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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Song of Solomon 2:15 - 2:15
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There now follows a cantiuncula. Shulamith comes forward, and, singing, salutes her beloved. Their love shall celebrate a new spring. Thus she wishes everything removed, or rendered harmless, that would disturb the peace of this love:
15 Catch us the foxes, the little foxes,
The spoilers of the vineyards;
For our vineyards are in bloom!
16 My beloved is mine, and I am his;
Who feeds his flock among the lilies.
If the king is now, on this visit of the beloved, engaged in hunting, the call: “Catch us,” etc., if it is directed at all to any definite persons, is addressed to those who follow him. But this is a vine-dresser's ditty, in accord with Shulamith's experience as the keeper of a vineyard, which, in a figure, aims at her love-relation. The vineyards, beautiful with fragrant blossom, point to her covenant of love; and the foxes, the little foxes, which might destroy these united vineyards, point to all the great and little enemies and adverse circumstances which threaten to gnaw and destroy love in the blossom, ere it has reached the ripeness of full enjoyment. שֻׁעָלִים comprehends both foxes and jackals, which “destroy or injure the vineyards; because, by their holes and passages which they form in the ground, loosening the soil, so that the growth and prosperity of the vine suffers injury” (Hitzig). This word is from שָׁעַל (R. של), to go down, or into the depth. The little foxes are perhaps the jackals, which are called tǎnnīm, from their extended form, and in height are seldom more than fifteen inches. The word “jackal” has nothing to do with שׁוּעָל, but is the Persian-Turkish shaghal, which comes from the Sanscr. crgâla, the howler (R. krag, like kap-âla, the skull; R. kap, to be arched). Moreover, the mention of the foxes naturally follows 14a, for they are at home among rocky ravines. Hitzig supposes Shulamith to address the foxes: hold for us = wait, ye rascals! But אָחַז, Aram. אֲחַד, does not signify to wait, but to seize or lay hold of (synon. לָכַד, Jdg 15:4), as the lion its prey, Isa 5:29. And the plur. of address is explained from its being made to the king's retinue, or to all who could and would give help. Fox-hunting is still, and has been from old times, a sport of rich landowners; and that the smaller landowners also sought to free themselves from them by means of snares or otherwise, is a matter of course, - they are proverbially as destroyers, Neh. 3:35 [4:3], and therefore a figure of the false prophets, Eze 13:4. מְחַבְּ כְּרָםִ are here instead of מְחַבְּלֵי הַכְּרָםִ. The articles are generally omitted, because poetry is not fond of the article, where, as here (cf. on the other hand, Son 1:6), the thoughts and language permit it; and the fivefold îm is an intentional mere verborum sonus. The clause וּכְרָ סְמָדַר is an explanatory one, as appears from the Vav and the subj. preceding, as well as from the want of a finitum. סְמָדַר maintains here also, in pausa, the sharpening of the final syllable, as חַץְ, Deu 28:42.
The 16th verse is connected with the 15th. Shulamith, in the pentast. song, celebrates her love-relation; for the praise of it extends into Son 2:15, is continued in Son 2:16, and not till Son 2:17 does she address her beloved. Luther translates:
My beloved is mine, and I am his;
He feeds (his flock) among the roses.
He has here also changed the “lilies” of the Vulgate into “roses;” for of the two queens among the flowers, he gave the preference to the popular and common rose; besides, he rightly does not translate הָרֹעֶה, in the mid. after the pascitur inter lilia of the Vulgate: who feeds himself, i.e., pleases himself; for רעה has this meaning only when the object expressly follows, and it is evident that בַּשּׁוֹ cannot possibly be this object, after Gen 37:2, - the object is thus to be supplied. And which? Without doubt, gregem; and if Heiligst., with the advocates of the shepherd-hypothesis, understands this feeding (of the flock) among the lilies, of feeding on a flowery meadow, nothing can be said against it. But at Son 6:2., where this saying of Shulamith is repeated, she says that her beloved בַּגַּנִּים feeds and gathers lilies. On this the literal interpretation of the qui pascit (gregem) inter lilia is wrecked; for a shepherd, such as the shepherd-hypothesis supposes, were he to feed his flock in a garden, would be nothing better than a thief; such shepherds, also, do not concern themselves with the plucking of flowers, but spend their time in knitting stockings. It is Solomon, the king, of whom Shulamith speaks. She represents him to herself as a shepherd; but in such a manner that, at the same time, she describes his actions in language which rises above ordinary shepherd-life, and, so to speak, idealizes. She, who was herself a shepherdess, knows from her own circle of thought nothing more lovely or more honourable to conceive and to say of him, than that he is a shepherd who feeds among lilies. The locality and the surroundings of his daily work correspond to his nature, which is altogether beauty and love. Lilies, the emblem of unapproachable highness, awe-inspiring purity, lofty elevation above what is common, bloom where the lily-like (king) wanders, whom the Lily names her own. The mystic interpretation and mode of speaking takes “lilies” as the figurative name of holy souls, and a lily-stalk as the symbol of the life of regeneration. Mary, who is celebrated in song as the rosa mystica, is rightly represented in ancient pictures with a lily in her hand on the occasion of the Annunciation; for if the people of God are called by Jewish poets “a people of lilies,” she is, within this lily-community, this communio sanctorum, the lily without a parallel.