The next three chapters are the Shepherd saying nice things to the Bride:
Chapter 1, verse nine: I have compared thee, O my love, to a company of horses in Pharaoh's chariots.
The Hebrew is horses-female, although it isn’t likely the Pharaoh would use mares or fillies to pull his chariots. The Pharaoh thing is strange to me, by the way—yes, of course the Pharaoh’s horses are proverbial, and if one wanted to compare one’s girlfriend to horseflesh, the stables of Pharaoh would be what would come to mind. On the other hand, you can’t say ‘Pharaoh’ without thinking about either the Pharaoh of the Joseph story or the Pharaoh of the Moses story. Or at least I can’t. Is this somehow deliberate? If so, I can’t make heads or tails of it. If not, isn’t it a bit sloppy and distracting? Further, when talk about Egyptian horses comes into the picture, I at least am reminded of Deuteronomy 17:16, where we are told that kings of Israel should not send to Egypt for horses, and then to 1 Kings 10:28 where King Solomon squanders the treasury on ... yes ... wait for it ... horses from Egypt. Two verses later, by the way, in 1 Kings 11:1, “King Solomon loved many strange women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, [and] Hittites”. So in this Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s, when he compares his love to the Pharaoh’s horses, are we supposed to be reminded that he is, for all his fair talk, a bad guy, profligate and promiscuous?
Chapter 1, verse ten: Thy cheeks are comely with rows [of jewels], thy neck with chains [of gold].
The cheeks which are comely are the same root l’khee as the jawbone Samson uses as a weapon; there’s a lot of smiting on cheekbones in later stories. I’m not sure what is going on with the rows, which could be circuits or circles, but then there’s a lot of obscure language in this thing. The chains are even more obscure. I think there’s intended to be imagery of circling, here, but I’m not sure. And is he saying that her jewelry is lovely, that her face looks beautiful with the jewelry, or that he will give her jewelry?
Chapter 1, verse eleven: We will make thee borders of gold with studs of silver.
Who are we? The Shepherd and his associates? The Daughters of Jerusalem? The person being addressed is clearly the Bride (feminine singular second person), but it’s a group who will do the making. The borders here, by the way, are the rows above, so we are probably talking about a head-dress with dangly bits framing the face, or something similar. At any rate, if that’s an offer from the Shepherd, then it’s not a very plausible one; if it’s an offer from the Daughters of Jerusalem, it’s still pretty odd. On the other hand, if this is Solomon, or at any rate the King figure, it’s more plausible, and conceivable that he speaks with a kingly we, although I don’t actually know if that’s done in Hebrew.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.