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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Song of Solomon 7:9 - 7:9
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9aa And thy palate like the best wine.
יֵין הַטּוֹב is wine of the good kind, i.e., the best, as רָע אֵושֶׁת, Pro 6:24, a woman of a bad kind, i.e., a bad woman; the neut. thought of as adject. is both times the gen. of the attribute, as at Pro 24:25 it is the gen. of the substratum. The punctuation כַּיַּיִן הַטּוֹב (Hitz.) is also possible; it gives, however, the common instead of the delicate poetical expression. By the comparison one may think of the expressions, jungere salivas oris (Lucret.) and oscula per longas jungere pressa moras (Ovid). But if we have rightly understood Son 4:11; Son 5:16, the palate is mentioned much rather with reference to the words of love which she whispers in his ears when embracing her. Only thus is the further continuance of the comparison to be explained, and that it is Shulamith herself who continues it.
9ab Which goes down for my beloved smoothly,
Which makes the lips of sleepers move.
The dramatic structure of the Song becomes here more strongly manifest than elsewhere before. Shulamith interrupts the king, and continues his words as if echoing them, but again breaks off. The lxx had here לדודי in the text. It might notwithstanding be a spurious reading. Hitzig suggests that it is erroneously repeated, as if from Son 7:11. Ewald also (Hohesl. p. 137) did that before, - Heiligstedt, as usual, following him. But, as Ewald afterwards objected, the line would then be “too short, and not corresponding to that which follows.” But how shall לדודי now connect itself with Solomon's words? Ginsburg explains: “Her voice is not merely compared to wine, because it is sweet to everybody, but to such wine as would be sweet to a friend, and on that account is more valuable and pleasant.” But that furnishes a thought digressing εἰς ἄλλο γένος; and besides, Ewald rightly remarks that Shulamith always uses the word דודי of her beloved, and that the king never uses it in a similar sense. He contends, however, against the idea that Shulamith here interrupts Solomon; for he replies to me (Jahrb. IV 75): “Such interruptions we certainly very frequently find in our ill-formed and dislocated plays; in the Song, however, not a solitary example of this is found, and one ought to hesitate in imagining such a thing.” He prefers the reading לְדּוֹדִים beloved ones, although possibly לדודי, with î, abbreviated after the popular style of speech from îm, may be the same word. But is this ledodim not a useless addition? Is excellent wine good to the taste of friends merely; and does it linger longer in the palate of those not beloved than of those loving? And is the circumstance that Shulamith interrupts the king, and carried forward his words, not that which frequently also occurs in the Greek drama, as e.g., Eurip. Phoenissae, v. 608? The text as it stands before us requires an interchange of the speakers, and nothing prevents the supposition of such an interchange. In this idea Hengstenberg for once agrees with us. The Lamed in ledodi is meant in the same sense as when the bride drinks to the bridegroom, using the expression ledodi. The Lamed in לְמֵישָׁרִים is that of the defining norm, as the Beth in במי, Pro 23:31, is that of the accompanying circumstance: that which tastes badly sticks in the palate, but that which tastes pleasantly glides down directly and smoothly. But what does the phrase וגו דּוֹבֵב שִׂףְ mean? The lxx translate by ἱκανούμενος χείλεσί μου καὶ ὀδοῦσιν, “accommodating itself (Sym. προστιθέμενος) to my lips and teeth.” Similarly Jerome (omitting at least the false μου), labiisque et dentibus illius ad ruminandum, in which דִּבָּה, rumor, for דובב, seems to have led him to ruminare. Equally contrary to the text with Luther's translation: “which to my friend goes smoothly goes, and speaks of the previous year;” a rendering which supposes יְשָׁנִים (as also the Venet.) instead of יְשֵׁנִים (good wine which, as it were, tells of former years), and, besides, disregards שׁפתי. The translation: “which comes at unawares upon the lips of the sleepers,” accords with the language (Heiligst., Hitz.). But that gives no meaning, as if one understood by יְשֵׁנִים, as Gesen. and Ewald do, una in eodem toro cubantes; but in this case the word ought to have been שֹֽׁכְבִים. Since, besides, such a thing is known as sleeping through drink or speaking in sleep, but not of drinking in sleep, our earlier translation approves itself: which causes the lips of sleepers to speak. This interpretation is also supported by a proverb in the Talm. Jebamoth 97a, Jer. Moeed Katan, iii. 7, etc., which, with reference to the passage under review, says that if any one in this world adduces the saying of a righteous man in his name (רוחשׁות or מרחשׁות), שׂפתותיו דובבות בקבר. But it is an error inherited from Buxtorf, that דובבות means there loquuntur, and, accordingly, that דובב of this passage before us means loqui faciens. It rather means (vid., Aruch), bullire, stillare, manare (cogn. זב, טף, Syn. רחשׁ), since, as that proverb signifies, the deceased experiences an after-taste of his saying, and this experience expresses itself in the smack of the lips; and דּוֹבֵב, whether it be part. Kal or Po. = מְדוֹבֵב, thus: brought into the condition of the overflowing, the after-experience of drink that has been partaken of, and which returns again, as it were, ruminando. The meaning “to speak” is, in spite of Parchon and Kimchi (whom the Venet., with its φθεγγόμενος, follows), foreign to the verb; for דִּבָּה also means, not discourse, but sneaking, and particularly sneaking calumny, and, generally, fama repens. The calumniator is called in Arab. dabûb, as in Heb. רָכִיל.
We now leave it undecided whether in דובב, of this passage before us, that special idea connected with it in the Gemara is contained; but the roots דב and זב are certainly cogn., they have the fundamental idea of a soft, noiseless movement generally, and modify this according as they are referred to that which is solid or fluid. Consequently דָּבַב, as it means in lente incedere (whence the bear has the name דֹּב), is also capable of being interpreted leniter se movere, and trans. leniter movere, according to which the Syr. here translates, quod commovet labia mea et dentes meos (this absurd bringing in of the teeth is from the lxx and Aq.), and the Targ. allegorizes, and whatever also in general is the meaning of the Gemara as far as it exchanges דובבות for רוחשות (vid., Levy under רְחֵשׁ). Besides, the translations qui commovet and qui loqui facit fall together according to the sense. For when it is said of generous wine, that it makes the lips of sleepers move, a movement is meant expressing itself in the sleeper speaking. But generous wine is a figure of the love-responses of the beloved, sipped in, as it were, with pleasing satisfaction, which hover still around the sleepers in delightful dreams, and fill them with hallucinations.