THE SHULAMITE.
Let my beloved come into his garden
And eat its delicious fruits!
THE SHEPHERD.
Chap. V. 1 I am coming into my garden, my sister, my betrothed:
I am gathering my myrrh with my spices,
I am eating my honeycomb with my honey,
I am drinking my wine with my milk.
SOME OF THE DAUGHTERS OF JERUSALEM.
Eat, O friends!
Drink, and drink abundantly, O beloved!
- cal designations for a gale generally,
without any particular reference to the peculiarities of the wind when blowing from these respective regions is evident from a comparison of Numb. xi. 31 with Ps. lxxviii. 26. This does away with the conflicting conjectures which have been hazarded, to account for the invocation of the wind from these opposite quarters of the earth. [HE: xopvOn/] and [HE: t.Eymon/], prop. the north and southern quarters, are poetically used, [HE: rv.Ha xopvOn/], and [HE: rv.Ha t.Eymon/], the north and south wind. Ps. lxviii. 26. [HE: b.^eS\omiym/], spices, here their odours.
Let my beloved come, &c. The Shulamite, continuing this beautiful apostrophe, responds: "If my person really resembles such a paradise, this garden is yours; yours are all its productions." [HE: p.^eriy m^egodoyv], literally the fruit of his deliciousness, i.e. his delicious fruit. When a compound idea is expressed by one noun followed by another in the genitive, a suffix which refers to this whole idea is sometimes appended to the second of the two nouns. Comp. [HE: 'e:liylEy k.as^ep.vO], his silver idols, Isa. ii. 20; Gesen. § 129, b; Ewald, § 291, b; [HE: gan/] being of a common gender, the suffix in [HE: m^egodoyv] may either refer to garden, or to beloved; it is more in keeping with the construction to refer it to the beloved, just as the suffix in [HE: g.an.^evO] refers to him. The fruit is the beloved's because the garden is his, and therefore he may enjoy it.
1. I am coming into my garden, &c. The shepherd, as he embraces his beloved, expresses his unbounded delight in her charms. The perfect forms, [HE: b.o'tiy] [HE: S/otiytiy], [HE: 'okal^et.iy], [HE: 'oritiy], are used for the present, Gesen. § 126.
Eat, O friends, &c. Some sympathizing court ladies, at a distance, seeing the mutual happiness of the lovers, urge them to take their fill of delight. The explanation of Rashbam and others, that this address is to the companions of the beloved to partake of a friendly meal; or, as others will have it, that it is an invitation to the marriage feast, is against the context. The expression [HE: 'ik^elv.], eat ye, must be taken in the same sense as [HE: 'okal^etiy], I eat; and it would be most incongruous to suppose that the beloved, who enjoys the charms of his loved one, would call on his friends to do the same. Dr. Geddes, who is followed by Dr. Good, alters the text into [HE: 'kl r`y St vSkyr dvdy], Eat, O my friend! drink, yea, drink abundantly, O my beloved! and puts it into the mouth of the Shulamite; thus making it an answer to what the beloved said in the preceding clause. But such conjectural emendations ought to be repudiated. It is most in accordance with the context to take these words as an epiphonema of some sympathizing court ladies. The parallelism and the accents require us to take [HE: dvOdiym/] as a concrete, synonymous with [HE: rE`iym/], friends; so the Sept., Vulg., Syr., Rashbam, Ibn Ezra, Rashi, Mendelssohn, &c.
