Though my own vineyard, &c. The word ‏כַּרְמִי‎, is either taken to denote the Shulamite’s personal appearance, or to mean her beloved: and the phrase is explained, “Through the constant watch which my brothers made me keep over their vineyard, I could not take care of (‏כַּרְמִי‎) my complexion; or could not attend to (‏כַּרְמִי‎) my beloved.” But it is a hazardous mode of interpretation to take an expression in the same verse in an ordinary and in an extraordinary sense, which ought never to be done unless required by absolute necessity, which is not the case here. Dr. Good indeed escapes this inconsistency by assigning a spiritual meaning to ‏כֶּרֶם‎, (viz. personal estate, one’s own person) in both clauses; and he submits that “the bride asserts that she had been compelled to neglect her own person, through the perpetual attention which was demanded of her by her brothers or sisters in decorating themselves, or in assisting in their concerns.” But apart from the unnecessary and unjustifiable deviation from the literal meaning, this interpretation is entirely at variance with the context. For in the words, “They have made me keeper of their vineyards,” the Shulamite evidently means to explain how she came to be exposed to the tanning sun. Whereas, the supposition of her perpetual attention to the adornment of her brothers, fails to account for the brown complexion. If however, with Ibn Ezra, we take these words to explain the severity of her brothers, everything will be plain and unforced. The damsel says, “My brothers were so angry—so severe with me that, resolved to carry out their purpose, they made me keep their vineyards, ‏ובתחילה קורם זה אפילו כרמי שלי לא נטרתי‎, a thing which I had never done before, even to my own vineyard. It is utterly inconceivable how those who maintain that this Song celebrates the marriage of Solomon with the daughter of Pharaoh can reconcile it with the facts that the damsel’s dark complexion is here described as adventitious; whereas the Egyptians, even of the highest and most secluded classes, are naturally dark, and that she has been made keeper of the vineyards, which would ill agree with any prince’s daughter. ‏כֶּרֶם‎ is most probably derived from ‏כָּרָה‎ = ‏כּוּר‎, to dig, hence a garden cultivated by means of axes and spades in contradistinction to fields worked with ploughs and harrows. (Compare Saalschütz, Archäologie der Hebräer, vol. i. p. 119.) For the term. ‏–ֶם‎ vide supra, p. 131. ‏שֶׁלִי‎, i.q. ‏אֲשֶׁר לִי‎ is used emphatically after ‏כַּרִמִי‎, to mark the contrast, and not, as Houbigant erroneously supposes, in the sense of ‏בשלי‎, tranquillè, mine own vineyard I kept not quietly.