The praise of the virtuous woman, at the close of the Proverbs, is given a Jahvist turn by verse 30: “Favour is deceitful and beauty vain; but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised.” But the Solomonists also had their ideas of the virtuous woman, and of beauty, these being beautifully expressed in a series of dramatic idylls entitled The Song of Songs. To this latter, in the original title, is added, “which is Solomon’s”; and it confirms what has been said concerning the superstitious awe of everything proceeding from Solomon, and the dread of insulting the Holy Spirit of Wisdom supernaturally lodged in him, that we find in the Bible these passionate love songs. And indeed Solomon must have been superlatively wise to have written poems in which his greatness is slightly ridiculed. That of course would be by no means incredible in a man of genuine wisdom—on the contrary would be characteristic—if other conditions were met by the tradition of his authorship.

At the outset, however, we are confronted by the question whether the Song of Songs has any general coherency or dramatic character at all. Several modern critics of learning, among them Prof. Karl Budde and the late Edward Reuss, find the book a collection of unconnected lyrics, and Professor Cornill of KÖnigsberg has added the great weight of his name to that opinion (Einleitung in das Alte Testament. 1891). Unfortunately Professor Cornill’s treatment is brief, and not accompanied by a complete analysis of the book. He favors as a principle Reuss’s division of Canticles into separate idylls, and thinks most readers import into this collection of songs an imaginary system and significance. This is certainly true of the “allegorical” purport, aim, and religious ideas ascribed to the book, but Professor Cornill’s reference to Herder seems to leave the door open for further treatment of the Song of Songs from a purely literary standpoint. He praises Herder’s discernment in describing the book as a string of pearls, but passes without criticism or denial Herder’s further view that there are indications of editorial modifications of some of the lyrics. For what purpose? Herder also pointed out that various individualities and conditions are represented. This indeed appears undeniable: here are prince and shepherd, the tender mother, the cruel brothers, the rough watchman, the dancer, the bride and bridegroom. The dramatis personÆ are certainly present: but is there any drama?

Admitting that there was no ancient Hebrew theatre, the question remains whether among the later Hellenic Jews the old songs were not arranged, and new ones added, in some kind of Singspiele or vaudeville. There seems to be a chorus. It is hardly consistent with the general artistic quality of the compilation that the lady should say “I am swarthy but comely,” or “I am a lily of the valley” (a gorgeous flower). Surely the compliments are ejaculations of the chorus. And may we not ascribe to a chorus the questions, “Who is this that cometh up out of the wilderness?” etc. (iii. 6–10.) “What is thy beloved more than another beloved”? (v. 9.) “Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness leaning on her beloved”? (viii. 5).

As in the modern vaudeville songs are often introduced without any special relation to the play, so we find in Canticles some songs that might be transposed from one chapter to another without marring the work, but is this the case with all of them? The song in the first chapter, for instance, in which the damsel, brought by the King into his palace, tells the ladies of the home she left, and of maltreatment by her brothers, who took her from her own vineyard and made her work in theirs, where she was sunburnt,—this could not be placed effectively at the end of the book, nor the triumphant line, “My vineyard, which is mine own, is before me,” be set at the beginning. This is but one of several instances that might be quoted. Even pearls may be strung with definite purpose, as in a rosary, and how perfectly set is the great rose,—the hymn to Love in the final chapter! Or to remember Professor Cornill’s word Scenenwechsel, along with his affirmation that the love of human lovers is the burden of the “unrivalled” book, there are some sequences and contrasts which do convey an impression of dissolving views, and occasionally reveal a connexion between separate tableaux. For example the same words (which I conjecture to be those of a chorus) are used to introduce Solomon in pompous palanquin with grand escort, that are presently used to greet the united lovers.

These are five chapters apart, yet surely they may be supposed connected without Hineininterpretation. Any single contrast of this kind might be supposed a mere coincidence, but there are two others drawn between the swarthy maiden and the monarch. The tableau of Solomon in his splendor dissolves into another of his Queen Mother crowning him on the day of his espousal: that of Shulamith leaning on her beloved dissolves into another of her mother pledging her to her lover in espousals under an apple tree. And then we find (viii. 11, 12) Solomon’s distant vineyards tended by many hirelings contrasted with Shulamith’s own little vineyard tended by herself.

