THE JAMES K. MOFFITT FUND. 
 
 LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 JAMES KENNEDY MOFFITT 
 
 OF THE CLASS OF '86. 
 
 Accession No. Class No. 
 
THE SONG OF SONGS, 
 
 COMMONLY CALLED 
 
 THE SONG OF SOLOMON, 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE CANTICLE. 
 
 FROM THE FRENCH OF 
 
 ALBERT REVIL L E, 
 
 
 
 DOCTOR IN THEOLOGY, 
 PASTOR OF THE WALLOON CHURCH OF ROTTERDAM. 
 
 WILLIAMS AND NOKGATE, 
 
 14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON 
 AND 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH. 
 1873. 
 
3- 
 
NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR. 
 
 THE following article which is now, with the permission 
 of the Author, translated into English, first appeared 
 in the Revue de Theologie of Strasbourg (1st Series, 
 Vol. XIV.), and was afterwards published among the 
 collected works of the Author. (See Essais de Critique 
 Religieuse, par Dr. Reville, published by Joel Cherbu- 
 liez, Paris, Nouvelle Edition, 1869.) 
 
 In rendering the poem into English, the words of 
 the ordinary English translation of the Bible have 
 been used as far as applicable. 
 
 109214 
 
ERRATA. 
 
 Pages 1 and 37. For " singing birds " read " songs." 
 Page 6. Note. For " Talmud " read " Targum." 
 Page 29. Note. For " portu " read " hortu." 
 Page 32, lines 8 and 11. For " black " read " brown.' 
 Page 49, line 10. For " cannot " read " can only." 
 
THE SONG OF SONGS, 
 
 i. 
 
 " Rise up, my love, iny fair one, and come away, 
 For lo, the winter is past, 
 The rain is over and gone, 
 The flowers appear on the earth, 
 The time of the singing birds is come, 
 And the voice of the tnrtle is heard in our land." 
 
 SUCH is a song of the spring-time, which a traveller 
 along the western chain of the Lebanon, towards the 
 end of the eighth century before our era, might have 
 heard resounding among the pasturages of these green 
 mountains. If he could foresee the future, and could 
 have contemplated the destinies of the charming idylb 
 of which it forms part, his astonishment would have 
 been great to see it transformed into a theological 
 oracle, and furnishing a favourite theme of meditation 
 to the most austere preachers of distant times. His 
 astonishment would not be less if he could foresee the 
 severity with which it might be treated by a posterity 
 still more remote. 
 
 Nothing can be more extraordinary than the destiny 
 of the book which we propose to study. On the one 
 
 B 
 
 
THE SONG OP SONGS. 
 
 hand, reverenced as a casket of most precious mystical 
 pearls, on the other hand accused of defiling the Bible 
 by its presence ; for some, a pure fountain of holy con- 
 templation, for others a folly and a scandal ; for the. 
 former, a limpid and wholesome spring, at which 
 they might refresh their faith ; for the latter an inex- 
 haustible source of profane mockery ; the book is at 
 once surrounded with the glory of an aureola, and with 
 the contempt of ignominy. Let us trace a sketch of 
 its history. 
 
 It is placed in the canonical list of the sacred books 
 of the Hebrews between Job and Ruth, and, con- 
 sequently makes part of the collection of sacred writ- 
 ings or liacjiograplis which were added to the biblical 
 collection subsequently to the prophetical and histo- 
 rical documents. As its claim to be entered in the 
 canonical list, it may be presumed that it had, by that 
 time, come to be considered as a work of King Solomon, 
 and that its allegorical interpretation as such gave it a 
 religious value to which in its origin it had little pre- 
 text. These two causes operated mutually, and were 
 necessary to each other. Unless the book were 
 ascribed to Solomon, it is not likely that it would 
 ha^e been received into the Canon, and except for its 
 allegorical interpretation at the time when the Canon 
 was fixed, it would not have been ascribed to Solo- 
 mon. 
 
 One thing is certain, that the book soon came to 
 occupy an eminent position in the rabbinical teaching. 
 Jerome informs us that among the Jews it was not 
 
THE SONG OF SO^GS. 
 
 allowed to be read by persons under the age of thirty, 
 not, as we might be inclined to think, on account of its 
 dangers to the juvenile imagination, but on account of 
 the theological profundities which it presented for con- 
 templation, and which required the maturity of age to 
 be adequately appreciated. The beginning of the 
 book of Genesis, and the beginning and end of the 
 book of Ezekiel, were for the same reason objects of 
 the same precautions.* In the Talmud we find the 
 eminent Eabbi Akiba expressing himself in these 
 words : " The whole world is not worth the day 
 " on which the Canticle was given to Israel. All the 
 e ' writings of the Canon are holy, but the Canticle is the 
 <c most holy of holies.' ; f The same rabbi tells us that 
 the only work of Solomon which has caused contro- 
 versy is the Ecclesiastes. 
 
 However, the terms of the assertion of the Rabbi 
 Akiba causes some suspicion that the unanimity as to 
 the Canticle was not so absolute as he alleges, and in 
 fact, in the same Talmudic treatise, we find Eabbi Jose 
 state that the " Ecclesiastes does not defile the hands, 
 " but that the Canticle is the subject of disputes." 
 
 In general, the Canticle when allegorized, becomes 
 too easily the subject of those subtle interpretations to 
 which the rabbinical school was so passionately ad- 
 dicted, in order to maintain prolonged argumentation. 
 In such circumstances, reasons which otherwise would 
 have tended to counteract belief in the Divine inspira- 
 tion of the book, came to corroborate that belief. In 
 
 * IJieron. Op. Pracf. adEzech. f Mischna, Tract, Judaim. iii. 5. 
 
 B 2 
 
THE SONG OF SONGS. 
 
 this way, a principle is formed and developed of which 
 Christian theology has too long undergone the yoke. 
 This principle may be formulated thus : the Bible is 
 not a divine book because the contents of it are divine, 
 but these contents are divine because they are in the 
 Bible. In starting from such a principle, it was im- 
 possible not to allegorize the Canticle, and that result 
 would come to predominate over every other feeling on 
 the part of those who did so. 
 
 We fortunately find in the Jewish literature some 
 traces of the allegorisation of the Canticle. In the 
 book of the Wisdom of Solomon, ch. viii. 2, the 
 author makes King Solomon, speaking of his wisdom, 
 say, " I loved her and sought her out from my youth, 
 " I desired to make her my spouse and I was a lover 
 " of her beauty ;" and at ver. 18, t( I went about seeking 
 " how to take her to me." These words seem an echo 
 of the allegorical interpretation of the Canticle. In 
 that sense, the wisdom should be personified in the 
 Shulamite, of whom King Solomon wished to gain the 
 good graces. This, however, is merely a presumption. 
 It is equally difficult to say what Philo, who certainly 
 did not interpret literally, found in the Canticle. 
 Josephus* ranks it among the last four books of the 
 Jewish Bible, which he designates generally as " con- 
 " taining the praises of God and rules of life for men." 
 That definition implies that the Jewish historian also 
 explained it allegorically. 
 
 It is remarkable that the New-Testament, which so 
 * Cant. Apion. i. 8. 
 
THE SONG OF SONGS. 
 
 frequently quotes the Old Testament, is silent as re- 
 gards the Canticle. I know that this assertion is dis- 
 puted, and that some pretended references are brought 
 forward against it which might as well shew that the 
 writers of the New Testament have quoted Virgil or ' 
 Theocritus. The only passage which, strictly speak- 
 ing, offers any resemblance of the kind, is the descrip- 
 tion in the Epistle to the Ephesians (ch. v. 27) of 
 the Church, considered as the mystic spouse of Christ, 
 " a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any 
 " such thing." There is there some accordance with a 
 passage of the Canticle (ch. iv. 7). But when it is 
 considered with what facility the old Jewish idea, 
 according to which the alliance between God and the 
 chosen nation, was assimilated to a matrimonial con- 
 tract, was adopted by the new Israel as the Church of 
 the redeemed, it is impossible to imagine that there is~^ 
 any intentional resemblance between the two passages. 
 The fact is, that the New Testament has in no way 
 regarded or referred to a book which would have 
 afforded powerful weapons for the time against the 
 unbelieving Jews, if the interpretation which after- 
 wards became traditional in the Christian Church, had 
 then prevailed. It is not necessary to infer from that, 
 as has sometimes been done, that the writers of the 
 New Testament were prejudiced against the book or 
 that they wished it to be forgotten. It is only per- 
 missible to conclude that their feelings, profoundly 
 religious, were not much attracted by its contents. 
 Perhaps also, the traditional Jewish interpretation 
 which prevailed, and which was not then replaced by 
 
THE SONG OP SONGS. 
 
 any parallel Christian interpretation, may have opposed 
 itself indirectly to the use of the Canticle in the interest 
 of the rising Church. 
 
 This Jewish interpretation, perpetuated under some 
 differences of form, all along the traditions of the rab- 
 bins, consisted of regarding the Canticle as a figurative 
 description of the mutual love between Jehovah and 
 the chosen people. It was held to be a prediction of 
 the final deliverance of Israel. We find that point of 
 view developed in the Arainean Hierosolymite version, 
 of which the unknown author lived shortly after the 
 editing of the Talmud.* His interpretation may be 
 considered as the type of all those which followed in 
 the synagogue. It was in some sort refined by Aben 
 Esdra, a Spanish Jew of the 12th century, who drew 
 from it the whole history, past and future, of the Hebrew 
 people, from Abraham downwards, and it was the rab- 
 bins who introduced the variations upon the funda- 
 mental theme. The philosopher Maimonides in his 
 More Nevochim, alone proposed a special interpretation 
 in the interest of his own my stico -pantheistic specula- 
 tions. He holds the mention of kisses at the com- 
 mencement of the book, to be a symbol to express the 
 tendency to unity, of the Creator and of the creature. 
 
 Origen was, for the Christians, that which the Hiero- 
 solymite Targumist had been for the Jews, that is to 
 say, he stereotyped in the Church the interpretation 
 which became traditional. The mutual love between 
 Christ and the Church is the essential datum. Atha- 
 
 * This Talmud is in the Biblia Hebraica of Buxtoflf, printed at Basle? 
 in 1618. 
 
THE SONG OF SOtfGS. 
 
 nasius departs considerably from the traditional type, 
 in seeing in the Canticle a hymn in honour of the 
 incarnation of the Eternal Word, tanquam verbi et 
 carnis epitJialamium. But the point of view of Origen 
 continued to be master of the situation. However, 
 Theodoret (5th century), an ardent defender of the 
 allegorical interpretation of the poem, makes known to 
 us several partisans of the literal interpretation. In 
 the first rank of them shines Theodore of Mopsjiestia^ 
 whose resistance to the general opinion upon the Can- 
 ticle, in which he saw nothing but descriptions of 
 sensual love, drew upon him the condemnation of being 
 a leader of heresy. 
 
 In the middle ages, the Canticle was a favourite 
 book of the mystics. Bernard of Clairvaux and Bona- 
 venture delighted in it. Remaining faithful to the 
 general views of Origen, they introduced the new ele- 
 ment of making it express the individual relations of 
 the believer with Christ. It is no more limited to 
 those of the Church with its Divine Head. Bernard 
 justifies this by the principle that that which the whole 
 possess, fully and integrally, the individuals have in 
 part. The Abbot of Clairvaux composed eighty-six 
 sermons on the Canticle. The most orthodox preacher 
 of the present time could scarcely venture to do more. 
 
 Shortly before the Eeformation, Nicolas de la Lyre 
 attempted to reconcile the Jewish interpretation with 
 the Christian, by dividing the book into two parts, and 
 in assigning for the subject of the first the history of 
 Israel until the time of Jesus Christ, and for the second 
 
8 THE SONG OP SONGS. 
 
 the history of the Church until the time of Con- 
 stantine. 
 
 Luther, who detested allegory, and who dared not 
 revert to the heretical view of Theodore of Mopsuestia, 
 tried to clear a way for himself. But he could not 
 prevent himself from lapsing into allegory. The Can- 
 ticle was, according to him, a song of praises where 
 Solomon thanked God for the gracious gift of the obe- 
 dience of the people. It may be permitted to enquire 
 if the excellent doctor was himself very well satisfied 
 with his explanation. On that point, it suffices to see 
 how he expresses himself, in his Latin Commentary, 
 after having combated the allegorists : " See then," 
 says he, "in what manner I understand that book 
 " touching the government of Solomon. If I deceive 
 " myself, it is necessary to excuse a first attempt, for 
 ' e the ideas of others are still very much more absurd."* 
 That essay of Luther can never have any visible result 
 upon general opinion. 
 
 In the Eeformed Church the old interpretation was 
 rigorously maintained, and in 1 544, the Great Council 
 of Geneva banished from the territory of the republic 
 Sebast. Castalio (Chatillon), who had proposed, on his 
 side, to banish from the Bible that curious book in 
 which he could see nothing but a " conversation of 
 " Solomon with a certain loving Shulamite."t 
 
 In the Eomish Church the allegorical interpretation 
 also preponderates, and the only phenomenon worthy of 
 
 * Nam aliorum coyitationes longe plit dbsurditatis lidbent. 
 t Colloquium Salomonis cum arnica quadarn Sularniiha. 
 
THE SONG OF SONGS. 
 
 remark, is that, very quietly, the Virgin Mary is sub- 
 stituted for the Church, under the traits of the be- 
 trothed of the Canticle. 
 
