10, 11. Arise, my love, &c. The Shulamite introduces here her beloved as speaking. He urges her to go, since the rain is over, and everything without is charming. ‏עָנָה‎ is idiomatically used in reference even to the person speaking first, without any antecedent interrogation. (Deut. xxvi. 5; Isa. xiv. 10; xxi. 9.) The meaning of the word seems to be simply to impart information, either asked for or not. In the former case ‏עָנָה‎ obtains the additional idea of a reply, whereas in the latter it merely means to inform, to tell, like ἀποκρίνομαι in the New Testament. Comp. ἀποκριθεῖς εἶπε, Matt. xvii. 4; Mark ix. 5. On the use of the dative ‏לָךְ‎, see Gesen. § 154, 3 e. Ewald, § 315 a. The ἅπα. λέγ.ἅπαξ λεγόμενον ‏סְתָו‎ properly denotes the winter = the rainy season, at the end of which, viz. February or March, the spring advances with surpassing quickness; it excludes the autumn, and thus differs from ‏חֹרֶף‎. The form ‏סְתָו‎ (from ‏סָתָה‎, to winter), is, according to the analogy of ‏חֲגָו‎, ‏מְדָו‎, ‏קְצָו‎, see Fürst, Lexicon, under ‏חֲגָו‎. The Sept. has mistaken the dative ‏לָךְ‎ for the imp. ‏לְכִי‎, and adds ‏יוֹנָתִי‎, my dove, after ‏יָפָתִי‎, my beauty. 12. The flowers appear, &c. The gradual development is exceedingly beautiful; the description unfolds with the season. After the graphic delineation of the meadows strewed with a profusion of variegated flowers; of the men in the fields, and the birds hovering over them, joining to pour forth a volume of various sounds; of the delicious odour of the embalmed fig, and fragrant vine, the beloved exclaims: “Nature has prepared a rich banquet; come, let us go and enjoy it!” The Sept., Aquila, Sym., Vulg., Chald., Rashbam, render ‏עֵת הַוָּמִיר‎, by the season for the pruning of vines: Gesenius defends this rendering, but against the usage of the word ‏זָמִיר‎, and the connexion. Wherever ‏זָמִיר‎ occurs, either in the singular (Isa. xxv. 5), or plural (2 Sam. xxiii. 1; Isa. xxiv. 16), it invariably means song or singing. Moreover, the parallelism, and the whole of the description, demand that it should be rendered so here. All the pleasures and charms here depicted are gratifications for the senses, and are adduced by the beloved as the invitation of nature to enjoy her banquet; whereas the pruning of the vines would be a summons to engage in toil. Besides, the vine is mentioned afterwards in its rotation (v. 13), and it would mar the gradual progression of this minute description to suppose that it has been uselessly repeated. Hence it has been rightly rendered singing by Rashi, Kimchi, Ibn Ezra, Anonymous Oxford Manuscript, Mendelssohn, Kleuker, Ewald, Döpke, Rosenmüller, De Wette, Magnus, Hengstenberg, Philippson, Fürst, Meier, Hitzig, &c. The objection that ‏זָמִיר‎, singing, means the song of men, is obviated by referring it here to the season when both man and bird begin to sing. ‏זָמִיר‎, like other words of the form ‏קָטִיל‎, expresses the time of the action; comp. ‏אָסִיף‎,