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The external aspect which it presents, is that of “A Song of Love,” which appears to have been composed on occasion of some distinguished espousals, and to set forth the strong human affections naturally connected therewith. The two lovers, or the bridegroom and the bride, appear throughout, expressing their feelings in highly impassioned, but in very beautiful, and in strongly figurative, but truthful language, to and of each other. The bridegroom is a king bearing the name of Shelomoh (the peaceful, or prince of peace), and the other a lady who becomes his queen, and who bears the corresponding name of Shelomith, which is but the feminine form of his own, and bears the same relation to it as Julia does to Julius. Besides these leading characters, there appears through the whole a kind of chorus, as in the Greek drama, composed of “the daughters of Jerusalem;” and towards the close two brothers of Shelomith appear, who each speak once only. Besides these, other characters are introduced or alluded to, such as shepherds, watchmen, gardeners, etc., but they are mutes, and do not speak.
It has been doubted by some whether the poem has any historical foundation. It is, however, generally supposed that it expresses the circumstances and sentiments connected with Solomon’s marriage with a lady, generally conceived to have been the King of Egypt’s daughter; but some modern commentators have produced arguments to show that the bride must have been a daughter of Israel and a native of Palestine. We formerly thought this question one of much interest; but latterly this and other external points connected with it have appeared to us in greatly reduced importance, in our search after the inner meaning, which under this aspect the book presents—the nutritive kernel which this outer husk contains, and to which it is adapted.
Does it contain any inner meaning? On this question there has been large debate. Some regard it as a song of human affection, and see nothing beyond this in it; and those who hold this opinion, consistently lament the presence of such a book in the Bible. And certainly, if we entertained this view, we should agree with them, and say that it ought not to be in the Sacred Volume. We say more, that it never would have been there if this were the view intended to be taken of the book, and the mere fact of its being there, among the holy books which existed in the time of our Lord, and to which he collectively bore testimony, is in itself a proof that this is not the true estimate of the Song of Songs, or rather, is a view that falls far short of the whole truth.
It is incredible that those who settled the canon of the Old Testament should have admitted this book into the sacred volume, had they regarded it as a mere song of human passion. In fact, so familiar were their minds with the practice of representing spiritual conditions under the symbols of human affections, and so much was this, as they knew, the practice of all oriental nations, that it probably never seemed to them possible that its true inner meaning, or, at least, that it was meant to represent spiritual things, however the meaning might be interpreted—should ever be called in question. “Far be it! far be it!” says Aben Ezra, in the Preface to his Exposition of this Book, “that the Song of Songs should treat of carnal affections; but all things in it are figuratively spoken. Yea, unless its excellence had been great, it would have had no place among the sacred writings; nor is there any controversy as to that.”
In taking this poem, as they did, to shadow forth the union which subsists between the Lord and his people, they were abundantly justified by many other passages of Scripture, in which that relation is similarly described by the most endearing of all earthly relations, that between the husband and the wife, or the bridegroom and the bride; and from which grew other figures drawn from the circumstances of the same condition. Thus, when the heart of the wedded church becomes alienated, the Lord is described as jealous; and when she persists in her evil ways, he threatens her with a bill of divorcement. There are, in fact, many passages, some of considerable length, as distinct as the Song of Songs in this external aspect, but which no one thought of interpreting in any other than the allegorical sense. It might have been anticipated that such a relationship, alluded to as it is in various Scriptures, would be more fully and circumstantially treated of in some particular portion of the inspired volume. Neither is it difficult to conceive that an entire book should be devoted by the Holy Spirit to a subject so important and precious to every spiritual mind. To set it forth with vividness, and so present it, that instead of being a mere abstraction, it might appeal to the heart and affections, the sort of dramatic form selected has evident advantage over others, and gives room for its adornment with all the beautiful imagery which nature and art afford.
In fact, this mode of expression is, at the present day, so familiar in the East, that an Oriental, on first becoming acquainted with this book, would read it with rapture, and recognize it as full of edifying spiritual expression, the general purport of which he would be at no loss to gather; and greatly would he be astonished to learn, that in the cold regions of the north, there were many who questioned that it had any spiritual significance. Mr. Lane, in his very interesting work on the Modern Egyptians, after correctly pointing out that the odes sung by the Moslems at their religious festivals, are of the same nature as the Song of Solomon, generally alluding to their prophet as the object of love and praise, gives a specimen of one of them, but it is too long for this place. He thus goes on . “I must translate a few more lines, to show more strongly the similarity of those songs to that of Solomon; and lest it should be thought that I have varied the expression, I shall not attempt to render them into verse. In the small collection of poems sung at zikrs, is one that begins with these lines—
‘O gazelle, from among the gazelles of El-Yemen!
I am thy slave without cost;
O thou small of age and fresh of skin!
