The attempts to convert the Song into a political allegory may be pronounced completely mist:iken. For instance, it has been supposed by J. L. Hug (1813) to be a fancy poem in which the longing of the ten tribes for a reunion with king Hezekiah is set forth under the figure of the love relations of the Shulammite with Solomon. According to G. P. C. Kaisef (1S'J5) the Song of Songs is 'a collective song, addressed to Zerubl>abel, Ezra, and Nehemiah, as ttie restorers of a Jewish constitution in the province of Judah.'
* The form in which Grotius states the traditional view la worthy of note: *Crrdittir autem Salomon, quo magis peren- narethoc scriptum, ea arte id composuisse, ut sine multa distortione allegoric in eo inveniri possent, qua Dei amorem adversus populum Israelit. exprimerent. Ille amor typus cum fuerit amoris Christi erga ecclesiam. Christian! ingenia sua ad applicanda ad earn rem huius carminis verba exercueniot, laudabili studio.'
t E. Rupprecht (Einlcit. in d. ATy 1898, p. 853 ff.) still walks quite in the footsteps of Hengstenberg.
SOXG OF SOXGS
SONG OF SONGS
591
The allegorical interpretation has all alon» started with presupposing the internal unity of the poem, and has uniformly seen in Solomon its author and its hero. On this view of the Song, moreover, the dramatical element in its construc- tion, which makes itself felt not indistinctly, i8 preserved, even if it is not always recognized. Over against not only the allegorical explanation but also that view of the Song which Weaks it up into -separate songs or fragments of songs in the fashion so brilliantly inaugurated by Herder, another manner of inttrpretation began to givin always wider currency and acceptance. This agreed with the second of the views just named, in holding that it is earthly love that is the subject of the Song, and witli the first in main- taining the literary unity of the poem. It ceased to search in Canticles for deep secrets of revela- tion, prophetico-symbolical glances into the de- velopment of the kingdom of God, and preferred to take its contents realistically, as the rellexion of a historical occurrence. What the poem lost in tills way ot the value which the allegorical interpretation had sought to impose upon it, was richly compensated by the ethical significance which it gained upon the new theory. The man who led the waj; in this mode of interpretation was J. C. Jacobi (in his anonymous work, Das durch einc leirhte Erlcldrunq von seinen Voncilrfen gercttcte Hohclicd, 1771). He saw in the Song a pancgj'ric on conjugal fidelity, for he considers that its subject is the steadfastness with which a wife who had been carried oflf from her husband maintained her fidelity to the latter, in face of the seductive attempts of Solomon. Afterwards the adherents of this system of interpretation deviated from Jacobi in one point. They saw in the heroine of the poem, not a married woman, but a virgin, who, in spite of all the insidious arts of Solomon, remained true to her lover or betrotlied, and who finally received the reward of her faithfulness in her union with her beloved.
Those who, in spite of dillerences in detail, which it is impossible to describe more fully here, held the same general view (just described) of the Song, were not all agreed also in regarding it as a dramatic poem. Some took it to be an epic poem ; others, in view of its strongly pronounced lyric character, would have it that it is a collection of ballads, or even an operetta, with choruses, duets, and solos. But the majority of the ad- herents of the above theory, especially amongst the most distinguished exegetes, took the view that the Song is a drama, or it might be a melo- drama. We may specify such names as Ewald (1820, 1867), Umbreit (1828, 1839), Hitzig (1855), Renan (1800), even Delitzsch (see, further, below), Stickel (1888), Oettli (1889), Driver (1891, etc.), Bruston (1891). Amongst many others the present writer has given in his adliesion to this opinion (1893). But as to the internal structure of the poem there is by no means complete agreement, although the dillerences that exist are no evidence, as has been supposed, that there is nothing in the dramatic theory. The absence of scenic indica- tions in the text, and the necessity of inferring •imply from the contents, or the form of exprcs- «ion, who is the speaker in particular sentences or sections, are quite sulficient to account for the surprising dillerences in the dramatic arraiigenient of the Song proposed by dillerent exegetes. These difl'erences are, of course, due also in large measure to the very great diiliculties that beset the ex- position of the Song of Songs.
The main ditl'erence amongst the adherents of the dramatical theory is the following. Starting with the primary assumption that Canticles is a dramatic poem, exegetes, in answering the ques-
tion as to the principal dramatis persona, part company in two quite dili'erent directions. De- litzsch (1851, 1875), and, in essential agreement with him, Zockler (in I.ange's Bibelwerk, IS68), and von Orelli (in I'li'E- vi. p. 24511"., art. ' Holies Lied Salomos,' 1880), hold, in harmony with the traditional view, that, apart from certain sub- ordinate figures, there are only two principal persons to be recognized, namely, Solomon and the Shulammite, and that, where a shepherd is spoken of, Solomon is here al.so to be understood.