Therefore do the damsels love thee. How natural for a woman, greatly admiring, and dotingly attached to her beloved, to think that every damsel must be enamoured of him! The most probable derivation of the much-disputed ‏עַלְמָה‎, is from ‏עָלָה‎ = ‏עוּל‎, to come up, to grow up; hence the Poel ‏עוֹלֵל‎, a growth, a child, ‏עֶלֶם‎, one growing up; with the termination ‏–ֶם‎, (Compare Alma, in Latin, from alo, ἄλδω, and Fürst, Lexicon, ‏מ‎ 2 c,) and the feminine ‏עַלְמָה‎, a growing damsel, without any reference to the idea of virginity, for which ‏בְּתוּלָה‎ is invariably used; Joel i. 8, not excepted. ‏בַּעַל‎ is here used, not to indicate that the marriage was consummated, but because the Jews regarded parties consecrated to each other from the very moment they were betrothed. Hence Mary is called the wife of Joseph, and he her husband. (Compare Matt. i. 19, 20, &c.) Other derivations assigned to ‏עַלְמָה‎, such as ‏עָלַם‎ = ‏חָלַם‎, to be fat, full, ripe, marriageable (Gesenius, &c.), or being excited, hence youth as being peculiarly subject to it (Lee); or ‏עָלַם‎, to hide, be concealed, unrevealed, unknown; hence ‏עֶלֶם‎ and ‏עַלְמָה‎, persons of a youthful age who were destitute of the knowledge which springs from sexual intercourse (Henderson) are exceedingly forced. Jerome’s assertion, as also Wordsworth’s, on Matt. i. 23, that ‏עַלְמָה‎, is the designation of a virgin, because it signifies kept secret, as a virgin is under the care of her parents, is gratuitous, for ‏עַלְמָה‎, is formed from ‏עֶלֶם‎, a young man, of whom this cannot be said. 4. Oh draw me, &c. The Shulamite wishes that her beloved should not only come and cheer her fainting heart with the tokens of his love, but take her away altogether. ‏אַחֲרֶיךָ‎ belongs to ‏מָשְׁכֵנִי‎. (Compare Job xxi. 33.) So the Chaldee, Immanuel, Luther, Mendelssohn, Kleuker, Percy, Hodgson, Ewald, Meier, Hitzig, Philippson, &c. The Septuagint renders ‏מָשְׁכֵנִי‎, by εἵλκυσάν σε, mistaking it for ‏מְשָׁכוּךָ‎, and adds ‏לְרֵיחַ שְׁמָנֶידָ‎ after ‏אַחֲרֶיךָ‎, evidently an interpolation from the first clause of the third verse, which the Vulgate, Percy, &c., follow.