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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Song of Solomon 5:8 - 5:8
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All this Shulamith dreamed; but the painful feeling of repentance, of separation and misapprehension, which the dream left behind, entered as deeply into her soul as if it had been an actual external experience. Therefore she besought the daughters of Jerusalem:
8 I adjure you, ye daughters of Jerusalem,
If ye find my beloved, -
What shall ye then say to him?
“That I am sick of love.”
That אִם is here not to be interpreted as the negative particle of adjuration (Böttch.), as at Son 2:7; Son 3:5, at once appears from the absurdity arising from such an interpretation. The or. directa, following “I adjure you,” can also begin (Num 5:19.) with the usual אִם, which is followed by its conclusion. Instead of “that ye say to him I am sick of love,” she asks the question: What shall ye say to him: and adds the answer: quod aegra sum amore, or, as Jerome rightly renders, in conformity with the root-idea of חלה: quia amore langueo; while, on the other hand, the lxx: ὃτι τετροομένη (saucia) ἀγάπης ἐγώ εἰμι, as if the word were חַלְלַת, from חָלָל. The question proposed, with its answer, inculcates in a naive manner that which is to be said, as one examines beforehand a child who has to order something. She turns to the daughters of Jerusalem, because she can presuppose in them, in contrast with those cruel watchmen, a sympathy with her love-sorrow, on the ground of their having had similar experiences. They were also witnesses of the origin of this covenant of love, and graced the marriage festival by their sympathetic love.