Song of Solomon 2:17

Alarmed for his safety, she now exhorts her lover to depart till the evening when he might return with greater safety.

Until the day break R.V. Until the day be cool, lit. until the day blow, i.e. until the evening wind rises; cp. Genesis 3:8, where -at the wind of the day" is properly rendered by the A.V. "in the cool of the day," i.e. when the sun has lost its power. -When the shadows flee away," therefore, does not denote dispersion of the shades of night by the rising sun, but the disappearance of the shadows of rocks, trees, &c., when the sun sets.

be thou like, &c. make thyself like a gazelle or a young hart on the cleft-riven mountains, i.e. flee swiftly away. The Heb. for the last clause is alhârç bether. There are three possible ways of explaining the word bether. (1) It may be a proper name, as the A.V. takes it to be, following some of the Greek versions (cp. Hastings" Bible Dict.). (2) It may mean a division or cleft. The analogy of the word bithrôn, 2 Samuel 2:29, which appears to denote a mountain ravine, as the words there are, "they went through all the bithron" or ravine, would support this. It may be that -the ravine" had become a proper name, just as -the valley" has become in some places; but it probably was originally a mere descriptive name. This is the view of the LXX, and if that analogy holds hârç betherwould mean cleft-riven mountains, as we have translated it. In the only other passages where betheroccurs, Genesis 15:10; Jeremiah 34:18-19, it means the part of an animal cut in two at the making of a covenant. Reasoning from this, Ewald and others prefer to render mountains of separation, i.e. mountains that separate; but if the view of the situation which we have taken be correct, the Shulammite is not separated from her lover by mountains, for he is at her window. (3) Some authorities take betherto be a contraction of μαλάβαθρον, Lat. malabathron, and hold it to be some aromatic plant. But there is a difficulty in finding out what malabathronwas. If, as some maintain, it is the equivalent of the Sanscrit tamalapatraand means the betel plant, then our phrase would mean -hills planted with betel." But the betel palm which bears the betel nut grows only in S. India, Ceylon, Siam, the Malay Archipelago, and the Philippine Islands, and nothing is known of either it or the betel vine (the plant in the leaves of which the betel nut is eaten) having been grown in Palestine. Moreover, the betel nut and leaf are not used for their perfume, as most who take betheras betel seem to suppose. They are not aromatic to any great extent, and they are cultivated and collected only for use as a masticatory (Enc. Brit. III. 616). There would appear, however, to have been another malabathron(cp. Field's Hexapla, II. 416, quotations, and Horace, Carm. II. 8 with Macleane's note), from which unguents were made. This was specially associated by the Romans with Syria, but it may have been so only because it was from traders of that country they obtained it. But if the plant grew in Syria, then mountains of betherwould be parallel to mountains of spices(ch. Song of Solomon 8:4). Some would actually read here hârç besâmîm. Cheyne on the other hand would read hârç běrôthîm, i.e. -mountains of cypresses."