adjuration (Böttch.), as at Sol 2:7; Sol 3:5, at once appears from the absurdity arising from such an interpretation. The or. directa, following “I adjure you,” can also begin (Num 5:19.) with the usual אם, which is followed by its conclusion. Instead of “that ye say to him I am sick of love,” she asks the question: What shall ye say to him: and adds the answer: quod aegra sum amore, or, as Jerome rightly renders, in conformity with the root-idea of חלה: quia amore langueo; while, on the other hand, the lxx: ὃτι τετροομένη (saucia) ἀγάπης ἐγώ εἰμι, as if the word were חללת, from חלל. The question proposed, with its answer, inculcates in a naive manner that which is to be said, as one examines beforehand a child who has to order something. She turns to the daughters of Jerusalem, because she can presuppose in them, in contrast with those cruel watchmen, a sympathy with her love-sorrow, on the ground of their having had similar experiences. They were also witnesses of the origin of this covenant of love, and graced the marriage festival by their sympathetic love.
Verse 9
When, therefore, they put to her the question: 9 What is thy beloved before another (beloved), Thou fairest of women? What is thy beloved before another (beloved), That thou dost adjure us thus? the question thus asked cannot proceed from ignorance; it can only have the object of giving them the opportunity of hearing from Shulamith's own mouth and heart her laudatory description of him, whom they also loved, although they were not deemed worthy to stand so near to him as she did who was thus questioned. Böttch. and Ewald, secs. 325a, 326a, interpret the מן in מדּור partitively: quid amati (as in Cicero: quod hominis) amatus tuus; but then the words would have been מה־מדוד דודך, if such a phrase were admissible; for מה־דוד certainly of itself alone means quid amati, what kind of a beloved. Thus the מן is the comparative (prae amato), and דּוד the sing., representing the idea of species or kind; מדּודים, here easily misunderstood, is purposely avoided. The use of the form השׁבעתנו for השׁבעתּינו is one of the many instances of the disregard of the generic distinction occurring in this Song, which purposely, after the manner of the vulgar language, ignores pedantic regularity.
Verse 10
Hereupon Shulamith describes to them who ask what her beloved is. He is the fairest of men. Everything that is glorious in the kingdom of nature, and, so far as her look extends, everything in the sphere of art, she appropriates, so as to present a picture of his external appearance. Whatever is precious, lovely, and grand, is
