Page:The Song of Songs (1857).djvu/17

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INTRODUCTION.

SECTION I.—TITLE OF THE BOOK AND ITS SIGNIFICATION.

This book, which, in the present editions of the Hebrew Bible, forms the first of the ((Symbol missingHebrew characters)) five Megiloth, or books (viz. Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther), and which, with some slight variations in the order of the Masorah, follows immediately after Job, is called (Symbol missingHebrew characters). This name, literally translated by the Septuagint, (Symbol missingGreek characters), Vulgate, Canticum Canticorum, and by the English version, Song of Songs, according to a Hebrew mode for expressing the superlative degree by repeating the same noun in the genitive, denotes the finest, the most beautiful, or the most excellent Song. Compare (Symbol missingHebrew characters), servant of servants, i.e., most abject servant (Gen. ix. 25); (Symbol missingHebrew characters), holy of holies, i.e., most holy (Exod. xxix. 37; Numb. iii. 32; Deut. x. 14; Eccl. i. 2; Hos. x. 15; Jer. vi. 28; Gesenius' Grammar, § 119, 2; Ewald, Lehrbuch, § 318, c). Medrash Yalkut renders it (Symbol missingHebrew characters), a song more celebrated and sublime than all songs; and also Rashi, Eben Ezra, Rabi Samuel, Luther, and many others. The opinion of Kleuker that this interpretation of the Rabbins is more owing to their preconceived notion of the sublime contents of the book than to the real meaning of these words is refuted by Rabi Samuel himself, who, having explained this phrase by most excellent song, does not refer to the contents of the book for corroboration, but adduces similar constructions of the superlative from other passages of the Bible, viz., (Symbol missingHebrew characters)

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