Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Song of Solomon 7:11 - 7:11

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Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Song of Solomon 7:11 - 7:11


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

11 Up, my lover, we will go into the country,

Lodge in the villages.

Hitzig here begins a new scene, to which he gives the superscription: “Shulamith making haste to return home with her lov.” The advocate of the shepherd-hypothesis thinks that the faithful Shulamith, after hearing Solomon's panegyric, shakes her head and says: “I am my beloved's.” To him she calls, “Come, my beloved;” for, as Ewald seeks to make this conceivable: the golden confidence of her near triumph lifts her in spirit forthwith above all that is present and all that is actual; only to him may she speak; and as if she were half here and half already there, in the midst of her rural home along with him, she says, “Let us go out into the fields,” etc. In fact, there is nothing more incredible than this Shulamitess, whose dialogue with Solomon consists of Solomon's addresses, and of answers which are directed, not to Solomon, but in a monologue to her shepherd; and nothing more cowardly and more shadowy than this lover, who goes about in the moonlight seeking his beloved shepherdess whom he has lost, glancing here and there through the lattices of the windows and again disappearing. How much more justifiable is the drama of the Song by the French Jesuit C. F. Menestrier (born in Sion 1631, died 1705), who, in his two little works on the opera and the ballet, speaks of Solomon as the creator of the opera, and regards the Song as a shepherd-play, in which his love-relation to the daughter of the king of Egypt is set forth under the allegorical figures of the love of a shepherd and a shepherdess!

(Note: Vid., Eugène Despris in the Revue politique et litteraire 1873. The idea was not new. This also was the sentiment of Fray Luis de Leon; vid., his Biographie by Wilkens (1866), p. 209.)

For Shulamith is thought of as a רֹעָה shepherdess, Son 1:8, and she thinks of Solomon as a רֹעֶה shepherd. She remains so in her inclination even after her elevation to the rank of a queen. The solitude and glory of external nature are dearer to her than the bustle and splendour of the city and the court. Hence her pressing out of the city to the country. הַשָׂדֶה is local, without external designation, like rus (to the country). כְּפָרִים (here and at 1Ch 27:25) is plur. of the unused form כָּפָר (constr. כְּפַר, Jos 18:24) or כְּפַר, Arab. kafar (cf. the Syr. dimin. kafrûno, a little town), instead of which it is once pointed כֹּפֶר, 1Sa 6:18, of that name of a district of level country with which a multitude of later Palest. names of places, such as כְּפַר נַחוּם, are connected. Ewald, indeed, understands kephārim as at Son 4:13 : we will lodge among the fragrant Al-henna bushes. But yet בַּכְּף cannot be equivalent to תַּחַת הכפרים; and since לִין (probably changed from לִיל) and השׁכים, Son 7:13, stand together, we must suppose that they wished to find a bed in the henna bushes; which, if it were conceivable, would be too gipsy-like, even for a pair of lovers of the rank of shepherds (vid., Job 30:7). No. Shulamith's words express a wish for a journey into the country: they will there be in freedom, and at night find shelter (בכף, as 1Ch 27:25 and Neh 6:2, where also the plur. is similarly used), now in this and now in that country place. Spoken to the supposed shepherd, that would be comical, for a shepherd does not wander from village to village; and that, returning to their home, they wished to turn aside into villages and spend the night there, cannot at all be the meaning. But spoken of a shepherdess, or rather a vine-dresser, who has been raised to the rank of queen, it accords with her relation to Solomon, - they are married, - as well as with the inexpressible impulse of her heart after her earlier homely country-life. The former vine-dresser, the child of the Galilean hills, the lily of the valley, speaks in the verses following.