i.e., as Jerome translates it: Sunem in tribue Issachar. et usque hodie vicus ostenditur nomine Sulem in quinto miliario montis Thabor contra australum plagam. This place if found at the present day under the name of Suwlam (Sôlam), at the west end of Jebel ed-Duhi (Little Hermon), not far from the great plain (Jisre'el, now Zer'în), which forms a convenient way of communication between Jordan and the sea-coast, but is yet so hidden in the mountain range that the Talmud is silent concerning this Sulem, as it is concerning Nazareth. Here was the home of the Shulamitess of the Song. The ancients interpret the name by εἰρημευìουσα, or by ἐσκυλευμεìνη (vid., Lagarde's Onomastica), the former after Aquila and the Quinta, the latter after Symm. The Targum has the interpretation: השׁלמה באמונתה עם ה (vid., Rashi). But the form of the name (the Syr. writes שׁילוּמיתא) is opposed to these allegorical interpretations. Rather it is to be assumed that the poet purposely used, not hshwb', but hshwl', to assimilate her name to that of Solomon; and that it has the parallel meaning of one devoted to Solomon, and thus, as it were, of a passively-applied שׁלומית = Σαλοìμη, is the more probable, as the daughters of Jerusalem would scarcely venture thus to address her who was raised to the rank of a princess unless this name accorded with that of Solomon.
Not conscious of the greatness of her beauty, Shulamith asks - 1ba What do you see in Shulamith?
She is not aware that anything particular is to be seen in her; but the daughters of Jerusalem are of a different opinion, and answer this childlike, modest, but so much the more touching question - 1bb As the dance of Mahanaim!
They would thus see in her something like the dance of Manahaaïm. If this be here the name of the Levitical town (now Mahneh) in the tribe of Gad, north of Jabbok, where Ishbosheth resided for two years, and where David was hospitably entertained on his flight from Absalom (Luthr.: “the dance to Mahanaaïm”), then we must suppose in this trans-Jordanic town such a popular festival as was kept in Shiloh, Jdg 21:19, and we may compare Abel-meholah = meadow of dancing, the name of Elisha's birth-place (cf. also Herod. i. 16: “To dance the dance of the Arcadian town of Tegea”). But the Song delights in retrospective references to Genesis (cf. Gen 4:11, Gen 7:11). At Gen 32:3, however, by Mahanaaïm[1] is meant the double encampment of angels who protected Jacob's two companies (Gen 32:8).
- ↑ Böttcher explains Mahanaaïm as a plur.; but the plur. of מצנה is מצנות and מחנים; the plur. termination ajim is limited to מים and שׁמים.