The theory that the book is a collection of bridal songs, and that the mention of Solomon is due to an eastern custom of designating the bridegroom and bride as Solomon and Queen Shulamith, during their honeymoon, does not seem consistent with the fact that in several allusions to Solomon his royal state is slighted, whereas only compliments would be paid to a bridegroom. Moreover the two—Shulamith and Solomon—are not as persons named together. It will, I think, appear as we proceed that the Shelomoh (Solomon) of Canticles represents a conventionalisation of the monarch, with some traits not found in any other book in the Bible. A verse near the close, presently considered, suggests that the bride and bridegroom are at that one point metaphorically pictured as a Solomon and Solomona, indicating one feature of the Wise Man’s conventionalization.

Renan assigned Canticles the date B. C. 992–952, mainly because in it Tirza is coupled with Jerusalem. Tirza was a capital only during those years, and at any later period was too insignificant a town to be spoken of as in the Song vi. 4:

But the late Russell Martineau, a thorough and unbiassed scholar, points out in the work phrases from Greek authors of the third century B. C., and assigns a date not earlier than 247–222.1 But may it not be that the Alexandrian of the third century built on some earlier foundation, as Shakespeare adapted the “Pound of Flesh” and the “Three Caskets” (Merchant of Venice) from tales traceable as far back as early Buddhist literature? or as Marlowe and Goethe used the mediÆval legend of Faustus?

The several songs can hardly be assigned to one and the same century. The coupling of Tirza and Jerusalem points to a remote past for that particular lyric, and is it credible that any Jew after Josiah’s time could have written the figleafless songs so minutely descriptive of Shulamith’s physical charms? Could any Jewish writer of the third century before our era have written iv. 1–7 or vii. 1–9, regarding no name or place as too sacred to be pressed into his hyperboles of rapture at every detail of the maiden’s form, and have done this in perfect innocency, without a blush? Or if such a poet could have existed in the later Jahvist times, would his songs have found their place in the Jewish canon? As it was the book was admitted only with a provision that no Jew under thirty years of age should read it. That it was included at all was due to the occult pious meanings read into it by rabbins, while it is tolerably certain that the realistic flesh-painting would have been expunged but for sanctions of antiquity similar to those which now protect so many old classics from expurgation by the Vice Societies. These songs, sensuous without sensuality, with their Oriental accent, seem ancient enough to have been brought by Solomon from Ophir.

On the other hand a critical reader can hardly ascribe the whole book to the Solomonic period. The exquisite exaltation of Love, as a human passion (viii. 6, 7), brings us into the refined atmosphere amid which Eros was developed, and it is immediately followed by a song that hardly rises above doggerel (viii. 8, 9). This is an interruption of the poem that looks as if suggested by the line that follows it (first line of verse 10) and meant to be comic. It impresses me as a very late interpolation, and by a hand inferior to the Alexandrian artist who in style has so well matched the more ancient pieces in his literary mosaic. Herder finds the collection as a whole Solomonic, and makes the striking suggestion that its author at a more mature age would take the tone of Ecclesiasticus.

Considered simply as a literary production, the composition makes on my own mind the impression of a romance conveyed in idylls, each presenting a picturesque situation or a scene, the general theme and motif being that of the great Solomonic Psalm.

This psalm (xlv.), quoted and discussed in chapter III., brings before us a beautiful maiden brought from a distant region to the court, but not quite happy: she is entreated to forget her people and enjoy the dignities and luxuries offered by her lord, the King. This psalm is remarkable in its intimations of a freedom of sentiment accorded to the ladies wooed by Solomon, and the same spirit pervades Canticles. Its chief refrain is that love must not be coerced or awakened until it please. This magnanimity might naturally connect the name of Solomon with old songs of love and courtship such as those utilised and multiplied in this book, whose composition might be naturally entitled “A Song (made) of Songs which are Solomon’s.”

