(Song of Songs), 1778, “with this divine seal. It is even as good as closed, for what follows appears only as an appended echo.” Daniel Sanders (1845) closes it with Sol 8:7, places Sol 8:12 after Sol 1:6, and cuts off Sol 1:8-11, Sol 1:13, Sol 1:14, as not original. Anthologists, like Döpke and Magnus, who treat the Song as the Fragmentists do the Pentateuch, find here their confused medley sanctioned. Umbreit also, 1820, although as for the rest recognising the Song as a compact whole, explains Sol 8:8-14 as a fragment, not belonging to the work itself. Hoelemann, however, in his Krone des Hohenliedes Crown of the Song, 1856 (thus he names the “concluding Act,” Sol 8:5-14), believes that there is here represented, not only in Sol 8:6, Sol 8:7, but further also in Sol 8:8-12, the essence of true love - what it is, and how it is won; and then in Sol 8:13 f. he hears the Song come to an end in pure idyllic tones.
We see in Sol 8:8 ff. the continuation of the love story practically idealized and set forth in dramatic figures. There is no inner necessity for this continuance. It shapes itself after that which has happened; and although in all history divine reason and moral ideas realize themselves, yet the material by means of which this is done consists of accidental circumstances and free actions passing thereby into reciprocal action. But Sol 8:8 ff. is the actual continuance of the story on to the completed conclusion, not a mere appendix, which might be wanting without anything being thereby missed. For after the poet has set before us the loving pair as they wander arm in arm through the green pasture-land between Jezreel and Sunem till they reach the environs of the parental home, which reminds them of the commencement of their love relations, he cannot represent them as there turning back, but must present to us still a glimpse of what transpired on the occasion of their visit there. After that first Act of the concluding scene, there is yet wanting a second, to which the first points.
Verse 8
The locality of this scene is Shulamith's parental home. It is she herself who speaks in these words: 8 We have a sister, a little one, And she has no breasts: What shall we do with our sister In the day when she will be sued for?
Between Sol 8:8 and Sol 8:7 is a blank. The figure of the wanderers