 It is among the doctrines of Arminianism, that the 
 first attempts of Protestant theology to obtain an his- 
 torical and rational interpretation have arisen. Grotius* 
 absolutely rejects all the allegories as untenable, and 
 can see nothing more in the Canticle of Solomon, 
 than a pleasant conjugal conversation, a gamtus con- 
 jugum inter se, intermingled with songs. " The mys- 
 e ' teries of marriage," says he, " are there disguised 
 " under the pleasant envelope of language."t I n n ^ s 
 view the spouses were Solomon and the daughter of 
 the King of Egypt, according to the first book of 
 Kings, ch. iii. 1. The choirs were composed, pro- 
 bably, of young people attending near the nuptial 
 chamber. The interpretation of Grotius may contain 
 some gleams of truth, but in other respects it is detest- 
 able. The time when he lived, and the theological 
 party of which he is the most illustrious representative, 
 were altogether incapable of appreciating the poetic 
 value and moral aspect of the book. In order to do 
 so his time and his party would have required more 
 elasticity of imagination, more aptitude to appropriate 
 the ideas and manners of races which have long since 
 disappeared, and more apprehension of the nature of 
 popular poesy. In other words, they would have 
 required that sense of antiquity which we have else- 
 
 * In his Annotations in Vet Testament. 
 
 f Nu/ptiarum arcana sub Iwnestis vcrlorum involucris hie latent. 
 
10 THE SONG OF SONGS. 
 
 where shewn to belong peculiarly to our own epoch. 
 In fact, Grotius, in his explanations, renders the book 
 more immoral than it is, and it is a remarkable spec- 
 tacle to see that grave personage discover indecencies 
 in the whole of it, and gross obscenities in texts 
 which are perfectly innocent. He goes so far that wo 
 are unwilling to transcribe, even in Latin, the passages 
 which justify the severity of our judgment. Grotius 
 contributed, to a great extent, to confirm the reasoning 
 which so long maintained the allegorical interpretation, 
 after having given rise to it. The Canticle interpreted 
 literally is immoral. If so, there is then an immoral 
 book in the Bible. Such a conclusion is impious. It 
 is therefore necessary, if its literal interpretation be 
 immoral, to interpret it allegorically. The Voltairian 
 unbelief was enchanted at coming into contact with 
 such a delightful confusion of reasoning. It was in a 
 great measure owing to the unsatisfactory impression 
 produced by the explanation of Grotius, that J. Cocceius, 
 the great Protestant allegorist, owed the success of 
 his Commentary, where, going beyond the previous 
 allegories, he transforms the Canticle into an Apoca- 
 lypse, finding in it the entire history of the Church, 
 from its origin till the final judgment, and finding, in 
 the end of the seventh chapter, a prediction of the Re- 
 formation. That work, the author of which mentions 
 that he was guided in his divinations by the Holy 
 Spirit, agreed so well with the opinions of the epoch 
 at which it was produced, an epoch at which ortho- 
 doxy, arrived at its apogee, regarded with instinctive 
 
THE SONG OP SONGS. 11 
 
 mistrust the appearance of anything like criticism 
 that notwithstanding the controversies, then very ani- 
 mated, between the Lutherans and other Reformers, 
 the views of Cocceius were adopted in both camps. 
 About the end of the 17th century, Heunich, the Lu- 
 theran writer, known by his apocalyptic calculations, 
 naturalized the^e views in his Church. 
 
 In the first half of the 18th century, Leclerc, who 
 was an Arminian, like Grotius, and who was a worthy 
 successor to him, as regards both his extensive learn- 
 ing and his aesthetic incapacity, saw in the Canticle an 
 idyll altogether terrestrial, in which Solomon disguised 
 as a shepherd (!) amuses himself with one of his wives 
 or concubines, perhaps the daughter of Pharaoh. He 
 had for his principal antagonist, against these views, 
 P. G. Carpsovius,* who was obliged to urge, in support 
 of the traditional explanation of the book, " the espousal 
 " of Christ with the Church and the redeemed." But 
 the flow of opinion was no longer so favourable to that 
 view as at the time of Cocceius. Michaelis delivered a 
 great blow against the traditional interpretation^ in 
 declaring himself opposed to it, and he was the first 
 who propounded the true view that the book, inter- 
 preted naturally, was far from deserving its evil repu- 
 tation, since the love it depicted was " chaste conjugal 
 " love." J. C. Jacobi, a clergyman of Celle, in 1771, 
 took a decided part on behalf of the morality of the 
 Canticle, and although he was sufficiently unfortunate 
 
 * Introd. ad libros Canon. N. et V. Testam. 1757. 
 f In his Fraelectiones de sacra pocsi Jlc^rcto 
 
 T 
 
 OF THE 
 
12 THE SONG OF SONGS. 
 
 in the romance which he invented, in order to explain 
 it, he discovered many points which modern researches 
 have subsequently confirmed. For example, he de- 
 monstrated that Solomon could not be the author of a 
 book in which he played a part very little flattering to 
 his own self-esteem, and he also said that the book 
 treated of a chaste affection, which the king attempted 
 to divert from its legitimate object.* That work made 
 some sensation, since the learned jurist Puffendorf took 
 in hand to controvert it,f and to sustain the typical 
 interpretation so much endangered. He believed him- 
 self able to strengthen that interpretation by invoking 
 a pretended hieroglyphic tongue borrowed by Solomon 
 from Egypt, and serving as an envelope to the esoteric 
 doctrines of the Israelitish king. That was another 
 romance. 
 
 Herder, who, of all the writers of the 18th century, 
 best understood the poetry of the Bible, came, at 
 length, to put in view the admirable beauty of a book 
 so long obscured by empty divinations on the one 
 hand, and unsuitable explanations on the other. He 
 developed his ideas on the Canticle in his book, Lieder 
 der Liebe, die aeltesten und schoensten aus den; Morgen- 
 lande, 1778. He, at least, felt how much there was of 
 real and ingenuous chastity in those descriptions, of 
 which it was maintained that the literal sense polluted 
 the Bible. Although Herder may be completely mis- 
 taken in regard to the composition of the Canticle, of 
 
 * Das von semen Worwiirfen gerettete Hohelied, 1771. 
 t Unschreibung des Hohenliedes, 1776. 
 
THE SONG OP SONGS. 13 
 
 which he does not perceive the unity, and although he 
 divides it, as Richard Simon does, into several dis- 
 tinct idyllic songs, he has the merit of raising the 
 views of the interpreters who came after him to the 
 proper elevation of sentiment, without which it is im- 
 possible to understand such a book. 
 
 The German critics, since the commencement of the 
 present century, have followed Herder in the views put 
 forward by him, but unequally and with infinitely less 
 aesthetic tact. The rationalistic school has more than 
 once relapsed into platitude, in the moralities which they 
 have sought to draw from the Canticle. However, the 
 allegorical interpretation was altogether fallen into dis- 
 use, even among the orthodox ranks, and it caused great 
 surprise to see Rosenmuller attempt to revive it. He 
 supported his views upon th.0 recent discovery of seve- 
 ral Indian and Persian productions, of which the sense 
 was allegorical, and which presented certain analogies 
 with the Hebrew Canticle. But he forgot to enquire 
 whether or not the allegory was not, for them as for it, 
 an arbitrary explanation. 
 
 The Roman Catholic theologian Hug* also allegorises 
 the Canticle, but in a manner entirely novel. Accord- 
 ing to him it treats of the ten tribes personified in the 
 Shulamite, and of King Hezekiah, represented by 
 Solomon. Israel, upon the ruins of Samaria > sighs 
 after her re-union with Judah, and King Hezekiah 
 desires to accomplish it. This is one of those numerous 
 
 * Das Hohelied, 1813. 
 
14 THE SONG OP SONGS. 
 
 attempts at intermediate criticism, of which the worthy 
 professor of Friburg was so affluent, and by means of 
 which he hoped to fill up the continually increasing 
 abyss between independent science and the traditions 
 of his Church. Resumed by Kaiser in 1835, that hypo- 
 thesis soon succumbed under the innumerable objec- 
 tions which it provoked. 
 
 We come at length to the works which have given 
 to modern science the natural explanation, and which 
 have impressed themselves, by their own evidence, upon 
 all unprejudiced minds. Ammon, in 1 780, had sur- 
 mised the truth, but, since his time, two writers of 
 very different tendencies from him, have brought it 
 fully to light. M. Uinbreit, whose orthodox reputation 
 ought to free him from any imputation of heresy,* and 
 M. Ewald, the most learned man of our time in the 
 history of the Hebrew people,t have concurred in 
 recognizing the unity of the composition of the book, 
 and the irrefutable characteristics of a dialogue, imply- 
 ing a history, which can be reconstructed according to 
 the indications which are given. There was therefore 
 a dramatic element in the poem, and it was not impos- 
 sible to re-establish its sense and action by judicious 
 interpretation. That idea, received at first with some 
 disfavour, at length made way, and has now obtained 
 almost a unanimity of competent suffrages. M. M. 
 
 * Lied der Liebe das acltcste und schoenste aus dem Morgcnlande. 
 Goettingen, 1820. 
 f Erkloerung dcs Ilohcnlicdes, 1826. 
 
THE SONG OP SONGS. 15 
 
 Boettger,* Loszner,f Hirzel,J and more recently 
 M. M. E, Meier of Tubingen, and Hitzig|| of Zurich, 
 have adopted, confirmed, and developed it. In Holland 
 it has obtained the assent of two distinguished theolo- 
 gians, M. M. Veth and Hoekstra, and we may add, 
 from personal knowledge, that of the learned professor 
 of Leyden, M. Kuenen. M. Veth, Professor of Oriental 
 languages at Amsterdam, has consecrated to the Can- 
 ticle an excellent article in the Bybelsh Woerdenboek 
 {published at Amsterdam since 1852), a sort of expla- 
 natory encyclopaedia of the Bible, to which contribu- 
 tions have been made by a great number of learned 
 Dutchmen. M. Hoekstra, Professor at the Baptist 
 seminary in the same city, has made the book the sub- 
 ject of a very elaborate work, which was first inserted 
 in the Jadrboekm voor wetensclia/p, Theologie, (Utrecht, 
 1855, pp. 323-468), and which has since been separately 
 published.^]" This work, which is recommended by the 
 scrupulous care of its details, and the philological 
 erudition of its country, equally corroborates the inter- 
 pretation which we propose to submit to the judgment 
 of our readers. We have also been surprised and 
 gratified to find it equally adopted by the authors of 
 a colossal English Introduction to the Books of 
 
 * Exegetisch-kritische, JEhrenlese. Leipsic, 1849. 
 t German translation of Canticle, Salomo und Sulamith, 1851. 
 $ Das Lied der Lieder. Zurich, 1840. 
 
 Das Hohelied, Tubingen, 1854, and in the Geschichte tier poet. 
 National-Literatur der Hebraer. Liepsic, 1856. 
 || Das Hohelied erkloert, 1 855. 
 ^f De triumph der Liefde in alle Beprocving. Utrecht, 1856. 
 
16 THE SONG OF SONGS. 
 
 the Bible, which appeared in 1856, in four large 
 volumes.* It may be said of these results of inde- 
 pendent criticism of this book, as of the interpreta- 
 tion now fixed for the Apocalypse, that to demonstrate 
 it, it is sufficient to state it. 
 
 As might be expected, the re-actionary school, of 
 which M. Hengstenberg has long been the leading 
 oracle, has made numerous attempts to repel an ex- 
 planation which, in absolving the Canticle from the 
 accusations of irreligious unbelief, is incompatible 
 with the idea of a Bible dictated throughout, from 
 beginning to end, by the Holy Spirit. But their 
 efforts have merely gone to shew their position to be 
 untenable. Whilst M. Hengstenberg, followed by 
 M. M. Keil and 0. de Gerlach, replace in honour the 
 old allegory of Christ and of the Church (1827 and 
 1853), one M. Golz, returns to the theory of Cocceius, 
 and transforms the Canticle into an. apocalypse, in 
 which the Church can read her final destinies. It is 
 unnecessary to add, that he finds in it clear and cer- 
 tain signs of the approaching end of the world, f 
 Such is always the result of apocalyptic calculations. 
 In the ranks of the reaction, M. Delitzsch is the writer 
 who has made the greatest concession to independent 
 criticism, but he has endeavoured to withdraw himself 
 
 * Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy 
 Scriptures, by the Rev. T. Hartwell Home, revised and brought down to 
 the present time by the Rev. Hartwell Home, Rev. Samuel Davidson, 
 and S. P. Tregelles. London, 1856. 
 
 f Hohelied Salomons, 1850. 
 
THE SONG OF SONGS. 17 
 
 from the natural consequences of his concessions, by 
 offering an explanation peculiar to himself.* Keject- 
 ing as untenable the traditional allegory, recognizing 
 the unity, and even the dramatic character of the 
 poem, he maintains that Solomon, in the Canticle, has 
 simply intended to depict the mysteries of marriage in 
 their most exclusive and endearing relations. But if 
 the King of Israel thought and spoke licentiously, the 
 Holy Spirit may have wished that in these erotic 
 poems the people of God, returned from captivity, 
 and the Church in her mystical communion with 
 Christ, should find in later times, their holy aspira- 
 tions retraced. For the natural marriage is in itself 
 mysterious and a type of communion with God. It 
 may be said, without fear, that such an explanation 
 as this is equivalent to an avowal of defeat. It is 
 true, then, that in itself, and in the mind of its 
 author, the subjects of the Canticle are terrestrial. 
 It is true then, that in order to interpret it, it is neces- 
 sary to disengage the mind of all allegorical prepos- 
 sessions. That being settled, it remains for con- 
 sideration whether or not a biblical book, or any other 
 book, can be meant to say any other thing than that 
 which it says. We may mention, in the last place, 
 the equally unfortunate attempt of H. A. Hahn,f who 
 sees in the Canticle a prediction of the victory ob- 
 tained over the heathen, by the love of Israel, and 
 who finds the conversion of the negroes, in what is 
 
 * Das Hohelied untersucht und ausgelegt, 1851. 
 t Das Hohelied von Salomo, 1852. 
 
 C 
 
18 THE SONG OP SONGS. 
 
 said of the " little sister" of the Shulamite, in cli. viii. 
 8. Such an example of these extravagances, de- 
 monstrates better than anything else how far the tra- 
 ditional view is untenable. 
 
