Глава 5

1. The beloved's feast. 2–7. Night impressions of the bride in search of her friend. 8–16. In a conversation with the maidens of Jerusalem, she praises her friend. Song 5:1. I came to my garden, my sister, my bride; I gathered my myrrh with my spices, I ate my honeycomb with my honey, I drank my wine with my milk. Eat, friends, drink and be satisfied, beloved! In response to the invitation or wish of the bride (Song 4.16), the beloved comes to his garden, and from all its fruits and spices he arranges a feast for guests and friends. In the texts of LXX, glory. Vulg.: second half of Art. 16th ch. IV is classified as 1st Art. V-th and that imparts greater integrity to adjacent and related thoughts - ending one chapter and beginning another. Song 5:2. I sleep, but my heart is awake; Behold, the voice of my beloved, which knocks: “Open to me, my sister, my beloved, my dove, my pure! because my head is all covered with dew, my curls with night moisture.” Song 5:3. I took off my tunic; How can I put it on again? I washed my feet; How can I get them dirty? Song 5:4. My beloved stretched out his hand through the hole, and my insides were stirred by him. Song 5:5. I stood up to unlock my beloved, and myrrh was dripping from my hands, and myrrh was dripping from my fingers onto the handles of the lock. Song 5:6. I opened the door for my beloved, and my beloved turned and left. There was no soul in me when he spoke; I looked for him and did not find him; I called him, and he did not answer me. Song 5:7. The guards going around the city met me, beat me, wounded me; The guarding walls removed the veil from me. The words: “I sleep, but my heart is awake” provide a true and accurate description of the fiery love that fills the entire being of a loving being even during sleep: one word from the beloved is enough for the one who loves him to awaken from sleep. Midrash (s. 134) paraphrases the words of Art. 2nd: “The congregation of Israel says before God: Lord of peace! I sleep and do not fulfill the commandments, but my heart is awake, it is excited by love for people; I sleep, I don’t talk about charity, but my heart is awake to do it, I sleep - I omit sacrifices, but my heart is vigilant, reverently disposed to reading the “shema” and prayer; I sleep - I don’t go to church, but my heart is vigilant - it strives to go to synagogues and schools; I am sleeping - I do not count on (the end of suffering), but my heart is vigilant - ardently desires deliverance, and the heart of God is vigilant - to deliver me.” What is further said: 1) about the slowness and, as it were, reluctance of the bride to open the doors to her groom knocking on the door from the cold of the night (v. 3) and 2) about his sudden disappearance after she unlocked the doors (v. 6, fn. 5), is not entirely understandable in the field of human relationships of mutual love. Therefore, the explanation of this passage by Prof. is not without interest and significance. Olesnitsky in the spirit of his theory, already known to us. “Early in the morning, when Palestine is still sleeping, the rising sun is already knocking on its door with its rays, still wet from the freshness of the night and the abundant summer dew. But now it no longer encounters the light and active life of spring, but a life already seduced by prolonged jubilation and lazily responding to the call of the daylight. The sun was offended and, when the earth finally woke up, hid in the gray sandy darkness, the phenomenon of samum, which is frequent in Palestine at this time of year, occurred, poetically depicted in verse 7. The earth is met by certain guards who beat it and forcibly tear off from it the beautiful veil of its vegetation: these are those constellations that, according to ancient cosmogony, cause storms and disturbances on the surface of the earth... Although above, in the spring song (Song 3.3), Palestine met with similar guards, but then they did not cause her such harm as now, in the middle of summer, and passed by in silence (in early spring, the appearance of the simoom is weak)... In the midst of an unexpected storm that changed and exposed the face of the entire country, the bride with regret dreams of the hidden peaceful and beautiful sun and depicts it in the poetic image of Songs 5.10–16, the features and colors of which clearly indicate the brilliance of the sun and the purity of its rays... Where is now your groom - the sun? they ask Palestine. He has descended into his ethereal gardens, but he is still mine, and I belong to him primarily” (pp. 375–376). Song 5:10. My beloved is white and ruddy, better than ten thousand others: Song 5:11. his head is pure gold; his curls are wavy, black as a raven; Song 5:12. his eyes are like doves by streams of water, bathed in milk, sitting in contentment; Song 5:13. his cheeks are a fragrant flower garden, ridges of fragrant plants; his lips are lilies, exuding flowing myrrh; Song 5:14. his hands are golden round pieces set with topaz; his belly is like an ivory statue, overlaid with sapphires; Song 5:15. his legs are marble pillars set on golden sockets; its appearance is like Lebanon, majestic as cedars; Song 5:16. His lips are sweetness, and he is all kindness. This is who is my beloved, and this is who is my friend, daughters of Jerusalem! After the Bride met with the daughters of Jerusalem and repeated (v. 3) the already known spell (cf. Song 2.7, 3.5) and their response (v. 9), She gives a description with great enthusiasm, v. 10–16, of the incomparable beauty of her friend, and “this description, like the description of the bride, represents a deliberate selection of strokes and pictures of nature, obscuring the features of the human image, which, however, was needed here in order to convey the unity of the impression to the individual strokes and to form a correspondence to another human image. And here human traits stand so close to the strokes of nature that even a particle of comparison between them is considered unnecessary” (Prof. Olesnitsky, pp. 357–358). In general, the image of the Groom is depicted here with especially bold comparisons in a purely oriental spirit (his head is pure gold; his curls are grape branches; his eyes are doves... his cheeks are a fragrant flower garden, his lips are lilies, his legs are marble pillars)... But it is precisely this hyperbolic nature of the image of the Beloved that provides the basis for a perspective explanation of this image. “As we peer into these pictures flooded with light, the human image of the groom becomes more and more dim and finally turns into the holy image of the sun” (Prof. Olesnitsky, p. 358). “But this beneficent power is not only the elemental power or the visible sun, but also the political power, which the biblical writers personified in the form of the sun (Jer. 15.9) and whose representative at the time of writing the Song of Songs was King Solomon, named six times in our sacred play” (p. 360). “The indicated combination of the king and the sun had already formed in the poet’s thoughts such a lofty ideal image that it was very convenient to add to it, without any violation of the unity of the picture, the strokes that define the divine power benefiting the country. In the sun and azure, King Solomon, towering above the earth, as the beneficent genius of the country, himself evoked in the poet’s thoughts the image of the glorified Messiah, who would appear in the clouds of glory and complete all the highest, worldly benefits to the people” (p. 362). You might be interested in: