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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Song of Solomon 1:6 - 1:6
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Shulamith now explains, to those who were looking upon her with inquisitive wonder, how it is that she is swarthy:
6a Look not on me because I am black,
Because the sun has scorched me.
If the words were בִי (תִּרְאֶינָה) אַל־תִּרְאוּ, then the meaning would be: look not at me, stare not at me. But אַל־תִּרְאֻנִי, with שׁ (elsewhere כִּי) following, means: Regard me not that I am blackish (subnigra); the second שׁ is to be interpreted as co-ordin. with the first (that ... that), or assigning a reason, and that objectively (for). We prefer, with Böttch., the former, because in the latter case we would have had שׁהשׁמשׁ. The quinqueliterum שְׁחַרְחֹרֶת signifies, in contradistinction to שָׁחוֹר, that which is black here and there, and thus not altogether black. This form, as descriptive of colour, is diminutive; but since it also means id quod passim est, if the accent lies on passim, as distinguished from raro, it can be also taken as increasing instead of diminishing, as in יְפֵיפָה, הֲפַכְפַּךְ. The lxx trans. παρέβλεπσέ (Symm. παρανέβλεπσέ) με ὁ ἣλιος: the sun has looked askance on me. But why only askance? The Venet. better: κατεῖδέ με; but that is too little. The look is thought of as scorching; wherefore Aquila: συνέκαυσέ με, it has burnt me; and Theodotion: περιέφρυξέ με, it has scorched me over and ov. שָׁזַף signifies here not adspicere (Job 3:9; Job 41:10) so much as adurere. In this word itself (cogn. שָׁדַף; Arab. sadaf, whence asdaf, black; cf. דָּעַךְ and זָעַךְ, Job 17:1), the looking is thought of as a scorching; for the rays of the eye, when they fix upon anything, gather themselves, as it were, into a focus. Besides, as the Scriptures ascribe twinkling to the morning dawn, so it ascribes eyes to the sun (2Sa 12:11), which is itself as the eye of the heavens.
(Note: According to the Indian idea, it is the eye of Varuna; the eye (also after Plato: ἡλιοειδέστατον τῶν περὶ τὰς αἰσθήσεις οργάνων) is regarded as taken from the sun, and when men die returning to the sun (Muir in the Asiatic Journal, 1865, p. 294, S. 309).)
The poet delicately represents Shulamith as regarding the sun as fem. Its name in Arab. and old Germ. is fem., in Heb. and Aram. for the most part mas. My lady the sun, she, as it were, says, has produced on her this swarthiness.
She now says how it has happened that she is thus sunburnt:
6b My mother's sons were angry with me,
Appointed me as keeper of the vineyards -
Mine own vineyard have I not kept.
If “mother's sons” is the parallel for “brothers” (אַחַי), then the expressions are of the same import, e.g., Gen 27:29; but if the two expressions stand in apposition, as Deut. 13:76, then the idea of the natural brother is sharpened; but when “mother's sons” stands thus by itself alone, then, after Lev 18:9, it means the relationship by one of the parents alone, as “father's wife” in the language of the O.T. and also 1Co 5:5 is the designation of a step-mother. Nowhere is mention made of Shulamith's father, but always, as here, only of her mother, Son 3:4; Son 8:2; Son 6:9; and she is only named without being introduced as speaking. One is led to suppose that Shulamith's own father was dead, and that her mother had been married again; the sons by the second marriage were they who ruled in the house of their mother. These brothers of Shulamith appear towards the end of the melodrama as rigorous guardians of their youthful sister; one will thus have to suppose that their zeal for the spotless honour of their sister and the family proceeded from an endeavour to accustom the fickle or dreaming child to useful activity, but not without step-brotherly harshness. The form נחֲרוּ, Ewald, §193c, and Olsh. p. 593, derive from חָרַר, the Niph. of which is either נָחַר or נִחַר (= נִחְרַר), Gesen. §68, An. 5; but the plur. of this נִחַר should, according to rule, have been נִחָרוּ (cf. however, נחֲלוּ, profanantur, Eze 7:24); and what is more decisive, this נִחַר from חַרָר everywhere else expresses a different passion from that of anger; Böttch. §1060 (2, 379). חָרָה is used of the burning of anger; and that נחֲרוּ (from נחֱרָה = נִחְרָה) can be another form for נחֱרוּ, is shown, e.g., by the interchange of אחֱרוּ and אחֲרוּ; the form נֶחְרוּ, like נֶחְלוּ, Amo 6:6, resisted the bringing together of the ח and the half guttural ר. Něhěrā (here as Isa 41:11; Isa 45:24) means, according to the original, mid. signif. of the Niph., to burn inwardly, ἀναφλέγεσθαι = ὀργίζεσθαι. Shulamith's address consists intentionally of clauses with perfects placed together: she speaks with childlike artlessness, and not “like a book;” in the language of a book, וַיְשִׂמוּנִי would have been used instead of שָׂמֻנִי. But that she uses נֹטֵרָה (from נטר, R. טר = τηρεῖν; cf. Targ. Gen 37:11 with Luk 2:51), and not נֹחֵרָה, as they were wont to say in Judea, after Pro 27:18, and after the designation of the tower for the protection of the flocks by the name of “the tower of the nōtsrīm” the watchmen, 2Ki 17:9, shows that the maid is a Galilean, whose manner of speech is Aramaizing, and if we may so say, platt-Heb. (= Low Heb.), like the Lower Saxon plattdeutsch. Of the three forms of the particip. נֹֽטְרָה, נוֹטֵרָה, נוֹטֶרֶת, we here read the middle one, used subst. (Ewald, §188b), but retaining the long ē (ground-form, nâṭir). The plur. אֶת־הךְּ does not necessarily imply that she had several vineyards to keep, it is the categ. plur. with the art. designating the genus; custodiens vineas is a keeper of a vineyard. But what kind of vineyard, or better, vine-garden, is that which she calls שֶׁלִּי כַּרְמִי, i.e., meam ipsius vineam? The personal possession is doubly expressed; shělli is related to cǎrmī as a nearer defining apposition: my vineyard, that which belongs to me (vid., Fr. Philippi's Status constr. pp. 112-116). Without doubt the figure refers to herself given in charge to be cared for by herself: vine-gardens she had kept, but her own vine-garden, i.e., her own person, she had not kept. Does she indicate thereby that, in connection with Solomon, she has lost herself, with all that she is and has? Thus in 1851 I thought; but she certainly seeks to explain why she is so sunburnt. She intends in this figurative way to say, that as the keeper of a vineyard she neither could keep nor sought to keep her own person. In this connection cǎarmī, which by no means = the colourless memet ipsam, is to be taken as the figure of the person in its external appearance, and that of its fresh-blooming attractive appearance which directly accords with כֶּרֶם, since from the stem-word כָּרַם (Arab.), karuma, the idea of that which is noble and distinguished is connected with this designation of the planting of vines (for כֶּרֶם, Arab. karm, cf. karmat, of a single vine-stock, denotes not so much the soil in which the vines are planted, as rather the vines themselves): her kěrěm is her (Arab.) karamat, i.e., her stately attractive appearance. If we must interpret this mystically then, supposing that Shulamith is the congregation of Israel moved at some future time with love to Christ, then by the step-brothers we think of the teachers, who after the death of the fathers threw around the congregation the fetters of their human ordinances, and converted fidelity to the law into a system of hireling service, in which all its beauty disappeared. Among the allegorists, Hengstenberg here presents the extreme of an interpretation opposed to what is true and fine.