My companions are listening to thy voice,

Let me hear thy voice!

THE SHULAMITE.

14 Haste, O my beloved,

And be like the gazelle, as the young one of the hind,

Over the mountains of spices.

[[129]]

[[Contents]]

[2]. Oh for a kiss, &c. That the speaker is a Shulamite shepherdess who had been separated by king Solomon from her beloved, and that she desires to be reunited with him, is evident from verses 4, 7, 8; vii. 1, &c. Excited by the pain of separation, the damsel wishes that her beloved were present, that he could kiss her, for his caresses would cheer her fainting heart more than the best of wines. Wine, either pure or mixed (see infra, vii. 3), is often spoken of by the sacred and profane poets as delighting the hearts of both gods and men, and reviving their drooping spirits. (Judges ix. 13; Ps. civ. 15; Prov. xxxi. 6; Eccl. x. 19.) Hence Helen gave a bowl of mixed wine to her guests oppressed with grief, to raise their spirits. (Hom. Odyss. iv. 220.) Yet the Shulamite declares that she preferred the caresses of her beloved to this highly prized cordial.

The imperfect form ‏יִשַּׁקֵנִי‎ is used optatively or voluntatively, “Oh that he would kiss me!” (Gesen. § 127, 3 b; Ewald, § 224 a); i.e. a kiss: the subject, either in the singular (Gen. xxviii. 11, compare v. 18; Exod. vi. [[130]]25; Ps. cxxxvii. 3), or plural (Gen. xxx. 14; Exod. xvii. 5; 2 Sam. xi. 17), is to be supplied from the plural noun ‏מִנְּשִׁיקוֹת‎, as indicated by the partitive ‏מִן‎. (Compare Gesen. § 154, 3 c; Ewald, § 217, b, i. b.) The singular, however, is preferable, for the Shulamite does not wish so much for a number of kisses as for the presence of her beloved; one would be sufficient if he could only come. We thus obtain a phrase ‏נָשָׁק נְשִׁיקָה‎, to kiss a kiss, i.e. to give a kiss; corresponding to ‏יָעַץ עֵצָה‎, to counsel a counsel, i.e. to give counsel, 2 Sam. xvi. 23; ‏חָלָה חֳלִי‎, 2 Kings xiii. 14. This construction is of frequent occurrence in Hebrew, and is also found in Greek and Latin; (Compare νοσεῖν νόσον, pugnam pugnare; Gesen. § 138 i., Rem. 1; Ewald, § 281 a.) The rendering, therefore, of ‏מִן‎ by with (Luther, English Version, Good, Williams, &c.) is incorrect. Ewald’s and Herxheimer’s translation, Let one of the kisses kiss me, is both incongruous and ungrammatical; for in the first place, it is not the kiss that kisses, but the individual; and secondly, ‏נְשִׁיקָה‎ is feminine, which would require ‏תִּשַּׁקֵנִי‎, the third fem. ‏דוֹדִים‎, prop. love, the abstract, which, as in Greek and Latin, is in Hebrew frequently expressed by the plural, (comp. ‏חַיִּים‎, life, ‏מַמְתַּקִים‎, sweetness, ‏מַחִמַדִים‎, beauty; vide infra, v. 16; Gesen. § 108, 2 a; Ewald, § 179 a), here metonomically for the expressions of it—love-tokens, caresses. So Lee, Magnus, Noyes, Fürst, Philippson, &c. This rendering is demanded by the context, for this clause gives the cause of the statement in the preceding one. The change from the third person ‏יִשַּׁקֵנִי‎, to the second ‏דֹדָיךָ‎, or from the second to the third person, is an enallage of frequent occurrence in sacred poetry. (Deut. xxxii. 15; Isa. i. 29; Jer. xxii. 24; Gesen. § 137, 3, Rem. 3.) The Sept. and Vulg. have ‏דַּדֶּיךָ‎, thy breasts, instead of ‏דֹדֶיךָ‎, thy caresses. That this is a gross error is evident from the fact that a man and not a woman is here addressed. To appeal to the catachresis in Isa. lx. 16, would be preposterous.