16. My beloved is mine, &c. The Shulamite tells the court ladies how she had consoled herself under these circumstances of separation: “Though my brothers succeeded in separating us bodily by assigning to me this post of keeping the vineyards, yet our affections are inseparable; and though still separated from me, my beloved is mine and I am his; his who tends his flock in the meadows abounding with flowers.” It seems as if the words, “he who feeds his flock among the lilies,” were designedly added, whenever the damsel speaks of her beloved, to show unmistakably that he was a shepherd. How such passages can be reconciled with the supposition that the king is the object of the maiden’s attachment, or, according to others, that the maiden is the daughter of Pharaoh, is difficult to divine. 17. When the day cools, &c. She also relates how she had comforted her beloved, telling him that this state of separation would not last long; that he must come in the evening, when unobserved, with the same swift-footed speed as he came in the morning. ‏עַד שָׁיָפוּחַ הַיּוֹם‎, i.q. ‏עַד שֶׁיָפוּחַ רוּחַ הַיּוֹם‎, when the day breeze blows, i.e. in the evening, shortly before sunset, when a gentle and cooling breeze blows in the East (see Pliny, Hist. Nat. ii. 47); hence ‏רוּחַ הַיּוֹם‎, Gen. iii. 8, opposed to ‏חוֹם הַיּוֹם‎, xviii. 1. That this is the sense of ‏שֶׁיָפוּחַ הַיּוֹם‎, and not day-break (English Ver.), or morning-breath (Good), is evident from the immediately following ‏וְנָסוּ הַצְלָלִים‎, which expresses the same idea in other words, i.q. evening; comp. Job xiv. 2. The shadows are said to flee away when at sunset they become elongated and stretched out; thus as it were run away from us, further and further, till they eventually vanish in the dark of night. Hence David, speaking of the approaching sunset of his life, says, ‏יָמַֹי כְּצֵל נָטוּי‎, My days are like an elongated shadow, Ps. cii. 12; cix. 23. Comp. also Virg. Eclog. i. 84, and ii. 66. So Herder, Kleuker, Ewald, Gesen., Döpke, Rosenmüller, Magnus, Heiligstedt, Fürst, Philippson, Meier, Hengstenberg, Hitzig. The rendering of Hodgson, Good, &c., “till the day-breath,” and their reference to the passage of Milton, “Sweet is the breath of morn” (Par. Lost, iv. 641), is gratuitous. The words ‏הֶרֵי בָתֶר‎ are rendered by the Sept. ὄρη τῶν κοιλωμάτων, mountains of cavities, i.e. decussated mountains, from ‏בָּתַר‎, to divide, to cut, which Gesenius and Heiligstedt explain, a region divided by mountains and valleys, but very unsatisfactorily. The Syriac and Theodo. have θυμιαμάτων, taking ‏בָּתֶר‎ for ‏בְּשָׂמִים‎, which is adopted by Meier; but this emendation is unsupported by MSS., and has evidently arisen from viii. 14. The Vulg. and Rashbam take ‏בָּתֶר‎ as a proper name, montes Bether; but neither place nor mountain is known by such name. The Chald., Ibn Ezra, Rashi explain ‏הָרֵי בָתֶר‎ by mountains of separation, i.e.