 We do not stop to refute it. Perhaps too many of 
 its partizans have never taken the trouble to examine 
 in detail, the consequences which follow from any 
 attempt to apply it to the text of the book. They 
 have too readily said that it depicts in a figurative 
 manner the mystical union of Christ and of the Church. 
 But when one puts himself in that view to follow the 
 text, word by word, he must be singularly embarrassed. 
 There are some passages which are perfectly opposed 
 to it. It would be easy to excite a smile by giving 
 some specimens of the ridiculous interpretations to 
 which such a system would lead. We renounce wil- 
 lingly any success of this kind. We content ourselves, 
 in all confidence, with such reasoning as may apply to 
 our religious and moral sense. 
 
 The motive which has led, and continues to lead 
 religious people to allegorise the Canticle, is simply 
 that if it be necessary to ascribe to it its natural signi- 
 fication, there would be an immoral book in the Bible. 
 If so, it would be necessary to admit that the Holy 
 Spirit of God employs an immoral medium to address 
 our souls ! to express the purest emotions ! to incar- 
 nate in us the most august mysteries ! We recoil 
 in horror from such a consequence. 
 
 I hasten now to add that the Canticle, interpreted 
 naturally, can not lend itself in the least degree to 
 
SONG OF SONGS. 19 
 
 allegory, but, on the other hand, it is very far from 
 constituting an immoral book in its general concep- 
 tion. If, as regards our modern manners, it inevitably 
 contains some indelicate passages, that is an incon- 
 venience which is unavoidable, in putting ourselves 
 into community of ideas with Oriental antiquity ; but, 
 making this allowance, the fundamental intention of the 
 poem is profoundly moral and beautiful. Would to 
 God that the great part of our popular poetry on the 
 same passion might contain the same teaching. 
 
 II. 
 
 We hope that we shall not be misunderstood in 
 regard to the kind of evidence which we bring forward 
 in favour of the interpretation which we are about to 
 propound. That interpretation is not intended to be 
 an illumination a giorno of the entire book, throwing 
 light upon the most minute details. All who have 
 studied the literature of antiquity know well that they 
 may be able to perceive perfectly the general cha- 
 racteristics and principal ideas of a book, without 
 being able to unravel all the obscurities. The general 
 perspective, under which the poem should be con- 
 sidered, we believe to be certain, and that is the only 
 conviction which we seek to impress. It is for that 
 reason that we do not impose on our readers any dis- 
 cussions which might divert their attention. Those 
 among them who may wish to know the details can 
 
 c 2 
 
20 THE SONG OP SONGS. 
 
 find ample exposition of them in the works which we 
 have cited. The work which we now submit to them, 
 as we humbly avow, is an eclectic production, and 
 owes its whole merit, if it has merit, to the views of 
 others. It is not but here and there that we have fol- 
 lowed our own course, but we attach so much the less 
 importance to these independent excursions, that, 
 after each of them, we always return to the road which 
 has been already cleared for us by numerous and able 
 pioneers. 
 
 The Song of Songs is a lyrical and pastoral poem, 
 containing dramatic action, and having for its subject 
 the victory of chaste and faithful love over the seduc- 
 tions of a king, whose passion, without being precisely 
 illegitimate in the age and country into which it carries 
 us, has nevertheless licentiousness for its motive. This 
 is the story which the poem discloses throughout. If 
 astonishment or doubt be excited by this view, we 
 pray the reader to suspend his judgment until after the 
 perusal of the references we are immediately about to 
 make to the book itself. 
 
 King Solomon^ whose pomp-loving and polygamous 
 tastes are well known, finds himself in the tribe of 
 Issachar at Baal-hamon, not far from Carmel, (chap, 
 viii. 11.) and in the neighbourhood of a village of which 
 the name is written Shunem,* but which the people 
 commonly call Sulem or Sulam. There is still pointed 
 out to travellers a hamlet situated about the same place 
 which the Arabs name Solam.f It was there that they 
 
 * Josh. xix. 18. 1 Sam. xxviii. 4. 2 Kings iv. 8. 
 t Robinson's Palestine, iii. p. 402. 
 
THE SONG OF SONOS. 21 
 
 went to seek the fair damsel Abishag,* whose radiant 
 youth cherished the last days of David " when he was 
 " well stricken in years, and gat no heat/' That 
 country appears to have been renowned then for the 
 beauty of its women. It is, accordingly, a young and 
 fair Shulamite, who, without being aware, went alone 
 too near to the Royal encampment, and whom the 
 attendants of Solomon carried off and brought to him 
 as worthy to enter his harem. But the girl had 
 been betrothed by her mother to a shepherd in the 
 neighbourhood, and the warm affection of both of 
 them accompanied their engagement. Solomon became 
 strongly enamoured of the fair peasant, but all his 
 attempts to seduce her from her fidelity to her be- 
 trothed were foiled. It is in vain, that, in order to 
 induce her to espouse him, he addresses to her the 
 most flattering compliments, in vain that he displays 
 before her all the magnificence of his Court, in vain 
 even that he offers her the first place among his 
 numerous wives. The girl remains firm, and, in 
 a series of songs, which respond to the advances 
 of the King, she finishes by convincing him of their 
 inutility. It is in the contest between the fidelity 
 which is inspired by true love and the allurements of 
 flattered vanity, that the interest of the drama con- 
 sists. We learn little by little, in listening to the 
 songs of the Shulamite, to know her story and her 
 feelings, as well as the circumstances which preceded 
 her being carried away. On a spring day, early in 
 * 1 Kings i. 3-15. 
 
22 THE SONG OP SONGS. 
 
 the morning, her betrothed had come to her and 
 engaged her to go out with him, that they might 
 enjoy together the flowers and the perfumes and the 
 singing of the birds, (chap. ii. 8-14). But her 
 brothers, who, on two occasions in the poem, appear as 
 the stern guardians of the honour of the family,* and 
 seem to take the place of their deceased father, do not 
 approve of that kind of useless promenade, and ordered 
 their sister to go and watch the vineyard with the 
 other people of the house. This results from the com- 
 parison of chap. i. 5, with chap. ii. 1 5. 
 Chase us the foxes, 
 The little foxes, 
 That spoil the vineyards, &c. 
 
 Separated from her lover, the girl thinks of the 
 time when she shall be re- united to him, and, occu- 
 pied with her thoughts, leaves the vineyard and 
 ventures beyond it, (ch. ii. 16, and ch. vi. 11, 12). It 
 was then that she was carried away. Almost all the 
 songs of the Shulamite are dedicated to describe the 
 ceaseless and unalterable firmness of the love which 
 she and her betrothed have vowed to each other. At 
 the same time, she takes care to make the daughters 
 of Jerusalem, who hear her and put occasional ques- 
 tions to her, understand that her love, which is so 
 ardent, is free from all reproach. At a given moment 
 (ch. iii. 6) the place of the scene changes, and we are 
 brought to Jerusalem, where we assist at the trium- 
 phal cortege of Solomon, who wishes to celebrate his 
 * Comp. Genesis, ch. xxxiv. 
 
THE SONG OF SONGS. 23 
 
 espousals with his new favourite. For he did not yet 
 despair of obtaining her good graces. But, as we have 
 already mentioned, his solicitations were useless, and 
 tired of his efforts, he sent back the girl to her rela- 
 tions and her betrothed, and we find her, at the end 
 of the poem, enjoying the merited felicity of her chaste 
 victory. Solomon, even although not viewed according 
 to the ideas of modern civilization, does not perform a 
 very distinguished part in all this. However, his final 
 decision is an act of wisdom, and perhaps also of good 
 policy in regard to a country which, like the North 
 of Palestine, might not have supported indefinitely the 
 excesses of despotism. 
 
 The fundamental idea of the poem is then that which 
 is expresed by the heroine herself, (ch. viii. 6, &c) : 
 
 Love is strong as death, 
 
 Jealousy is cruel as the grave, 
 (or, ardent affection is unyielding as the grave), 
 
 The flames thereof are flames of fire, 
 
 Of the lightnings of Jehovah. 
 
 We find the same idea in several places, in the course 
 of the book, formulated in the conjuration, or sort of 
 refrain, which the Shulamite addresses to the daugh- 
 ters of Jerusalem, who exhort her to accept the offers 
 of the King 
 
 I conjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, 
 By the roes, and by the hinds of the field, 
 That ye stir not up, nor provoke love, 
 Before the heart so inclines. 
 
24 THE SONG OF SONGS. 
 
 We have spoken of the lyrical and dramatic elements 
 which mingle in the poem. In reality the Canticle is, 
 at the same time, a song and a drama, and one of 
 the questions raised by the contemporary interpreters, 
 who have recognized the general sense of the book, is 
 to know in which category it should be ranked. It 
 seems to us that the two opinions, those which refuse 
 to recognize it as a drama, and those which maintain it 
 to be one, have each a part of the truth. If, by a drama 
 is to be understood action represented according to 
 the recognized laws of the Greek or modern drama, 
 evidently the Canticle is not a drama. Occasionally, 
 and in the same scene, unity of place is observed, as 
 in the old engravings, where, in the foreground, Joseph 
 explains to the chief baker his sinister dream, and 
 in the distance he is, at the same time, already seen 
 hung on the gallows. But it cannot be denied that 
 the dialogue describes a contest of sentiment and 
 passions, that it refers to facts which lead to that 
 contest, and that it terminates in a real denouement. 
 On the one hand, the Canticle can very well be sung 
 by a single voice, as our popular ballads, in which so 
 frequently several persons are made to speak, without 
 their entering or leaving being marked otherwise than 
 by the sense of the words. On the other hand, through 
 the complaisance of imagination, which children and 
 childish people put willingly at the service of what- 
 ever amuses them, the Canticle can very well be 
 held as its own performance. In a word, the Can- 
 ticle holds the place between the minstrel's lay, and 
 
THE SONG OF SONGS. 25 
 
 the mystery of the middle ages, and if we express, 
 at all hazards, the modern genus which it resembles 
 most, we would indicate the opera. Is an opera ex- 
 clusively a drama? Does it not also enter the field 
 of lyric poetry, and sacrifice every instant the essen- 
 tial conditions of the drama to the exigencies of the 
 song? Well! the lay of the Hebrew troubadour is 
 found in analogous conditions, he sings a dialogue 
 containing dramatic action. 
 
 This idea of its being a drama has brought against 
 the modern explanation of the Canticle, its most able 
 adversaries. It was formerly admitted, without dis- 
 pute, that all dramatic forms were foreign to the 
 Hebrew mind. This view was maintained from the 
 complete absence, from the literature of the Bible, of 
 the traces of any drama whatever, and this absence 
 was ascribed to the innate estrangement of the Semitic 
 races from everything of the nature of plastic art. 
 Now, the drama may be called the plastic art 
 of literature. The narrative and its teaching, or the 
 moral in the drama, take a visible shape, and become, 
 as it were, graven images. The Hebrew sings, teaches, 
 prays in his poems, but he does not represent; the 
 lyrical and didactic genius, the spontaneous descrip- 
 tion of sentiment which impels the poet, or doctrine 
 presented under a poetic clothing, which renders it 
 more impressive and popular, such are the forms 
 natural to that people, to which we owe the Psalms, 
 the heroic songs, the prophecies, the book of Job, the 
 Proverbs, but which has left neither epopee nor dramas. 
 
26 THE SONG OF SONGS. 
 
 Otherwise, the members of the Semitic races cannot 
 divest themselves of their individuality, to identify 
 themselves with passions which are not their own, and 
 that is evidently the fundamental condition of dra- 
 matic composition. 
 
 All these remarks were very ingenious. I even 
 believe that to a considerable extent they are founded 
 on the truth. But what then ? If the Canticle, with- 
 out being a drama in all the force of the term, contains 
 very real dramatic elements, is it not necessary that 
 theory yield to fact, and to admit that the Semitic 
 mind is not so entirely opposed to the drama as they 
 would wish to make it ? 
 
 Is it legitimate to deduce consequences so abso- 
 lute from the general character of a race or of a 
 people ? The French do not possess the genius of 
 epic poetry, but does it follow that their literature 
 has never produced anything resembling an epopee ? 
 Speaking generally, the theories of history, which are 
 now made so successfully, upon natural tendencies, 
 must involve occasional exceptions to their absolute 
 truth. Thus, the Semitic races are undoubtedly mono- 
 theistic in their general tendency, and yet both idolatry 
 and polytheism have been very frequent; among them. 
 How., then, do we still maintain the tendency of the 
 Semitic races to be monotheistic ? We do so because 
 the monotheism of the world is their work ; it is by 
 that they have made their position in history, it is by 
 that their illustrious men have been distinguished. 
 The Semitic races are monotheistic in the same sense 
 
TfiE SONG OP SONGS. 27 
 
 as the Greek races are artistic. Yet the latter included 
 the brutish Spartans and the clownish Boetians. In 
 the same way the Semitic Canaanites and Babylonians 
 participated in the most hideous religions of the 
 ancient world. But the fact that a race or a people 
 have a general tendency is no proof that circumstances 
 at variance with such a tendency may not be occasion- 
 ally found in their history. 
 
 I say then, that while I accord to historians all that 
 they put forward in regard to the aversion to dramatic 
 conception in the Hebrew mind, I reserve the right, 
 nevertheless, to establish exceptions to that general rule, 
 when facts constrain me to do so. Is it however quite 
 certain that that aversion was so profound ? Is not 
 symbolism, going sometimes even the length of mi- 
 micry, indigenous with the Semitic races ? Does it 
 not occasionally furnish to the prophets, the elite of 
 these races, some forms of strange energy and re- 
 markable frequency ? Is the interval wide between 
 developed symbolism, and the drama ? Cannot it be 
 said that there are dramatic elements in the book of 
 Job ? Even if the drama were completely foreign to 
 the scope of the Hebrew mind, and if it were difficult 
 to conceive the composition of the Canticle in the king- 
 dom of Judah, there may not be the same difficulty in 
 regard to a remote fraction of the people of Israel, 
 placed beyond the circumference of the Hebraic circle. 
 Now the Canticle, as we shall afterwards see, belongs 
 in its origin to the north of Palestine, to a district 
 in frequent contact with the caravans from Tyre, and 
 
28 THE SONG OP SONGS. 
 
 where the pure Hebrew type might probably begin to 
 lose its more rigid characteristics. 
 
