conjugal fidelity is the Shulamite, the heroine of the book. This humble woman was married to a shepherd. Solomon, being struck with her beauty, tempted her with the luxuries and splendour of his court to forsake her husband and enter the royal harem; but the Shulamite spurned all the allurements, and remained faithful to her humble husband.[1] However strange the manner in which Jacobi divides this book, and the interpretation of separate passages, it must be acknowledged that he was the first in Germany who showed that Solomon was not the object of the Shulamite's affections, and that the beloved was a humble shepherd from whom the King endeavoured to separate her. It will be remembered that Ibn Ezra, Immanuel, and the Anonymous Commentary,[2] have already taken the lovers to be a shepherd and shepherdess, and regarded Solomon as a separate person, whom the rustic maiden adduces in illustration of her sincere attachment to her shepherd, affirming that if this great King were to bring her into his court, and offer her all its grandeur and luxuries, she would still rejoice in her humble lover.
1772. It seems unaccountable that though the increased attention paid in this country to the sound exegesis of the Scriptures compelled expositors to propound the literal meaning of this book, that Durell[3] could still overlook the two distinct persons referred to in this poem, viz. the King and the Shepherd, and maintain that the Song of Songs is an epithalamium on Solomon's marriage with Pharaoh's daughter.
1776. It was not to be expected that the opposition of sound critics, and much less the newly propounded view of Jacobi, would at once subvert the old allegorical theories, or check fertile imaginations from inventing new speculations. The Song of Songs was too darling an object of those whose minds were addicted to allegories and mysticisms to be so
