2. I was sleeping, &c. The sympathies manifested by some of the court ladies for the Shulamite, at the close of the last section, encourage her to relate to them a dream which she recently had. The purpose of this narration is the description of the shepherd to which it leads, and which is necessary to the completion of the whole drama. ‏יְשֵׁנָה‎, like the participle form generally, may be used to express all the relations of time. Comp. ‏כִּי כֻלָּם יְשֵׁנִים‎, for all were sleeping, 1 Sam. xxvi. 12; 1 Kings iii. 20. Gesen. § 134, 1; Ewald, § 306 d. ‏לֵב‎, heart, here the seat of thought. The Hebrews regarded the heart, not only as the seat of the passions, but also of the intellectual faculties of the mind. The whole clause is merely another way of saying ‏בַּחֲלֹמִי‎, Gen. xli. 17. The circumlocution is chosen in preference to ‏בַּחֲלמִי‎, to indicate that the powers under which the exhausted frame succumbed, could not keep her mind from dwelling upon the object of her affections. ‏קֹל‎, hark; vide supra, ii. 8. ‏דֹפֵק‎ is best taken with the Sept., Syriac, Vulg., and many modern commentators, as a separate clause, he is knocking. The Sept. adds ἐπὶ τὴν θύραν, at the door, after ‏דֹפֵק‎, he is knocking. Open to me, &c. She introduces him speaking. To make his request the more urgent, he pleads that he had been drenched with dew. The dew falls so copiously in the East, during certain months, that it saturates the clothes like rain. See Judges vi. 38; Rosenmüller, Orient. i. 122; Winer, Bib. Dict. s.v. A similar passage occurs in Anacreon, iii. 10, where love is represented as standing at night behind the door, begging for admittance, and pleading the same excuses. Ἄνοιγε, φησί Βρέφος εἰμί, μὴ φόβησαι Βρέχομαι δέ, κἀσέληνον Κατὰ νύκτα πεπλάνημαι. “‘Fear not,’ said he, with piteous din, ‘Pray ope the door and let me in: A poor unshelter’d boy am I, For help who knows not where to fly: Lost in the dark, and with the dews, All cold and wet, that midnight brews.’” Comp. also Propert. i. 16, 23; Ovid Amor. ii. 19, 21. ‏תַמָּתִי‎, my perfect one, is well explained by Rosenmüller by ‏מוּם אֵין בָּךְ‎, there is no fault in thee, iv. 7; 2 Sam. xiv. 25. 3. I have put off my tunic; was the answer she gave in her dream. ‏כֻּתֹּנֶת‎, χιτών, tunic, is an inner garment, commonly of linen, descending to the ankles, which is taken off when one retires. On the costume of the Hebrews, see Rosenmüller, Orient. ii. 19; Winer, Bib. Dict.; Kitto, Cyclop. Bib. Lit. s.v.; Saalschütz, Archäologie der Hebräer, vol. i. c. 2.