The attractiveness of the above theory cannot be denied; but it may be asked whether the attraction does not lie in the appeal to modern taste of a story which is largely the product of modern imagination. It supposes a freedom of intercourse between lovers inconceivable for the East. The initial situation of the maiden in the harem of Solomon is left as a problem for the reader to discover, until he comes to its supposed origin in vi. 11; the expedient might be granted in the case of one of Browning’s Men and Women, but seems very improbable in the present case. The more elaborate dramatic theories can find no parallel in Semitic literature to the “drama” of Canticles, the book of Job being no exception to this statement; whilst even the simpler theories ask us to believe that the essential parts of the story—the rape of the Shulamite, the change in Solomon’s disposition, her release from the harem—are to be supplied by the reader from obscure and disputable references. More serious still is the fact that any progress of action from first to last is so difficult to prove. In the first chapter we listen to a woman speaker desiring to be kissed by the man who has brought her into his chambers, and speaking of “our bed”; in the last we leave her “leaning upon her beloved.” The difficulties of detail are equally great. To suppose that all the male love-making, by hypothesis unsuccessful, belongs to Solomon, whilst the heroine addresses her passionate words to the continuously absent shepherd, is obviously unconvincing; yet, if this shepherd speaks in iv. 8-v. 1, how are we to explain his appearance in the royal harem? This and other difficulties were acknowledged by Robertson Smith, notably the presence of vii. 1-9, which he proposed to set aside as an interpolation, because of its sensuality and of the difficulty of working it into the dramatic scheme. The fact that this passage has subsequently become the central element in the new interpretation of the book is, perhaps, a warning against violent measures with difficulties.
Attention has already been drawn to Herder’s proposal, accepted by some later writers, including Diestel and Reuss, to regard the book as a collection of detached songs. This received new and striking confirmation from the anthropological data supplied by J.G. Wetstein (1873), Prussian consul at Damascus. His observations of the wedding customs of Syrian peasants led him to believe that Canticles is substantially a collection of songs originally sung at such festivities. Wetstein’s contribution was republished shortly afterwards by Delitzsch, in an appendix to his Commentary; but it received little attention. The first amongst Old Testament scholars to perceive its importance seems to have been Stade, who accepted Wetstein’s view in a footnote to his History of the Jewish People (ii. p. 197), published in 1888; to Budde, however, belongs the distinction of the systematic and detailed use of Wetstein’s suggestions, especially in his Commentary (1898). This interpretation of the book is accepted by Kautzsch (1896), Siegfried (1898), Cheyne (1899), and other eminent scholars. The last-named states the theory tersely as follows: “The book is an anthology of songs used at marriage festivals in or near Jerusalem, revised and loosely connected by an editor without regard to temporal sequence” (Ency. Bibl. 691). The character of the evidence which has contributed to the acceptance of this view may be indicated in Wetstein’s own statements:—
“The finest time in the life of the Syrian peasant consists of the first seven days after his wedding, in which he and his young wife play the part of king (melik) and queen (melika), both being so treated and served by their village and the invited communities of the neighbourhood. The majority of the greater village weddings fall in the month of March, the finest of the Syrian year. The winter rains being over, and the sun still refreshing, not oppressive as in the following months, the weddings are celebrated in the open air on the village threshing-floor, which at this time of the year is with few exceptions a flowery mead. ... We pass over the wedding-day itself with its displays, the sword-dance of the bride, and the great feast. On the morrow, bridegroom and bride awake as king and queen. Already before sunrise they receive the leader of the bridesmen, as their vizier, and the bridesmen themselves; the latter thereupon fetch the threshing-board and bring it to the threshing-floor, singing a rousing song of battle or love, generally both. There it is erected as a throne, and after the royal couple have taken their seats and the necessary formalities are gone through, a great dance in honour of the young couple begins; the accompanying song is concerned only with themselves, its principal element being the inevitable wasf, i.e. a description of the physical perfections of both and their ornaments. The eulogy of the queen is more moderate, and praises her visible, rather than veiled, charms; this is due to the fact that she is to-day a married woman, and that the wasf sung on the previous day during her sword-dance has left nothing to desire. This wasf is the weak element in Syrian wedding-songs according to our taste; its comparisons are to us frequently too clumsy and reveal the stereotyped pattern. It is the same with the little collection of charming wedding-songs and fragments of them which has been received into the canon of the Old Testament under the name of Canticles; the wasf (iv.