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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Song of Solomon 6:8 - 6:8
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
8 There are sixty queens,
And eighty concubines,
And virgins without number.
9 One is my dove, my perfect one, -
The only one of her mother,
The choice one of her that bare her.
The daughters saw her and called her blessed, -
Queens and concubines, and they extolled her.
Even here, where, if anywhere, notice of the difference of gender was to be expected, הֵמָּה stands instead of the more accurate הֵנָּה (e.g., Gen 6:2). The number off the women of Solomon's court, 1Ki 11:3, is far greater (700 wives and 300 concubines); and those who deny the Solomonic authorship of the Song regard the poet, in this particular, as more historical than the historian. On our part, holding as we do the Solomonic authorship of the book, we conclude from these low numbers that the Song celebrates a love-relation of Solomon's at the commencement of his reign: his luxury had not then reached the enormous height to which he, the same Solomon, looks back, and which he designates, Ecc 2:8, as vanitas vanitatum. At any rate, the number of 60 מְלָכוֹת, i.e., legitimate wives of equal rank with himself, is yet high enough; for, according to 2Ch 11:21, Rehoboam had 18 wives and 60 concubines. The 60 occurred before, at Son 3:7. If it be a round number, as sometimes, although rarely, sexaginta is thus used (Hitzig), it may be reduced only to 51, but not further, especially here, where 80 stands along with it. פילֶגֶשׁ (פִּלֶּגֶשׁ), Gr. πάλλαξ παλλακή (Lat. pellex), which in the form פִּלַּקְתָּא (פַּלְקְתָא) came back from the Greek to the Aramaic, is a word as yet unexplained. According to the formation, it may be compared to חֶרְמֵשׁ, from חָרַם, to cut off; whence also the harem bears the (Arab.) name ḥaram, or the separated synaeconitis, to which access is denied. And ending in is (ש) is known to the Assyr., but only as an adverbial ending, which, as 'istinis = לְבַדּוֹ, alone, solus, shows is connected with the pron. su. These two nouns appear as thus requiring to be referred to quadrilitera, with the annexed שׁ; perhaps פלגשׁ, in the sense of to break into splinters, from פָּלַג, to divide (whence a brook, as dividing itself in its channels, has the name of פֶּלֶג), points to the polygamous relation as a breaking up of the marriage of one; so that a concubine has the name pillěgěsh, as a representant of polygamy in contrast to monogamy.
In the first line of Son 6:9 אחת is subj. (one, who is my dove, my perfect one); in the second line, on the contrary, it is pred. (one, unica, is she of her mother). That Shulamith was her mother's only child does not, however, follow from this; אחת, unica, is equivalent to unice dilecta, as יָחִיד, Pro 4:3, is equivalent to unice dilectus (cf. Keil's Zec 14:7). The parall. בָּרָה has its nearest signification electa (lxx, Syr., Jerome), not pura (Venet.); the fundamental idea of cutting and separating divides itself into the ideas of choosing and purifying. The Aorists, Son 6:9, are the only ones in this book; they denote that Shulamith's look had, on the part of the women, this immediate result, that they willingly assigned to her the good fortune of being preferred to them all, - that to her the prize was due. The words, as also at Pro 31:28, are an echo of Gen 30:13, - the books of the Chokma delight in references to Genesis, the book of pre-Israelitish origin. Here, in Son 6:8, Son 6:9, the distinction between our typical and the allegorical interpretation is correctly seen. The latter is bound to explain what the 60 and the 80 mean, and how the wives, concubines, and “virgins” of the harem are to be distinguished from each other; but what till now has been attempted in this matter has, by reason of its very absurdity or folly, become an easy subject of wanton mockery. But the typical interpretation regards the 60 and the 80, and the unreckoned number, as what their names denote, - viz. favourites, concubines, and serving-maids. But to see an allegory of heavenly things in such a herd of women - a kind of thing which the Book of Genesis dates from the degradation of marriage in the line of Cain - is a profanation of that which is holy. The fact is, that by a violation of the law of God (Deu 17:17), Solomon brings a cloud over the typical representation, which is not at all to be thought of in connection with the Antitype. Solomon, as Jul Sturm rightly remarks, is not to be considered by himself, but only in his relation to Shulamith. In Christ, on the contrary, is no imperfection; sin remains in the congregation. In the Song, the bride is purer than the bridegroom; but in the fulfilling of the Song this relation is reversed: the bridegroom is purer than the bride.