Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Song of Solomon 1:5 - 1:5

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Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Song of Solomon 1:5 - 1:5


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

After this choral song, Shulamith, who has listened to the singers not without being examined by their inquisitive glances as a strange guest not of equal rank with them, now speaks:

5 Black am I, yet comely, ye daughters of Jerusalem,

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

From this, that she addresses the ladies of the palace as “daughters of Jerusalem” (Kerı̂ ירושׁלַיִם, a du. fractus; like עֶפְרַיִן for עֶפְרוֹן, 2Ch 13:19), it is to be concluded that she, although now in Jerusalem, came from a different place. She is, as will afterwards appear, from Lower Galilee; - and it may be remarked, in the interest of the mystical interpretation, that the church, and particularly her first congregations, according to the prophecy, was also Galilean, for Nazareth and Capernaum are their original seats; - and if Shulamith is a poetico-mystical Mashal or emblem, then she represents the synagogue one day to enter into the fellowship of Solomon - i.e., of the son of David, and the daughters of Jerusalem, i.e., the congregation already believing on the Messiah. Yet we confine ourselves to the nearest sense, in which Solomon relates a self-experience. Shulamith, the lightly esteemed, cannot boast that she is so ruddy and fair of countenance as they who have just sung how pleasant it is to be beloved by this king; but yet she is not so devoid of beauty as not to venture to love and hope to be loved: “Black am I, yet comely.” These words express humility without abjectness. She calls herself “black,” although she is not so dark and unchangeably black as an “Ethiopian” (Jer 13:23). The verb שָׁחַר has the general primary idea of growing dark, and signifies not necessarily soot-blackness (modern Arab. shuhwar, soot), but blackness more or less deep, as שַׁחַר, the name of the morning twilight, or rather the morning grey, shows; for (Arab.) saḥar

(Note: After an improbable etymology of the Arab., from saḥar, to turn, to depart, “the departure of the night” (Lane). Magic appears also to be called sihar, as nigromantia (Mediaev. from nekromantia), the black art.)

denotes the latter, as distinguished from (Arab.) fajr, the morning twilight (vid., under Isa 14:12; Isa 47:11). She speaks of herself as a Beduin who appears to herself as (Arab.) sawda, black, and calls

(Note: The houri (damsel of paradise) is thus called ḥawaryyt, adj. relat. from ḥawra, from the black pupil of the eye in the centre of the white eyeball.)

the inhabitants of the town (Arab.) ḥawaryyat (cute candidas). The Vav we have translated “yet” (“yet comely”); it connects the opposite, which exists along with the blackness. נָאוָה is the fem. of the adj. נָאוֶה = נאֲוֶה = נאֲוַי, which is also formed by means of the doubling of the third stem-letter of נָאָה = נָאַו, נָאַי (to bend forward, to aim; to be corresponding to the aim, conformable, becoming, beautiful), e.g., like רעֲנָן, to be full of sap, green. Both comparisons run parallel to nigra et bella; she compares on the one hand the tents of Kedar, and on the other the tapestry of Solomon. אֹהֶל signifies originally, in general, the dwelling-place, as בַּיִת the place where one spends the night; these two words interchange: ohel is the house of the nomad, and baith is the tent of him who is settled. קֵדַר (with the Tsere, probably from (Arab.) ḳadar, to have ability, be powerful, though of after the Heb. manner, as Theodoret explains and Symm. also translates: σκοτασμός, from (Heb.) Kadar, atrum esse) is the name of a tribe of North. Arab. Ishmaelites (Gen 25:13) whom Pliny speaks of (Cedraei in his Hist. Nat. Son 5:11), but which disappeared at the era of the rise of Islam; the Karaite Jefeth uses for it the word (Arab.) Ḳarysh, for he substitutes the powerful Arab tribe from which Muhammed sprung, and rightly remarks: “She compares the colour of her skin to the blackness of the hair tents of the Koreishites,” - even to the present day the Beduin calls his tent his “hair-house” (bêt wabar, or, according to a more modern expression, bêt sa'r, שֵׂעָר בֵּית); for the tents are covered with cloth made of the hair of goats, which are there mostly black-coloured or grey. On the one hand, dark-coloured as the tents of the Kedarenes, she may yet, on the other hand, compare herself to the beautiful appearance of the יְרִיעוֹת of Solomon. By this word we will have to think of a pleasure-tent or pavilion for the king; pavillon (softened from Lat. papilio) is a pleasure-tent spread out like the flying butterfly. This Heb. word could certainly also mean curtains for separating a chamber; but in the tabernacle and the temple the curtains separating the Most Holy from the Holy Place were not so designated, but are called פָּרֹכֶת and מָסָךְ; and as with the tabernacle, so always elsewhere, יְרִיעוֹת (from יָרַע, to tremble, to move hither and thither) is the name of the cloths or tapestry which formed the sides of the tent (Isa 54:2); of the tent coverings, which were named in parall. with the tents themselves as the clothing of their framework (Hab 3:7; Jer 4:20; Jer 10:20; Jer 49:29). Such tent hangings will thus also be here meant; precious, as those described Ex 26 and 36, and as those which formed the tabernacle on Zion (2 Sam 7; cf. 1Ch 17:1) before the erection of the temple. Those made in Egypt

(Note: Vid., Wetzstein's Isaiah (1869), p. 698.)

were particularly prized in ancient times.