—vii.) is considerably below the rest in poetical value. With this dance begin the sports, lasting seven days, begun in the morning on the first, shortly before midday on the other days, and continuing far into the night by the light of the fires that are kindled; on the last day alone all is over by sunset. During the whole week both royalties are in marriage attire, must do no work and have no cares; they have only to look down from the merteba (throne) on the sports carried on before them, in which they themselves take but a moderate part; the queen, however, occasionally gives a short dance to attract attention to her bridal attire.”[6]
For the general application of these and the related customs to the interpretation of the book, reference should be made to Budde’s Commentary, which recognizes four wasfs, viz. iv. 1-7 (describing the bride from head to breasts), v. 10-16 (the bridegroom), vi. 4-7 (similar to and partly repeating iv. 1-7), and vii. 1-9, belonging to the sword-dance of the bride, her physical charms being sung from feet to head (cf. vii. 1; “Why look ye on the Shulamite as (on) a dance of camps?” i.e. a war-dance). This dance receives its name from the fact that she dances it with a sword in her hand in the firelight on the evening of her wedding-day, and amid a circle of men and women, whilst such a wasf as this is sung by the leader of the choir. The passage relating to the litter of Solomon (iii. 6-11)—an old difficulty with the dramatizers—relates to the erection of the throne on the threshing-floor.[7] The terms “Solomon” and “the Shulamite” are explained as figurative references to the famous king, and to Abishag the Shulamite, “fairest among women,” on the lines of the use of “king” and “queen” noted above. Other songs of Canticles are referred by Budde to the seven days of festivities. It need hardly be said that difficulties still remain in the analysis of this book of wedding-songs; whilst Budde detects 23 songs, besides fragments, Siegfried divides the book into 10.[8] Such differences are to be expected in the case of a collection of songs, some admittedly in dialogue form, all concerned with the common theme of the love of man and woman, and without any external indication of the transition from one song to the next.
Further, we must ask whether the task has been complicated by any editorial rearrangement or interpolation; the collector of these songs has certainly not reproduced them in the order of their use at Syrian weddings. Can we trace any principle, or even any dominant thought in this arrangement? In this connexion we touch the reason for the reluctance of some scholars to accept the above interpretation, viz. the alleged marks of literary unity which the book contains (e.g. Driver, loc. cit.). These are (1) general similarity of treatment, seen in the use of imagery (the bride as a garden, iv. 12; vi. 2, 3), the frequent references to nature and to particular places, and the recurrence of descriptions of male and female beauty; (2) references to “Solomon” or “the king,” to “the Shulamite” and to “the daughters of Jerusalem” (from which, indeed, the dramatic theory has found its chief inspiration); (3) indications that the same person is speaking in different places (cf. the two dreams of a woman, and the vineyard references, i. 6; viii. 12); (4) repetitions of words and phrases especially of the refrains, “disturb not love” (ii. 7; iii. 5; viii. 4), and “until the day break” (ii. 17; iv. 6). But of these (1) is no more than should be expected, since the songs all relate to the same subject, and spring from a common world of life and thought of the same group of people; (2) finds at least a partial parallel and explanation in the use of “king” and “queen” noted above; whilst (3) and (4) alone seem to require something more than the work of a mere collector of the songs. It is, of course, true that, in recurrent ceremonies, the same thought inevitably tends to find expression in the same words. But this hardly meets the case of the refrains, whilst the reference to the vineyard at beginning and end does suggest some literary connexion. It is to be noted that the three refrains “disturb not love” severally follow passages relating to the consummation of the sexual relation, whilst the two refrains “until the day break” appear to form an invitation and an answer in the same connexion, whilst the “Omnia vincit Amor” passage in the last chapter forms a natural climax (cf. Haupt’s translation). So far, then, as this somewhat scanty evidence goes, it may point to some one hand which has given its semblance of unity to the book by underlining the joy of consummated love—to which the vineyard and garden figures throughout allude—and by so arranging the collection that the descriptions of this joy find their climax in viii. 6-7.[9]
