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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Song of Solomon 5:12 - 5:12
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12 His eyes like doves by the water-brooks,
Bathing in milk, stones beautifully set
The eyes in their glancing moistness (cf. ὑγρότης τῶν ὀμμάτων, in Plutarch, of a languishing look), and in the movement of their pupils, are like doves which sip at the water-brooks, and move to and fro beside them. אָפִיק, from אָפַק, continere, is a watercourse, and then also the water itself flowing in it (vid., under Psa 18:16), as (Arab.) wadin, a valley, and then the river flowing in the valley, bahr, the sea-basin (properly the cleft), and then also the sea itself. The pred. “bathing” refers to the eyes (cf. Son 4:9), not to the doves, if this figure is continued. The pupils of the eyes, thus compared with doves, seem as if bathing in milk, in that they swim, as it were, in the white in the eye. But it is a question whether the figure of the doves is continued also in יֽשְׁבוֹת עַל־מִלֵּאת. It would be the case of milleth meant “fulness of water,” as it is understood, after the example of the lxx, also by Aquila (ἐκχύσεις). Jerome (fluenta plenissima), and the Arab. (piscinas aqua refertas); among the moderns, by Döpke, Gesen., Hengst., and others. But this pred. would then bring nothing new to Son 5:12; and although in the Syr. derivatives from melā' signify flood and high waters, yet the form milleth does not seem, especially without מַיִם, to be capable of bearing this signification. Luther's translation also, although in substance correct: und stehen in der fülle (and stand in fulness) (milleth, like שׁלמותא of the Syr., πληρώσεως of the Gr. Venet., still defended by Hitz.), yet does not bring out the full force of milleth, which, after the analogy of כִּסֵּא, רִצְפָה, appears to have a concrete signification which is seen from a comparison of Exo 25:7; Exo 27:17, Exo 27:20; Exo 39:13. There מִלֻּאָה and מִלֻּאִים signify not the border with precious stones, but, as rightly maintained by Keil, against Knobel, their filling in, i.e., their bordering, setting. Accordingly, milleth will be a synon. technical expression: the description, passing from the figure of the dove, says further of the eyes, that they are firm on (in) their setting; עַל is suitable, for the precious stone is laid within the casket in which it is contained. Hitzig has, on the contrary, objected that מלֻאת and מלֻאים denote filling up, and thus that milleth cannot be a filling up, and still less the place thereof. But as in the Talm. מוּלְיְתָא signifies not only fulness, but also stuffed fowls or pies, and as πλήρωμα in its manifold aspects is used not only of that with which anything is filled, but also of that which is filled (e.g., of a ship that is manned, and Eph 1:23 of the church in which Christ, as in His body, is immanent), - thus also milleth, like the German “Fassung,” may be used of a ring-casket (funda or pala) in which the precious stone is put. That the eyes are like a precious stone in its casket, does not merely signify that they fill the sockets, - for the bulbus of the eye in every one fills the orbita, - but that they are not sunk like the eyes of one who is sick, which fall back on their supporting edges in the orbita, and that they appear full and large as they press forward from wide and open eyelids. The cheeks are next described.