rather tantamount to--"I will conduct myself in a similar manner towards thee." Now two things may constitute this equality of conduct. _Either_ it is conceived thus:--that the prophet is placed in parallelism with the wife. The latter has lost all claims upon the prophet; she has violated connubial [Pg 281]fidelity, and, hence, has no title to demand that he should observe it. But that which she cannot demand from him, he does, from the necessity of his nature. He promises to her that, during the proceeding which has commenced against her, he would not enter into any new connection; and by holding out to her the hope of her returning, at some future period, to her old relation to him, he makes it more easy for her to break off the sinful connections which have destroyed it. Without a figure: The Lord, from His forbearance and mercy, waits for the reformation of those who hitherto were His people; does not drive them to despair by receiving another people in their place. _Or_, The prophet is placed in parallelism with the other man. As the wife does not enter into any relation with that man, so the prophet also abstains from any nearer intercourse with her. The latter explanation (adopted by _Simson_ and _Hitzig_) is to be preferred. The exclusiveness cannot in the same sense be applicable to the prophet, representing the Lord, as to the wife, representing the people. So early as in Deut. xxxii. 21, we read: "They have moved Me to jealousy with that which is not God, they have provoked Me to anger with their vanities; and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people, I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation," After all that had, in the Song of Solomon, been predicted regarding the reception of the Gentile nations into the kingdom of God and Christ, and about the receiving again into it of Israel, to be effected by their instrumentality (compare my _Comment. on Song of Sol._, S. 239), the thought suggested by the former view would be quite incomprehensible. Quite decisive, however, is ver. 4, in which the thought, which is here in a symbolical garb, is expressed in plain language. There, however, not only the intercourse with the idols, but the connection with Jehovah also, appears to be intermitted. The reason why the prophet does not enter into a closer connection with the wife is, that her repentance is more of a negative, than of a positive character. By want and isolation, her hard heart is to be broken, true repentance to be called forth, and the flame of cordial conversion and love to her husband, whose faithful love she had so ill requited, to be enkindled in her. In favour of the explanation given by us, and in opposition to that first mentioned, the גם is decisive. Against this, that other explanation, [Pg 282]in its various modifications, tries its strength in vain. "I also will be thine, or will adhere to thee," would require in the preceding context, "Thou shalt be mine, or adhere to