Isaiah 5:1

Now will I sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved "Let me sing now a song," etc. - A MS., respectable for its antiquity, adds the word שיר shir , a song, after נא na ; which gives so elegant a turn to the sentence by the repetition of it in the next member, and by distinguishing the members so exactly in the style and manner in the Hebrew poetical composition, that I am much inclined to think it genuine.

A song of my beloved "A song of loves" - דודי dodey , for דודים dodim : status constructus pro absoluto , as the grammarians say, as Micah 6:16 ; Lamentations 3:14 , Lamentations 3:66 , so Archbishop Secker. Or rather, in all these and the like cases, a mistake of the transcribers, by not observing a small stroke, which in many MSS., is made to supply the מ mem , of the plural, thus, דודי dodi . דודים שירת shirath dodim is the same with ידידת שיר shir yedidoth , Psalm 45:1 . In this way of understanding it we avoid the great impropriety of making the author of the song, and the person to whom it is addressed, to be the same.

In a very fruitful hill "On a high and fruitful hill" - Hebrew שמן בן בקרן bekeren ben shamen , "on a horn the son of oil." The expression is highly descriptive and poetical. "He calls the land of Israel a horn, because it is higher than all lands; as the horn is higher than the whole body; and the son of oil, because it is said to be a land flowing with milk and honey." - Kimchi on the place. The parts of animals are, by an easy metaphor, applied to parts of the earth, both in common and poetical language. A promontory is called a cape or head; the Turks call it a nose. " Dorsum immane mari summo ;" Virgil, a back, or ridge of rocks: -

" Hanc latus angustum jam se cogentis in arctum

Hesperiae tenuem producit in aequora linguam,

Adriacas flexis claudit quae cornibus undas