributed to the schisms between the two kingdoms (1 Kings xii. 4, seq.; 2 Chron. x. 1, seq.); the entire absence of all allusions to the temple and its worship; the exaltation of Tirzah to an equal place with Jerusalem as a type of beauty (vi. 4); dialectical peculiarities, which can only be accounted for on this hypothesis, or on the untenable one of an extremely late composition; the comparison with Hosea, undoubtedly a northern writer, which shows that the two authors "lived in the same circle of images, and that the same expressions were familiar to them" (Renan, Le Cantique des Cantiques, p. 112, referring to Hitzig, Das Hohelied, pp. 9, 10).

This fact of a northern origin established, it follows almost inevitably that the date of the poem must be placed somewhere in the middle of the tenth century, for it was only during the period from 975 to 924 B.C. that Tirzah occupied the position of northern capital (see Note ad loc.); and the whole tone and spirit of the book, together with its treatment of Solomon, is what we should expect at a time not far removed from the rupture of the two kingdoms. As yet tradition had not exaggerated the splendour of the Solomonic era in the references to Solomon's guard, his harem, and his arsenal, the figures are not extravagant, as in the comparatively late accounts in Kings and Chronicles. A crowd of smaller indications point the same way, e.g., the mention of Heshbon, which had ceased to be an Israelitish town by Isaiah's time (Isa. xv. 8). The mention of the Tower of David, as still possessing a garrison (vii. 4, and iv. 4), the allusion to Pharaoh's equipages have a similar tendency; while it is almost inconceivable that Solomon himself or any author, while that monarch was alive, and his rule all-powerful, could have represented him and his court in such an unfavourable light as they appear in the song. But it is exactly the representation we should look for in a poet of the northern kingdom in the early years after it revolted against the tyranny of the Davidic dynasty.

EXCURSUS II.-ON THE FORM

The dramatic feeling was not altogether strange to the Hebrews, as we see from the Book of Job, the sixty. third chapter of Isaiah, the concluding chapters of Micah, and certain of the Psalms. And there is undoubtedly a great deal of the dramatic element in the Song of Songs." Two characters at least speak, a bride and a bridegroom, and as early as the Alexandrian codex of the LXX.translation the dramatic character was recognised, the words "bride" and "bridegroom” being

AND PURPOSE OF THE POEM.

in many instances prefixed to denote the persons speak. ing. Following out the suggestions thus given by the poem itself, a great many commentators have arranged it as a regular drama, and suppose that it may actually have been put on the stage, but this hypothesis can only be supported by a long succession of other hypotheses. M. Renan, for example, thinks that all the actors must have been present on the stage at once, but always unobservant of what was going on outside their own rôle.

And in fact the almost infinite diversity of conjecture hazarded in support of the dramatic theory and the tremendous liberties taken with the text by its advocates go far to disprove it altogether. But it is not necessary, on the other hand, to have recourse to a theory like Herder's, that the Song is a collection of different lovepoems selected and arranged by Solomon. The pieces have a certain unity of subject and style. This is now generally admitted, but they are so loosely connected that they might easily be detached, and a new arrangement made without altering the sense and purpose. Indeed various suggestions of such alterations have at times been made.

The division we accept gives the following lyrical pieces, which we regard not, strictly speaking, as separate poems, but as stanzas of the same poem, somewhat loosely strung together, and not arranged after any definite artistic method.

The break at the end of II., IV., and XIII. is marked by the formula, "I charge thee," &c.; at the end of III. and VI. by another formula, expressing the return of night, "until the day breaks," &c., properly "until the day cools," i.e., the evening. Similarly the emphatic declaration, "I am my beloved's," &c., which ends the pieces IX. and XII. An abrupt change of situation sometimes indicates the beginning of a new stanza, as at end of I., VI., and XIV., or a question marks a new departure, as at the beginning of V. and XI. Some of the pieces, as indicated by the brackets, are more closely related than others. But in every case, without exception, there is described, or at least implied, under figures transparent enough, the complete union of the wedded pair. In fact each piece has exactly, whether short or long, whether more or less elaborate, the same general character and dénoûment. Each tells from one or other point of view the story of a courtship, ending in the complete and happy union of the lovers. The book is a series of love-poems, written, or supposed to be written, by a husband for or to his own wife, to recall to her, in the midst of their perfect union, the difficulties their love had encountered, the obstacles thrown in its way, its devoted constancy on both sides, and ultimate conquest over every hindrance.