 It remains to make very large allowance for the pro- 
 found differences of manners, of time, and of place. 
 If the Canticle involves the idea of the drama, it no- 
 where does that of the theatre ; and some of its modern 
 interpreters have prejudiced their explanations, by 
 attempting to adapt it to our dramatic divisions of 
 acts and scenes. I can easily picture to my mind the 
 Canticle sung among the village population of an 
 oriental scene and climate, assembled in the evening 
 near one of their fountains, to refresh and amuse them- 
 selves. Two or three sweet voices to sing the princi 
 pal parts, a choir to give the answers, and easily able 
 to perform several parts successively (without counting 
 that of spectators), was all that was necessary to its 
 representation, if it was represented, as to which I 
 make no assertion. I may add, however, that the 
 Canticle might have some relation to the Asamer, or 
 songs intermingled with dances, which Burckhardt has 
 heard among the Bedouins of Mount Sinai. It is in 
 the evenings that the young people of the tribe gather 
 together for these diversions.* It is necessary to re- 
 member that the customs of the Arabs allow much more 
 freedom to women than those of the Turks or Persians. 
 In this respect, as in many others, they approach much 
 more nearly to those of the Hebrews. 
 
 " 
 
 i- 
 
 * That is the opinion of M. E. Meier (Gesch. der nat. poet. Lit. der 
 Hebraer, p. 73 ct scq.), and we find in the Canticle itself several traits 
 which confirm it. 
 
THE SONG OF SONGS. 
 
 In order to appreciate the poetry of the Canticle it 
 is necessary to keep in view that we must expect to 
 find in it a sort of imagery which, to modern European 
 taste, must appear extremely strange and unsuitable. 
 It is every where full of comparisons which justify this 
 assertion. The characteristic of its figurative language 
 is that the image borrows its application, much less 
 from any external resemblance in form or colour of the 
 objects compared, than from the analogy of the sub- 
 jective impressions caused by these objects. Thus, 
 the nose of the Shulamite is compared to the " Tower 
 " of Lebanon which looketh towards Damascus." That 
 comparison, so strange to us, has for its medium the 
 sentiment of its subject being gracefully placed in 
 the midst of objects agreeable to the view. In the 
 same manner, the Shulamite compares the lips of her 
 lover to lilies.* Another local characteristic of the 
 poetic language is, that the points of comparison the 
 most appreciated, relate to the objects which were held 
 in the highest estimation, according to the tastes and 
 manners of the country. The fresh and sparkling 
 
 This kind of comparison, especially in erotic poetry, would have 
 been less surprising to the Western Greek and Roman than to us. 
 M. Hoekstra has found, in Ovid and Anacreon, various passages re- 
 sembling those of the Canticle. The former, for example, addresses to 
 Galatea such compliments as these : ' Riguo formosior portu, platano 
 conspectior alba, nobilior pomis, matura dulcior uva" $c. There is an 
 almost incredible comparison of a young girl, who is complimented, to 
 a horse (1. 9), which we also find in Theocritus, xviii. 30. 
 
 TJ ap/iari QtffaaXog ITTTTOQ 
 
 tva ActKidaipovi icoafiof. 
 
30 THE SONG OF SONGS. 
 
 rills, the precious stones, and above all the perfumes, 
 a source of physical enjoyment to which the Orientals 
 are certainly more sensible than we are present them- 
 selves every moment to the imagination of the popular 
 singer. Besides this, it should not occasion surprise, 
 if the responses of the interlocutors are rarely direct, 
 and leave their real meaning rather to be implied 
 than expressed positively. This, again, is altogether 
 characteristic of the East, and of a country where they 
 answer the most pressing questions by a similitude or 
 an enigma. 
 
 We hope, from what we have stated, to have suffi- 
 ciently prepared our readers for what is to follow. They 
 ought to appreciate the degree of evidence and the 
 nature of the difficulties of which the version we 
 proceed to give is susceptible. Supposing that the 
 words of a modern opera were to come into the hands 
 of a very remote posterity, to whom our language shall 
 be a dead one, and that nothing should distinctly indi- 
 cate to the readers of that period, the division of the 
 scenes, and the succession of the personages, any one 
 who might attempt, from the indications furnished by 
 the words so preserved, to re-establish the primitive 
 divisions, would have a task similar to that which we 
 have tried to accomplish. So far, it would be easy to 
 him, if certain that it was a dialogue he had before him, 
 to design, with some assurance, the fundamental idea, 
 and the principal elements of the action, so far he might 
 get beyond mental hesitation, as to the soundness of 
 the division which he might so re-establish, but while 
 
THE SONG OF SONGS. 31 
 
 the evidence might sustain the general result there 
 might perhaps remain great obscurity on many points 
 of detail. 
 
 III. 
 
 We repeat that it would be contrary to the spirit of 
 the time and of the poem to apply our dramatic divi- 
 sions to it. But there are in it some scenes, some 
 tableaux, which arise successively in the imagination of 
 the poet, and we use them as a natural and easy mode 
 of dividing the poem. 
 
 Scene I. On the occasion at which the song com- 
 mences, the Shulamite is brought into the midst of a 
 group of women of the harem, who have been desired 
 to influence her in favour of the advances of Solomon, 
 Her own thoughts are occupied entirely with her love 
 for her betrothed, whom she calls for in vain. She 
 speaks to him as if he was present, her whole soul 
 belongs to him. Then, with a vivacity altogether 
 feminine, she questions the women who examine her 
 curiously, while she is eulogising his beauty. She is 
 in despair at having failed to guard her vineyard, that 
 is to say her betrothed. That and other analogous 
 comparisons recur frequently in the poem. 
 
 THE SHULAMITE. 
 
 I. 2. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, 
 
 For thy love is better than wine. 
 3. Because of the savour of thy good ointments, 
 Thy name is like ointment poured forth, 
 Therefore do the virgins love thee. 
 
32 THE SONG OF SONGS. 
 
 4. Draw mo after thee, let us go away, 
 The king brings me into his chambers. 
 
 CHORUS OP WOMEN. 
 
 Let us be glad and rejoice in thee, 
 
 Let us remember thy love more than wine, 
 
 The upright love thee. 
 
 THE SHULAMITE. 
 
 5. I am black, but comely, 0, daughters of Jerusalem, 
 As the tents of Kedar,* 
 
 As the curtains of Solomon. 
 
 6. Look not upon me, if I am black, 
 
 It is because the sun hath looked on me ; 
 My mother's children were angry with me, 
 They made me keeper of the vineyards, 
 But mine own vineyard have I not kept. 
 
 7. Tell me, oh, thou whom my soul loveth, 
 Where thou feedest thy flock, 
 Where thou restest at noon, 
 
 For why should I be wandering 
 Towards the flocks of thy companions. 
 
 The women are astonished, and perhaps feel a certain 
 contempt for a peasant who despises honours, which 
 seem to them to surpass all the dreams of feminine 
 ambition, and say to her ironically ; 
 
 * Kedar was a nomad Ishmac lite people who wandered about the north- 
 east of Palestine, and whose tents, shining in the sun, from time to time 
 appeared in the distance to the eyes of the mountaineers of the Lebanon. 
 
THE SONG OF SONGS. 
 
 CHORUS OF WOMEN. 
 
 8. Since thou art not reasonable, 
 O thou fairest among women, 
 Follow then the footsteps of the flock, 
 And feed thy kids 
 Beside the tents of the shepherds. 
 
 Scene II. The royal lover appears, and commences 
 by praising the beauties of the Shulamite, and speaks 
 to her of the rich adornments which will make her still 
 more beautiful. He never imagines that his advances 
 can be repelled. But the young girl answers to him 
 that she is entirely absorbed with thoughts of her 
 betrothed. That thought is the spikenard* which 
 exhales its perfume continually, even before the king 
 arrives. Solomon redoubles his flatteries. The Shula- 
 mite falls back upon the thought of her lover, and 
 indirectly refuses the offers of the king, in preferring 
 the beauties of her native country, in the midst of 
 which, flower of the field as she is herself, she is more 
 in her place and more happy than in the midst of the 
 pomps of the Court. The first conversation of Solomon 
 with the young captive terminates by a vigorous de- 
 scription of the passionate love which inspires her for 
 her betrothed, followed by the conjuration to the 
 daughters of Jerusalem, of which we have already 
 spoken. 
 
 * Spikenard is an Indian perfume, which in ancient times was very 
 highly esteemed. Compare Mark xiv. 3-5. 
 
34 THE SONG OF SONGS. 
 
 SOLOMON. 
 
 9. I have compared thee, my love, 
 
 To my horse in the chariot of Pharaoh.* 
 
 10. Thy cheeks are comely with collars of pearls, 
 And thy neck with chains of coral. 
 
 1 1. We shall make thee chains of gold, 
 With studs of silver. 
 
 THE SHULAMITE. 
 
 12. While the king sitteth at his table, 
 
 My spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof, 
 
 13. For a bundle of myrrh is my well beloved, 
 
 He shall lie all night upon my bosom, 
 
 1 4. My beloved is unto me as a cluster of camphire 
 
 In the vineyards of Engedi.f 
 
 SOLOMON. 
 
 15. Behold thou art fair, my love., 
 
 Behold thou art fair, 
 Thou hast dove's eyes. 
 
 THE SHULAMITE. 
 
 1G. Behold thou art fair, my beloved, yea, pleasant, 
 Also, curbed is green. f 
 
 * That is to say, before a fine chariot of Egypt. This comparison 
 makes allusion, not less to the richness of the harness, than to the grace 
 of the animal. In the Asamer the young Arabs compare the objects of 
 their addresses to camels, their favourite animal. 
 
 | Engedi was a locality in the south of Palestine, renowned for its 
 gardens, and, according to Josephus (Antiq. ix. 1), fertile in balsam and 
 palm trees. 
 
 J The young girl applies to her lover the compliments which the 
 king makes to her. She makes allusion at the same time to the simplicity 
 of their condition. 
 
THN SONG OF SONGS. 35 
 
 SOLOMON. 
 
 17. The beams of our house are cedar, 
 
 And our rafters (or pannelling) of fir.* 
 
 THE SHULAMITE. 
 
 II. 1. I am a simple rose of Sharon, f 
 A lily of the valleys. 
 
 SOLOMON. 
 
 2. As a lily among thorns, 
 
 So is my love among girls. 
 
 THE SHULAMITE. 
 
 3. As the apple treej among the trees of the 
 
 wood, 
 
 So is my beloved among young men, 
 I loved to seat myself under his shadow, 
 His fruit was sweet in my mouth. 
 
 * Solomon connects with the last words of the Shulamite the eulogy 
 of the palace which he will give her to reside in. Compare with this 
 what the first Book of Kings tells us as to the houses built by Solomon. 
 Cfa. v. and vii. 
 
 f Sharon designates a flowery district, which extends from the foot of 
 Carmel, and slopes gently towards the Mediterranean. Compare Isaiah, 
 ch. xxxiii. 9, and xxxv. 2. It is impossible for us to translate the proper 
 name of the flower to which the Shulamite compares herself. There is 
 no means of giving its scientific name, colchicum, and still less its 
 popular name, tue-chien, or safran-latard. It is an autumnal plant 
 with violet flowers, and abounds among the grass of the plains. The 
 Germans call it the Zeitlose. In the Dutch M. Hoekstra is puzzled by 
 the same difficulty, and prefers to cut the knot, as we do, rather than 
 apply, as figurative of the Shulamite, the horrible word Herfsttydeloose. 
 
 The apple trees of Syria are a very large species, and their fruits 
 are remarkable for their good odour. Sec Winer, Realwocrt, b. art. 
 Apfelbaum. 
 
 D 2 
 
36 THE SONG OF SONGS. 
 
 4. He brought me into the banquetting house,* 
 And his banner over me was love. 
 
 5. Stay me with flagons, f 
 
 Comfort me with the perfumes of apples, 
 For I am sick of love. 
 
 6. That his left hand maybe under my head, 
 That his right hand may embrace me. 
 
 7. I conjure you, daughters of Jerusalem,, 
 By the roes, and by the hinds of the field, 
 That ye stir not up, nor provoke love, 
 Before the heart so inclines. 
 
 After having thus expressed the vivacity of her 
 attachment for her betrothed, attachment which, we 
 shall soon see, was much more chaste than these ex- 
 pressions appear in the first instance to infer, the 
 Shulamite relates two scenes of her previous life, which 
 form the subject of the two solos which follow. If we 
 venture to pursue our comparison of the Canticle with 
 a modern opera, we should call these two cavatinas two 
 romances, destined to explain circumstances or senti- 
 ments which cannot find place in the dialogue. 
 
 In the first song the girl depicts the profound love 
 of her betrothed for her, and at the same time recalls 
 
 Literally, He makes me to enter into the cellar, where they guard the 
 wine, that is say, that he rejoices my heart as if there were an assem- 
 blage in such a place. 
 
 f That is to say, send me to my betrothed, whom she has compared 
 to a vine, ch. i. 6, in the same manner as she has just compared him to 
 an apple tree. 
 
THE SONG OP SONGS. 37 
 
 the occasion from which her misfortunes proceeded, 
 the order which her brothers gave her to go to guard 
 the vineyard. The song of the brothers, analogous to 
 that which we find further on, ch. viii. 8, with its rude- 
 ness and its positive character, breaks in, in a manner 
 very original, upon the charming warbling of love 
 which precedes, and which truly touches the sweetest 
 notes of bucolic sentiment. While the betrothed lovers 
 see in the spring time but the accord of nature with 
 their young loves, the brothers turn their attention to 
 the work which the season renders necessary. 
 
