Attributed commentary excerpt
Keil & Delitzsch on Song of Solomon 1:6
A historical reference excerpt for this verse. Read it alongside the biblical text and other available sources.
Commentary on the Old Testament
C. F. Keil & F. Delitzsch · 19th-century historical commentary
Source: BibleWord.ai's local reference edition of this named work.
Shulamith now explains, to those who were looking upon her with inquisitive wonder, how it is that she is swarthy: 6a Look not on me because I am black, Because the sun has scorched me. If the words were בי (תּראינה) אל־תּראוּ, then the meaning would be: look not at me, stare not at me. But אל־תּראני, with שׁ (elsewhere כּי) following, means: Regard me not that I am blackish (subnigra); the second שׁ is to be interpreted as co-ordin. with the first (that ... that), or assigning a reason, and that objectively (for). We prefer, with Bttch., the former, because in the latter case we would have had שׁהשׁמשׁ. The quinqueliterum שׁחרחרת signifies, in contradistinction to שׁחור, that which is black here and there, and thus not altogether black. This form, as descriptive of colour, is diminutive; but since it also means id quod passim est, if the accent lies on passim, as distinguished from raro, it can be also taken as increasing instead of diminishing, as in יפיפה, הפכפּך. The lxx trans. παρέβλεπσέ (Symm. παρανέβλεπσέ) με ὁ ἣλιος: the sun has looked askance on me. But why only askance? The Venet. better: κατεῖδέ με; but that is too little. The look is thought of as scorching; wherefore Aquila: συνέκαυσέ με, it has burnt me; and Theodotion: περιέφρυξέ με, it has scorched me over and ov. שׁזף signifies here not adspicere ( Job 3:9; Job 41:10) so much as adurere. In this word itself (cogn. שׁדף; Arab. sadaf, whence asdaf, black; cf. דּעך and זעך, Job 17:1), the looking is thought of as a scorching; for the rays of the eye, when they fix upon anything, gather themselves, as it were, into a focus. Besides, as the Scriptures ascribe twinkling to the morning dawn, so it ascribes eyes to the sun ( Sa2 12:11), which is itself as the eye of the heavens. (Note: According to the Indian idea, it is the eye of Varuna; the eye (also after Plato: ἡλιοειδέστατον τῶν περὶ τὰς αἰσθήσεις οργάνων) is regarded as taken from the sun, and when men die returning to the sun (Muir in the Asiatic Journal, 1865, p. 294, S. 309).) The poet delicately represents Shulamith as regarding the sun as fem. Its name in Arab. and old Germ. is fem., in Heb. and Aram. for the most part mas. My lady the sun, she, as it were, says, has produced on her this swarthiness. She now says how it has happened that she is thus sunburnt: 6b My mother's sons were angry with me, Appointed me as keeper of the vineyards - Mine own vineyard have I not kept. If "mother's sons" is the parallel for "brothers" (אחי), then the expressions are of the same import, e.g., Gen 27:29; but if the two expressions stand in apposition, as Deut. 13:76, then the idea of the natural brother is sharpened; but when "mother's sons" stands thus by itself alone, then, after Lev 18:9, it means the relationship by one of the parents alone, as "father's wife" in the language of the O.T. and also Co1 5:5 is the designation of a step-mother. Nowhere is mention made of Shulamith's father, but always, as here, only of her mother, Sol 3:4; Sol 8:2; Sol 6:9; and she is only named without being introduced as speaking. One is led to suppose that Shulamith's own father was dead, and that her mother had been married again; the sons by the second marriage were they who ruled in the house of their mother. These brothers of Shulamith appear towards the end of the melodrama as rigorous guardians of their youthful sister; one will thus have to suppose that their zeal for the spotless honour of their sister and the f…
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