Song of Solomon 5:7

In this dream all goes ill with her, in comparison with the former dream (Song of Solomon 3:1 ff.). Oettli suggests that this is due to the anxious state of mind in which she lay down to sleep, shrinking from the return of her undesired lover (Song of Solomon 4:6).

that went about the city R.V. rightly, that go about the city; the participle here indicating their duty, what they were accustomed to do.

they smote me, they wounded me Taking her for a suspicious character, they tried to stop her, but in her wild anxiety she refused, until they used violence.

the keepers of the walls Better, the watchmen of the walls, the same probably as "the watchmen that go about the city." They may however be different divisions of the watchmen of the city. Del. thinks that the fact that she sought her beloved, not in the open field, nor in the villages, but in the city, is fatal to the -shepherd" hypothesis here as in the other dream, but see note there.

my vail The word here is different from that for -veil" in ch. Song of Solomon 4:1; Song of Solomon 4:3. There it is tsammâh; here it is rĕdhîdh, a word which occurs again in the O.T. only in Isaiah 3:23, where the A.V. translates -veils," as here. But the LXX has in both places θἐριστρον, a thin summer garment, and here it should be translated mantle, or thin outer garment. Riehm, Handwörterbuch, p. 1428, says, "The veil mentioned in Song of Solomon 5:7 and in Isaiah 3:23 seems to have been a fine lawn garment which the women of the East still throw over their whole dress. Cp. Susanna v. 32." Cheyne and Driver translate it mantle. The word occurs in Syriac and in Targum for the Heb. tsâ-îph=-a veil," and in the Mishnah.