love: asîruha is equivalent to her lov.[1]
The mention of the king now leads from the imagery of a dance to the scene which follows, where we again hear the king's voice. The scene and situation are now manifestly changed. We are transferred from the garden to the palace, where the two, without the presence of any spectators, carry on the following dialogue.
Verse 6
Sol 7:6 6 How beautiful art thou, and how charming, O love, among delights!
It is a truth of all-embracing application which is here expressed. There is nothing more admirable than love, i.e., the uniting or mingling together of two lives, the one of which gives itself to the other, and so finds the complement of itself; nor than this self-devotion, which is at the same time self-enrichment. All this is true of earthly love, of which Walther v. d. Vogelweide says: “minne ist sweier herzen wünne” love is the joy of two hearts, and it is true also of heavenly love; the former surpasses all earthly delights (also such as are purely sensuous, Ecc 2:8), and the latter is, as the apostle expresses himself in his spiritual “Song of Songs,” 1Co 13:13, in relation to faith and hope, “greater than these,” greater than both of them, for it is their sacred, eternal aim. In יפית it is indicated that the idea, and in נעמתּ that the eudaemonistic feature of the human soul attains its satisfaction in love. The lxx, obliterating this so true and beautiful a promotion of love above all other joys, translate ἐν ταῖς τρυφαῖς σου (in the enjoyment which thou impartest). The Syr., Jerome, and others also rob the Song of this its point of light and of elevation, by reading אהמה O beloved! instead of אהבה. The words then declare (yet contrary to the spirit of the Hebrew language, which knows neither אהוּמה nor אהוּמתי as vocat.) what we already read at Sol 4:10; while, according to the traditional form of the text, they are the prelude of the love-song, to love as such, which is continued in Sol 8:6.
Verses 7-8
When Solomon now looks on the wife of his youth, she stands before him like a palm tree with its splendid leaf-branches, which the Arabians call ucht insân (the sisters of men); and like a vine
- ↑ Samaschshari, Mufaṣṣal, p. 8.