that it is the poet who speaks by her mouth, but also that it is not the bride or the beloved, but the wife, whom he represents as thus speaking. עשׁת (from the peculiar Hebraeo-Chald. and Targ. עשׁת, which, after Jer 5:28, like ḳhalak, creare, appears to proceed from the fundamental idea of smoothing) designates an artistic figure. Such a figure was Solomon's throne, made of שׁן, the teeth of elephants, ivory,[1] 1Ki 10:18. Here Solomon's own person, without reference to a definite admired work of art, is praised as being like an artistic figure made of ivory, - like it in regard to its glancing smoothness and its fine symmetrical form. When, now, this word of art is described as covered with sapphires (מעלּפת, referred to עשׁת, as apparently gramm., or as ideal, fem.), a sapphire-coloured robe is not meant (Hitzig, Ginsburg); for עלף, which only means to disguise, would not at all be used of such a robe (Gen 38:14; cf. Gen 24:65), nor would the one uniform colour of the robe be designated by sapphires in the plur. The choice of the verb עלף (elsewhere used of veiling) indicates a covering shading the pure white, and in connection with ספּירים, thought of as accus., a moderating of the bright glance by a soft blue. For ספיר (a genuine Semit. word, like the Chald. שׁפּיר; cf. regarding ספר = שׁפר, under Psa 16:6) is the sky-blue sapphire (Exo 24:10), including the Lasurstein (lapis lazuli), sprinkled with golden, or rather with gold-like glistening points of pyrites, from which, with the l omitted, sky-blue is called azur (azure) (vid., under Job 28:6). The word of art formed of ivory is quite covered over with sapphires fixed in it. That which is here compared is nothing else than the branching blue veins under the white skin.
Verse 15
Sol 5:15 15a His legs white marble columns, Set on bases of fine gold.
If the beauty of the living must be represented, not by colours, but in figurative language, this cannot otherwise be done than by the selection of minerals, plants, and things in general for the comparison, and the comparison must more or less come short, because dead soulless matter does not reach to a just and full representation of the living. Thus here, also, the description of the lower extremity, which reaches from the thighs and the legs down to the feet, of which last, in the words of an anatomist,[2] it may be said that “they form the pedestal for the bony pillars of the legs.” The comparison is thus in accordance with fact; the שׁוקים (from שוק = Arab. saḳ, to
