n11.cle, the 11.rk in the wilderness, Moses on Pieg11.h, the death of Moses, entr11.nce into Can11.an, conquest and partition of Canaan, conflicts under the Judges, prosperity and peace unde1' Solomon. To these ten Old Testa- ment facts •correspond ten New Testament fulfilments-the Incarnation, teaching of Christ, hie life and miracles, hie ascent to Jerusalem, hie death on the cross, the ingathering of Jewish converts, the mission to the Gentiles, the conflicts of the martyr Church, prosperity and peace under Constantine. Cocceius (1673), in hie • Cogitationee,' finds in it the pre- diotion of the events of hie own time ; and Cornelius e. Lapide treats it, in a high Roman Catholic manner, as significant of the glory of the Virgin, while he takes it as a kind of;prophetic drama, setting forth the history of the Church. When we come to more modern times and to the great " Introductions" to the study of the Bible, written by the most learned critics, we see the influence of a closer attention to the structure and language of the book in the gradual decay of the allegorical method, and the attempt to unite the facts which underlie the words with a distinct spiritual significance. In the beginning of this century, the great Roman Catholic theologian and critic .Leon. Hug (1813) made a novel attempt to maintain the allegorical view. The bride 'represented the ten tribes, the bridegroom King Hezekiah, the brother cif the bride a party ii:J. the house of Judah opposing the reunion 1 of the rent kingdom. He was followed by Kaiser in 1825. Rosenmiiller sought to put fresh life into the worn-out theory by analogies brought from Hindoo and Persian poetry; as Puffendorf (1776) introdnced in his para- phrase mys_tical allusions tci the grave and the hope of the resurrection, the u virgins" being" pure and chaste souls shut up in the dark grave," and waiting'for the light of the Saviour's resurrection. Until we come to the time of ;Keil ari.d Hengstenberg, we have no really sensible defence of the theory put forth, and it is scarcely necessary to make the remark that their defence is a virtual surrender, for their use of the allegorical method is so moderate that it barely exceeds the ideal and typical view, and is sub- stantially the same as that of Delitzsch and Zockler. Keil(' Introduction to the Old· Testament,' vol. i. p. 503, Eng. transl.) says, " The book depicts in dramatico-lyrical, responsive songs, under the allegory of the bridal love of Solomon and Shulamith, the loving communion between the Lord and his Church, according to its ideal nature as it results from the choice of Israel to be the Church of the Lord. According to this, every disturbance of, that. fellowship springing out of Israel's infidelity leads to an ever firmer establishment of the covenant of love, by means of Israfll's return to the true covenant God, and this God's unchangeable love. Yet we are not to trace in the po'em the historical course of the covenant relation, as if a veil of allegory had been thrown over the principal critical events in the theocratic history." Hahn, e.g., finds allegorically represented "that the kingdom of Israel is called in the service of God finally to overcome heathe11,dom with the weapons of love and righteousness, and to lead it Xi1' IliTRODUGTION TO
back to the peaoeful rest of loving fellowship with Israel, and so with God again." Hengstenberg, in his• Prolegomena to .the Song of t;!olomoJ:!,' and in his Exposition (1858), argues for the allegorical view from the )lee of similar erotio language in the Psalms and prophets, as w~ll o.s in the general tone of the Old Testament. The beloved of the heavenly Solomon is the daughter of Zion; the whole, therefore, must be expl;lined of Messiah and his Church. But he proceeds to attempt an application of this view to the details of the language, in which he shows that it can only be acoepted in a modified form-the hair of the bride like a jloclc of goat.s represents the mass of nations converted to Christianity; the. navel of Shulamith denotes the cup from which the Church refreshes those that thirst for salvation with a noble and refreshing draught; the sixty and eighty wive, of Solomon, the admission of the original Gentill3 nations. into the Church, 140 being 7 multiplied by 2 and by 10-the "signature of the covenant," the kingdom of Christ being prefigured by the diver,se _nations introduced into Solomon's harem I Such follies tend to blind the reader to the su bsta.ntial truth of the theory, which -is that,' und~:r •the figure of the pure and beautiful love of Solomon for Shulamith, is imaged th~ loye of God in Christ for humanity, both in the individua:l and in the Church. • The only other names which require mention in connection with the allegorical theory are those of Thrupp, Wordsworth, and, Stowe. Joseph Fra.ncis Thrupp published a revised_ translation with intr_odqft~on an,~ commentary (Cambridge, 1862). The. millenarian_ vie~ d()min_ate~ his work throughout. It is a prophecy of the coming of Christ. Wordsworth (Christopher), in his • Commentary on the Bible,' published 1868, also regards the poem as a prophetic allegory, suggested by S.olomo:q's :o:iarriage with Pha.raoh's daughter, and describing " the gathering" of the world into mystical union with Christ, and its consecration into - &_Church espoused to him as the bride. Calvin E. Stowe defends_ th~ allegorical view in the Biblical RepoBitory (April, 1847), giving a parti_al, iraµslation. The fault of all these writer&, o.ble and learned as they are, is that they push their theory too far, and that they are led away by it into a misuse of S(,']:ipture to support that which does not f?,irly r,est upon :it. .This is the danger which must always attend upon the allegorical method. The ingenuity of the interpreter is tempted to supply, out of his own cree,d. what is lacking in the scheme of the allegory. He has liberty to suggest what analogi~s he discovers. The highly figurative language of such a poem as the Song of Solomon is easily accommoda_ted to the demand~ of any system of thought to which the wish is father., _ But _while the allegorical method, aa a formal treatment, may be erroneous, it_ recognizes the spiritual meaning and value of the book. 'l'he caJ?,<;>nical position of such a work requires to be justified. The allegorist attempts to do so. He is certainly right in demandipg that a distinct religious purpose. shall be the vital centr~ of any system of interpretation put forth. As Isaac Taylor has remarked, in his 'Spirit of Hebrew Poetry,' "The book has giyen THE BONG OF SOLOMON. IV