thought therein expressed: “Press me close to thy breast, enclose me in thine arms.” But it is the first request, and not the second, which is in the form עכל־זרועך, and not על־זרועתיך (שׁימני), which refers to embracing, since the subject is not the relation of person and thing, but of person and person. The signet-ring comes into view as a jewel, which one does not separate from himself; and the first request is to this effect, that he would bear her thus inalienably (the art. is that of the specific idea) on his heart (Exo 28:29); the meaning of the second, that he would take her thus inseparably as a signet-ring on his arm (cf. Hos 11:3 : “I have taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by their arms”), so that she might lie always on his heart, and have him always at her side (cf. Psa 110:5): she wishes to be united and bound to him indissolubly in the affection of love and in the community of life's experience.
The reason for the double request following כּי, abstracted from the individual case, rises to the universality of the fact realized by experience, which specializes itself herein, and celebrates the praise of love; for, assigning a reason for her “set me,” she does not say, “my love,” nor “thy love,” but אהבה, “love” (as also in the address at Sol 7:7). She means love undivided, unfeigned, entire, and not transient, but enduring; thus true and genuine love, such as is real, what the word denotes, which exhausts the conception corresponding to the idea of love. קנאה, which is here parallel to “love,” is the jealousy of love asserting its possession and right of property; the reaction of love against any diminution of its possession, against any reserve in its response, the “self-vindication of angry love.”[1]
Love is a passion, i.e., a human affection, powerful and lasting, as it comes to light in “jealousy.” Zelus, as defined by Dav. Chyträus, est affectus mixtus ex amore et ira, cum videlicet amans aliquid irascitur illi, a quo laeditur res amata, wherefore here the adjectives עזּה (strong) and קשׁה (hard, inexorable, firm, severe) are respectively assigned to “love” and “jealousy,” as at Gen 49:7 to “anger” and “wrath.” It is much more remarkable that the energy of love, which, so to say, is the life of life, is compared to the energy of death and Hades; with at least equal right ממּות and משּׁאול (might be used, for love scorns both, outlasts both, triumphs over both (Rom 8:38.; 1Co 15:54.). But the text does not speak of surpassing, but of equality; not of love and jealousy that they surpass death and Hades,
- ↑ Vid., my Prolegomena to Weber's Vom Zorne Gottes (1862), p. 35 ss.