The heroine, whose name is Shulamith,—(feminine of Shelomoh, Solomon)2—is an only daughter, cherished by her apparently widowed mother but maltreated by her brothers. Incensed against her, they compel Shulamith to keep their vineyards to the neglect of her own. She becomes sunburnt, “swarthy,” but is very “attractive,” and is brought by Solomon to his palace, where she delights the ladies by her beauty and dances. In what I suppose to be one of the ancient Solomonic Songs embodied in the work it is said:

Thus far the motif seems to be that of a Cinderella oppressed by brothers but exalted by the most magnificent of princes. But here the plot changes. The magnificence of Solomon cannot allure from her shepherd lover this “lily of the valley.” Her lover visits her in the palace, where her now relenting brothers (vi. 12) seem to appear (though this is doubtful) and witness her triumphs; and all are in raptures at her dancing and her amply displayed charms—all unless one (perhaps the lover) who, according to a doubtful interpretation, complains that they should gaze at her as at dancers in the camps (vi. 13).4

Although Russell Martineau maintained, against most other commentators, that Solomon is only a part of the scene, and not among the dramatis personÆ, the King certainly seems to be occasionally present, as in the following dialogue, where I give the probable, though of course conjectural, names. The dancer has approached the King while at table.

Solomon—

Shulamith, who, on leaving the King, meets her jealous lover—

Shepherd Lover—

Shulamith—

Chorus, or perhaps the Lover—

Shepherd Lover—

Shulamith—

Thus we find the damsel anointing the king with her spikenard, but for her the precious fragrance is her shepherd. Against the plaits of gold and studs of silver offered in the palace (i. 2) her lover can only point to his cottage of cedar and fir, and a couch of grass. She is content to be only a flower of the plain and valley, not for the seraglio. Nevertheless she remains to dance in the palace; a sufficient time there is needed by the poet to illustrate the impregnability of true love against all other splendors and attractions, even those of the Flower of Kings. He however puts no constraint on her, one song, thrice repeated, saying to the ladies of the harem—

This refrain is repeated the second time just before a picture of Solomon’s glory, shaded by a suggestion that all is not brightness even around this Prince of Peace. The ladies of the seraglio are summoned to look out and see the passing of the King in state, seated on his palanquin of purple and gold, but escorted by armed men “because of fear in the night.” In immediate contrast with that scene, we see Shulamith going off with her humble lover, now his bride, to his field and to her vineyard, and singing a beautiful song of love, strong as death, flame-tipped arrow of a god, unquenchable, unpurchaseable.

Though according to the revised version of vi. 12 her relatives are princely, and it may be they who invite her to return (vi. 13), she says, “I am my beloved’s.” With him she will go into the field and lodge in the village (vii. 10, 11). She finds her own little garden and does not envy Solomon.

There was, as we see in Koheleth, a prevailing tradition that Solomon felt the hollowness of his palatial life. “See life with a woman thou lovest.” The wife is the fountain:

This perhaps gave rise to a theory that the shepherd lover was Solomon himself in disguise, like the god Krishna among the cow-maidens. It does not appear probable that any thought of that kind was in the writer of this Song. Certainly there appears not to be any purpose of lowering Solomon personally in enthroning Love above him. There is no hint of any religious or moral objection to him, and indeed throughout the work Solomon appears in a favourable light personally,—he is beloved by the daughters of Jerusalem (v. 10)—though his royal estate is, as we have seen, shown in a light not altogether enviable. Threescore mighty men guard him: “every man hath his sword upon his thigh because of fear in the night,” and the day of his heart’s gladness was the day of his espousals (iii. 8, 11).

It is not improbable that there is an allusion to Solomon’s magic seal in the first lines of the hymn to Love (viii. 6). The legend of the Ring must have been long in growing to the form in which it is found in the Talmud, where it is said that Solomon’s “fear in the night” arose from his apprehension that the Devil might again get hold of his Ring, with which he (Aschmedai) once wrought much mischief. (Gittin. Vol. 68, col. 1, 2). The hymn strikes me as late Alexandrian:

Excluding the interrupting verses 8 and 9, the hymn is followed by a song about Solomon’s vineyard, preceded by two lines which appear to me to possess a significance overlooked by commentators. Shulamith (evidently) speaks:

The word “peace” is ShalÔm; it is immediately followed by Shelomoh (Solomon, “peaceful”); and Shulamith (also meaning “peaceful”), thus brings together the fortress of her lover’s peace, her own breast, and the fortifications built by the peaceful King (who never attacked but was always prepared for defence). Here surely, at the close of Canticles, is a sort of tableau: ShalÔm, Shulamith, Shelomoh: Peace, the prince of Peace, the queen of Peace. If this were the only lyric one would surely infer that these were the bride and bridegroom, under the benediction of Peace. It is not improbable that at this climax of the poem Shulamith means that in her lover she has found her Solomon, and he found in her his Solomona,—their reciprocal strongholds of ShalÔm or Peace.

Of course my interpretations of the Song of Songs are largely conjectural, as all other interpretations necessarily are. The songs are there to be somehow explained, and it is of importance that every unbiassed student of the book should state his conjectures, these being based on the contents of the book, and not on the dogmatic theories which have been projected into it. I have been compelled, under the necessary limitations of an essay like the present, to omit interesting details in the work, but have endeavoured to convey the impression left on my own mind by a totally unprejudiced study. The conviction has grown upon me with every step that, even at the lowest date ever assigned it, the work represents the earliest full expression of romantic love known in any language. It is so entirely free from fabulous, supernatural, or even pious incidents and accents, so human and realistic, that its having escaped the modern playwright can only be attributed to the superstitious encrustations by which its beauty has been concealed for many centuries.

This process of perversion was begun by Jewish Jahvists, but they have been far surpassed by our A. S. version, whose solemn nonsense at most of the chapter heads in the Bible here reached its climax. It is a remarkable illustration of the depths of fatuity to which clerical minds may be brought by prepossession, that the closing chapter of Canticles, with its beautiful exaltation of romantic love, could be headed: “The love of the Church to Christ. The vehemency of Love. The calling of the Gentiles. The Church Prayeth for Christ’s coming.” The “Higher Criticism” is now turning the headings into comedy, but they have done—nay, are continuing—their very serious work of misdirection.

It has already been noted that the Jewish doctors exalted Bathsheba, adulteress as she was, into a blessed woman, probably because of the allusion to her in the Song (iii. 2) as having crowned her royal Son, who had become mystical; and it can only be ascribed to Protestantism that, instead of the Queen-Mother Mary, the Church becomes Bathsheba’s successor in our version: “The Church glorieth in Christ.” And of course the shepherd lover’s feeding (his flock) among the lilies becomes “Christ’s care of the Church.”

But for such fantasies the beautiful Song of Songs might indeed never have been preserved at all, yet is it a scandal that Bibles containing chapter-headings known by all educated Christians to be falsifications, should be circulated in every part of the world, and chiefly among ignorant and easily misled minds. These simple people, reading the anathemas pronounced in their Bibles on those who add anything to the book given them as the “Word of God” (Deuteronomy iv. 2, xii. 32, Proverbs xxx. 6, Revelation xxii. 18), cannot imagine that these chapter-headings are not in the original books, but forged. And what can be more brazenly fraudulent than the chapter-heading to one of these very passages (Revelation xxii. 18, 19), where nothing is said of the “Word of God,” but over which is printed: “18. Nothing may be added to the word of God, nor taken therefrom.” But even the learned cannot quite escape the effect of these perversions. How far they reach is illustrated in the fate of Mary Magdalen, a perfectly innocent woman according to the New Testament, yet by a single chapter-heading in Luke branded for all time as the “sinner” who anointed Jesus,—“Magdalen” being now in our dictionaries as a repentant prostitute. Yet there are hundreds of additions to the Bible more harmful than this,—additions which, whether honestly made or not originally, are now notoriously fraudulent. It is especially necessary in the interest of the Solomonic and secular literature in the Bible that Truth shall be liberated from the malarious well—Jahvist and ecclesiastical—in which she has long been sunk by mistranslation, interpolation, and chapter-headings. The Christian churches are to be credited with having produced critics brave enough to expose most of these impositions, and it is now the manifest duty of all public teachers and literary leaders to uphold those scholars, to protest against the continuance of the propaganda of pious frauds, and to insist upon the supremacy of truth.