 FIRST SONG OF THE SHULAMITE. 
 
 II. 8. The voice of my beloved, 
 
 Behold ! he cometh leaping upon the moun- 
 tains, 
 
 Skipping upon the hills. 
 9. My beloved is like a roe, or a young hart, 
 Behold ! he stands th behind our wall, 
 He looketh forth at the windows, 
 He sheweth himself thro' the lattice. 
 10. My beloved spake, and said to me, 
 
 Kise up, my love, my fair one, and come 
 
 away, 
 
 For lo, the winter is past, 
 The rain is over and gone, 
 12. The flowers appear on the earth, 
 
 The time of the singing birds is come, 
 And the voice of the turtle is heard in our 
 land, 
 
38 THE SONG OF SONGS. 
 
 1 3 . The fig tree putteth forth her green figs. 
 
 The vines with the tender grape give a good 
 
 smell, 
 Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. 
 
 14. my dove that art in the clefts of the rock, 
 In the secret places of their steps, 
 
 Let me see thy countenance, 
 
 Let me hear thy voice, 
 
 For sweet is thy voice, 
 
 And thy countenance is comely. 
 But in place of the clear notes of the girl, it is the 
 rough voice of her brothers which makes itself to be 
 heard. 
 
 THE BROTHERS. 
 
 15. Chase us the foxes, 
 The little foxes, 
 
 That spoil the vineyards, 
 
 For our vines have tender grapes. 
 
 THE SHULAMITE. 
 
 16. My beloved is mine, 
 And I am his, 
 
 He pastures his flock among the lilies. 
 
 17. Before the day break, 
 Before the shadows flee away. 
 Return, my beloved, 
 
 Like a roe or a young hart, 
 Upon the hills which are furrowed by the 
 valleys. 
 
THE SONG OF SONGS. 39 
 
 The second song has for its object to depict the 
 affection of the girl for him whom her soul loveth, but 
 more especially to make it to be understood that her 
 conduct is pure, and that her love has been legitimated 
 by the consent of her mother. This song is again 
 terminated by the conjuration already given. 
 
 SECOND SONG OF THE SHULAMITE. 
 
 III. 1 . By night on my bed I sought 
 Him whom my soul loveth 
 I sought him, but I found him not. 
 
 2. I will rise now, and go about the town, 
 In the streets and in the broad ways, 
 I will seek him whom my soul loveth, 
 I sought him, but I found him not. 
 
 3. I found the watchmen that go about the town 
 Saw you him whom my soul loveth ? 
 
 4. It was but little that I passed from them, 
 When I found him whom my soul loveth, 
 I held him and would not let him go, 
 
 Till I brought him into my mother's house, 
 Into the chamber of her that bare me. 
 
 5. I conjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, 
 By the roes, and by the hinds of the field, 
 That ye stir not up, nor provoke love, 
 Before the heart so inclines. 
 
 Scene III. In the mind of the Hebrew troubadour 
 the locality of the scene has evidently changed. We 
 assist at a triumphal cortege presided over by King 
 
40 THE SONG OF SONGS. 
 
 Solomon, who celebrates new espousals. The chorus 
 is held to express the admiration of the spectators of 
 the procession. Each mentions the object which makes 
 the strongest impression on his attention. We see 
 appear, in succession, the Shulamite in the midst of 
 clouds of perfumes, the divan of Solomon escorted by 
 sixty body guards, chosen men, marching with naked 
 swords in their hands, and followed by the magnificent 
 couch which has been provided for the ceremony. Only 
 the spectators do not yet know who is to be the happy 
 spouse, who is to partake of it, and imagine that it is to 
 be, as formerly, a daughter of Jerusalem. At length 
 the King appears himself, with the crown of the 
 espousals upon his head. The mistake of the spectators, 
 the pomp, the royal state, also indicate the royal re- 
 sidence, Jerusalem. That presumption is confirmed by 
 the final call to the daughters of Sion, who are supposed 
 to hasten forward, and who receive here their title of 
 honour, while in the rest of the poem they are always 
 called simply the daughters of Jerusalem. 
 
 CHOKUS OF THE INHABITANTS OF JERUSALEM. 
 
 III. 6. Who is this that comefch out of tho wilderness, 
 Like pillars of smoke, 
 Perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, 
 And all kinds of sweet odours ?* 
 
 * The cortege appears to have been preceded by the thurifers, in 
 the midst of whom proceeded the Shulamite, no doubt veiled (whkh 
 explains the mistake of the spectators, verse 10) y and seeming to be 
 shiouded by the vapours which rose in columns round her. The espou- 
 
THE SONG OF SONGS. 41 
 
 7. Behold his bed, which is Solomon's, 
 Three score valiant men are about it, 
 Three score valiant men of Israel,* 
 
 sals are not yet completed, and this is merely a preparatory ceremony by 
 which Solomon hopes to dazzle the girl and to render her agreeable 
 to his wishes. It is interesting to compare with this, the description 
 which Quintus Curtius gives us (viii. 9) of the manner in which the 
 Indian kings proceed in public : " Servants," says he, " preceded, carrying 
 44 censers, and filling with perfumes the way by which the king was to 
 " pass. The king himself reposed upon a litter of gold, adorned with 
 " garlands of pearls. His clothes were of gold and purple." The first 
 Book of Kings, ch. [x. 22, mentions the trading by which Solomon 
 increased the luxury of his Court. 
 
 There is here, apparently, some contradiction of what we read in 
 2 Sam. xv. 18, xx. 7, and 1 Kings i. 38-44. According to these pas- 
 sages the body-guards of David and Solomon were strangers, Chere- 
 thites and Pelethites. The general opinion now is, that these names 
 designated mercenary soldiers of Cretan and Philistine origin. Like 
 other monarchs of the East, and even some European kings, the kings 
 of Israel preferred foreigners to their own subjects for their personal 
 body-guards. There is no more difficulty in understanding the King of 
 Israel to be guarded by Philistines, than the Pope and the King of 
 Naples being surrounded by Swiss, republicans and often Protestants. 
 Elsewhere we learn that David had some devoted partizans in the Philis- 
 tine district of Gath (2 Sam. xv. 18, &c.), and David himself was proposed 
 as a body-guard to the Philistine king Achish (1 Sam. xxviii. 2, comp. 
 xxvii. 12). Perhaps the apparent contradiction is resolved by the fact that 
 the sentiment of repugnance with which the protection of their govern- 
 ment by foreign soldiers is viewed in modern Europe, was unknown in 
 Oriental antiquity, and that once incorporated into the royal army, the 
 mercenaries became "valiant men of Israel" on the same footing as the 
 others. It may be, in the same manner, that the Ephraimite author of 
 the Canticle describes the women of the harem as " daughters of Jeru- 
 " salem," although we know that the foreign element prevailed in it 
 also. 1 Kings xi. 1. 
 
42 THE SONG OP SONGS. 
 
 8. They all hold swords, expert in war, 
 Every man hath his sword upon his thigh, 
 Because of fear in the night. 
 
 9. King Solomon made himself a bed, 
 Of the trees of Lebanon. 
 
 10. The pillars thereof are of silver, 
 The supports are of gold, 
 
 The couch is of purple, 
 
 In the midst thereof will shine his chosen one, 
 
 Chosen among the daughters of Jerusalem. 
 
 11. Go forth, ye daughters of Zion, 
 And behold King Solomon, 
 
 With the crown wherewith his mother crowned 
 
 him, 
 
 In the day of his espousals, 
 And in the day of the gladness of his heart. 
 
 Solomon, without doubt, thought that her distance 
 from her native place, and the pomps displayed around 
 her would overcome the resolution of the girl. 
 He recommences to praise, in most flattering terms, 
 the attractions of the Shulamite. We refer to what 
 we already said in regard to the language of Oriental 
 gallantry. Besides the neck compared to the tower 
 of David, the comparison of the teeth to a flock of 
 sheep that are shorn, and come up from the wash- 
 ing, walking two and two together, corroborates our 
 previous remarks. We ask permission to pass over 
 the farther enumeration of feminine charms. It adds 
 nothing to the development of the drama, and con- 
 tains passages which can scarcely be rendered in a 
 
THE SONG OP SONGS. 43 
 
 modern translation (ch. iv. 1-7). Let us remark, how- 
 ever, that verse 7 has taken position for several years 
 among the passages which are cited in favour of the 
 immaculate conception. 
 
 The Shulamite is unwilling to understand, in a dis- 
 quieting sense, the words of verse 6. She snatches 
 at the word Lebona, incense, which terminates it, and 
 which, by the resemblance of sound recalls to her the 
 mountains which she has more than once traversed 
 with her shepherd. She connects then to that word 
 a new song, a solo, similar to the first song of the pre- 
 ceding scene, and which, like it, depicts the love which 
 she inspires to her betrothed. To the far-fetched 
 compliments of the king, she opposes sentiments more 
 vigorous, more true, and in reality more flattering, on 
 behalf of the young mountaineer. The language is 
 impassioned but it is more chaste than that of the 
 king. The name which she, speaking as the lover, 
 gives to her well-beloved is that of her betrothed 
 sister. His language is delicious to her ear as milk and 
 honey is to the palate. He compares her to a fresh 
 garden, closed to every one, but filled with precious 
 flowers, the perfumes of which are exhaled for himself 
 alone. So the girl promises herself to him, and the 
 song terminates by a sort of invocation (ch. v. 1), 
 which the chorus delighted, no doubt, with this song 
 of love, gives out in sign of sympathy. 
 
44 THE SONG Otf SONGS. 
 
 FIRST SONG OP THE SHULAMITE. 
 
 IV. 8. Come with me from Lebanon, my betrothed, 
 Come with me from Lebanon, 
 Look from the top of Amana, 
 From the top of Shenir and Hermon, 
 From the lions' dens, 
 From the mountains of the leopards : 
 9. Thou hast ravished my heart, my betrothed 
 
 sister, 
 Thou hast ravished my heart with one of thy 
 
 glances, 
 With one of the circles of thy neck. 
 
 10. How fair is thy love, my betrothed sister, 
 How much better is thy love than wine, 
 
 And the smell of thine ointments than all 
 spices, 
 
 1 1 . Thy lips, my betrothed, drop as the honey- 
 
 comb, 
 
 Honey and milk are under thy tongue,* 
 And the smell of thy garments is as the smell 
 
 of Lebanon. 
 
 12. Thou art a garden enclosed, my betrothed 
 
 sister, 
 A spring shut up, a fountain sealed. 
 
 * Theocritus (Idyll xx. 26, 27) presents a parallel resembling very 
 much this manner of describing the inherent charm of the voice of a 
 person beloved : 
 
 To arofia /cat Trajcrac y\VKu>rtpov tK aroparw St 
 Eppcs f*oe $wi/ 
 
THE SONG OF SONGS. 45 
 
 13. Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, 
 With pleasant fruits, cypress and spikenard, 
 
 14. Spikenard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, 
 With all trees of frankincense. 
 
 Myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices. 
 
 15. A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, 
 And streams from Lebanon. 
 
 16. Awake, north wind, 
 And come, thou South, 
 Blow upon my garden, 
 
 That the spices thereof may flow out. 
 Let my beloved come into his garden, 
 And eat his pleasant fruits. 
 
 V. 1. I am come into my garden, my betrothed 
 
 sister, 
 
 I have gathered my myrrh with my spice, 
 I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey, 
 I have drunk my wine and my milk. 
 
 CHORUS. 
 
 Eat, friends, drink, 
 Enrapture yourselves of love. 
 
 This indirect response to the king, ought to shew 
 him how much her lover knew better than him the way 
 to her heart. But as in the preceding scene, the first 
 solo is followed by a second which will develop, in its 
 turn, the vivacity of the love which, on her side, she 
 also bears to her betrothed. She does so, in re- 
 lating a dream in which sho believes that he knocks 
 
46 THE SONG OF SONGS. 
 
 at her door. Under the impression of this dream, and 
 after some objections on account of her alarmed 
 modesty, she rises to open the door to him, but, of 
 course, he was not there ; and as she continues under the 
 illusion, she searches and calls for him. The noise 
 attracts the watchmen, who beat her, and remove her 
 veil. But the result is, that, by night as well as by 
 day, her soul is entirely devoted to her betrothed, and 
 will not be so to any other. 
 
 SECOND SONG OF THE SHULAMITE. 
 
 V. 2. I sleep, but my heart waketh, 
 
 The voice of my well-beloved knocketh, 
 
 ' Open to me, my sister, my love, 
 
 My dove, my undefiled, 
 
 My head is filled with dew, 
 
 And my locks with the drops of the night/* 
 
 3. I have put off my clothes, 
 How shall I put them on ? 
 I have washed my feet, 
 How shall I soil them ? 
 
 4. My beloved put in his hand by the window, 
 And my heart was moved for him. 
 
 * This is a new trait of analogy with the songs and manners of the 
 Arabs. " When a lover cannot sleep he goes to the part of the tent 
 " reserved for men, or to a neighbouring tent belonging to a friend, and 
 " sings his Hodscheini (a love song) in order to induce his fair one to 
 " shew herself." Meier, from Burckhardt, p. 77). May it not be in- 
 ferred that the Spanish serenade is of Arabic origin ? 
 
THE SONG OF SONGS. 47 
 
 5. I rose up to open to my beloved, 
 And my hands dropped myrrh,* 
 And my fingers sweet smelling myrrh, 
 Upon the handles of the lock. 
 
 0. I opened to my beloved, 
 
 But my beloved was not there. 
 
 My soul failed me when he spake, 
 
 I sought him but I could not find him, 
 
 I called him, but he gave me no answer. 
 
 7. The watchmen who went about the town found 
 
 me, 
 
 They smote me, they wounded me, 
 The keepers of the walls took away my veil 
 from me. 
 
