but from whence had they wine to pour? For in the wilderness they had no proper place for sowing; neither had they fig-trees, nor vines, nor pomegranates; but they went to the vineyards of En-gedi, and took clusters of grapes from thence, and pressed wine out of them, and poured it upon the altar, the fourth part of a hin to one lamb.
15. Behold thou art beautiful, &c.—When the children of Israel performed the will of their King, he himself praised them in the family of the holy angels, and said, "How fair are thy works, my daughter, my beloved, O congregation of Israel, in the time that thou doest my will, and studiest in the words of my law; and how well ordered are thy works and thy affairs, as young doves that are fit to be offered upon the altar!"
16. Behold thou art comely, &c.—The congregation of Israel answered before the Lord of the world, and thus said, "How fair is the shechinah of thy holiness, when thou dwellest among us, and receivest prayers with acceptance; and when thou dwellest in our beloved bed, and our children are multiplied in the world, and we increase and multiply like a tree that is planted by a stream of water, whose leaf is fair, and whose fruit is plenteous!"
17. The beams of, &c.—Solomon, the prophet, said, "How beautiful is the house of the sanctuary of the Lord, which is built by my hands, of wood of Gulmish; but far more beautiful will be the house of the sanctuary which shall be built in the days of the King Messiah, the beams of which will be of the cedars of the garden of Eden, and whose rafters will be of cypress, pine, and box."
The precedent of the Talmud in taking the beloved as the
Lord, and the loved one as the Congregation of Israel, and in
explaining the text in such a manner as to make it square with
her doings, has quite prepared us for the Chaldee exposition,
the author of which most probably was himself one of the
later Talmudists. How could the paraphrast do otherwise?
"Are not the words of the sages more excellent than even the
wine of the Law?"[1] "Is not he who transgresses the words
of the scribes more guilty than he who transgresses the words of
the Law?"[2] Having, therefore, been once settled by the sages
that this Song describes the doings and sufferings of Israel, it
only remained for the expositors to apply their exegetical
canons, viz.: of transposing, changing, or omitting letters;
explaining words by others of a similar sound; making each
letter of a word begin another word; reducing an expression
to its numerical value, and explaining the text accordingly,
&c. &c., in order to palm upon this book, in a consecutive
