SONG OF SOLOMON. This poem is said to be the only remaining one of the 1,005 songs composed by Solomon (in the Hebrew idiom it is called the Song of Songs, or the best of them all); and both Jewish and Christian tradition agree in this. It has been thought to have been a Marriage Ode composed by him at his nuptials with the daughter of Pharaoh, or with some

native of Palestine (espoused some years later), of noble extraction, but inferior to her husband (ii. 1, 6; vii. 1), and its language is held to be figurative of the union between Christ and His Spouse, the Church.

It is a poem, in which there are two characters, a male (Shelomoh, Peace), and a female, called by the same name with a feminine termination (Shulamith). There are treble and bass solos, which occasionally glide into a duet ( ii. 7; iii. 5; viii. 4), terminating in a chorus of virgins (Song iii. 6-11; v. 9; vi. 1,13; viii. 5, 8, 9). The sonnet of each of the two principal characters is not distinguished in our translation, as it is in the Hebrew by the use of masculine and feminine pronouns and adjectives; but they may be thus marked: Shulamith begins a treble solo ( Song i. 2-6), followed by a dialogue or duet (of about a verse each), to Song ii. 3, terminating in the duet (Song ii. 6, 7). Then Shulamith sings a solo (Song ii. 8-13), answered by Shelomoh (Song ii. 14, 15), and he again by her (Song iii. 1-4), gliding into the duet (Song iii. 5), and the chorus of virgins (from ver. 6 to the end of that chapter).

Chap. iv. commences with a sonnet from Shulamith in praise of her lover, answered by him, singing hers in turn. The same compliments are retorted with little variation by Shelomoh (chap, vii.), in praise of his spouse. The two intervening chapters (v. and vi.) seem to be sung by Shulamith and the chorus, and chap. viii. by them all chorally.

Ewald, with much reason, has conjectured that it is not the composition of Solomon, nor yet a marriage ode; but that it had its origin in the loving cry of the faithful Church still remaining in the kingdom of the ten tribes, when rent away from the house of David. Thus, "Solomon" is the head of the Jewish Church, personified in the Temple, the centre of devotion and love of the faithful spouse now excluded from it, but whose heart still yearns towards it. The compulsory attendance on the worship at Dan and Beth-el is well pourtrayed by—"My mother's children were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine mvn vineyard (God's Church) have I not kept." And again, as the worship of the calves was the beginning of Baalism, well might the faithful Israelite Church, forced to a false worship, hide its face and cry, "Look not upon me, because I am black; because the Sun hath looked upon me."

This view is sustained by the imagery used by the two speakers one of the other: that applied to the male being such as is applicable to the physical features of Judea; that to the female such as belongs rather to the northern kingdom. Again, the neck of Shelomoh is like the "tower of David " (iv. 4); he lives amidst the daughters of Jerusalem, and among the roes, harts, and hinds of the field, "leaping upon the mountains" (ii. 7, 8); while Shulamith lives under Lebanon, "a dove in the clefts of the rock, in the secret stairs " (ii. 14); her eyes are like fishpools in Hesh-bon, her nose as the tower of Lebanon, her head like Carmel (vii. 4, 5). All names of places used in the imagery of her by Shelomoh, or by her of herself, are taken from the ten tribes, even extending to those beyond the Jordan.

Date and Authorship. With the exception of a few Talmudists (who ascribe it to the time of Hezekiah), there is a general consent of all critics, down to the last century, that it is a genuine work of Solomon, though the date at which it was written is disputed. Kennicott places it in the time of Ezra or Nehemiah, on account of certain Chaldaisms in the Hebrew text, which, Gesenius alleges, are provincialisms peculiar to the northern part of Palestine, existing in the age of Solomon, to which period he attributes the composition. There seems nothing whatever in the subject-matter which could identify it with the post-Babylonish period, and the LXX. style it the "Song of Solomon."

The more probable time of its composition would seem to be that of Rehoboam, and it would appear as if it were an eirenikon (overture of peace) beween the two hostile kingdoms of Israel and Judah, reminding them that they were brethren (compare Song iii. 11; v. 16; viii. 2,5). The mention in juxtaposition of the two rival royal cities in the time of Jeroboam and Kehoboam, viz. Tirzah and Jerusalem (Song vi. 4); of the "threescore valiant men of Israel," expert in war, coming out of the wilderness (Song iii. 6-8); and of "the company of two armies," with the appeal to Shulamith to return (Song vi. 10), all seem to point to the conclusion of hostilities recorded in 1 Kings xii. 23, 24, or after the chastisement of Jeroboam by Abijah (2 Chron. xiii.).

Shelomoh would seem to be a personification of "Salem" (Jerusalem), and this ode would thus pourtray the yearning of the bereaved Israelite Church towards the holy Temple on Mount Zion after the separation of the ten tribes. This more fitly typifies the love between the Church and Christ than an "Epithalamium" on the marriage of Solomon with a heathen princess; while the terms of endearment lose all their grossness when applied to two nations with their distinctive physical features, —a view which the constant transition (in the original Hebrew) from the singular to the plural (or collective) pronouns strengthens

The Canonicity of this book has never been doubted, the evidence in its favour being as strong as that in support of the other books; but, among the Jews, no one under thirty years of age was allowed to read it.