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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Song of Solomon 2:14 - 2:14
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Solomon further relates how he drew her to himself out of her retirement:
My dove in the clefts of the rock,
In the hiding-place of the cliff;
Let me see thy countenance,
Let me hear thy voice!
For thy voice is sweet and thy countenance comely.
“Dove” (for which Castellio, columbula, like vulticulum, voculam) is a name of endearment which Shulamith shares with the church of God, Psa 74:19; cf. Psa 56:1; Hos 7:11. The wood-pigeon builds its nest in the clefts of the rocks and other steep rocky places, Jer 48:28.
(Note: Wetstein's Reisebericht, p. 182: “If the Syrian wood-pigeon does not find a pigeon-tower, περιστερεῶνα, it builds its nest in the hollows of rocky precipices, or in the walls of deep and wide fountains.” See also his Nord-arabien, p. 58: “A number of scarcely accessible mountains in Arabia are called alkunnat, a rock-nest.”)
That Shulamith is thus here named, shows that, far removed from intercourse with the world, her home was among the mountains. חַגְוֵי, from חֶגֶו, or also חָגוּ, requires a verb הָגָה = (Arab.) khajja, findere. (סֶלַ, as a Himyar. lexicographer defines it, is a cleft into the mountains after the nature of a defile; with צוּר, only the ideas of inaccessibility and remoteness are connected; with סלע, those of a secure hiding-place, and, indeed, a convenient, pleasant residence. מַדְרֵגָה is the stairs; here the rocky stairs, as the two chalk-cliffs on the Rügen, which sink perpendicularly to the sea, are called “Stubbenkammer,” a corruption of the Slavonic Stupnhkamen, i.e., the Stair-Rock. “Let me see,” said he, as he called upon her with enticing words, “thy countenance;” and adds this as a reason, “for thy countenance is lovely.” The word מַרְאֵיךְ, thus pointed, is sing.; the Jod Otians is the third root letter of רָאַי, retained only for the sake of the eye. It is incorrect to conclude from ashrēch, in Ecc 10:17, that the ech may be also the plur. suff., which it can as little be as êhu in Pro 29:18; in both cases the sing. ěshěr has substituted itself for ashrē. But, inversely, mǎraīch cannot be sing.; for the sing. is simply marēch. Also mǎrāv, Job 41:1, is not sing.: the sing. is marēhu, Job 4:16; Son 5:15. On the other hand, the determination of such forms as מַרְאֵינוּ, מַרְאֵיהֶם, is difficult: these forms may be sing. as well as plur. In the passage before us, מַרְאִים is just such a non-numer. plur. as פָנִים. But while panīm is an extensive plur., as Böttcher calls it: the countenance, in its extension and the totality of its parts, - marīm, like marōth, vision, a stately term, Exo 40:2 (vid., Deitrich's Abhand. p. 19), is an amplificative plur.: the countenance, on the side of its fulness of beauty and its overpowering impression.