fin. foll., once with the perf. foll. (1Sa 14:19), once (for Job 8:21 is easily explained otherwise) with the fut. foll. (Psa 141:10, according to which Gen 49:10 also is explained by Baur and others, but without כי עד in this sense of limited duration: “so long as,” being anywhere proved). מסבּו is the inflected מסב, which, like the post-bibl. מסבּה, signifies the circuit of the table; for סבב signifies also, after 1Sa 16:11 (the lxx rightly, after the sense οὐ μὴ κατακλιθῶμεν), to seat themselves around the table, from which it is to be remarked that not till the Greek-Roman period was the Persian custom of reclining at table introduced, but in earlier times they sat (1Sa 20:5; 1Ki 13:20; cf. Psa 128:3). Reclining and eating are to be viewed as separate from each other, Amo 6:4; הסב, “three and three they recline at table,” is in matter as in language mishnic (Berachoth 42b; cf. Sanhedrin 2:4, of the king: if he reclines at table, the Tôra must be opposite him). Thus: While (usque eo, so long as), says Shulamith, the king was at his table, my nard gave forth its fragrance. נרדּ is an Indian word: naladâ, i.e., yielding fragrance, Pers. nard (nârd), Old Arab. nardîn (nârdîn), is the aromatic oil of an Indian plant valeriana, called Nardostachys 'Gatâmânsi (hair-tress nard). Interpreters are wont to represent Shulamith as having a stalk of nard in her hand. Hitzig thinks of the nard with which she who is speaking has besprinkled herself, and he can do this because he regards the speaker as one of the court ladies. But that Shulamith has besprinkled herself with nard, is as little to be thought of as that she has in her hand a sprig of nard (spica nardi), or, as the ancients said, an ear of nard; she comes from a region where no nard grows, and nard-oil is for a country maiden unattainable.[1]
Horace promises Virgil a cadus (= 9 gallons) of the best wine for a small onyx-box full of nard; and Judas estimated at 300 denarii (about £8, 10s.) the genuine nard (how frequently nard was adulterated we learn from Pliny) which Mary of Bethany poured from an alabaster box on the head of Jesus, so that the whole house was filled with the odour of the ointment (Mar 14:5; Joh 12:2). There, in Bethany, the love which is willing to sacrifice all expressed itself in the nard; here, the nard is a figure of the happiness of love, and its fragrance a figure of the longing of love. It is only in the language of flowers that Shulamith makes precious perfume a figure of the love which she bears in the recess of her heart, anl which, so
- ↑ The nard plant grows in Northern and Eastern India; the hairy part of the stem immediately above the root yields the perfume. Vid., Lassen's Indische Alterthumskunde, I 338f., III 41f.
