William Robertson Smith and Henry Wheeler Robinson

“ The vivid reminiscence of ii. 8-17 takes the form of a dialogue within the main dialogue of the poem, a picture within a picture—the picture of her beloved as he stood at her window in the early spring time, and of her own merry heart as she laughingly answered him in the song with which watchers of the vineyards frighten away the foxes. It is, of course, a fault of perspective that this reminiscence is as sharp in outline and as strong in colour as the main action. ”

“ But now the day of Yahweh is near upon all nations, Esau and all the heathen shall drink full retribution for their banquet of carnage and plunder on Yahweh’s holy mountain. A rescued Israel shall dwell in Mount Zion in restored holiness; the house of Jacob shall regain their old possessions; Edom shall be burned up before them as chaff before the flame; they shall spread over all Canaan, over the mountain of Esau and the south of Judah, as well as over Gilead and the Philistine and Phoenician coast. ”

“ The anarchy that followed on the murder of Zachariah appears to the prophet as the natural decadence of a realm not founded on divine ordinance. The nation had rejected Yahweh, the only helper. And now the avenging Assyrian [9] is at hand. Samaria’s king shall pass away as foam on the water. Fortress and city shall fall before the ruthless invader, who spares neither age nor sex, and thistles shall cover the desolate altars of Ephraim. ”

“ The root of this corruption lay in total ignorance of Yahweh, whose precepts were no longer taught by the priests, while in the national calf-worship, and in the local high places, this worship was confounded with the service of the Canaanite Baalim. Thus the whole religious constitution of Israel was undermined. And the political state of the realm was in Hosea’s eyes not more hopeful. The dynasty of Jehu, still great and powerful when the prophet’s labours began, is itself an incorporation of national sin. ”

“ Now, at viii. 5, a female figure advances leaning upon her beloved, with whom she claims inseparable union,—“for love is strong as death, its passion inflexible as the grave, its fire a divine flame which no waters can quench or floods drown. ”

“ The point of the allegory in i. 2 is plainly infidelity after marriage as a parallel to Israel’s departure from the covenant God, and a profligate wife (אשת זנונים‎) is not the same thing with an open prostitute (זונה‎) . The marriage was marred by Gomer’s infidelity; and the struggle of Hosea’s affection for his wife with this great unhappiness—a struggle inconceivable unless his first love had been pure and full of trust in the purity of its object—furnished him with a new insight into Yahweh’s dealings with Israel. ”

“ The chief interest of the book of Obadiah lies in its references to the historical relations between Israel and Edom. From the point of view of religion, we may notice the emphasis on the doctrine of strict retribution (vers. 10 f., 15 b) which remains applicable to other peoples, even when its inadequacy as a complete theory of providence has been slowly and painfully discovered in the case of Israel itself. ”

“ It seems, however, fair to infer that it would hardly have found acceptance but for a Solomonic theory of authorship and a “religious” theory of meaning. The problem raised by its present place in the canon occurs in relation to mistaken Jewish theories about other books also; it suggests, at least, that divine inspiration may belong to the life of a people rather than to the letter of their literature. Of that life Canticles portrays a central element—the passion of love—in striking imagery and graceful language, however far its oriental standard of taste differs from that of the modern West. ”

“ The unity is one of feeling only, and the sob of anguish in which many of his appeals to a heedless people seem to end turns once and again with sudden revulsion into the clear accents of evangelical promise, which in the closing chapter swell forth in pure and strong cadence out of a heart that has found its rest with God from all the troubles of a stormy life. ”

“ No part of the Bible has called forth a greater diversity of opinions than the Song of Solomon, and this for two reasons. In the first place, the book holds so unique a position in the Old Testament, that the general analogy of Hebrew literature is a very inadequate key to the verbal difficulties, the artistic structure, and the general conception and purpose of the poem. In point of language the departures from ordinary Hebrew are almost always in the direction of Aramaic. Many forms unique in Biblical Hebrew are at once explained by the Aramaic dialects, but not a few are still obscure. ”

“ Of the life of Hosea [1] we know nothing beyond what can be gathered from his prophecies. That he was a citizen of the northern kingdom appears from the whole tenor of the book, but most expressly from i. 2, where “the land,” the prophet’s land, is the realm of Israel, and vii. 5, where “our king” is the king of Samaria. The date at which Hosea flourished is given in the title, i. 1, by the reigning kings of Judah and Israel. He prophesied (i) in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah; (2) in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel. ”

“ The more elaborate dramatic theories can find no parallel in Semitic literature to the “drama” of Canticles, the book of Job being no exception to this statement; whilst even the simpler theories ask us to believe that the essential parts of the story—the rape of the Shulamite, the change in Solomon’s disposition, her release from the harem—are to be supplied by the reader from obscure and disputable references. More serious still is the fact that any progress of action from first to last is so difficult to prove. ”

“ It is the same with the little collection of charming wedding-songs and fragments of them which has been received into the canon of the Old Testament under the name of Canticles; the wasf (iv.—vii.) is considerably below the rest in poetical value. With this dance begin the sports, lasting seven days, begun in the morning on the first, shortly before midday on the other days, and continuing far into the night by the light of the fires that are kindled; on the last day alone all is over by sunset. During the whole week both royalties are in marriage attire, must do no work and have no cares ”

