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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Song of Solomon 1:13 - 1:13
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
13 A bundle of myrrh is my beloved to me,
Which lieth between by breasts.
14 A bunch of cypress-flowers is my beloved to me,
From the vine-gardens of Engedi.
Most interpreters, ignoring the lessons of botany, explain Son 1:13 of a little bunch of myrrh; but whence could Shulamith obtain this? Myrrh, מֹר (מָרַר, to move oneself in a horizontal direction hither and thither, or gradually to advance; of a fluid, to flow over the plain),
(Note: Vid., Schlotmann in the Stud. u. Krit. (1867), p. 217.)
belongs, like the frankincense, to the amyrids, which are also exotics
(Note: They came from Arabia and India; the better Arabian was adulterated with Indian myrrh.)
in Palestine; and that which is aromatic in the Balsamodendron myrrha are the leaves and flowers, but the resin (Gummi myrrhae, or merely myrrha) cannot be tied in a bunch. Thus the myrrh here can be understood in no other way than as at Son 5:5; in general צְרוֹר, according to Hitzig's correct remark, properly denotes not what one binds up together, but what one ties up - thus sacculus, a little bag. It is not supposed that she carried such a little bag with her (cf. Isa 3:20), or a box of frankincense (Luth. musk-apple); but she compares her beloved to a myrrh-repository, which day and night departs not from her bosom, and penetrates her inwardly with its heart-strengthening aroma. So constantly does she think of him, and so delightful is it for her to dare to think of him as her beloved.
The 14th verse presents the same thought. כֹּפֶר is the cypress-cluster or the cypress-flowers, κύπρος (according to Fürst, from כפר = עפר, to be whitish, from the colour of the yellow-white flowers), which botanists call Lawsonia, and in the East Alḥennā; its leaves yield the orange colour with which the Moslem women stain
(Note: Vid., the literature of this subject in Defrémery's notice of Dozy-Engelmann's work in the Revue Critique, III 2 (1868), p. 408.)
their hands and feet. אֶשְׁכֹּל (from שָׁכַל, to interweave) denotes that which is woven, tresses, or a cluster or garland of their flowers. Here also we have not to suppose that Shulamith carried a bunch of flowers; in her imagination she places herself in the vine-gardens which Solomon had planted on the hill-terraces of Engedi lying on the west of the Dead Sea (Ecc 2:4), and chooses a cluster of flowers of the cypress growing in that tropical climate, and says that her beloved is to her internally what such a cluster of cypress-flowers would be to her externally. To be able to call him her beloved is her ornament; and to think of him refreshes her like the most fragrant flowers.