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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Song of Solomon 8:1 - 8:1
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If Solomon now complies with her request, yields to her invitation, then she will again see her parental home, where, in the days of her first love, she laid up for him that which was most precious, that she might thereby give him joy. Since she thus places herself with her whole soul back again in her home and amid its associations, the wish expressed in these words that follow rises up within her in the childlike purity of her love:
1 O that thou wert like a brother to me,
Who sucked my mother's breasts!
If I found thee without, I would kiss thee;
They also could not despise me.
2 I would lead thee, bring thee into my mother's house;
Thou wouldest instruct me -
I would give thee to drink spiced wine,
The must of my pomegranates.
Solomon is not her brother, who, with her, hung upon the same mother's breast; but she wishes, carried away in her dream into the reality of that she wished for, that she had him as her brother, or rather, since she says, not אָח, but כְּאָח (with כְּ, which here has not, as at Psa 35:14, the meaning of tanquam, but of instar, as at Job 24:14), that she had in him what a brother is to a sister. In that case, if she found him without, she would kiss him (hypoth. fut. in the protasis, and fut. without Vav in the apodosis, as at Job 20:24; Hos 8:12; Psa 139:18) - she could do this without putting any restraint on herself for the sake of propriety (cf. the kiss of the wanton harlot, Pro 7:13), and also (גַּם) without needing to fear that they who saw it would treat it scornfully (לְ בּוּז, as in the reminiscence, Pro 6:30). The close union which lies in the sisterly relationship thus appeared to her to be higher than the near connection established by the marriage relationship, and her childlike feeling deceived her not: the sisterly relationship is certainly purer, firmer, more enduring than that of marriage, so far as this does not deepen itself into an equality with the sisterly, and attain to friendship, yea, brotherhood (Pro 17:17), within. That Shulamith thus feels herself happy in the thought that Solomon was to her as a brother, shows, in a characteristic manner, that “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life,” were foreign to her. If he were her brother, she would take him by the hand,
(Note: Ben-Asher punctuates אנְהגֲךָ. Thus also P. rightly. Ben-Naphtali, on the contrary, punctuates אנְהֳגְךָ. Cf. Genesis (1869), p. 85, note 3.)
and bring him into her mother's house, and he would then, under the eye of their common mother, become her teacher, and she would become his scholar. The lxx adds, after the words “into my mother's house,” the phrase, καὶ εἰς ταμεῖον τῆς συλλαβούσης με, cf. Son 3:4. In the same manner also the Syr., which has not read the words διδάξεις με following, which are found in some Codd. of the lxx. Regarding the word telammedēne (thou wouldest instruct me) as incongruous, Hitzig asks: What should he then teach her? He refers it to her mother: “who would teach me,” namely, from her own earlier experience, how I might do everything rightly for him. “Were the meaning,” he adds, “he should do it, then also it is she who ought to be represented as led home by him into his house, the bride by the bridegroom.” But, correctly, Jerome, the Venet., and Luther: “Thou wouldest (shouldest) instruct me;” also the Targ.: “I would conduct thee, O King Messiah, and bring Thee into the house of my sanctuary; and Thou wouldest teach me (וּתְאַלֵּף יָתִי) to fear God and to walk in His ways.” Not her mother, but Solomon, is in possession of the wisdom which she covets; and if he were her brother, as she wishes, then she would constrain him to devote himself to her as her teacher. The view, favoured by Leo Hebraeus (Dialog. de amore, c. III), John Pordage (Metaphysik, III 617 ff.), and Rosenmüller, and which commends itself, after the analogy of the Gîtagovinda, Boethius, and Dante, and appears also to show itself in the Syr. title of the book, “Wisdom of the Wise,” that Shulamith is wisdom personified (cf. also Son 8:2 with Pro 9:2, and Pro 8:3; Pro 2:6 with Pro 4:8), shatters itself against this תלמדני; the fact is rather the reverse: Solomon is wisdom in person, and Shulamith is the wisdom-loving soul,
(Note: Cf. my Das Hohelied unter. u. ausg. (1851), pp. 65-73.)
- for Shulamith wishes to participate in Solomon's wisdom. What a deep view the “Thou wouldest teach me” affords into Shulamith's heart! She knew how much she yet came short of being to him all that a wife should be. But in Jerusalem the bustle of court life and the burden of his regal duties did not permit him to devote himself to her; but in her mother's house, if he were once there, he would instruct her, and she would requite him with her spiced wine and with the juice of the pomegranates.
הָרֶקַח יַיִן, vinum conditura, is appos. = genitiv. יֵין הרקח, vinum conditurae (ἀρωματίτης in Dioscorides and Pliny), like יַיִן תַּרְ, Psa 6:5, לַחַץ מַיִם 1Ki 22:27, etc., vid., Philippi's Stat. Const. p. 86. אַשְׁקְךָ carries forward אֶשּׁקֲךָ in a beautiful play upon words. עָסִיס designates the juice as pressed out: the Chald. עַסּי corresponds to the Heb. דָּרַךְ, used of treading the grapes. It is unnecessary to render רִמֹּנִי as apoc. plur., like מִנִּי, Psa 45:9 (Ewald, §177a); rimmoni is the name she gives to the pomegranate trees belonging to her, - for it is true that this word, rimmon, can be used in a collective sense (Deu 8:8); but the connection with the possessive suff. excludes this; or by 'asis rimmoni she means the pomegranate must (cf. ῥοΐ́της = vinum e punicis, in Dioscorides and Pliny) belonging to her. Pomegranates are not to be thought of as an erotic symbol;
(Note: Vid., Porphyrius, de Abstin. iv. 16, and Inman in his smutty book, Ancient Faiths, vol. I 1868, according to which the pomegranate is an emblem of “a full womb.”)
they are named as something beautiful and precious. “O Ali,” says a proverb of Sunna, “eat eagerly only pomegranates (Pers. anâr), for their grains are from Paradise.”
(Note: Vid., Fleischer's Catal. Codd. Lips. p. 428.)