Song Of Solomon 1:15 - Exposition

Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thine eyes are as doves; literally, thine eyes are doves. The king receives the worship of his bride and delights in her. She is very sweet and fair to him. The dove is a natural symbol of love; hence it was attached by the classical nations to the garden of love, together with the myrtle, rose, and apple, all of which we find introduced in this Hebrew poem. Hence the Arabic name for a dove, Jemima, as we see in the Book of Job, was the name of a woman (cf. Columbina). The language of the king is that of ecstasy; hence the interjection and repetition. The enraptured monarch gazes into the eyes of his beloved bride, and sees there only purity, constancy, and affection. In So Job 7:4 the eyes are compared to fish ponds, no doubt for their clear, liquid depth and serenity. Some have thought that the allusion is to the very lovely eyes of the doves; but there is no need of the limitation.

Verse 1:16-2:1

Behold, thou art fair, my beloved, yea, pleasant; also our couch is green. The beams of our house are cedars, and our rafters are firs. I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valley. We take these three verses together as being, in all probability, the address of the bride to her royal husband. This was the view taken by the Masoretic editors and preserved in our present pointing of the Hebrew, as we see in the masculine form of the first word, הִגֶּךָ , which replies to the feminine form in Song of Solomon 2:15 , הִגָּךְ . The seventeenth verse is apparently abrupt. Why should the bride pass so suddenly from the general address of affection, "Thou art fair, thou art pleasant," to a particular description of a rural scene? The explanation suggested by some of the critics is not farfetched, that Solomon whispers to her that she shall go back with him to her country life if she pleases, or she reminds him of his promise made at some other time. Undoubtedly the point of Shulamith's response lies in Song of Solomon 2:1 , "I am not at ease in this palatial splendour; I am by nature a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valley. Take me to the green couch, and let me lie under the cedars and the firs." The couch is the divan (cf. Amos 6:4 ), from a root "to cover over" (like "canopy" in Greek, κωνωπεῖον , so called from its protecting the person under it from the κώνεπες , or "gnats). It is not that the nuptial bed is particularly intended, or even the bridal bower, but the home itself as a bowery resting place. "Our home is a sweet country home; take me, there, beloved one." The word "green" is very suggestive in the Hebrew. It is said to "combine in itself the ideas of softness and juicy freshness, perhaps of bending and elasticity, of looseness and thus of overhanging ramification, like weeping willow." Beams, from a root "to meet," "to lay crosswise," "to hold together." But the meaning depends upon the idea of the whole description. Some would render "fretted ceilings," or "galleries;" but Dr. Ginsburg gives it, "our bower is of cedar arches," which excludes the idea of a formal structure made of cedar beams. The same meaning is conveyed in the last clause, "our rafters are firs." The word rendered "rafters" ( יָחִיט ) literally signifies "a place upon which one runs" (like שׁוּק , a "street"), i.e. a charming or pleasant spot. The beroth is the cypress tree, an Aramaic word, or one used in the north of Palestine. The meaning is, "our pleasant retreat is cypresses"—is beautiful and fragrant with the cypress tree. Delitzsch, however, and others would take it differently as describing the panels or hollows of a wainscoted ceiling, like φατναί , lacunae , lacunaria, and the LXX ; φατνωμάτα : Symmachus, φατνωσεῖς : Jerome, laquearii (cf. Isaiah 60:13 ). But the concluding words would then be unfitting. The bride is not describing a splendid palace, but a country home. "I am a tender maiden," she says, "who has been brought up in retirement; take me to a forest palace and to the green, fragrant surroundings, where the meadow flower, the valley lily will be happy." We are so accustomed to the rendering of So Song of Solomon 2:1 , which our Revised Version has adopted from the Authorized, that it would be wrong to destroy the effect which it borrows from long familiarity unless it were absolutely necessary. The word chavatseleth, however, has been differently translated; it is literally any wild flower—rose, saffron crocus ( Colchieum autumnale ) , tulip, narcissus, lily. The crocus is, perhaps, nearest to the meaning, as the name is probably derived from a root "to form bulbs" or bulbous knolls. It occurs only once again, in Isaiah 35:1 , where it is rendered "rose" in the Authorized Version; LXX ; ἄνθος : Vulgate, flos . Some derive it from the root chavaz, "to be bright," with ל as termination. Sharon may be here a general denomination of the open field or plain, from יָרַשׁ , "to be straight, plain." There was a district called Sharon on the coast from Joppa to Caesarea. There was another Sharon beyond the Jordan (see 1 Chronicles 5:16 ). According to Eusebius and Jerome, there was yet another, between Tabor and Tiberias, and this, as being in the north, may be referred to. Aquila renders "a rosebud of Sharon." The lily ( shoshannah ) is only found as here in the feminine form in the Apocrypha. The red and white lily were both known. Some would derive the word from the numeral ( shesh ) "six," because the liliaceae are six-leaved, while the rosaceae are five-leaved; but it is probably akin to shesh , "byssus," shayish, "white marbles" (cf. Hosea 14:5 , "He shall bloom as a lily"). Our Lord's reference to "the lilies of the field" reminds us that they were in Palestine both very beautiful and very abundant. Zockler thinks it is not the strongly scented white lily ( Lilium candidam ) to which reference is made, but the red lily ( Lilium rubens ); but either will convey the same idea of a flower of the field which is meant. "My beauty is the beauty of nature—artless and pure."