Sol 5:2 2 I sleep, but my heart keeps waking- Hearken! my beloved is knocking: Open to me, my sister, my love, My dove, my perfect one; For my head is filled with dew, My locks (are) full of the drops of the night.
The partic. subst. clauses, Sol 5:2, indicate the circumstances under which that which is related in Sol 5:2 occurred. In the principal sentence in hist. prose ויּדפּק would be used; here, in the dramatic vivacity of the description, is found in its stead the interject.vocem = ausculta with the gen. foll., and a word designating state or condition added, thought of as accus. according to the Semitic syntax (like Gen 4:10; Jer 10:22; cf. 1Ki 14:6). To sleep while the heart wakes signifies to dream, for sleep and distinct consciousness cannot be coexistent; the movements of thought either remain in obscurity or are projected as dreams. ער = ‛awir is formed from עוּר, to be awake (in its root cogn. to the Aryan gar, of like import in γρηγορεῖν, ἐγείρειν), in the same way as מת = mawith from מוּת. The שׁ has here the conj. sense of “dieweil” (because), like asher in Ecc 6:12; Ecc 8:15. The ר dag., which occurs several times elsewhere (vid., under Pro 3:8; Pro 14:10), is one of the inconsistencies of the system of punctuation, which in other instances does not double the ר; perhaps a relic of the Babylonian idiom, which was herein more accordant with the lingual nature of the r than the Tiberian, which treated it as a semi-guttural. קוצּה, a lock of hair, from קץ = קיץ, abscîdit, follows in the formation of the idea, the analogy of קציר, in the sense of branch, from קצר, desecuit; one so names a part which is removed without injury to the whole, and which presents itself conveniently for removal; cf. the oath sworn by Egyptian women, laḥajât muḳṣu̇si, “by the life of my separated,” i.e., “of my locks” (Lane, Egypt, etc., I 38). The word still survives in the Talmud dialect. Of a beautiful young man who proposed to become a Nazarite, Nedarim 9 a says the same as the Jer. Horajoth iii. 4 of a man who was a prostitute in Rome: his locks were arranged in separate masses, like heap upon heap; in Bereshith rabba c. lxv., under Gen 27:11, קוּץ, curly-haired, is placed over against קרח, bald-headed, and the Syr. also has ḳauṣoto as the designation of locks of hair-a word used by the Peshito as the rendering of the Heb. קוצּות, as the Syro-Hexap. Job 16:12, the Greek κόμη. טל, from טלל (Arab. ṭll, to moisten, viz., the ground; to squirt, viz., blood), is in Arabic drizzling rain, in Heb. dew; the drops of the night (רסיסי, from רסס, to sprinkle, to drizzle) are just drops of dew, for the precipitation of the damp air assumes this form in nights which are not so cold as to become frosty. Shulamith thus dreams that her beloved seeks admission to her. He comes a long way and at night. In the most tender words he entreats for that which he expects without delay. He addresses her, “my sister,” as one of equal rank with himself, and familiar as a sister with a brother; “my love” (רע), as one freely chosen by him to intimate fellowship; “my dove,” as beloved and prized by him on account of her purity, simplicity, and loveliness. The meaning of the fourth designation used by him, תּמּתי, is shown by the Arab. tam to be “wholly devoted,” whence teim, “one devoted” = a servant, and mutajjam, desperately in love with one. In addressing her tmty, he thus designates this love as wholly undivided, devoting itself without evasion and without reserve. But on this occasion this love did not approve itself, at least not at once.