 8. I conjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, 
 If ye find my beloved, 
 
 That ye tell him 
 
 That I suffer from love. 
 
 We come here to a trait of great finesse. We have 
 seen in the former scene that the women in whose 
 company the Shulamite had been placed, obeyed supe- 
 rior orders, in exhorting her to accept the position 
 which the king wished to give her, but were not very 
 well disposed towards her. Now the poem indicates 
 here a change in their disposition towards her, which 
 
 * Myrrh is here a symbol of the love which fills her whole being, so far 
 that it drops from her fingers upon the door. It comes advantageously 
 in place of what a romancer of the school of Balzac would probably 
 describe as electric fluid, or as a magnetic current. 
 
48 THE SONG OF SONGS. 
 
 soon becomes true sympathy. They conclude from the 
 impression of a love so strong and so true as to repulse 
 the offers of King Solomon, that the object of it must 
 possess exceptional merit, and in place of turning into 
 derision, as they did on the former occasion, the inclina- 
 tion of the girl for a simple shepherd, they question her 
 thus : 
 
 CHORUS OF WOMEN. 
 
 9. What is thy beloved more than another beloved, 
 thou fairest among women ? 
 What is thy beloved more than another beloved, 
 That thus dost charge us so ? 
 
 The Shulamite then describes the beauty of her lover 
 (10-16), and this description is a pendant of that 
 which King Solomon had made to herself of her own 
 charms. She terminates by these words a sort of 
 ingenuous pride : 
 
 16. Such is my well-beloved, 
 Such is my friend, 
 daughters of Jerusalem. 
 
 The poet carefully avoids putting into the response 
 of the women any words of doubt or mockery. Indeed, 
 every woman who loves would have spoken in the same 
 manner of her beloved, but the profound affection which 
 her words express, affects the women themselves, as she 
 idealizes the lover in the eyes of his betrothed. This 
 is then the first victory achieved by the force of true 
 
THE SONG OF SONGS. 49 
 
 love. The same women who at first scoffed at her 
 pastoral amours are now softened, and join with the 
 Shulamite in wishing that she may find her betrothed, 
 and offer to aid her in doing so. 
 
 CHORUS OP WOMEN. 
 
 VI. 1 . Where is thy beloved gone, 
 O, thou fairest among women, 
 Where is thy beloved gone, 
 That we may seek him with thee ? 
 
 But the Shulamite cannot describe the pasturages 
 where, since her being carried away, her betrothed 
 now feeds his flock. 
 
 THE SHULAMITE. 
 
 2. My beloved is gone to his garden, 
 To the beds of spices, 
 
 To feed in the gardens, 
 And to gather lilies. 
 
 3. I am my beloved's, 
 And my beloved is mine, 
 
 He feedeth among the lilies.* 
 
 Scene 4. We still continue at Jerusalem, and the 
 only thing which makes a change here, in the un- 
 folding of the drama, is that the means of persuasion 
 to which Solomon has recourse differ from those which 
 he tried previously. He no longer tries to gain the 
 girl merely by flattery and by dazzling her with 
 
 * Compare ch. ii. 16. This repetition also shows that nothing is 
 changed in her inclination. 
 
 E 
 
50 TTTE SONG OP SONGS. 
 
 ostentation. He offers her the first place among his 
 women, or, as it may be said, to make her his favourite 
 sultana. This offer of the king is sustained by the 
 homage which the poet describes the women them- 
 selves as rendering to the unrivalled beauty of the 
 young Shulamite. 
 
 SOLOMON. 
 
 VI. 4. Thou art beautiful, my love, as Tirzah,* 
 Comely as Jerusalem, 
 Terrible as an army with banners.f 
 5. Turn away thine eyes from me, 
 For they have overcome me. 
 
 8. There are threescore queen s,J 
 And fourscore concubines, 
 And virgins without number. 
 
 9. But one is my dove, my undefiled, 
 She is the only one of her mother, 
 
 She is the choice one of her that bare her. 
 
 * Tirzah is a town of Canaanite origin (Josh. xii. 24), and during 
 some time it was the residence of the kings of Israel (1 Kings xiv. 17 ; 
 xv. 21, 33 ; and xvi. 8). It is for that reason it is put here in parallel 
 with Jerusalem. 
 
 f Solomon admits here that he feels himself deterred by the firmness 
 of the Shulamite. 
 
 t This very considerable number of spouses mentioned in a passage, 
 the object of which cannot be to diminish the renown ascribed to Solo- 
 mon, suggests that there may be some legendary exaggeration in what 
 is stated in 1 Kings xi. 3. But how has M. Delitzch, in the face of such 
 passages, been able to imagine that the type of matrimonial purity, and 
 of marriage as a divine institution, is represented in the Canticle ? 
 
THE SONG OF SONGS. 51 
 
 The daughters saw her and blessed her, 
 The queens and the concubines praised her. 
 
 CHORUS OF WOMEN. 
 
 10. Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, 
 Fair as the moon, 
 
 Clear as the sun, 
 
 Terrible as an army with banners ? 
 
 Then the Shulamite makes the king understand 
 seriously that it is against her wish to go to his harem. 
 Perhaps Solomon had suspected some interested mo- 
 tives when he learned that she was found wandering 
 alone near the royal encampment. She declares to 
 him distinctly, that it was in entire ignorance, and 
 while thinking of her love, that she had so wandered. 
 
 THE SHULAMITE. 
 
 11. I went down unto the garden of nuts, 
 To see the fruits of the valley, 
 
 To see if the vine flourished, 
 If the pomegranates budded.* 
 
 12. I know not how my heart led me 
 
 Near the chariots of the nobles of my people. 
 
 Now comes a chorus which we scarcely know what 
 to ascribe to. In my opinion, there does not appear to 
 be any other admissible explanation than that which 
 
 * We see, in referring to ch. ii. 13, that the girl makes allusion 
 to the promenade which her lover had proposed to her, and which she 
 wished to make alone, not being able to enjoy his society. 
 
52 THE SONG OF SONGS. 
 
 puts it in the mouth of the people of Shulem, who 
 lament the disappearance of their fair compatriot. 
 She was the ornament of their fetes. All eyes were 
 fixed upon her when she danced. This intervention of 
 the Shulamites is, no doubt, a perfect dramatic impro- 
 bability, but it is full of grace in such popular poetry. 
 There is nothing sweeter than some of the words of it, 
 repeating themselves from the distant echo : " Sclwuby 9 
 Sclwiiby, ha Schoulamith, Scliouly, Scliouby" &c. 
 
 CHORUS OF SHULAMITES. 
 
 13. Return, return, Shulamite, 
 
 Return, return, that we may look upon thee. 
 Why will ye look on the Sliulamite 
 As the dance of Mahanaiin ? * 
 
 VII. 1. How beautiful are thy feet 
 
 With shoes, O daughter of a noble.f 
 
 Perhaps, also, the Ephraimite poet wished to make 
 it to be understood by that, that the compatriots of 
 the girl would avenge her if she were detained 
 
 * Mahanaim was a great and ancient city of the north of Palestine 
 (see 1 Sam. ii. 8 ; xvii. 24 ; xix. 32, &c.). An old myth connected 
 itself with the name (Genesis xxxii. 1, 2), and probably the tradition 
 led to some annual fete, or rejoicing, at which the surrounding popula- 
 tion gathered themselves. 
 
 f Literally, daughter of a noble, or of a man free and well off, as 
 that appears from the last song of the brothers (ch. viii. 8) to be the 
 state of the fortune of the family. This strophe presents a new re- 
 semblance to the Arabic Asamer, where the young girls advance in turn, 
 dancing before the young men, who praise in a loud voice their move- 
 ments and their graces. (Meier, after Burckhardt, p. 75.) 
 
THE SONG OF SONGS. 53 
 
 against her pleasure in the royal harem. It also ex- 
 plains better, from his point of view, the determination 
 which Solomon finishes by taking. But he is not yet 
 resolved. He tries a last effort, praising with passion 
 the attractions of his captive. It is always the same 
 kind of comparisons, drawn from things the most pre- 
 cious, from flowers the most esteemed, from perfumes 
 the most rare all appearing to us wonderfully strange. 
 Thus the eyes of the Shulamite are compared to the 
 fish-pools of Heshbon. Probably the water of these 
 pools was renowned for its transparence and purity. 
 A king is held in the curls of her hair (ver. 4 and 5) . 
 
 But the response of the Shulamite remains inexorable. 
 She belongs to her well-beloved, and her only desire is 
 to rejoin him, and to enjoy with him the sweetness of 
 the Spring-time. The fruits of the garden her lover 
 has so called her (ch. iv. 12) have been guarded for 
 him. Yet here chastity of thought predominates over 
 the ardour of the images. " Oh ! " she exclaims, " that 
 thou wert as my brother." Finally, the conjuration to 
 the daughters of Jerusalem is repeated, for the last 
 time, with a slight shade of difference from previous 
 occasions. 
 
 THE SHULAMITE. 
 
 VII. 10. I am my beloved's, 
 
 And his desire is toward me. 
 11. Come, my beloved, 
 
 Let us go forth into the fields, 
 
 Let us repose upon the flowers of the cypress. 
 
54 THE SONG OF SONGS. 
 
 12. Let us get up early to the vineyards, 
 Let us see if the vines flourish, 
 
 If the tender grapes appear, 
 If the pomegranates bud forth ; 
 There will I give thee my loves. 
 
 13. The mandrakes * give a perfume, 
 
 At our gates are all manner of pleasant fruits, 
 New and old, my well beloved, 
 I have laid them up for thee. 
 
 VIII. 1. that thou wert as my brother, 
 
 Nourished upon the bosom of my mother, 
 
 I should find thee without, 
 
 I would embrace thee, 
 
 Yea ! I should not be despised. 
 
 2. I would lead thee and bring thee 
 Into the house of my mother, 
 
 Thou should'st teach me to give thee to 
 drink 
 
 Of spiced wine and the juice of the pome- 
 granate. 
 
 3. His left hand should be under my head, 
 And his right hand should embrace me. 
 
 4. I conjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, 
 Why do ye stir up, why provoke love 
 Before the heart so inclines ? 
 
 * Mandragores, or Belladonna, which in Palestine, above all at the 
 environs of Thabor and Carmel, grow in great abundance, and fill the 
 air in spring with intense and even intoxicating perfumes. It is also a 
 symbolical plant which plays a great part in the amorous language of 
 the East. (See Winer Realwoerterbuch, art. Alraun.) 
 
THE SONG OF SONGS. 55 
 
 We think, with M. Hoekstra, that this change in the 
 form of the conjuration, which becomes here a trium- 
 phant interrogation, ought to vindicate the victory 
 achieved by the Shulamite. It is no more a supplica- 
 tion that she pronounces, it is a morality that she 
 draws. 
 
 Scene V. We see now the return into the country 
 of Shulem. The girl has again found her betrothed, 
 and returns supported on his arm. The chorus of her 
 compatriots announces her arrival, as that of the in- 
 habitants of Jerusalem had sung her entry into the 
 capital (ch. iii. 6) ; but the description is naturally 
 much shorter. 
 
 CHORUS OF SHULAMITES. 
 
 VIII. 5. Who is this that cometh from the plain, 
 Leaning on her beloved ? 
 
 The Shulamite sings then a last solo, which contains 
 the thought of the entire poem. True love is stronger */ 
 than all obstacles ; it is a lightning from God ; it is r 
 neither bought nor sold. This song is addressed to 
 her well-beloved, who is beside her. The apple-tree 
 was the symbol of true love_( com P are ch. iv 3, 5) . 
 The girl recalls to him that she has conquered his 
 heart under the apple-tree, that is to say, under the 
 auspices of sincere and mutual affection. From this 
 comes her unalterable fidelity and the strength of her 
 attachment. 
 
56 THE SONG OF SONGS. 
 
 SONG OF THE SHULAMITE. 
 
 VIII. 5. Under the apple-tree I won thee, 
 
 There thy mother has betrothed thee, 
 There she that brought thee forth has be- 
 trothed thee. 
 
 6. Place me as a seal upon thy heart, 
 As a seal upon thine arm, 
 
 For love is strong as death, 
 Ardent affection is unyielding as the grave, 
 The flames thereof are flames of fire, 
 The lightnings of Jehovah. 
 
 7. Many waters cannot quench love, 
 Neither can the floods drown it, 
 
 If a man would offer all that he hath for love, 
 He would receive contempt upon contempt. 
 
 The brothers re-appear once more upon the scene, 
 and interrupt the amorous melody with the same 
 abruptness, the same originality of which we have 
 seen a former specimen (ch. ii. 15). It is an indirect 
 question which they address to their sister, in declaring 
 what they intend to do with another sister still younger 
 than she is. If, when she shall be of maiTiageable 
 age, her virtue shall have resisted as a wall the seduc- 
 tions which may be held out to her, they shall give her 
 fair and rich adornments. If, on the contrary, she be- 
 takes herself to light conduct, as a door which yields 
 to the least pressure, they shall not give her anything 
 but the ornament to which a door has right a frame 
 of wood, that is to say, something of small value. This 
 
THE SONG OF SONGS. 57 
 
 rude language, from which a sort of coarse ,good 
 humour gleams out, contains, according to their 
 manner, the morality of the poem. The sentiment 
 reflected from^amlly tenour pleads the same thesis as 
 impassioned love. 
 
 THE BROTHEBS. 
 
 VIII. 8. We have a sister, 
 A little sister, 
 Yet without breasts, 
 What shall we do for our sister, 
 In the day when she shall be spoken for ? 
 9. If she be as a wall, 
 We will build upon her 
 Battlements of silver, 
 If she be as a door 
 We will inclose her 
 With boards of cedar. 
 
 The elder sister understands the allusion, and, with 
 legitimate pride, she attests her firmness in the midst 
 of the royal seductions. She has at length found peace, 
 the king, on account of her perseverance, has per- 
 mitted her to go away, and she relates her history 
 under a parabolic fc form, comparing herself to a vine- 
 yard fallen into the power of Solomon, which he had 
 entrusted to keepers, and the produce of which was 
 very valuable. 
 
