Having given a good deal of attention to Canticles during the past 15 years, the author of this article wishes to record a few of his views and impressions.
(1) Canticles is lyric poetry touched with the dramatic spirit. It is not properly classed as drama, for the Hebrews had no stage, though much of the Old Testament is dramatic in spirit. The descriptions of the charms of the lovers were to be sung or chanted.
(2) The amount that has to be read between the lines by the advocates of the various dramatic theories is so great that, in the absence of any hints in the body of the book itself, reasonable certitude can never be attained.
(3) The correct translation of the refrain in Song 2:7 and Song 3:5 (compare Song 8:4) is important for an understanding of the purpose of Canticles. It should be rendered as follows:
`I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
By the gazelles, or by the hinds of the field,
That ye stir not up, nor awaken love,
Until it please.'
Love between man and woman should not be excited by unnatural stimulants, but should be free and spontaneous. In Song 8:4 it seems to be implied that the women of the capital are guilty of employing artifices to awaken love:
`I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
Why do ye stir up, or awaken love,
Until it please?'
That this refrain is in keeping with the purpose of the writer is clear from the striking words toward the close of the book:
"Set me as a seal upon thy heart,
As a seal upon thine arm:
For love is strong as death;
Jealousy is cruel as Sheol;
The flashes thereof are flashes of fire,
A very flame of Yahweh.
Many waters cannot quench love,
Neither can floods drown it:
If a man would give all the substance of his house for love,
He would utterly be contemned" (Song 8:6 f).
(4) Canticles discloses all the secret intimacies of wedded life without becoming obscene. The imagery is too sensuous for our taste in western lands, so that words of caution are often timely, lest the sensuous degenerate into the sensual; but I have been told by several Syrian and Palestinian students whom I have had the privilege of teaching, that Canticles is considered quite chaste among their people, the wedding-songs now in use among them being more minute in their description of the physical charms of the lovers.
(5) Canticles is by no means excluded from the Canon by the acceptance of the literal interpretation. Ewald's theory makes it an ethical treatise of great and permanent value. Even if Canticles is merely a collection of songs describing the bliss of true lovers in wedlock, it is not thereby rendered unworthy of a place in the Bible, unless marriage is to be regarded as a fall from a state of innocency. If Canticles should be rejected because of its sensuous imagery in describing the joys of passionate lovers, portions of Proverbs would also have to be excised (Pr 5:15-20). Perhaps most persons need to enlarge their conception of the Bible as a repository for all things that minister to the welfare of men. The entire range of man's legitimate joys finds sympathetic and appreciative description in the Bible. Two young lovers in Paradise need not fear to rise and meet their Creator, should He visit them in the cool of the day.
LITERATURE.
C. D. Ginsburg, The Song of Songs, with a Commentary, Historical and Critical, 1857; H. Ewald, Dichter des Alten Bundes, III, 333-426, 1867; F. C. Cook, in Biblical Commentary, 1874; Franz Delitzsch, Hoheslied u. Koheleth, 1875 (also translation); O. Zockler, in Lange's Comm., 1875; S. Oettli, Kurzgefasster Kommentar, 1889; W. E. Griffis, The Lily among Thorns, 1890; J. W. Rothstein, Das Hohe Lied, 1893; K. Budde, article in New World, March, 1894. and Kommentar, 1898; C. Siegfried, Prediger u. Hoheslied, 1898; A. Harper, in Cambridge Bible, 1902; G. C. Martin, in Century Bible, 1908; article on "Canticles" by Cheyne in EB, 1899.
John Richard Sampey