It is quite true that, even upon this inter- pretation, whidi at all events docs fuller justice to the text than the traditional view adopted anew by Delitzsch, there are still ditliculties enough in points of detail. But it is question- able whether these difticulties are sufficiently great to make bliis explanation inadet]uate alike from the formal and the material point of view, and thus to demand its rejection. The present writer does not think so.
The principal difficulty is In the so-called Third Act(3«-6l). Tile (luestioii is whether the conclusion (51) is intended to mark the longed-for marriatre union as actually consummated. Hitzip held that this <iuestion must he answered in the alhrrna- tive, and supposed the marriage in view to have been one that Solomon contracted with a woman of Jerusalem, but not with tlie Shulatnniite. Bruston is also of opinion that in this Third Act we have to do with the marriacje of the kin;^ to another — in fact, as he thinks may be gathered from 4"^, with a Tynan princess. This actually accomplished marriage with another woman would thus place on a still higher level the invincible fid<.-Iity of the Shulammite. But there is really no necessity to take the Shulamniite's words in 4l6b as formally different from her words in ch. 1. She is thinking in botli passages, not of the king, but of her true lover, and it occasions no dilficulty, but onlj' marks the climax of the conflict that the king believes, of course, that the object of his desires is now about to yield to him, whereas, as the very next scene shows, such an idea haa never entered her mind. Ewald himself held that from 4t* onwards we have again words of her lover, which the Shulammite imagined she heard, as in 281" ; he even sup- posed that two lines have dropped out before v.8, their con- tents being, * Behold, my beloved, behold, there comes he! Hark how he speaks to me his words . . . ,' or the like. But it is unnecessary and hardly justifiable to suppose that a different subject speaks in i*^^- from the speaker in v.itf f — Stickel, too, denies that 4fff- are words of Solomon, but he thinks to escape all dithculties by the strange assumption that in V- s 115-2* 4"-5i there are three scenes that are to be separated from the rest of the poem. In these he supposes a second pair of lovers, a shepherd and a shepherdess, to be introduced, who actually arrive at a marriage union, this inter- lude having the effect of setting Solomon's wooing of the Shulammite in a peculiar light. J Otherwise, the relation of Solomon to the Shulammite and her relation to him remain the same as on Ewald's theory. But this view of Stickel's, which destroys the unity of the poem, presupposes far too great skill in producing stage effects (' Biihnengeschickticftkeit ') on the part of the author to be well founded.
A very important turn of opinion as to the literary character of the Song of Songs has been brought about in the most recent times. J. G. Wetzstein, %\ho was for long Prussian consul at Damascus, and who has rendered much service in the way of increasing our knowledge of Oriental life and contributing to the understanding of the OT, availed himself of bis opportunities of making acquaintance with the marriage customs in modern Syria. In this way he met with some things which are certainly calculated to throw light on certain portions of the Song of Songs. He published in Hastian's Zcitschrift f. EthnoTor/ie (1873, p. 27011.), an article, entitled 'Die syrische Dreschtafel,' in which he describes the manifold uses made of the threshing-board, and amongst others its symbolical employment in the so-called ' king's week,' i.e. d\iring the seven days' marriage festival (p. 287 fl'.). It was partly from this artitde that the 'Bemer- kungen zum Hohenliede ' in Delitzsch's Commentary were taken, but the author contributed further important materials to the elucidation of the sub- ject. To the same category belongs an earlier
* The reader will find an exact account of the scheme of the Song proposed by Kwald, in Driver's LUT'i p. 4-11) ff.
t It may be noted that, in the opinion of the present writer, 4^ is not now in its original place. It is not till v. 7 that the description of the chan.is of the Shulammite (vv.l-^) closes. Perhaps v. 6 should follow v. 7, and formed originally the con- nectin;c link with v.s'r..
1 Cf. Stickel, Dot HoJulied, p. 46; 'Antithesis, that india- pensat4e art of the drama, by presenting so vividly the un- disturbed happy shepherd's love in contrast with the sorely tried heroine of the Song, awakens warm sympathy with the latter, and a feeling of suspense and compaflmon,' etc. Further, this interlude is su)>posea to mark and fill up various spaces of time in the course of the main transaction.
article by Wetzstein, entitli'd ' Spracbliches aui den Zeltlagern der syrischen Wii.-te,' in ZDMG xxii. (1868), p. 69 ff., containing valuable notes on a story written down from oral communication. The remarkable similarity between certain songs sung at moilern niarria''e celebrations and certain portions of the Song of Songs, naturally enough forced upon him the conclusion that the latter ia not 'a dramatic unity,' but rather a collection of ' beautiful nuptial songs' which were received into the Canon 'to furnish good models to the occasional poets whose productions may in Hebrew antiquity, as at the present day, have transgressed the bounds of decency and good taste.' The allegorical or mystical interpretation is held to have come in afterwards (cf. Delitzsch, Camm. p. 172, note). After Stade {Gesrh. Isr. ii. [18S8] 197) had referred approvingly to Wetzstein's ' most helpful contri- bution to tlie understanding of this (juite unique book,' Budde, in an article on ' The Song of Solo- mon' in the New World (Boston, U.S.A. 1894, p. 56 ti'.; cf. Preuss. Jahrbucher, 1894, p. 92 if.), went in the fullest detail into Wetzstein s communica- tions, and sought with their help to win its natural sense for the Song of Songs.* His arguments gained complete assent from Kautzsch (' Abriss der Gesch. d. alttest. Schrifttums' in the 'Beilagen' to his ATy. 210 f. [in the ' Sonderabdruck ' of 1897, p. 134 f.]), and in specially emphatic, confident fashion from Cornill (Einleitung^, p. 256 : ' In this way the enigma of our book is definitively solved ').t Whether this confidence is really justified is open to doubt. With reference to Budde's claim (I.e. p. 9) that he has cut away the roots of the dramatical interpretation of the Song by his explanation of 'Solomon' and 'the Shulammite,' which stand simply for bridegroom and bride, husband and wife, Bruston (cf. Le Xo cungris des Orientalistes et I'ancicn 'Testament, Paris, 1895, p. 13 tf.) declares, ' I fear that this is a huge and extraordinary illusion,' a judgment with which the present writer agrees.