 THE SHULAMITE. 
 
 VIII. 10. I have been as a wall, 
 
 And my breasts as towers, 
 
58 THE SONO OF SONGS. 
 
 And I have been in his eyes 
 As one that found favour. 
 
 1 1 . Solomon had a vineyard 
 In Baal-hamon.* 
 
 He entrusted it to the keepers, 
 Every one offered for its fruits 
 A thousand pieces of silver. 
 
 12. My vineyard, which is mine, is before me, 
 Guard thy silver, Solomon, 
 
 And leave two hundred pieces to the 
 guardians. 
 
 There is some obscurity in the last verse. It may 
 be perhaps an ironical adieu which the girl lanced 
 from the distance at King Solomon. He had not drawn 
 any profit from the vineyard that he had acquired, and 
 he ought even to recompense the keepers to whom he 
 had entrusted it, in giving them at least a fifth of the 
 return which he expected from it. The Shulamite, on 
 the contrary, has her vineyard, her lover, near her, and 
 has no need to entrust it to any person. 
 
 Her betrothed then speaks as if to assert his entire 
 confidence in her assurances of fidelity. He then prays 
 her to let him and his friends hear some of her sweet 
 songs, of which they were deprived by her absence. 
 
 * That appears to be the locality in which Solomon was when she 
 was taken away. The king, no doubt, had made a spring excursion into 
 these pleasant countries. Hence the curtains of the tents of Solomon 
 (ch. i. 5) in the same manner as the reference to the tents of Kedar. 
 
QF 
 
 UNIVERSH 
 
 THE SONG OF 
 
 HEE BETEOTHED. 
 
 VIII. 13. Thou that dwellest in tho gardens. 
 Friends hearken to thy voice, 
 Cause me to hear it. 
 
 And the girl satisfies his desire, in repeating the 
 strophe which she sang the day on which she was 
 carried off, when she hoped again to see her betrothed 
 before night. 
 
 THE SHULAMITE. 
 
 14. Make haste, my beloved, 
 
 Be like a roe, or a young hart, 
 Upon the mountains of spices. 
 
 The Canticle then terminates naturally, by the peace- 
 ful reunion of the two lovers, and it is difficult to 
 comprehend why so many critics have maintained the 
 end of the poem to be lost. What would they have 
 after that ? Have we not come to the moment for 
 which, from the first verse of the poem, the fair Shula- 
 mite has sighed so ardently ? 
 
 IV. 
 
 We hope that those of our readers who have accom- 
 panied us attentively concur with us in the striking 
 probability of the explanation which has been given. 
 Some differences in detail do not affect the results which 
 we are about to state. 
 
60 THE SONG OF SONGS. 
 
 In the first place, we merely express what is the most 
 evident thing of all, that Solomon cannot be the author 
 of such a poem. How can it be imagined that a king 
 would set about singing in charming verse, with inimi- 
 table verve and freshness, his defeat by a young peasant, 
 whom he could not persuade to become his wife ? We 
 may lay aside the idea as absurd. This negation of the 
 traditional opinion as to the authorship of the book, which 
 is sufficiently evident to any one who may admit even 
 the general tenor of the observations we are about to 
 make, is supported by other indications. Thus, the super- 
 scription of the book, " The Song of Songs, which is 
 Solomon's," is clearly from another hand than that of 
 the author. For it presents an important contrast of 
 dialect with all the rest of the poem. The dialect of 
 the North of Palestine joined the relative pronoun to 
 the first word of the preposition following, and in doing 
 so reduced the pronoun to a single letter. On the other 
 hand, in the classical Hebrew of Judah, they used the 
 whole word in order to express the relative, ascher. And 
 it is that word which is found in the superscription, 
 whilst from the one end of the poem to the other it is 
 the northern usage which is constantly followed. This 
 is almost already conclusive that the poem has come 
 from the North, and that its actual title has been given 
 to it in the South. But there is more. The Septuagint 
 has given the title of the book, not as we have it, but 
 as the " Song of Songs, namely, Solomon."* Now 
 this superscription, going back to a form more ancient 
 
THE SONG OF SONGS. 61 
 
 than ours, expresses an actual truth. The Canticle 
 should be called " Solomon/' not from the name of its 
 author, but from the name of the principal person 
 who figures in it, in the same way as so many other 
 biblical books, poems, romances, histories, and as they 
 have always named dramas. We could adduce other 
 details which the traditional opinion renders incompre- 
 hensible. 
 
 We desire now to form some inductions as to the 
 time and circumstances in which the song has been 
 composed. 
 
 It seems to us that there are sufficient indications to 
 enable us to affirm that the Canticle is a production of 
 the North of Palestine, of the Bphraimite kingdom of 
 the ten tribes, and that the approximate date of its 
 composition ought to be assigned to the reign of Jero- 
 boam II. (825-784 B.C.) 
 
 The Palestine of the North appears in the history of 
 the Israelites, as less accessible to spiritualism, and to 
 religious puritanism, less in reaction against nature and 
 natural life, than the Palestine of the South. It is 
 there also that popular poesy seems to have taken the 
 most lively flight. In the benediction of Jacob, (Genesis 
 xlix. 1-27), a national song of Israel, and containing a 
 characteristic of each tribe, the northern tribe of Naph- 
 tali has for itself poetic genius, "he giveth goodly 
 words." This is the same country from which we have 
 the patriotic song of Deborah, the charming apologue 
 of Jehoram, the histories of Gideon, of Jephthah, where 
 the poetic element h^lds so much place, the prophecies 
 
62 THE SONG OF SONGS. 
 
 of Hosea, so warm in colour, the prophets who have not 
 written, but of whom history attests the vigorous action 
 upon the popular imagination, Elijah and Elisha, the 
 legend of Jonah, &c. The poetry of the South is more 
 pure, more chastened, and is the classical poetry of the 
 nation. It is every where much more exclusively reli- 
 gious. The kind of poetry, such as the Canticle, seems 
 therefore more natural in the kingdom of the north than 
 in that of Judah. There it would have been either 
 much more religious, if it had been composed among 
 the faithful Jews, or much less moral if it had owed its 
 origin to the idolatrous party. In the latter case, ill- 
 regarded from the first by men of monotheistic faith, it 
 would never have entered into the biblical canon, made 
 up by the scribes of Judah. Besides, it is not in the 
 kingdom of Judah that Solomon would have been re- 
 presented in a light so little flattering to him. An 
 influence sufficiently powerful, however indirect, over 
 their own manners and customs, and a manner of living 
 less subordinate to the pre-occupations of the temple, 
 and to the royal state maintained in Judah, would have 
 been necessary in order to make the triumph of pure 
 over sensual love, a subject of popular song. It may 
 be added that the beauties of nature in the North, in the 
 country of the Lebanon, of marvellous fertility, rich in 
 woods, prairies, running streams, better inspire bucolic 
 poetry than the sandy and frequently rocky districts of 
 the South.* 
 
 * Sec Winer, Realwoerterbucli. art. Galilea. 
 
THE SONG OF SONGS. 63 
 
 It 'has been maintained that the Canticle was a satire 
 directed by the popular malice of the North against 
 the person of Solomon, that it was the expression of 
 the sentiments of aversion against the dynasty of 
 David, of which the tribes of the North gave prompt 
 proof after the death of his son. It is impossible for 
 me to join in that opinion. Solomon, no doubt, has 
 not a pleasant role in the Canticle, and here and there 
 there is an evident indulgence of ironical intention 
 at his expense. But, after all, he is not charged with 
 any odious deed. His pomp, his polygamy, are matters 
 of history, and are nowhere charged against him repre- 
 hensively. The morality of the drama may be reduced 
 to this formula : True love is so strong that it resisted 
 even Solomon ; and surely such a formula as this is not 
 fundamentally malevolent against him. His giving the 
 girl her liberty is a fine trait of its kind, and responds 
 to the wisdom of the monarch, which is no more 
 attacked by the story of her carrying off, which pre- 
 cedes, than he has been in the general tradition of the 
 Semitic Bast, by his moral and religious vagaries. It 
 seems to me that, taking every thing into view, the 
 author of the Canticle has not had any political arrtire- 
 pensee, and that he wished simply to sing of a subject 
 which was pleasing to his muse, in profiting, perhaps, 
 of a local tradition which might well have an historic 
 foundation. But, on the other hand, it is necessary to 
 recognise that, in the population among whom the 
 poem had birth, and among whom it was sung, the 
 person of Solomon was far from holding the prestige 
 
64 THE SONG OP SONGS. 
 
 which ho otherwise exercised. In a word, in the 
 Canticle there is no direct opposition to Solomon, but 
 there is indifference, and complete absence of any 
 fascination before his glory. This also carries us to- 
 wards the Palestine of the North. The South was 
 always more Davidical. 
 
 To these considerations, of which none who have 
 carefully studied the history of the Hebrew people can 
 misunderstand the value, are joined the remarks fur- 
 nished by the text itself. Thus, with the exception of 
 Jerusalem and Engaddi, all the localities of which 
 mention is made, Sharon, Gilead, Tirzah, the Lebanon, 
 Amana, Hermon, Shenir, Carmel, Mahanaim, Baal- 
 Hamon, the country of the heroine, appertain to the 
 kingdom of the North. They see that the author 
 knows the places, and that which distinguishes them. 
 He has seen the goats of Gilead (ch. iv. 1), the tower 
 of Lebanon which commands the road to Damascus 
 (ch. vii. 4). He knows the fishpools of Heshbon, he 
 knows that they are near the gates of the town, and he 
 knows the names of the gates (ch. vii. 4). Some ruins, 
 yet visible,* attest the exactitude of these indications. 
 Tirzah is mentioned as a fair city (ch. vi. 4) which can 
 be compared to Jerusalem. On the contrary, no detail 
 of that kind indicates the same knowledge of the 
 localities of the South. 
 
 Farther, the language is that of the North. We 
 have already noticed the scliin prefix, substituted 
 everywhere to ascher. We could still adduce a suffi- 
 
 * Robinson's Palestine, 3. 924. 
 
THE SONG OF SONGS. 65 
 
 ciently long list of Aramean or Aramaic expressions 
 which lead to the same conclusion. But we refer for 
 them to the special treatises which we have cited. 
 
 What is, then, the period of the history of the Pales- 
 tine of the North, which presents a favourable occasion 
 for the nourishing of these delicate flowers of popular 
 poesy ? 
 
 It is inadmissible that the Canticle could have been 
 composed after the destruction of the kingdom of the 
 North. Its admission into the Biblical canon is entirely 
 opposed to this. We are then limited to the period 
 between the death of Solomon (975) and the invasion 
 of Shalmaneser (721). For we can no longer suppose 
 the composition of such a poem, during the lifetime 
 of Solomon. Now, that period, however extended, 
 presents scarcely but one moment when the appearance 
 of the Canticle might be probable. It may be assumed 
 that the idyll, the bucolic poesy, requires, in order to 
 strike from its lyre sounds so sweet and fresh, a period 
 of calm in which the people may give themselves up to 
 their industry and rustic enjoyments. That was not 
 when the Syrian devastated the country, when civil 
 war unchained its furies, when the women hid them- 
 selves in the forests and mountains, and the young 
 men were constantly under arms. It is not at such a 
 time as that, that people gather together in the even- 
 ings to hear the singing of girls, and to celebrate with 
 them the beauties of nature and the enjoyments of rural 
 life. In such times, the cultivators of the fields can 
 scarcely recognize or protect their own. Now, during the 
 
66 THE SONG OF SONGS. 
 
 whole period between 975 and 721 (B.C.) I cannot see 
 but the reign of Jeroboam II. (825 784) which gave 
 to the kingdom of Israel any continuation, sufficiently 
 long, of peaceful and prosperous years.* At the ter- 
 mination of a fortunate war against the Syrians, from 
 whom he took the territories of Damascus and Hamath, 
 he assured to his people a tranquil possession of their 
 country, such as neither before nor after is to be found 
 in the history of their kingdom. The manners of the 
 Court became softened and refined under the influence 
 of a luxury and prosperity without precedent. We can 
 see this from the contemporary prophecy of Amos. 
 (See ch. vi. 1 and following verses, particularly ver. 5.) 
 After Jeroboam II/s reign of forty years came the 
 return of anarchy, of bloody revolutions, and continual 
 wars with Syria and Assyria. At first, there might 
 appear to be reason to draw back the date on account 
 of the parallelism of Tirzah and Jerusalem (ch. vi. 4), 
 as from the time of Omri (923 918) it was at Samaria 
 that the kings of Israel resided. But the ancient 
 capital might preserve the remains of her grandeur, 
 and the author of the poem might very well know that, 
 in the time of Solomon, there could be no question of 
 Samaria as the rival of Jerusalem. If, at the time of 
 the schism, the kings of Israel first fixed themselves at 
 Tirzah, that must have been on account of its import- 
 ance ; and even long after the translation of their resi- 
 dence to Samaria, Tirzah was the seat of a conspiracy 
 
 * See 2 Kings xiv. 23. et seq. , 
 
THE SONG OF SONGS. 67 
 
 against King Shallum. (2 Kings xv. 13, 14.) There 
 was, perhaps, a proverbial parallelism of very ancient 
 date between the two cities, and of a nature not to be 
 modified by poetic usage. But that which decides me 
 principally is that, before Jeroboam II., I cannot 
 imagine the production of such a work as the Canticle 
 under the troubles and wars which prevailed in the 
 reigns of Nadab, Baasha, Elah, Omri, Ahab, Jehoram, 
 Jehu, and Jehoahaz. The time that we indicate is also 
 that at which the hatred against Solomon, which, of 
 course, was strongest at the epoch of the separation, 
 had given place to a certain degree of indifference. 
 The Israelites had had time to see that what they 
 reproached so severely against the house of David 
 was almost an inevitable consequence of royalty. It is 
 a very curious fact which is brought into notice by 
 M. Hoekstra, that the 45th Psalm, which is an epithala- 
 mium celebrating the nuptials of a Hebrew king, pre- 
 sents in its seventeen verses singular resemblances, both 
 in substance and in form to the Canticle, and that there 
 is no Israelite prince to whom the strophes of that psalm 
 apply so well as to Jeroboam II. 
 
