is not here understood, for in such a state she would have flown to meet him; but a sinking of the soul, such as is described by Terence (And. I 5. 16):“Oratio haec me miseram exanimavit metu.”
The voice of her beloved struck her heart; but in the consciousness that she had estranged herself from him, she could not openly meet him and offer empty excuses. But now she recognises it with sorrow that she had not replied to the deep impression of his loving words; and seeing him disappear without finding him, she calls after him whom she had slighted, but he answers her not. The words: “My soul departed when he spake,” are the reason why she now sought him and called upon him, and they are not a supplementary remark (Zöckl.); nor is there need for the correction of the text בּדברו, which should mean: (my soul departed) when he turned his back (Ewald), or, behind him (Hitz., Böttch.), from דּבר = (Arab.) dabara, tergum vertere, praeterire, - the Heb. has the word דּביר, the hinder part, and as it appears, דּבּר, to act from behind (treacherously) and destroy, 2Ch 22:10; cf. under Gen 34:13, but not the Kal דּבר, in that Arab. signification. The meaning of חמק has been hit upon by Aquila (ἔκλινεν), Symmachus (ἀπονεύσας), and Jerome (declinaverat); it signifies to turn aside, to take a different direction, as the Hithpa. Jer 31:22 : to turn oneself away; cf. חמּוּקים, turnings, bendings, Sol 7:2. חבק and אבק (cf. Gen 32:25), Aethiop. ḥaḳafa, Amhar. aḳafa (reminding us of נקץ, Hiph. הקּיף), are usually compared; all of these, however, signify to “encompass;” but חמק does not denote a moving in a circle after something, but a half circular motion away from something; so that in the Arab. the prevailing reference to fools, aḥamḳ, does not appear to proceed from the idea of closeness, but of the oblique direction, pushed sideways. Turning himself away, he proceeded farther. In vain she sought him; she called without receiving any answer. ענני is the correct pausal form of ענני, vid., under Psa 118:5. But something worse than even this seeking and calling in vain happened to her.
Verse 7
Sol 5:7 7 The watchmen who go about in the city found me, They beat me, wounded me; My upper garment took away from me, The watchmen of the walls.
She sought her beloved, not “in the midbar” (open field), nor “in the kepharim” (villages), but בעיר, “in the city,” - a circumstance which is fatal to the shepherd-hypothesis here, as in the other dream. There in the city she is found by the watchmen who patrol the city,
