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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Song of Solomon 2:9 - 2:9
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
9 My beloved is like a gazelle,
Or a young one of the harts.
Lo, there he stands behind our wall!
He looks through the windows,
Glances through the lattices.
The figure used in Son 2:8 is continued in Son 2:9. צְבִי is the gazelle, which is thus designated after its Arab. name ghazāl, which has reached us probably through the Moorish-Spanish gazela (distinct from “ghasele,” after the Pers. ghazal, love-poem). עֹפֶר is the young hart, like the Arab. ghufar (ghafar), the young chamois, probably from the covering of young hair; whence also the young lion may be called כְּפִיר. Regarding the effect of אוֹ passing from one figure to another, vid., under Son 2:7. The meaning would be plainer were Son 2:9 joined to Son 2:8, for the figures illustrate quick-footed speed (2Sa 2:18; 1Ch 12:8; cf. Psa 18:34 with Hab 3:19 and Isa 35:6). In Son 2:9 he comes with the speed of the gazelle, and his eyes seek for the unforgotten one. כֹּתֶל (from כָּתַל, compingere, condensare; whence, e.g., Arab. mukattal, pressed together, rounded, ramassé; vid., regarding R. כת at Psa 87:6), Aram. כּוּתַל (Jos 2:15; Targ. word for קִיר), is meant of the wall of the house itself, not of the wall surrounding it. Shulamith is within, in the house: her beloved, standing behind the wall, stands without, before the house (Tympe: ad latus aversum parietis, viz., out from it), and looks through the windows, - at one time through this one, at another through that one, - that he might see her and feast his eyes on her. We have here two verbs from the fulness of Heb. synon. for one idea of seeing. הִשְׁגִּיחַ, from שָׁגַח, occurring only three times in the O.T., refers, in respect of the roots ש, שך, שק, to the idea of piercing or splitting (whence also שֻׁגַּע, to be furious, properly pierced, percitum esse; cf. oestrus, sting of a gadfly = madness, Arab. transferred to hardiness = madness), and means fixing by reflexion and meditation; wherefore הַשְׁגָּחָח in post-bibl. Heb. is the name for Divine Providence. הֵצִיץ, elsewhere to twinkle and to bloom, appears only here in the sense of seeing, and that of the quick darting forward of the glance of the eye, as blick glance and blitz lightning (blic) are one word; “he saw,” says Goethe in Werther, “the glance of the powder” (Weigand).
(Note: In this sense: to look sharply toward, is הציץ (Talm.) - for Grätz alone a proof that the Song is of very recent date; but this word belongs, like סמדר, to the old Heb. still preserved in the Talm.)
The plurs. fenestrae and transennae are to be understood also as synechdoche totius pro parte, which is the same as the plur. of categ.; but with equal correctness we conceive of him as changing his standing place. חַלּוֹן is the window, as an opening in the wall, from חָלַל, perforare. חֲרַכִּים we combine most certainly (vid., Pro 12:27) with (Arab.) khark, fissura, so that the idea presents itself of the window broken through the wall, or as itself broken through; for the window in the country there consists for the most part of a pierced wooden frame of a transparent nature, - not (as one would erroneously conclude, from the most significant name of a window שְׂבָכָה, now schubbâke, from שָׂבַךְ, to twist, to lattice, to close after the manner of our Venetian blinds) of rods or boards laid crosswise. הֵצִיץ accords with the looking out through the pierced places of such a window, for the glances of his eye are like the penetrating rays of light.