 We have now to explain the admission of such a 
 book into the Biblical Canon. 
 
 It is often thought that the transportations in mass 
 of the Israelite population, by order of their Asiatic 
 conquerors, rendered absolutely desert the countries 
 stricken by these terrible decrees. It ought to be kept 
 in view that many things necessarily prevented the 
 absolute accomplishment of such orders. There is 
 
 P 2 
 
68 THE SONG OF SONGS. 
 
 always a part of the people condemned, who succeed 
 in concealing themselves, above all in mountainous 
 countries ; and there are always villages, and even 
 districts, which escape the attention of the conqueror. 
 It is the fact that, after the destruction of the kingdom 
 of Israel by Shalmaneser, and the transportation of the 
 greater part of the inhabitants, there was, among the 
 Israelites who escaped from that measure, a very natu- 
 ral reconciliation and gathering together with their 
 brothers of Judah. King Hezekiah* promoted this 
 with all his power, and tried to re-establish between 
 the two branches of Israel the religious unity which 
 had been so compromised since the schism. He even 
 exercised tolerance towards the men of the north so 
 far as to pardon, to those who entered into his views, 
 several illegalities proceeding from their ignorance of 
 the paschal law (2 Chron. xxx. 17 20), and shortly 
 afterwards it is very astonishing to see (ch. xxxi. 1) 
 the men of Israel animated with more lively zeal than 
 many of the men of Judah against the groves and the 
 high places. At verse 6 of the same chapter, express 
 mention is made of the children of Israel who inhabited 
 the cities of Judah. It resulted naturally from that 
 mixture that the popular productions of northern 
 poetry were known and vulgarised in the south. 
 
 The Song of Songs, that is to say, the Song par 
 excellence, the most beautiful of songs, sufficiently 
 merited its name of honour to become one of those 
 most widely spread. It may be doubtful if, by that 
 
 * -2 Chron. xxx. and xxxi. 
 
THE SONG OF SONGS. 
 
 69 
 
 time, its whole bearing continued to be thoroughly 
 understood, when it is considered how little the people 
 of present times understand the songs of our ancestors, 
 although they repeat them without changing a word. 
 In other respects the local manners of Judah, more 
 legal, more prosaic, more urbane, did not, like those of 
 the north, favour these animated repetitions of the 
 pastoral drama. The Canticle, which was infinitely 
 pleasing, from its charming details, even when they 
 might have lost the key to its general construction, 
 presented nothing to them unfavourable to its moral 
 reputation. Those who first sang it in Judah would 
 certainly offer it as a moral song which celebrated the 
 victory of chastity ; and marriage was too sacred an 
 institution in the national estimation of the Hebrews 
 for them to doubt the moral propriety of describing 
 the joys and rapture of the love which precedes it. It 
 was only at a later epoch, after the captivity, and under 
 the influence, at least indirect, of the Persian dualism, 
 that the institution of marriage lost its religious value, 
 of which we see the result in the doctrines of the 
 Ebionites and the Essenes. In a word, the Canticle 
 could acclimatize itself in the kingdom of Judah, with 
 excellent estimation, even in the eyes of the faithful. 
 It is after that, no doubt, that the tendency to allegorise 
 it must have commenced. When it came to be no 
 longer understood in its original application, when the 
 order of things, the manners, the customs to which it 
 made allusion had entirely disappeared, beyond the 
 prospect of return, from the life of the Jewish peoplo, 
 
70 THE SONG OF SONGS. 
 
 the song itself continued to be handed down in the 
 popular memory as a venerable one which their fathers 
 had sung ; and with the theocratic spirit, which pre- 
 vailed at the period at which the Canon was formed, 
 there was no more required to make them perceive, 
 little by little, mysteries, types, and allegories in its 
 poetic descriptions. The name of Solomon, which 
 recurs in several parts of the poem ; his renown, con- 
 tinually increasing, in the penumbra of the national 
 tradition, for profound wisdom ; the symbolic language 
 of many prophets, who compared the alliance of Israel 
 with God to a marriage, and its rupture, by the fault of 
 the former, to an adultery, were the middle terms of 
 which the re-union formed the bridge by which the 
 Jews passed from" the forgotten literal sense to the alle- 
 gorical sense. The imagination once led in that direc- 
 tion, it was no more difficult to ascribe the Canticle to 
 Solomon, who had himself been a poet and composed 
 songs (1 Kings iv. 32), than to ascribe to him, as was 
 done, without any more grounds, the whole collection 
 of the Proverbs, and the book of Ecclesiastes. 
 
 To resume : the admission of the Canticle into the 
 Canon has been preceded 1st, by the propagation in 
 the kingdom of Judah of the Canticle brought along 
 with them by the Ephraimite refugees under Hezekiah ; 
 2nd, by the high reputation which it then held ; and 
 3rd, by the tendency to allegorise in a theocratical- 
 religious sense which, in the circumstances, became 
 more easily applicable to that book than to any other. 
 
 We cannot close without saying some words upon 
 
THE SONG OF SONGS. 71 
 
 ike position of modern interpretation in regard to this 
 book. It has been very ill treated. It has suffered 
 alike at the hands of its warmest admirers and of its 
 'detractors. This pearl of ancient poesy, of the finest 
 water, and of the purest sparkle, has been equally mis- 
 understood by both. Let us endeavour to pronounce 
 upon it impartially, according to what we now know, 
 without allowing ourselves to be blinded by ill-founded 
 prejudices on the one hand, or by admiration still more 
 unfounded on the other. 
 
 I admit that the book is not penetrated with the 
 same religious spirit as the most of the other Biblical 
 books. But it has nothing to fear, in that respect, in 
 comparison with some fragments of the Book of Judges, 
 or of the Proverbs, or with the Book of Esther. As 
 to the fundamental idea with which it is inspired, it is 
 not, in the view of a Protestant public, that it ought 
 to be necessary to maintain its profound morality. 
 The book speaks of love, of the ardent and passionate 
 love of two betrothed persons towards each other. 
 Well ! it speaks of an institution of God, and if it 
 speaks with more unreserve than is agreeable to our 
 modern delicacy, it remains to be considered if we 
 have much cause to glorify ourselves in that respect. 
 I beg to make this reflection that, in France, we 
 undergo, more than we are aware, the influence of the 
 Eoman Catholic atmosphere which surrounds us. It is /X ' 
 very remarkable how much, in Protestant countries, 
 the relations of the two sexes, their ideas of marriage, 
 and of its normal conditions, differ from that which 
 
72 THE SONG OF SONGS. 
 
 I prevails among ITS. The farther you proceed into the 
 I regions of Southern Catholicism, the more that differ- 
 v ence increases. This is not astonishing after all. In the 
 doctrines of Catholicism the married state is an inferior 
 one ; the celibate, the perfect one. The model educa- 
 tion is that of the convent or the clerical seminary, and 
 the family is a pis -oiler. I can understand that, to the 
 eyes of the moral Catholic, the normal love of two 
 individuals of different sexes, which is a sentiment as 
 spontaneous in man, as much in accordance with his 
 destiny, as paternal or filial love, has always something 
 of the forbidden fruit.* There ought not to be the 
 same among us ; and those who persist in deploring 
 the presence of the Canticle in the Bible, because it 
 almost exclusively treats of love, sacrifice, without 
 wishing to do so, to a Eoman Catholic prejudice of 
 much more remote origin than the Popes, and having 
 , its roots in the dualism of antiquity.^ It is in the 
 Canticle as inTHe^cEaste nuctiHeiTof statuary to the 
 pure all things are pure.^. 
 
 Do we then maintain the Canticle to be an edifying 
 book ? No, certainly not. It is no more so than a great 
 many parts of the Old Testament which we can point 
 out. But that its reading may be profoundly instructive ; 
 that it holds a remarkable place among the documents 
 
 * I hope that I express myself clearly. I am far from denying that 
 there are some cases in which it is necessary to renounce a wife (actual 
 or future) as there are others in which it is necessary to renounce a 
 father, a mother, and children. Only I say that such cases should not 
 be made to arise voluntarily. 
 
THE SONG OF SONGS. 73 
 
 of Hebraic antiquity ; that it opens new perspectives 
 of high interest upon the life and real manners of the 
 people, of which we are apt to form a sort of official 
 opinion little resembling the reality ; that, in a word, 
 it aids us better to understand that stem which in- 
 creased, and from which ultimately the Gospel burst 
 forth; and that, by all these claims, it occupies a 
 legitimate place among the records of the old Cove- 
 nant, we maintain firmly. For it is a false idea which 
 refuses to accord to a book a place in the Bible, unless 
 it be strictly religious. It is necessary to the his- 
 torical value of the collection that this book should 
 hold its place there. 
 
 We learn, for example, in reading this book, what 
 does not directly flow from its religious interest, 
 namely, how it took place that Solomon was the author 
 of the ruin of his dynasty. In bringing foreign cus- 
 toms and ideas to the soil of Palestine, he greatly 
 shocked the spirit and tendencies of the nation. Poly- 
 gamy was not forbidden in Israel ; but their manners 
 tended naturally to monogamy, more especially in the 
 rural districts. The pomp displayed by the king 
 dazzled their judgment; but when it became neces- 
 sary, in order to maintain it, to lay heavy imposts upon 
 the rural population, the old instincts of independence 
 and decentralization did their work. The religious 
 syncretism to which he abandoned himself during the 
 last part of his life, as a freethinker, who sacrificed 
 under different symbols to the same Deity, was not 
 only an anomaly, but, in addition, involved lese- 
 
74 THE SONG OF SONGS. 
 
 nationality at a time, and in a nation, in which the 
 ideas of God and of country were so much blended to- 
 gether. Solomon, in place of developing the virtual 
 powers of his people, the religious and moral ten- 
 dencies inherent to their proper genius, wished to 
 make them like other nations, without perceiving that 
 Israel drew its grandeur precisely from the fact that it 
 was not like other nations, and that in wishing to 
 assimilate it to them, he reduced it to being inferior to 
 them. In reality, the author of the Shulamite, as a 
 faithful and ingenuous organ of the natural sentiments 
 of his people, is more attached to the God of Israel than 
 to the anointed of the Lord. In the most solemn mo- 
 ment of his poem, when he makes the gravest chords of 
 his harp to resound, he comes to pronounce the name 
 of a God, and that God is Jehovah : 
 
 VIII. 6. For love is strong as death, 
 
 Ardent affection is unyielding as the grave, 
 The flames thereof are flames of fire 
 Of the lightnings of Jehovah. 
 
 In this book, which speaks so much of pleasure, and 
 which, at the first view, is so exclusively terrestrial, we 
 do not find the least trace of either idolatry or poly- 
 theism. So true it is, that the natural and pure senti- 
 ments which make part of true humanity are in intimate 
 harmony with religious truth. It is the too sensual 
 king who abandons himself, so much the more easily, 
 to the foreign religions, that they make pleasure one of 
 the elements of their worship, while the heroes of the 
 
THE SONG OF SONGS. 75 
 
 Canticle are necessarily monotheist. It is not the fair 
 and proud girl, who proclaims, with so much energy, 
 her exclusive love for her betrothed, and who at the 
 same time allows to be seen so much naive modesty, 
 and so much real chastity, in her impassioned recitals, 
 that would take part in the impurities of the worship 
 of Baal and of Astarte. It is in that sense that it can 
 be asserted that love, such as it is understood in modern 
 times, could not have arisen, but in a monotheistic 
 community. Is it not necessary that the two sexes be 
 on a certain footing of equality before it can be de- 
 veloped ? Is it not necessary that one and the same 
 God has made both the one and the other ? In the 
 nations surrounding Israel, the nature ascribed to their 
 Gods involved the two principles, male and female, and 
 hence the obscenities which mingled in their worship. 
 Their strange forms of sacrifice, under their revolting 
 monstrosity, contain, nevertheless, the idea, frightfully 
 disfigured, of the sacrifice of self. But true love is 
 essentially monogamous, and consequently counteracts 
 spontaneously the consequences, ascetic or indecent, 
 (more near than is supposed) of dualism. 
 
 It is thus that we can understand that the idea of a 
 sole Creator, maintained itself among the people of 
 Israel against all that might conflict with it. Precisely 
 because the Canticle is not a religious book, properly 
 called, precisely because it has sprung even from the 
 enjoyments and diversions of the people, it shews us 
 how much monotheism was the foundation of the sen- 
 timents and the life of the Hebrew people, since these 
 
76 THE SONG OP SONGS. 
 
 sentiments were strictly indigenous, and since the life 
 was such as repelled foreign influences. Behold the 
 residue of Israel that cannot perish ! Behold tho 
 seven thousand who would not bend the knee before 
 Baal ! They are far from being saints in the Christian 
 idea of the word. Their ideal involves infinitely more 
 than ours, of material life. They estimate its enjoyments 
 much more highly than we do, and they seek them 
 without the least false shame. But they have the spirit 
 of rectitude, which consists in adhering firmly to the 
 duties of which they are conscious. And they are the 
 depositaries and transmitters of that monotheistic 
 religiosity, which contains, in germ, the pure morality 
 with which it has pleased God to endow the Semitic 
 race, more particularly the Abrahamides, and among 
 the latter, above all, the Israelites. 
 
 The Canticle is then, in its own manner, one of the 
 witnesses the best qualified, of that religious predes- 
 tination, which, with the Bible, we call the election of 
 the people of Israel, and in virtue of which it was in its 
 bosom, and in its bosom only, that should be born the 
 Founder of the definitive religion of humanity. 
 
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