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riage, the composer of which represented the groom as Solomon and the bride as the Shulamite. The union of these two were, according to our hypothesis, set forth, as Delitzsch and ZSckler rightly perceived. So she loves in him not the king, nor does she require sensual pleasure nor riches; she seeks only to find in him real companionship as though he were her brother and friend and of the rank of shepherd as she is herself. Such love is strong as death and unpurchasable. If the rural environment is looked on rather as poetic adornment than as trustworthy narrative, let iv. 8 have its weight and one need not have recourse to Buckle's theory of a gloss.

How the Song is to be understood the last act teaches. It is the love of a bride with its longings and hopes, its search and discovery; its disillusioning and surprises, the pure love which as a .divine spark suffers nothing impure and through its might overcomes all earthly obstacles, set forth here in rare completeness in the two noblest exemplars the author could find. This object is in itself not unworthy of the-Bible, all the more that the-opposition to a ,simply sensual or share affection works out in the poem. Were there not something lofty and mysterious in the love of a bride for her husband, it could not elsewhere be used as the picture of the holiest relations. The value of the canonical Song of Songs becomes noticeable first when one remarks the singular worth of the kin_; whom it mentions. Solomon was to the consciousness of his times like David the.anointed of the Lord, the Messiah, who stood to the people for the invisible King of kings. If now such a king, in the way the poet describes as he follows some tradition, seeking a purer and holier love than he found in the capital, determined to elevate a simple daughter of the people to the highest honor, the while she offered him wifely love in complete purity, such a marriage would be like that of the Messiah sung in 7?s. xlv., an achievement in the visible kingdom of God, which would find itself repeated the oftener among posterity the more they learned from the prophets.

Without difficulty the notion might spring up that Solomon was himself the author of this poem which deals with himself. Anew in favor of this has been adduced the imagery of the

lxxii., attributed to Solomon, tile poet of 1,005 songs (I Kings v. 12). But the person pictured in the poem with the brilliancy of Solomon is evidently a matter of poetic interest in one who is removed from the poet in time. The vocabulary of the poem is individual, the little piece having between fifty and sixty haptuxlegomena; if it is pre-exilic, it must belong to the north. Gratz has found little sympathy with his idea that the poem displays a knowledge of Greek custom and is dependent upon the Idyls of Theocritus. Oettli argues for a pre-exilic date, Konig and Strack place it about 500 B.C. Under the shepherd hypothesis the piece would have been lost; into the Judaic canon this anti-Solomonic tendencywriting could not have come nor Solomonic authorship been attributed to it. Also on the threshing-

implement, consisting of two plain planks bent outward, is used in the marriage week to make the throne upon which bride and groom take their seat of honor, as they play for the week the part of king and queen, watching the games produced in their honor and listening to the songs sung in competition. Among these songs is always one which commends the beauty of bride and groom, for the composition of which they summon the best poet obtainable. An especial part is the sword-dance song which the bride sings on the evening before the wedding (while with a sword she keeps at a distance the groom), the singing of which gives the company an occasion to extol her charms; on the second day the praise of the wedded queen is sung with more of reserve. On this interpretation it follows that the poem has to do with a marriage among peasants in town or country in which the bridegroom plays the part of king. Just so the Shulamite appears only once, is so called with reference to Abigail of Shunem, the most beautiful woman in Israel, and is herself the most beautiful of women. The sword dance of the bride, and particularly the song in praise of the betrothed, is discerned in vii. 2 sqq., though it should stand at the beginning of the poem; the more moderate song to the wedded bride is seen in iv. 1-6, that to the spouse in chap. v. The entire poem is a collection of songs which have no other bond than that they sing of wedded love; moreover, they are not arranged in the order in which they are employed. Budde discovers not less than twenty-three such songs or fragments, while Siegfried discovers only ten.

But not even with this explanation has the last word been spoken. That the unity of the whole is strongly evident was remarked at the first. The form is throughout delicate and refined