long as Solomon was absent, breathed itself out and, as it were, cast forth its fragrance[1] (cf. Sol 2:13; Sol 7:13) in words of longing. She has longed for the king, and has sought to draw him towards her, as she gives him to understand. He is continually in her mind.
Verses 13-14
Sol 1:13-14 13 A bundle of myrrh is my beloved to me, Which lieth between by breasts. 14 A bunch of cypress-flowers is my beloved to me, From the vine-gardens of Engedi.
Most interpreters, ignoring the lessons of botany, explain Sol 1:13 of a little bunch of myrrh; but whence could Shulamith obtain this? Myrrh, מר (מרר, to move oneself in a horizontal direction hither and thither, or gradually to advance; of a fluid, to flow over the plain),[2] belongs, like the frankincense, to the amyrids, which are also exotics[3] in Palestine; and that which is aromatic in the Balsamodendron myrrha are the leaves and flowers, but the resin (Gummi myrrhae, or merely myrrha) cannot be tied in a bunch. Thus the myrrh here can be understood in no other way than as at Sol 5:5; in general צרור, according to Hitzig's correct remark, properly denotes not what one binds up together, but what one ties up - thus sacculus, a little bag. It is not supposed that she carried such a little bag with her (cf. Isa 3:20), or a box of frankincense (Luth. musk-apple); but she compares her beloved to a myrrh-repository, which day and night departs not from her bosom, and penetrates her inwardly with its heart-strengthening aroma. So constantly does she think of him, and so delightful is it for her to dare to think of him as her beloved.
The 14th verse presents the same thought. כּפר is the cypress-cluster or the cypress-flowers, κύπρος (according to Fürst, from כפר = עפר, to be whitish, from the colour of the yellow-white flowers), which botanists call Lawsonia, and in the East Alḥennā; its leaves yield the orange colour with which the Moslem women stain[4] their hands and feet. אשׁכּל (from שׁכל, to interweave) denotes that which is woven, tresses, or a cluster or garland of their flowers. Here also we
- ↑ In Arab. ntn = נתן, to give an odour, has the specific signification, to give an ill odour (mintin, foetidus), which led an Arab. interpreter to understand the expression, “my nard has yielded, etc.,” of the stupifying savour which compels Solomon to go away (Mittheilung, Goldziher's).
- ↑ Vid., Schlotmann in the Stud. u. Krit. (1867), p. 217.
- ↑ They came from Arabia and India; the better Arabian was adulterated with Indian myrrh.
- ↑ Vid., the literature of this subject in Defrémery's notice of Dozy-Engelmann's work in the Revue Critique, III 2 (1868), p. 408.