“ In ch. ii. the faithlessness of Israel to Jehovah (Yahweh) , the long-suffering of God, the moral discipline of sorrow and tribulation by which He will yet bring back His erring people and betroth it to Himself for ever in righteousness, love and truth, are depicted under the figure of the relation of a husband to an erring spouse. The suggestion of this allegory lies in the prophet’s marriage with Gomer, but the details are worked out quite independently, and under a rich multiplicity of figures derived from other sources. ”

“ In Jeremiah the picture is vague, and Edom’s unwisdom (ver. 7) stands without proof. In Obadiah the conception is quite definite. Edom is attacked by his own allies, and his folly appears in that he exposes himself to such treachery. Again, the probability that the passage in Jeremiah incorporates disjointed fragments of an older oracle is greatly increased by the fact that the prophecy against Moab in the preceding chapter uses, in the same way, Isa. ”

“ On the view accepted above, Canticles describes in a number of separate poems the central passion of human life, and is wholly without didactic tendencies. Of its earliest history as a book we have no information. It is already included in the Hebrew canon (though its right to be there is disputed) when the first explicit mention of the book occurs. We have no evidence, therefore, of the theory of interpretation prevalent at the time of its incorporation with the other books of the canon. ”

“ The cause of this judgment is his cruelty to his brother Jacob. In the day of Jerusalem’s overthrow the Edomites rejoiced over the calamity, grasped at a share of the spoil, lay in wait to cut off the fugitives (vers. 10-14) . ”

“ It has the great advantage of supplying a psychological key to the conception of Israel or the land of Israel (i. 2) as the spouse of Yahweh, which dominates these chapters, but in the later part of the book gives way to the personification of the nation as God’s son. This conception has, indeed, formal points of contact with notions previously current, and even with the ideas of Semitic heathenism. On the one hand, it is a standing Hebrew usage to represent the land as mother of its people, while the representation of worshippers as children of their god is found in Num. ”

“ And the name of Gomer bath Diblaim is certainly that of an actual person, upon which all the allegorists, from the Targum, Jerome and Ephraem Syrus downwards, have spent their arts in vain, whereas the true symbolical names in the book are perfectly easy of interpretation. [4] That the ancient interpreters take the whole narrative as a mere parable is no more than an application of their standing rule that everything in the Biblical history is allegorical which in its literal sense appears offensive to propriety (comp. Jerome’s proem to the book) . ”

“ The spouse is Israel, her royal lover the divine king, and the poem is explained as tracing the great events of the people’s history from the Exodus to the Messianic glory and final restoration. [4]
The authority of Origen, who, according to Jerome, surpassed himself in his commentary of ten volumes on this book, established the allegorical theory in the Christian church in the two main forms in which it has since prevailed. The bridegroom is Christ, the bride either the church or the believing soul. ”

“ The constant direction of the maiden’s mind to her true love is partly expressed in dialogue with the ladies of the court (the daughters of Jerusalem) , who have no dramatic individuality, and whose only function in the economy of the piece is to give the heroine opportunity for a more varied expression of her feelings. ”

“ She is not only beautiful but terrible, her eyes trouble him, and he cannot endure their gaze. She is unique among women, the choice and only one of her mother. The unity of action can only be maintained by ignoring vii. 1-9, and taking the words of Solomon in chapter vi. in their obvious sense as implying that the king at length recognizes in the maiden qualities of soul unknown in the harem, a character which compels respect, as well as a beauty that inflames desire. ”

“ Smend, p. 209: “Hosea rejects the kingship in itself”; Wellhausen, p. 125: “The making of kings in Israel is for him, together with the heathen cultus, the fundamental evil”) . This view depends on a disputed interpretation of the reference to Gibeah (x. 9; cf. ix. 9) ; and on the words: “I give thee kings in mine anger, and I take them away in my wrath” (xiii. 11) , which may refer to the rise and fall of contemporary kings (cf. Marti, ad loc.) . In any case, as Wellhausen himself says (p. 132) : “He does not start from a dogmatic theory, but simply from historical experience.” ”

“ The terms “Solomon” and “the Shulamite” are explained as figurative references to the famous king, and to Abishag the Shulamite, “fairest among women,” on the lines of the use of “king” and “queen” noted above. Other songs of Canticles are referred by Budde to the seven days of festivities. It need hardly be said that difficulties still remain in the analysis of this book of wedding-songs; whilst Budde detects 23 songs, besides fragments, Siegfried divides the book into 10. ”

“ The following presentation of the theory, on the general lines of Ewald, gives that form of it which Robertson Smith was able to accept in 1876.
The centre of attraction is throughout a female figure, and the unity of this figure is the chief test of the unity of the book. In the long canto, i. 1-ii .7, the heroine appears in a royal palace (i. 4) among the daughters of Jerusalem, who are thus presumably ladies of the court of Zion. At i. 9, an additional interlocutor is introduced, who is plainly a king, and apparently Solomon (i. 9, 12) . ”

“ Such differences are to be expected in the case of a collection of songs, some admittedly in dialogue form, all concerned with the common theme of the love of man and woman, and without any external indication of the transition from one song to the next. ”

“ Yea, if a man would give all his wealth for love he would only be contemned.” This is obviously the sentiment of ii. 7, and the suitor, whose wealth is despised, must almost of necessity be identified with the king of chapter i., if, as seems reasonable, we place viii. ii, 12 in the mouth of the same speaker—“King Solomon has vineyards which bring him a princely revenue, and enrich even the farmers. Let him and them keep their wealth ”

“ To suppose that all the male love-making, by hypothesis unsuccessful, belongs to Solomon, whilst the heroine addresses her passionate words to the continuously absent shepherd, is obviously unconvincing ”