Page:04.BCOT.KD.PoeticalBooks.vol.4.Writings.djvu/2208

 an armed band for protection. That Solomon took care to have his chosen one brought to him with royal honours, is seen in the lavish expenditure of spices, the smoke and fragrance of which signalized from afar the approach of the procession, - the mittā, which is now described, can be no other than that in which, sitting or reclining, or half sitting, half reclining, she is placed, who is brought to him in such a cloud of incense. Thus mittā (from nāthā, to stretch oneself out), which elsewhere is also used of a bier, 2Sa 3:21 (like the Talm. ערס = ערשׂ), will here signify a portable bed, a sitting cushion hung round with curtains after the manner of the Indian palanquin, and such as is found on the Turkish caiques or the Venetian gondolas. The appositional nearer definition שׁלּשׁ, “which belonged to Solomon” (vid., under 6b), shows that it was a royal palanquin, not one belonging to one of the nobles of the people. The bearers are unnamed persons, regarding whom nothing is said; the sixty heroes form only the guard for safety and for honour (sauvegarde), or the escorte or convoie. The sixty are the tenth part (the élite) of the royal body-guard, 1Sa 27:2; 1Sa 30:9, etc. (Schlottm.). If it be asked, Why just 60? we may perhaps not unsuitably reply: The number 60 is here, as at Sol 6:8, the number of Israel multiplied by 5, the fraction of 10; so that thus 60 distinguished warriors form the half to the escort of a king of Israel. חרב אחזי properly means, held fast by the sword so that it goes not let them free, which, according to the sense = holding fast = practised in the use of the sword; the Syr. translation of the Apoc. renders παντοκράτωρ by 'he who is held by all,” i.e., holding it (cf. Ewald, §149b).

Verses 9-10
Another voice now describes the splendour of the bed of state which Solomon prepared in honour of Shulamith: 9 A bed of state hath King Solomon made for himself    Of the wood of Lebanon. 10 Its pillars hath he made of silver,      Its support of gold, its cushion of purple;      Its interior is adorned from love      By the daughters of Jerusalem. The sound of the word, the connection and the description, led the Greek translators (the lxx, Venet., and perhaps also others) to render אפּריון, by φορεῖον, litter palanquin (Vulg. ferculum). The appiryon here described has a silver pedestal and a purple cushion - as we read in Athenaeus v. 13 (II p. 317, ed. Schweigh.) that the