•By the way, Budde's view la not at all favoured by the drcumsuncc that in the Song of Songs the Shulammite or the bride is never called ' queen.^ The • daughter of a noMe ' (7') doe* not take the place of this. VOU IV. — 38
p. 171), is the so-called swortl dance of the bride on the evening before the bridal night. In this dance, which is acconqKinied by the soug of a double chorus of men and women in praise ot her physical beauty, she seeks in the light of the high-leaping flames of a lire to display to the bridegroom the charms of het person, brandishing all the time a sharp sword in her right hand, and holding a handkerchief in her left. The whole per- formance is an imitation of the dance that celebrates a victory. Now, as a matter of fact, the ira.«/"sung during the sword dance corresponds in Canticles to 7if- (:is far at least as v.7). The uat; referring to the young wife (i.e. the queen) after the consum- mation of the marriage on the bridal night, on the flret day of the ' king's week," is found, according to Uudde, in 41-*'. It is put in the mouth of the young husband, and is partially re- peated in 0*-7, There is also a panegyric on the physical charms of the husband or king, tiie iwi^ referring to which is put in the mouth of the wife in o'-"*^-, v.-^- being supposed to be intended simply to sen*e as an introduction to this wa^/'with a pleasing dramatical movement. Next, according to this mode of in terpretation, :l*'-Al contains a description of the fettive train o' the gorgeously dressed bridegroom - king, and their joyous greeting to him on the morning alter the bridal night, wher the threshing-board has been placed and decked out as the throne; here the name 'Solomon' is, of course, not meant to be taken literally.* The 'sixty mighty men" are the 'com- panions of the bridegroom,' who, as Wetzstein with the approval of liudde suggests, were perhaps originally charged with the duty of protecting the festival against attacks, especially during the night (33, ct. Delitzsch, Comm. p. 170).t The ' fiaughters of Jerusalem ' are of course, in the same way, not ladies of the royal harem, but virgins from the same neighbourhood as the bridal pair, who take part in a variety of ways in the wedding celebration.! The circumstance that it is with Jerusalem in particular that they are brought into relation, proves, according to Hudde, that the home of the wedding songs which are brought together in Canticles is to be sought in this city or its environs.
But now, as liudde further supposes, the passages just named have not. in their present order, the chronological succession demanded by the course of the marriage celebrations. At all events, the song that accompanied the sword dance ("i*^-) must stand before ^ti""-, the greeting addressed to the approaching bridegroom-king. Budde suggests, however, that perhaps ita proper pLoce is after 3*' u and before 4-0, if, as is possible, the subject of 36-n ig not the proces-^ion to the throne on the day a/trr the marri.age, but the ceremonial arrival of the bridegroom a't llie marriage itself on the evening of the wed<ling day. (If 51 alludes to the coining actual consummation of the marriage covenant, the latter supposition appears to the present writer to be the only suitable one). From all this it follows, according to Budde, 'that the songs are brought together irregularly, and the last trace of an orderly arrangement thus appears.' It is a question, however, whether the premisses ui)on which this conclusion rests are in all respects correct. The present writer does not think so.
In the remaining portions of Canticles also there is of course, in Budde's opinion, no connexion to be discovered, but still less any progressive history. These passages, on the contrary, may be readily broken up into a number of songs, which, as NVe'tzstein's information showed, may have been used during the ' king's week ' in praise of love in general, and of the love of the present pair in particular (Budde, p. 16 f.).
But, after the Song of Songs has been thus resolved into a number of .separate songs, the ques- tion iarises, W/iat judgment is to be passed on the book in its present form ? IVas it originally nothing more titan a collection of wedding songs, or was a species of editing carried out in the arrangement of them with the intention of establishing an internal connexion f Budde decides in the main in favour of the first of these alternatives, holding that we have to do, at least originaUy, only with a collec- tion. Some one who felt an interest in this species of lyric poetry is sujiposed (like Wetzstein in our own day) to have written down these songs, and then the collection would be piissed on to ]>osterity in this form, i)erli;i)is without indication of their origin and without any exact distinction of the limits of the dillerent songs. In this w.ay the l)Ook would be exposed to the greatest danger of falling into disorder. Of cour.se this is in itself a i)Ossible view. But that the question as to the origin of
tlie book in its present form is not settled in this simple fashion, liuilde is well aware. He finds