1. Oh that thou wert as my brother, &c. The charming description which the Shulamite gave of their happiness when at home, recalled to her mind the obstacles which they met with, even there; and hence she is led to wish that he had sustained to her the relation of a brother, that, whether in the street or the house, none might misinterpret or interrupt the manifestation of their attachment. ‏מִי יִתֵּן‎ is used to express the optative. Comp. Deut. v. 29; xxviii. 67; Ps. xiv. 7; Job vi. 8; Gesen. § 136, 1; Ewald, § 329 c. ‏כְּאָח‎ is the accusative. The rendering of the Septuag., Τὶς δῴη σε, ἀδελφιδέ μου, θηλάζοντα μαστοὺς μητρός μου; and Luther, “O dass ich dich, mein Bruder, der du meiner Mutter Brüste saugest, draussen fände,” are wrong. ‏יֹונֵק שְׂדֵי אִמִּי‎, does not mean “an infant still sucking the breasts.” (Grotius, Gill, Good, Williams, &c.), but “one who had sucked and is now a youth;” it is the second accusative to ‏מִי יִתֶּנְךָ‎, and stands in parallelism with ‏אָח‎, brother; like the participle ‏יֹולֶדֶת‎ (which does not mean one who just gave birth), and ‏אֵﬦ‎, vide supra, chap. vi. 9. ‏אֶמְצָאֲךָ‎ is conditional, with the particle ‏אִﬦ‎ implied, Judg. xi. 36; Prov. xxiv. 10; Ewald, § 367 b. ‏גַם‎ is used poetically for ‏וְ‎, and, Judg. v. 4; Joel i. 12. ‏יָבֻזוּ‎: the third person is used to express the indeterminate third person, the passive in English. Gen. xli. 14; Gesen. § 157, 3. For ‏לִי‎, me, five MSS. and two editions read ‏לָךְ‎, thee, which Ewald adopts. But this is against the majority of MSS. and all the versions, and does not at all improve the sense. 2. I would lead thee, &c. As a brother, she could unreservedly bring him from the spot, where she met him in the street, to her mother’s house. We must supply ‏מִשָּׁם‎, thence, before ‏אֱנְהָגְךָ‎; so Rashbam. Simple as the word ‏תְּלַמְּדֵנִי‎ seems to be, it has nevertheless produced a variety of renderings. The Septuagint and Syriac, followed by Percy, entirely omit it, and interpolate here ‏וְאֶל חֶדֶר הוֹרָתִי‎, and into the apartment of her who gave me birth, from chap. iii. 4; after ‏בֵית אִמִּי‎, the house of my mother. Ibn Ezra, the Authorized Version, Kleuker, Döderlein, Hitzig, &c., supply ‏אֲשֶׁר‎, who, before ‏תְּלַמְּדֵנִי‎, and refer it to ‏אִמִּי‎, my mother. But this interrupts the construction, and, against the scope of the description, introduces the mother as an actress. Hodgson and the editor of Calmet, strangely enough, render it Talmudni, as a proper name of the maiden’s mother. The most natural way seems to be to take it with the Vulgate, Chaldee, Rashbam, Luther, Ewald, Döpke, De Wette, Delitzsch, Hengstenberg, Philippson, &c., as the second person masculine.