all combined in the living beauty of his person.[1]
She first praises the mingling of colours in the countenance of her beloved. 10 My beloved is dazzling white and ruddy, Distinguised above ten thousand.
The verbal root צח has the primary idea of purity, i.e., freedom from disturbance and muddiness, which, in the stems springing from it, and in their manifold uses, is transferred to undisturbed health (Arab. ṣaḥḥ, cf. baria, of smoothness of the skin), a temperate stomach and clear head, but particularly to the clearness and sunny brightness of the heavens, to dazzling whiteness (צחח, Lam 4:7; cf. צחר), and then to parched dryness, resulting from the intense and continued rays of the sun; צח is here adj. from צחח, Lam 4:7, bearing almost the same relation to לבן as λαμπρός to λευκός, cogn. with lucere. אדום, R. דם, to condense, is properly dark-red, called by the Turks kuju kirmesi (from kuju, thick, close, dark), by the French rouge foncé, of the same root as דּם, the name for blood, or a thick and dark fluid. White, and indeed a dazzling white, is the colour of his flesh, and redness, deep redness, the colour of his blood tinging his flesh. Whiteness among all the race-colours is the one which best accords with the dignity of man; pure delicate whiteness is among the Caucasian races a mark of high rank, of superior training, of hereditary nobility; wherefore, Lam 4:7, the appearance of the nobles of Jerusalem is likened in whiteness to snow and milk, in redness to corals; and Homer, Il. iv. 141, says of Menelaus that he appeared stained with gore, “as when some woman tinges ivory with purple colour.” In this mingling of white and red, this fulness of life and beauty, he is דּגוּל, distinguished above myriads. The old translators render dagul by “chosen” (Aquila, Symm., Syr., Jerome, Luther), the lxx by ἐκλελοχισμένος, e cohorte selectus; but it means “bannered” (degel, Sol 2:4), as the Venet.: σεσημαιωμένος, i.e., thus distinguished, as that which is furnished with a degel, a banner, a pennon. Grätz takes dagul as the Greek σημειωτός (noted). With רבבן, as a designation of an inconceivable number, Rashi rightly compares Eze 16:7. Since the “ten thousand” are here though of, not in the same manner as דגולים, the particle min is not the compar. magis quam, but, as at Gen 3:14; Jdg 5:24; Isa 52:14, prae, making conspicuous (cf. Virgil, Aen. v. 435, prae omnibus unum).
- ↑ Hengstenberg finds in this eulogium, on the supposition that Solomon is the author, and is the person who is here described, incomprehensible self-praise. But he does not certainly say all this immediately of himself, but puts it into the mouth of Shulamith, whose love he gained. But love idealizes; she sees him whom she loves, not as others see him, - she sees him in her own transforming light.
