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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Song of Solomon 8:10 - 8:10
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10 I was a wall,
And my breasts like towers;
Then I became in his eyes
Like one who findeth peace.
In the language of prose, the statement would be: Your conduct is good and wise, as my own example shows; of me also ye thus faithfully took care; and that I met this your solicitude with strenuous self-preservation, has become, to my joy and yours, the happiness of my life. That in this connection not אני חומה, but חומה אני has to be used, is clear: she compares herself with her sister, and the praise she takes to herself she takes to the honour of her brothers. The comparison of her breasts to towers is suggested by the comparison of her person to a wall; Kleuker rightly remarks that here the comparison is not of thing with thing, but of relation with relation: the breasts were those of her person, as the towers were of the wall, which, by virtue of the power of defence which they conceal within themselves, never permit the enemy, whose attention they attract, to approach them. The two substantival clauses, murus et ubera mea instar turrium, have not naturally a retrospective signification, as they would in a historical connection (vid., under Gen 2:10); but they become retrospective by the following “then I became,” like Deu 26:5, by the historical tense following, where, however, it is to be remarked that the expression, having in itself no relation to time, which is incapable of being expressed in German, mentions the past not in a way that excludes the present, but as including it. She was a wall, and her breasts like the towers, i.e., all seductions rebounded from her, and ventured not near her awe-inspiring attractions; then (אָז, temporal, but at the same time consequent; thereupon, and for this reason, as at Psa 40:8; Jer 22:15, etc.) she became in his (Solomon's) eyes as one who findeth peace. According to the shepherd-hypothesis, she says here: he deemed it good to forbear any further attempts, and to let me remain in peace (Ewald, Hitz., and others). But how is that possible? מצא שָׁלוֹם בעיני is a variation of the frequently occurring מצא חֵן בעיני, which is used especially of a woman gaining the affections of a man, Est 2:17; Deu 24:1; Jer 31:2 f.; and the expression here used, “thus I was in his eyes as one who findeth peace” is only the more circumstantial expression for, “then I found (אז מָצָאתִי) in his eyes peace,” which doubtless means more than: I brought it to this, that he left me further unmolested; שׁלום in this case, as syn. of חן, means inward agreement, confidence, friendship, as at Psa 41:10; there it means, as in the salutation of peace and in a hundred other cases, a positive good. And why should she use שׁלום instead of חן, but that she might form a play upon the name which she immediately, Son 8:11, thereafter utters, שׁלמה, which signifies, 1Ch 22:9, “The man of peace.” That Shulamith had found shalom (peace) with Shelomoh (Solomon), cannot be intended to mean that uninjured she escaped from him, but that she had entered into a relation to him which seemed to her a state of blessed peace. The delicate description, “in his eyes,” is designed to indicate that she appeared to him in the time of her youthful discipline as one finding peace. The כ is כ veritatis, i.e., the comparison of the fact with its idea, Isa 29:2, or of the individual with the general and common, Isa 13:6; Eze 26:10; Zec 14:3. Here the meaning is, that Shulamith appeared to him corresponding to the idea of one finding peace, and thus as worthy to find peace with him. One “finding peace” is one who gains the heart of a man, so that he enters into a relation of esteem and affection for her. This generalization of the idea also opposes the notion of a history of seduction. מוֹחְאֵת is from the ground-form matsiat, the parallel form to מוֹצֵאת, 2Sa 18:22. Solomon has won her, not by persuasion or violence; but because she could be no other man's, he entered with her into the marriage covenant of peace (cf. Pro 2:17 with Isa 54:10).