Which perfume thou art, by thy name, &c. This clause is explanatory of the preceding one, “Sweet is the odour of thy perfumes, because thou art that perfume.” The comparison of an agreeable person to perfumes arose from the great requisition of aromatics in the East. In warm climates perspiration is profuse, and much care is needful to prevent its offensiveness. Hence the use of perfumes particularly at weddings, feasts, on visits to persons of rank (2 Sam. xii. 20; Ps. xlv. 8; Prov. vii. 17; Amos vi. 6), and most of the occasions which bring people together with the intention of being agreeable to one another. Hence the pleasant odours diffused by perfumes soon became a metaphor to express the attractions which an agreeable person throws around him (Eccl. vii. 1), just as an offensive smell is used to express the contrary idea. (Gen. xxxiv. 30; Exod. v. 21.) The word ‏תּוּרַק‎, being taken as the third person fem., has greatly perplexed interpreters. For neither ‏שֶׁמֶן‎, to which the Sept., Ibn Ezra, Rashbam, Immanuel, &c., refer it, nor ‏שֵׁם‎, to which it is referred by Ewald, Gesenius, &c., ever occurs as feminine. Others, to overcome this difficulty, have either taken ‏תּוּרַק‎ as a proper name (Syria. R. Tobiah) or as an appellative (Bochart, Hieron. ii. 4, 26.) The true solution seems to be that the word in question is not the third person feminine but the second person masculine. So Rashi, Michaelis, Hengstenberg, &c. The words literally translated would be, like oil art thou poured forth, with regard to thy name. ‏שִׁמְךָ‎, is the second accusative, comp. Ps. lxxxiii. 19; Ewald, § 281, 3 c. The words ‏שֶׁמֶן‎ and ‏שֵׁם‎ form a paranomasia. This figure, which consists of words ranged together of similar sound, but differing in sense, is frequently used in the Old Testament; and also occurs in the New. (Compare λιμοὶ καὶ λοιμοὶ, Luke xxi. 11, and Acts xvii. 25.)