The _oriental imagery_ in which Hebrew poetry abounds imparts to it a peculiar and striking costume. Palestine was, in an emphatic sense, the Hebrew poet's world. It was the land given by God to his fathers for an everlasting possession; about which all his warm affections clustered; with whose peculiar scenery and climate, employments and associations, all his thoughts and feelings had been blended from childhood. It followed of necessity that these must all wear an oriental costume. As soon as he opens his mouth there comes forth a stream of eastern imagery, very natural and appropriate to him, but much of it very strange to us of these western regions. To understand the extent of this characteristic one has only to peruse the Song of Solomon. The bride is black but comely as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon. She is a dove in the clefts of the rock; her hair is as a flock of goats, that appear from Mount Gilead; her teeth are like a flock of sheep which come from the washing; her lips are like a thread of scarlet; her temples are like a piece of a pomegranate; her stature is like a palm tree, and her breasts like clusters of grapes--all thoroughly oriental. So also the bridegroom is like a roe or a young hart leaping upon the mountains; his eyes are as the eyes of doves by the rivers of waters; his cheeks are as a bed of spices; his lips like lilies, dropping sweet-smelling myrrh, and his countenance as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars. So also if we open the book of Isaiah, we find the Messiah described as "the shadow of a great rock in a weary land"--a figure which could not well occur to an Englishman or an American, but was perfectly natural in the mouth of a Hebrew familiar with the terrible sun of the Asiatic deserts, where neither tree nor cloud offers a shelter to the thirsty and fainting traveller. Precisely here lies much of the obscurity of which the expounders of Hebrew poetry complain. True, there are other difficulties of a formidable character. The theme is often vast, stretching into the distant and dimly-revealed future; the language rugged with abrupt transitions, the historic allusions obscure, and the meaning of the terms employed doubtful. But aside from all these considerations the western scholar encounters a perpetual difficulty in the fact that he is not of oriental birth, and can enter but imperfectly into the spirit and force of oriental imagery. What costs him days of laborious investigation would open itself like a flash of lightning to his apprehension--all except that which remains dark from the nature of the prophetic themes--could he but have that perfect apprehension of the language, the historic allusions, the imagery employed, and the modes of thought, which was possessed by the contemporaries of the Hebrew poet.