There is a further conjecture which the form of the poem suggests, it is that these love-poems, by whomsoever originally composed, were arranged and adapted for the celebration of marriages, since, as pointed out in the Notes, maidens and young men vie in praising,

these the bridegroom's beauty, those the bride's. But whether arranged for any one particular marriage or to be used at such events generally, there is no indication. The daughters of Jerusalem and the friends of the bridegroom may actually have been introduced to sing these praises, or they may have only been present in fancy; we have no positive indication to guide us. Bossuet is really to be credited with this suggestion, though his division into seven portions to suit a period of seven days, the ordinary duration of an Eastern wedding, is somewhat too arbitrary. His conjecture in its general outline is accepted by Renan as well as by our own scholar Lowth; the former even finds confirmation of the Epithalamium hypothesis in the expression of Jer. vii. 34, and xxv. 10, "the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride." The analogy of modern Eastern weddings is a still stronger confirmation of this conjecture, that the Song was employed as an Epithalamium, if not composed in that character. It also helps to explain what else would seem extravagant in the poem and bordering on the licentious. The manners of many countries allow at weddings a relaxation of the ordinary rules of propriety. It was so in Palestine. "The evening feast was one of boisterous merriment, almost amounting to rioting. There were regular joke-makers; anything however false might be said of the bride, and to make the gravest Rabbi, even the President of the Sanhedrim, sing or dance, seemed a special object of delight" ("Marriage among the Ancient Hebrews," by the Rev. Dr. Edersheim, Bible Educator, Vol. IV., p. 270). In the remarks on the Song of Songs, by Dr. J. J. Wetstein, given by Delitsch in an Appendix to his Commentary, many illustrations of the poem are adduced from modern Bedouin customs, among others, that of the Wasf, or a description of the personal perfections and beauty of the young couple, of which a specimen is actually given, very analogous in character and imagery to vii. 2-6. But it is not only the East which offers analogy. Love and its language are necessarily the same all the world over. Spenser's famous Epithalamium helps us to understand the Song of Solomon.

As to the versification of the Song of Songs, it con tains examples of almost all the different forms of parallelism, the name given to indicate that balance of clause against clause, either in regard to construction or sense, which constitutes the chief element of Hebrew rhythm. But the greater part of it is free even of the very lax rules which seem to have guided the poets of Israel. We may compare them to those irregular measures in which so many modern poets love to express their sweet and wayward fancies, in which the ear alone is the metrical law. Had the Song but the completeness given by rhyme, it would want nothing of the richness of sound of the finest pieces of Tennyson's Maud. (See Bible Educator, Vol. III., p. 48.)

Translated word for word this passage runs as follows:-"Into the garden of nuts I descended to see the verdure of the valley, to see if the vine was shooting, if the pomegranates flourished. I did not know,-my soul,-put me,-chariots of my people-noble. Come back, come back the Shulamite. Come back, come back, in order that we may see thee. What do you see in Shulamite? Like the dance of two camps."

This the LXX. translate:-"Into the garden of nuts

I descended to see among the vegetation of the torrent bed, to see if the vine flourished, if the pomegranate sprouted, there I will give thee my breasts. My soul did not know, the chariots of Amminadab put mereturn, return, Shunamite, return, return, and we will contemplate thee. What will you see in the Shunamite ? She that cometh like choruses of the camps."

The Vulgate does not insert the promise of love, and reads: "and I did not know, my soul troubled me

on account of the four-horsed chariots of Amminadab. Return, return, Shulamite, that we may look at thee. What wilt thou see in the Shulamite; if not the chorus of camps."

A comparison of the above seems to show

(1) That the Hebrew text has not come down to us in its integrity.

(2) That the Greek translators had before their eyes another text.

(3) That neither they nor St. Jerome understood the text which came to them already incomplete.

Yet this impossible passage," the rags of a text irremediably corrupt," has become for many scholars the key to the entire book. The heroine in a moment of bewilderment strays into the midst of a cortége of King Solomon, who instantly falls in love with her; or perhaps into the midst of a detachment of his troops, who capture her for the royal harem, after a comparison of her simple country style of dancing with that of the trained court ladies. This, or some similar device, is resorted to by most of those who construct an elaborate drama out of this series of love-lyrics, the whole structure falling to pieces when we see that on this, the centre, the only passage giving a possible incident on which to hang the rest, no reliance whatever can be placed, since it is so obviously corrupt.

The following are a few of various suggested translations of this piece :

66

My heart led me-I know not how-far from the troop of my noble people. Come back, come back, they

My desire brought me to a chariot, a noble one," &c. 'Suddenly I was seized with fright,—chariots of my people, the Prince!"

we say

As to "the dance of Mahanaim," even if by itself intelligible, as a reference to an old national dance, as "Polonaise," "Scotch dance, or as a dance performed by two choirs or bands (see Note ad loc.) the connection with the context is almost inexplicable. The only suggestion which seems worthy of consideration, connects the words not with what precedes but with what immediately follows. If a word or words leading to the comparison, "like," &c., have dropped out, or if "like a dance of Mahanaim" may be taken as a kind of stage direction, to introduce the choric scene, the passage will become clear in the light thrown on it by the analogy of the modern Syrian marriage customs.

The question, "What do you see in Shulamite?" may be understood as a challenge to the poet to sing the customary "wasf" or eulogy on the bride's beauty, which accordingly follows in the next chapter. But before it began, a dance after the manner of the sword dance that forms at present a customary part of a Syrian wedding, would in due course have to be per formed, and the words "(dance) like the dance of Mahanaim" would be a direction for its performance. See end of Excursus II. on the form of the Poem.