Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Song of Solomon 5:2 - 5:2

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Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Song of Solomon 5:2 - 5:2


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

2 I sleep, but my heart keeps waking-

Hearken! my beloved is knocking:

Open to me, my sister, my love,

My dove, my perfect one;

For my head is filled with dew,

My locks (are) full of the drops of the night.

The partic. subst. clauses, Son 5:2, indicate the circumstances under which that which is related in Son 5:2 occurred. In the principal sentence in hist. prose וַיִּדְפֹּק would be used; here, in the dramatic vivacity of the description, is found in its stead the interject. vocem = ausculta with the gen. foll., and a word designating

(Note: דּוֹפֵק is knocking is not an attribute to the determinate דּוֹדִי my beloved which it follows, but a designation of state or condition, and thus acc., as the Beirut translation renders it: “hear my beloved in the condition of one knocking.” On the other hand, דוד דופק signifies “a beloved one knocking.” But “hear a beloved one knocking” would also be expressed acc. In classical language, the designation of state, if the subst. to which it belongs is indeterminate, is placed before it, e.g., “at the gate stood a beloved one knocking.”)

state or condition added, thought of as accus. according to the Semitic syntax (like Gen 4:10; Jer 10:22; cf. 1Ki 14:6). To sleep while the heart wakes signifies to dream, for sleep and distinct consciousness cannot be coexistent; the movements of thought either remain in obscurity or are projected as dreams. עֵר = ‛awir is formed from עוּר, to be awake (in its root cogn. to the Aryan gar, of like import in γρηγορεῖν, ἐγείρειν), in the same way as מֵת = mawith from מוּת. The שׁ has here the conj. sense of “dieweil” (because), like asher in Ecc 6:12; Ecc 8:15. The ר dag., which occurs several times elsewhere (vid., under Pro 3:8; Pro 14:10), is one of the inconsistencies of the system of punctuation, which in other instances does not double the ר; perhaps a relic of the Babylonian idiom, which was herein more accordant with the lingual nature of the r than the Tiberian, which treated it as a semi-guttural. קְוֻצָּה, a lock of hair, from קָץ = קָיַץ, abscîdit, follows in the formation of the idea, the analogy of קָצִיר, in the sense of branch, from קָצַר, desecuit; one so names a part which is removed without injury to the whole, and which presents itself conveniently for removal; cf. the oath sworn by Egyptian women, laḥajât muḳṣu̇si, “by the life of my separated,” i.e., “of my locks” (Lane, Egypt, etc., I 38). The word still survives in the Talmud dialect. Of a beautiful young man who proposed to become a Nazarite, Nedarim 9a says the same as the Jer. Horajoth iii. 4 of a man who was a prostitute in Rome: his locks were arranged in separate masses, like heap upon heap; in Bereshith rabba c. lxv., under Gen 27:11, קַוָּץ, curly-haired, is placed over against קֵרֵחַ, bald-headed, and the Syr. also has ḳauṣoto as the designation of locks of hair-a word used by the Peshito as the rendering of the Heb. קְוֻצּוֹת, as the Syro-Hexap. Job 16:12, the Greek κόμη. טַל, from טָלַל (Arab. ṭll, to moisten, viz., the ground; to squirt, viz., blood), is in Arabic drizzling rain, in Heb. dew; the drops of the night (רְסִיסֵי, from רָסַס, to sprinkle, to drizzle)

(Note: According to the primary idea: to break that which is solid or fluid into little pieces, wherefore רסיסים means also broken pieces. To this root appertains also the Arab. rashh, to trickle through, to sweat through, II to moisten (e.g., the mouth of a suckling with milk), and the Aethiop. rasěḥa, to be stained. Drops scattered with a sprinkling brush the Arabs call rashaḥât; in the mystical writings, rashaḥât el-uns (dew-drops of intimacy) is the designation of sporadic gracious glances of the deity.)

are just drops of dew, for the precipitation of the damp air assumes this form in nights which are not so cold as to become frosty. Shulamith thus dreams that her beloved seeks admission to her. He comes a long way and at night. In the most tender words he entreats for that which he expects without delay. He addresses her, “my sister,” as one of equal rank with himself, and familiar as a sister with a brother; “my love” (רֲעְ), as one freely chosen by him to intimate fellowship; “my dove,” as beloved and prized by him on account of her purity, simplicity, and loveliness. The meaning of the fourth designation used by him, תַּמָּתִי, is shown by the Arab. tam to be “wholly devoted,” whence teim, “one devoted” = a servant, and mutajjam, desperately in love with one. In addressing her tmty, he thus designates this love as wholly undivided, devoting itself without evasion and without reserve. But on this occasion this love did not approve itself, at least not at once.