O thou who art scarce past the time of drinking milk!’
In the first of these verses, we have a comparison exactly agreeing with the concluding verses of Solomon’s Song, for the word which in our Bible is translated a ‘roe,’ is used in Arabic as synonymous with ghazal (or a gazelle); and the mountains of El-Yemen are the ‘mountains of spices.’ This poem ends in the following lines—
‘The phantom of thy form visited me in my slumber:
I said, ‘O phantom of slumber, who sent thee?’
He said, ‘He sent me whom thou knowest;
He whom love occupies thee.’
The beloved of my heart visited me in the darkness of the night.
I stood to show him honor until he sat down.
I said, ‘O thou, my petition and all my desire!
Hast thou come at midnight and not feared the watchman?
He said to me, ‘I feared; but, however, love
Had taken from me my soul and my breath.’’
Compare the above with the second and five following verses of the fifth chapter of Solomon’s Song. Finding that songs of this description were exceedingly numerous, and almost the only poems sung at zikrs that they are composed for the purpose, and intended only to have a spiritual sense (though certainly not understood in that sense by the generality of the vulgar), I cannot entertain any doubts as to the design of Solomon’s Song. The specimen I have given of the religious love-songs of the Moslems have not been selected, in preference to others, as most agreeing with that of Solomon, but as being in frequent use.”
The passage thus cited certainly furnishes a most valuable illustrative testimony to the spiritual sense of Solomon’s Song; and we trust that none of our readers will hereafter rest upon the mere literal aspect of this Divine Song, at the peril of being counted among “the generality of the vulgar,” by whom alone, as Mr. Lane admits, the spiritual sense of such songs is not apparent.
This practice is, however, far from being confined to the Arabian countries. We find it in Persia, in India, and among the Rabbinical Hebrews. We shall confine our further remarks, however, to Persia—the most poetical country of the East. In that country, the glowing poems of the Persian bards are firmly believed by the Soofees, and by many others, to have a mystical significance, and are so explained and employed. “The Persians insist,” says Major Scott Waring, “that we should give them the credit of understanding their own language; that all the odes of their celebrated poets are mystical, and breathe a fervent spirit of adoration towards the Supreme Being. They maintain that the poets, being generally Soofees, profess eager desire without carnal affection, and circulate the cup but no material goblet, since all is spiritual to them, all is mystery within mystery. In fact, they regard the poetry as of the same nature as Solomon’s Song; and, indeed, the fact that so large a proportion of the poetry of Western Asia, that is, of Arabia and Persia, is employed in the expression of religious emotions mystically, under the same image that we find there, is a very strong argument for the general opinion that the Canticles form a mystical or allegorical or religious poem, the details of which, although they seem to us hard to be understood, are perfectly intelligible in a sacred sense to the Persian and Arabian of the present day, as they were to the ancient Hebrew.”
The principle of this poetical mysticism is clearly announced by the poet Jamee, who tells us that he addresses the Almighty by no particular name, for that everything in the universe declares His presence and existence—
“Sometimes the wine, sometimes the cup, I call Thee; sometimes the lure, sometimes the net, I call Thee.
Excepting thy name, there is not another letter in the tablet of the universe.
Say by what appellation shall I call Thee?”
Another passage, avowedly of this mystical character, we copy from Sheikh Mohammed Ali Hazin, as the most characteristic specimen of this kind of verse on which we can lay our hands—
“Cup-bearer of orthodox wine, Note: Literally, wine of the acknowledgment of the Divine unity, opposed to the dry dullness and gloomy distraction of Polytheism. from among us
Which carries away the darkness of idolatry—
Which, to our gloomy hearts, is like a flame of fire,
On the midnight illumination of Mount Sinai—
Give us goblets that we may move aside from ourselves,
And, out of ourselves, in ecstasy, take our way towards the Incomparable.
Musician, put thy heart-attracting breath to the reed,
And shorten this dark night of separation;
Raise the curtain from the morning of conjunction;
Convert into the dawn of day the eve of our painful banishment,
That I may be freed at length from this disunion,
And may gain the presence of the object of my love. Note: This may be more intelligible, when it is understood that the Soofees suppose the cause of love to be an anxious desire of the soul for union. Thus, they compare the soul to a bird confined in it cage, panting for liberty, and pining at its separation from the Divine essence.
Cup-bearer, a cup of Magian wine,
Fresh drawn from the jar of the wine-house,
Pour into the palate of the dry-lipped Hazin,
As a libation to his fiery heat. #
Musician, thy breath gives brightness to the soul;
For the dead of heart, it is the inspiration of the Messiah,
We are shrunk as stagnant blood in the darkened cuticle;
A lancet is good for a congealed vein.
For the dead heart, the cold body is a grave.
The sound of thy reed is the voice of the last trumpet”