Sol 5:9
When, therefore, they put to her the question: 9 What is thy beloved before another (beloved), Thou fairest of women? What is thy beloved before another (beloved), That thou dost adjure us thus? the question thus asked cannot proceed from ignorance; it can only have the object of giving them the opportunity of hearing from Shulamith’s own mouth and heart her laudatory description of him, whom they also loved, although they were not deemed worthy to stand so near to him as she did who was thus questioned. Böttch. and Ewald, secs. 325 a, 326 a, interpret the מן in מדּור partitively: quid amati (as in Cicero: quod hominis) amatus tuus; but then the words would have been מה־מדוד דודך, if such a phrase were admissible; for מה־דוד certainly of itself alone means quid amati, what kind of a beloved. Thus the מן is the comparative (prae amato), and דּוד the sing., representing the idea of species or kind; מדּודים, here easily misunderstood, is purposely avoided. The use of the form השׁבעתנו for השׁבעתּינו is one of the many instances of the disregard of the generic distinction occurring in this Song, which purposely, after the manner of the vulgar language, ignores pedantic regularity.