Whatever conclusion, however, may be reached as to the present arrangement of Canticles, the recognition of wedding-songs as forming its nucleus marks an important stage in the interpretation of the book; even Rothstein (1902), whilst attempting to resuscitate a dramatic theory, “recognizes... the possibility that older wedding-songs (as, for instance, the wasfs) are worked up in the Song of Songs” (Hastings’ D.B. p. 594b). The drama he endeavours to construct might, indeed, be called “The Tokens of Virginity,” since he makes it culminate in the procedure of Deut. xxii. 13 f., which still forms part of the Syrian ceremonies. But his reconstruction is open to the same objection as all similar attempts, in that the vital moments of the dramatic action have to be supplied from without. Thus between v. 1 and v. 2, the baffled king is supposed to have disappeared, and to have been replaced by the happy lover; between viii. 7 and viii. 8, we are required to imagine “the bridal night and its mysteries”; whilst between viii. 9 and viii. 10, we must suppose the evidence that the bride has been found a virgin is exhibited. He also attempts, with considerable ingenuity, to trace the legend involved in the supposed drama to the fact that Abishag remained a virgin in regard to David (I Kings i. 4) whilst nothing is said of her marriage to Solomon.[10]
On the view accepted above, Canticles describes in a number of separate poems the central passion of human life, and is wholly without didactic tendencies. Of its earliest history as a book we have no information. It is already included in the Hebrew canon (though its right to be there is disputed) when the first explicit mention of the book occurs. We have no evidence, therefore, of the theory of interpretation prevalent at the time of its incorporation with the other books of the canon. It seems, however, fair to infer that it would hardly have found acceptance but for a Solomonic theory of authorship and a “religious” theory of meaning. The problem raised by its present place in the canon occurs in relation to mistaken Jewish theories about other books also; it suggests, at least, that divine inspiration may belong to the life of a people rather than to the letter of their literature. Of that life Canticles portrays a central element—the passion of love—in striking imagery and graceful language, however far its oriental standard of taste differs from that of the modern West.
From the nature of the book, it is impossible to assign a precise date for its origin; the wedding-songs of which it chiefly consists must belong to the folklore of more than one century. The only evidence we possess as to date is drawn from the character of the Hebrew in which the book is written, which shows frequent points of contact with new Hebrew.[11] On this ground, we may suppose the present form of the work to date from the Greek period, i.e. after 332 b.c. This is the date accepted by most recent writers, e.g. Kautzsch, Cheyne, Budde, Rothstein, Jacob, Haupt. This late date finds some confirmation in the fact that Canticles belongs to the third and latest part of the Old Testament canon, and that its canonicity was still in dispute at the end of the 1st century a.d. The evidence offered for a north Israelite origin, on the ground of linguistic parallels and topographical familiarity (Driver, loc. cit.), does not seem very convincing; Haupt, however, places the compilation of the book in the neighbourhood of Damascus.
Literature.—Most of the older books of importance are named above; Ginsburg, The Song of Songs (1857), gives much information as to the history of the exegesis of Canticles; Diestel’s article, “Hohes Lied,” in Schenkel’s Bibel Lexikon (1871), reviews well the history of interpretation prior to Wetstein; cf. also Riedel, Die Auslegung des Hohenliedes in der jüdischen Gemeinde und der griechischen Kirche (1898). The most important commentary is that by Budde, in Marti’s Kurzer Hand-Commentar (Die fünf Megilloth) (1898), where references to the literature of the 19th century are given. To his list add Siegfried, “Prediger und Hoheslied,” in Nowack’s Handkommentar (1898); Cheyne’s article “Canticles,” in the Encyclopaedia Biblica (1899); Dalman, Palästinischer Diwan (1901), parallels to the songs; Rothstein’s article, “Song of Songs,” in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible (1902); G. Jacob, Das Hohelied auf Grund arabischer und anderer Parallelen von neuem Untersucht (1902); A. Harper, The Song of Songs (1902); Haupt, “The Book of Canticles,” in The American Journal of Semitic Languages (July 1902); Scholz, Kommentar über das Hohelied und Psalm 45 (1904) (written from the Roman Catholic dogmatic standpoint of allegorical interpretation, with a vigorous criticism of other positions). No commentator in English, except Haupt, in the article named above, has yet worked on the lines of the above anthology theory. Haupt gives valuable notes, with a translation and rearrangement of the separate songs.
(W. R. S.; H. W. R.*)