for which the sing. מישׁור occurs) is an ethical conception (Pro 1:3), and signifies, not: the right of the motive, but: the rightness of the word, thought, and act (Pro 23:16; Psa 17:2; Psa 58:2); thus, not: jure; but: recte, sincere, candide. Hengst., Thrupp, and others, falsely render this word like the lxx, Aquil., Symm., Theod., Targ., Jerome, Venet., and Luther, as subject: rectitudes abstr. for concr. = those who have rectitude, the upright. Hengstenberg's assertion, that the word never occurs as in adv., is set aside by a glance at Psa 58:2; Psa 75:3; and, on the other hand, there is no passage in which it is sued as abstr. pro concr. It is here, as elsewhere, an adv. acc. for which the word בּמישׁרים might also be used.
The second pentastich closes similarly with the first, which ended with “love thee.” What is there said of this king, that the virgins love him, is here more generalized; for diligunt te is equivalent to diligeris (cf. Sol 8:1, Sol 8:7). With these words the table-song ends. It is erotic, and yet so chaste and delicate, - it is sensuous, and yet so ethical, that here, on the threshold, we are at once surrounded as by a mystical cloudy brightness. But how is it to be explained that Solomon, who says (Pro 27:2), “Let another praise thee, and not thine own mouth,” begins this his Song of Songs with a song in praise of himself? It is explained from this, that here he celebrates an incident belonging to the happy beginning of his reign; and for him so far fallen into the past, although not to be forgotten, that what he was and what he now is are almost as two separate persons.
Verse 5
After this choral song, Shulamith, who has listened to the singers not without being examined by their inquisitive glances as a strange guest not of equal rank with them, now speaks: 5 Black am I, yet comely, ye daughters of Jerusalem, As the tents of Kedar, as the hangings of Solomon.
From this, that she addresses the ladies of the palace as “daughters of Jerusalem” (Kerı̂ ירושׁלים, a du. fractus; like עפרין for עפרון, 2Ch 13:19), it is to be concluded that she, although now in Jerusalem, came from a different place. She is, as will afterwards appear, from Lower Galilee; - and it may be remarked, in the interest of the mystical interpretation, that the church, and particularly her first congregations, according to the prophecy, was also Galilean, for Nazareth and Capernaum are their original seats; - and if Shulamith is a poetico-mystical Mashal or emblem, then she represents the synagogue one day to enter into the fellowship of Solomon - i.e., of the son of David, and the daughters of Jerusalem, i.e., the
