11. Come out, O ye daughters, &c. As the royal train begins to enter the city, a fourth bystander calls the daughters of Zion to come out and see the monarch in his joyful attire. Thus the inspired writer beautifully puts into the mouth of several spectators the description he desires to give. The crown here mentioned is not the symbol of royalty, but the emblem of happiness (Job xix. 9). Crowns or chaplets of flowers were worn in ancient times on occasions of festivity and rejoicing; comp. Apocryp. Wisdom, ii. 7, 8. Conjugal life being regarded as the most happy, it became a custom among the Jews, as well as among other nations, to put crowns on the heads of the newly-married people. Rosenmüller, Orient. iv. 196. “In the Greek Church in Egypt,” says Maillet, “the parties are placed before a reading-desk on which is the book of the Gospels, having two crowns upon it of flowers, cloth, or tinsel. The priest, after benedictions and prayers, places one on the bridegroom’s, the other on the bride’s head, covering both with a veil.” (See also Talmud, Sotha, ix. 14; Selden, Uxor. Hebr. II. xv. 139; I. F. Hirt, de Coronis apud Hebraeos nuptialibus sposi sposaeque). The Jews still call the bridegroom ‏מֶלֶךְ‎, and the bride ‏מַלְכָּה‎. The design of Solomon in putting on this crown is evidently to dazzle the rustic girl. The arrival and entrance of the royal train in the capital, recorded in verses 6–11, evidently show that the circumstances narrated in the preceding sections took place out of Jerusalem, and that the apartments into which the king brought the damsel, as stated in ch. i. 4, were not in the capital, but, as we see from ch. vi. 11, 12, in the neighbourhood of the Shulamite’s home. The abnormal ‏צְאֶינָה‎ is here intentionally used instead of the normal ‏צֵאנָה‎, to correspond in form with ‏רְאֶינָה‎; just as ‏מוֹבָא‎, entrance (Ezek. xliii. 11), is employed instead of ‏מָבוֹא‎, to correspond with ‏מוֹצָא‎, see also Jer. l. 20; Ezek. xvi. 50; infra, viii. 5; Gesen. § 59, Rem. 3; Ewald, § 118 d. The female inhabitants of the town are designedly called ‏בְּנוֹת צִיוֹן‎, to distinguish them from the ‏בְּנוֹת יְרוּשָׁלַיִם‎, which is the appellation of the court ladies.