Therefore do the damsels love thee.
4 Oh draw me after thee! Oh let us flee together!
Which perfume thou art, by thy name, &c. This clause is explanatory of the preceding one, "Sweet is the odour of thy perfumes, because thou art that perfume." The comparison of an agreeable person to perfumes arose from the great requisition of aromatics in the East. In warm climates perspiration is profuse, and much care is needful to prevent its offensiveness. Hence the use of perfumes particularly at weddings, feasts, on visits to persons of rank (2 Sam. xii. 20; Ps. xlv. 8; Prov. vii. 17; Amos vi. 6), and most of the occasions which bring people together with the intention of being agreeable to one another. Hence the pleasant odours diffused by perfumes soon became a metaphor to express the attractions which an agreeable person throws around him (Eccl. vii. 1), just as an offensive smell is used to express the contrary idea. (Gen. xxxiv. 30; Exod. v. 21.) The word [HE: t.v.raq], being taken as the third person fem., has greatly perplexed interpreters. For neither [HE: S/emen/], to which the Sept., Ibn Ezra, Rashbam, Immanuel, &c., refer it, nor [HE: S/Em/], to which it is referred by Ewald, Gesenius, &c., ever occurs as feminine. Others, to overcome this difficulty, have either taken [HE: t.v.raq] as a proper name (Syria. R. Tobiah) or as an appellative (Bochart, Hieron. ii. 4, 26.) The true solution seems to be that the word in question is not the third person feminine but the second person masculine. So Rashi, Michaelis, Hengstenberg, &c. The words literally translated would be, like oil art thou poured forth, with regard to thy name. [HE: S/im^ek/o], is the second accusative, comp. Ps. lxxxiii. 19; Ewald, § 281, 3 c. The words [HE: S/emen/] and [HE: S/Em/] form a paranomasia. This figure, which consists of words ranged together of similar sound, but differing in sense, is frequently used in the Old Testament; and also occurs in the New. (Compare [GR: limoi\ kai\ loimoi\], Luke xxi. 11, and Acts xvii. 25.)
Therefore do the damsels love thee. How natural for a woman, greatly admiring, and dotingly attached to her beloved, to think that every damsel must be enamoured of him! The most probable derivation of the much-disputed [HE: `al^emoh], is from [HE: `oloh] = [HE: `v.l], to come up, to grow up; hence the Poel [HE: `vOlEl], a growth, a child, [HE: `elem/], one growing up; with the termination [HE: —em/], (Compare Alma, in Latin, from alo, [GR: a)/ldô], and Fürst, Lexicon, [HE: m] 2 c,) and the feminine [HE: `al^emoh], a growing damsel, without any reference to the idea of virginity, for which [HE: b.^etv.loh] is invariably used; Joel i. 8, not excepted. [HE: b.a`al] is here used, not to indicate that the marriage was consummated, but because the Jews regarded parties consecrated to each other from the very moment they were betrothed. Hence Mary is called the wife of Joseph, and he her husband. (Compare Matt. i. 19, 20, &c.) Other derivations assigned to [HE: `al^emoh], such as [HE: `olam/] = [HE: Holam/], to be fat, full, ripe, marriageable (Gesenius, &c.), or being excited, hence youth as being peculiarly subject to it (Lee); or [HE: `olam/], to hide, be concealed, unrevealed, unknown; hence [HE: `elem/] and [HE: `al^emoh], persons of a youthful age who were destitute of the knowledge which springs from sexual intercourse (Henderson) are exceedingly forced. Jerome's assertion, as also Wordsworth's, on Matt. i. 23, that [HE: `al^emoh], is the designation of a virgin, because it signifies kept secret, as a virgin is under the care of her parents, is gratuitous, for [HE: `al^emoh], is formed from [HE: `elem/], a young man, of whom this cannot be said.
4. Oh draw me, &c. The Shulamite wishes that her beloved should not only come and cheer her fainting heart with the tokens of his love, but take her away altogether. [HE: 'aHa:reyk/o] belongs to [HE: moS/^ekEniy]. (Compare Job xxi. 33.) So the Chaldee, Immanuel, Luther, Mendelssohn, Kleuker, Percy, Hodgson, Ewald, Meier, Hitzig, Philippson, &c. The Septuagint renders [HE: moS/^ekEniy], by [GR: ei(/lkysa/n se], mistaking it for [HE: m^eS/okv.k/o], and adds [HE: l^erEyHa S/^emoneydo] after [HE: 'aHa:reyk/o], evi-
