The five Megilloths are arranged in the calendar according to their liturgical use.
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In the church this synagogal allegorizing received a new turn. They saw represented in the Song the mutual love of Christ and His church, and it thus became a mine of sacred mysticism in which men have dug to the present day. Thus Origen explains it in twelve volumes. Bernhard of Clairvaux died (1153) after he had delivered eighty-six sermons on it, and had only reached the end of the second chapter;
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and his disciple Gilbert Porretanus carried forward the interpretation in forty-eight sermons only to Sol 5:10, when he died. Perluigi de Palestrina gained by his twenty-nine motettoes on the Song (1584) the honoured name of Principe della Musica. In modern times this allegorico-mystical interpretation is represented in the department of exegesis (Hengst.), sermon (F. W. Krummacher), and poetry (Gustav Jahn), as well as of music (Neukomm's duet:Er und sie), and even of painting (Ludw. von Maydell).
If the Song is to be understood allegorically, then Shulamith is the personification of the congregation of Israel, and mediately of the church. All other interpretations fall below this. Hug (1813) understands by the “beloved” the kingdom of the ten tribes longing after a reunion with the house of David; and Heinr. Aug. Hahn (1852), the Japhetic heathendom. Ludw. Noack (1869) has even changed and modified the readings of the Heb. text, that he might find therein the ballads of a Tirhâka romance, i.e., a series of pictures of the events occurring between Samaria and her Aethiopian lover Tirhâka, of the years (b.c.) 702, 691, and 690. These are the aberrations of individuals. Only one other interpretation recommends itself. Solomon's chairsma and aim was the Chokma. The Peshito places over the Song the superscription חכמת דחכמתא. Is Shulamith, then, the personification of wisdom, like Dante's Beatrice? Rosenmüller (1830) is the most recent representative of this view; we ought then to have in Dante's Convito the key to the allegorical interpretation. He there sings sweet songs of love of his mistress Philosophy. But there is nothing in the description here to show that Shulamith is Wisdom. The one expression, “Thou shalt teach me” (Sol 8:2), warns us against attempting to put Wisdom in the place of the church, as a reversal of the facts of the case.
- ↑ Note: The Song. was read on the 8th day of the Passover; Ruth, on the second Shabuoth Pentecost; Lamentations, on the 9th Ab; Ecclesiastes, on the 3rd Succoth Tabernacles; Esther, between the 11th and 16th Adar feast of Purim.
- ↑ Note: Vid., Fernbacher's Die Reden des. h. Bernhard über das Hohelied, prefaced by Delitzsch. Leipzig 1862.
