Aquila: συνέκαυσέ με, it has burnt me; and Theodotion: περιέφρυξέ με, it has scorched me over and ov. שׁזף signifies here not adspicere (Job 3:9; Job 41:10) so much as adurere. In this word itself (cogn. שׁדף; Arab. sadaf, whence asdaf, black; cf. דּעך and זעך, Job 17:1), the looking is thought of as a scorching; for the rays of the eye, when they fix upon anything, gather themselves, as it were, into a focus. Besides, as the Scriptures ascribe twinkling to the morning dawn, so it ascribes eyes to the sun (2Sa 12:11), which is itself as the eye of the heavens.[1]
The poet delicately represents Shulamith as regarding the sun as fem. Its name in Arab. and old Germ. is fem., in Heb. and Aram. for the most part mas. My lady the sun, she, as it were, says, has produced on her this swarthiness.
She now says how it has happened that she is thus sunburnt: 6b My mother's sons were angry with me, Appointed me as keeper of the vineyards - Mine own vineyard have I not kept.
If “mother's sons” is the parallel for “brothers” (אחי), then the expressions are of the same import, e.g., Gen 27:29; but if the two expressions stand in apposition, as Deut. 13:76, then the idea of the natural brother is sharpened; but when “mother's sons” stands thus by itself alone, then, after Lev 18:9, it means the relationship by one of the parents alone, as “father's wife” in the language of the O.T. and also 1Co 5:5 is the designation of a step-mother. Nowhere is mention made of Shulamith's father, but always, as here, only of her mother, Sol 3:4; Sol 8:2; Sol 6:9; and she is only named without being introduced as speaking. One is led to suppose that Shulamith's own father was dead, and that her mother had been married again; the sons by the second marriage were they who ruled in the house of their mother. These brothers of Shulamith appear towards the end of the melodrama as rigorous guardians of their youthful sister; one will thus have to suppose that their zeal for the spotless honour of their sister and the family proceeded from an endeavour to accustom the fickle or dreaming child to useful activity, but not without step-brotherly harshness. The form נחרוּ, Ewald, §193c, and Olsh. p. 593, derive from חרר, the Niph. of which is either נחר or נחר (= נחרר), Gesen. §68, An. 5; but the plur. of this נחר should, according to rule, have been נחרוּ (cf. however, נחלוּ,
- ↑ According to the Indian idea, it is the eye of Varuna; the eye (also after Plato: ἡλιοειδέστατον τῶν περὶ τὰς αἰσθήσεις οργάνων) is regarded as taken from the sun, and when men die returning to the sun (Muir in the Asiatic Journal, 1865, p. 294, S. 309).
