or SONG OF SOLOMON, one of the books of the Old Testament, is placed in our modern collection immediately before the prophetical books, but generally stands fourth in the Hagiography of the Jews. There is no other inspired book concerning which (at least in modern times) so great diversity of opinion has existed; and the points of attack have been severally its canonicity, its authorship, its structure, and its interpretation. In regard to the first of these, the denial of its canonicity, this has been based more on aesthetic than on historic-critical considerations, although some writers (such as Whiston, and Dr Pye Smith) have attempted to show that, because it cannot hold a place Canticles in any of the groups into which the catalogue of Josephus is divided, it is therefore to be regarded with great suspicion. This is an opinion which has been generally abandoned by modern critics. It is utterly untenable when weighed against the fact of its existence in all the MSS., in all the detailed catalogues which have come down to us, in the Septuagint, and the versions of Symmachus and Aquila. The denial of its authorship by Solomon is a fundamental principle of that school of criticism which denies the unity, and consequently the single authorship, of all the great poems of antiquity. In this respect it has only shared the fate of the Iliad and Odyssey. With endless variety in the details, the critics of this class all agree in regarding it as a collection of songs by different authors, compiled and edited by a later hand. To what an extent this disintegrating criticism has been carried, may be seen from the scheme of Magnus (Kritische Bearbeitung und Erklärung des Hohen Liedes, 1842), who detects in Canticles no fewer than forty-four different parts, complete and fragmentary, early and late, glossarial and spurious. This is justly regarded by most later critics as inconsistent with the sameness that prevails throughout the whole collection. The sameness of the subject, of the recurring formulae, of the Aramaic colouring and idiom, and of the personages introduced, all combine to mark the Song of Songs, like the holy of holies, as an individual unity. In regard to its author, the unvarying testimony of tradition is decisive in favour of Solomon, and there are many things in the style of the book to sanction this view. The wide circle of its imagery, drawn from the most remote localities, if not also the freshness and vigour of its style, point to an age anterior to the dismemberment of the kingdom; at the same time that the allusions to foreign equipages (i. 9), and the introduction of foreign words (iv. 13, iii. 9), strikingly coincide with Solomon's penchant for exotic grandeur. In regard to the structure of the book, critics have more widely differed. Bossuet regards it as a pastoral eclogue, divided into plots of seven days, commensurate with the celebration of a marriage-feast; Eichhorn divides it into a number of detached but systematized idyls; Ewald into a drama of four, Delitzsch of six, acts; while others split it into sections and subsections, on an endless variety of principles. The difficulty attaching to all the schemes is that they are too artificial. Any of them may, none of them must, be true; but the dramatic and semi-dramatic theories are inconsistent with the entire absence of any progress in the plot. With all the change of scenery there is no change of the relations subsisting between the parties who are introduced in each successive scene. The more probable solution appears to be, that it is entirely destitute of any plan, and that, as it aims simply at placing the love of the king and his bride in a variety of aspects, it is consistent with such abrupt transitions as may easily be mistaken for the commencement of separate acts.

The interpretation of the Canticles is the point at once the most important, and, within certain limits, the most keenly contested. Disregarding the questions that have been raised in regard to the origin of the poem, we may divide the various methods of interpretation into the three great classes of literal, typical, and allegorical. Those who interpret it literally, still regarding it as Solomon's, hold it to be an erotic poem, the heroine of which is either Pharaoh's daughter or a simple country maiden introduced into his court. Others, who regard it as a collection of detached songs or idyls, find in them the loving converse of a chaste pair, either before or after marriage. Of this class, some hold it to be utterly destitute of a moral at all; others recognise in it an ethical value, as commending monogamy, or as setting forth the beauty of conjugal fidelity in the faithfulness of Shulamith. On any of these hypotheses it seems impossible to account for or vindicate the placing of Canticles in the canon of Cantilever Scripture. Its language—which is, however, far more delicate in the Hebrew than in any European dress—might be used in the harem as well as at the hearth, and it is as void of any reference to the religious import and religious duties of marriage or monogamy as are the odes of Háiz or Anacreon. The typical interpretation stands half-way between the literal and allegorical. It regards the primary aim of the Canticles as being a celebration of Solomon's marriage with his one favourite wife, at the same time that the parties described are raised to the rank of ideals or types of the marriage union, which has its antitype in the union of Christ and the church. This mode of interpretation, although—by investing the composition with a higher ethical meaning—it rises from the degradation of the literal, and approaches indefinitely near the higher spiritual signification, yet is unfortunate in having to bear the burdens of both without the advantages of either scheme. By those who have held the allegorical view various solutions have been given, most of them more remarkable for their ingenuity than their verisimilitude. One theory regards it as a delineation of the fortunes of Israel at various epochs of their history; another as marking the relation of the Jewish church to Christ, before and after his advent; and a third as illustrating the betrothal of Japhetic and Hametic heathendom to the Saviour.

But the interpretation which has been sanctioned by the concurrent testimony of Jewish and Christian antiquity is that which regards it as an allegory descriptive of the love of Jehovah to Israel, of Christ to his church. The arguments in favour of this view are derived from the inconsistencies that defy any literal interpretation; the intimations of collective plurality in that of which the bride is the representation (i. 4, i. 9, iii. 6, &c.); and the prominence given to the fundamental figure of the conjugal relation of Jehovah to the church in the Old, and in some passages of the New Testament. It remarkably corroborates this view, that the same idea is seen to colour the denunciations of all the posterior prophets, who freely borrow the language applicable to a violation of the seventh in order to designate a breach of the second commandment. This is the view which has prevailed almost universally in the synagogue and in the church till within a very recent period. It does not seem to have been challenged till the sixth century, when the literal interpretation formed a count in the condemnation of Theodore of Mopsuestia; and though Jerome approves of what seems to have been the Jewish rule in his day, which forbade all below thirty years of age to read it, this scrupulous jealousy was accompanied by no suspicions of the truth of its spiritual meaning. From Theodore in the sixth to Castellio in the sixteenth century, the literal interpretation had no advocate; and when first brought forward it was everywhere rejected as sacrilegious. From the period of the Reformation it again lay quiescent till revived in Germany by the Rationalists of last century, among whom it has since held undisputed sway. The most recent interpreters, however, in that country—Delitzsch, Hahn, and Hengstenberg—seem to be retracing their steps, through the typical and semi-allegorical, back to the ancient allegorical interpretation.

(n. w.—x.)