congregation already believing on the Messiah. Yet we confine ourselves to the nearest sense, in which Solomon relates a self-experience. Shulamith, the lightly esteemed, cannot boast that she is so ruddy and fair of countenance as they who have just sung how pleasant it is to be beloved by this king; but yet she is not so devoid of beauty as not to venture to love and hope to be loved: “Black am I, yet comely.” These words express humility without abjectness. She calls herself “black,” although she is not so dark and unchangeably black as an “Ethiopian” (Jer 13:23). The verb שׁחר has the general primary idea of growing dark, and signifies not necessarily soot-blackness (modern Arab. shuhwar, soot), but blackness more or less deep, as שׁחר, the name of the morning twilight, or rather the morning grey, shows; for (Arab.) saḥar[1] denotes the latter, as distinguished from (Arab.) fajr, the morning twilight (vid., under Isa 14:12; Isa 47:11). She speaks of herself as a Beduin who appears to herself as (Arab.) sawda, black, and calls[2] the inhabitants of the town (Arab.) ḥawaryyat (cute candidas). The Vav we have translated “yet” (“yet comely”); it connects the opposite, which exists along with the blackness. נאוה is the fem. of the adj. נאוה = נאוה = נאוי, which is also formed by means of the doubling of the third stem-letter of נאה = נאו, נאי (to bend forward, to aim; to be corresponding to the aim, conformable, becoming, beautiful), e.g., like רענן, to be full of sap, green. Both comparisons run parallel to nigra et bella; she compares on the one hand the tents of Kedar, and on the other the tapestry of Solomon. אהל signifies originally, in general, the dwelling-place, as בּית the place where one spends the night; these two words interchange: ohel is the house of the nomad, and baith is the tent of him who is settled. קדר (with the Tsere, probably from (Arab.) ḳadar, to have ability, be powerful, though of after the Heb. manner, as Theodoret explains and Symm. also translates: σκοτασμός, from (Heb.) Kadar, atrum esse) is the name of a tribe of North. Arab. Ishmaelites (Gen 25:13) whom Pliny speaks of (Cedraei in his Hist. Nat. Sol 5:11), but which disappeared at the era of the rise of Islam; the Karaite Jefeth uses for it the word (Arab.) Ḳarysh, for he substitutes the powerful Arab tribe from which Muhammed sprung, and rightly remarks: “She compares the colour of her skin to the blackness of the hair tents of the Koreishites,” -
- ↑ After an improbable etymology of the Arab., from saḥar, to turn, to depart, “the departure of the night” (Lane). Magic appears also to be called sihar, as nigromantia (Mediaev. from nekromantia), the black art.
- ↑ The houri (damsel of paradise) is thus called ḥawaryyt, adj. relat. from ḥawra, from the black pupil of the eye in the centre of the white eyeball.
