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IDYL THE SIXTH.

Containing the last six Verses of the third Chapter.

THE exterior imagery in this Idyl bears some resemblance to that of the first allegory. It is a marriage-procession, for the purpose of conveying the bride of the King of Israel to his royal residence.

The circumstances of the processions, however, are very different. The dialogue in the first idyl was maintained between the bride herself, a messenger, and the virgins; but the dialogue in this poem is carried on between the virgins alone, as the spectators of the ceremony.

They describe a scene which passes before their eyes.— On the one part appears the bride, borne from a distance, in the royal palanquin of Solomon, surrounded with his guards: on the other part, our attention is suddenly called to the King himself, "Solomon in all his glory," who comes forth to meet his bride on her arrival. This, supposing, which is not improbable, an allusion to a real event, was, no doubt, a high day in Jerusalem; and, like some other circumstances of the times, is allegorized, to veil and typify the mysteries of the everlasting reign of the true Solomon-the "Prince of Peace."

FIRST VIRGIN.

WHO is this coming up from the wilderness? Like columns of smoke,

a" Or what is this," &c.-Percy, Green, and Good. But the most faithful translation is, "Who is this?" What woman, or

From incense of myrrh and frankincense,
From all the powders of the merchant?

SECOND VIRGIN.

Lo! it is the palanquin of Solomon: Sixty valiant men surround it,

Of the valiant of Israel:

All are swords-men,

Disciplined for war:

Each has his sword on his thigh

Because of fear in the nighta.

bride, as she is known to be, from her appearance? very rarely refers to things: is the 3d per. sing. fem. by too is fem. as in 1 Kings, xviii. 44.

66 Τις αυτη η αναβαινουσα απο της ερημου ;” Septuagint.

The at

They are supposed to see a bridal couch or palanquin at a distance, with a multitude of attendants. They compare it to columns of smoke, to the fuming incense of the altar. tendants perhaps were burning perfumes; or their smoking torches, their cottors or luminous standards, might give the procession the appearance here attributed to it. Or, it is possible, the allusion may be to the columns of dust raised by the feet of the attendants, the signal usually observed of the approach of travellers in the desert of Arabia.

אחזי חרב c

66

comprehensi, i. e. accincti gladio, vel qui adhæserunt, adjuncti gladio, per Hypallagen, pro, quibus gladius adhæsit sive adjunctus est." Simonis, Heb. Lex.

"Possessed or scised of a sword."-Parkhurst.

A party of the royal guards we may suppose to have been sent with the royal vehicle. They conduct the bride, as it appears, from a distance. This vehicle, a description of which follows, must undoubtedly, according to Mr. Harmer and other commentators, have been a kind of palanquin. For first, it is called, a bed or couch, something which would admit a person to lay himself at length. Secondly, it is, evidently, portable, and surrounded with attendants for a journey. Of the other

King Solomon has made him a palanquin,
He formed it of the woods of Lebanon ;
Its supporters he made of silver;

Its mattress of cloth of' gold;

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5 Go forth, and see, O daughters of Zion, King Solomon term, by which it is called 58, Simon observes, "Compositum ex 2 synonymis Arab. cucurrit, latus est; et ex Chald. · cucurrit, latus est."-" It is used in the Misnah for the nuptial bed, or open chariot, in which the bride was carried from her father's house to her husband's."-Dr. Gill.

eThe chariot or body part, stragula.

f Its inner lining was spread over, literally paved, worked so as to resemble a pavement, with appropriate devices and mottos, by the women of Jerusalem.-Harmer's Outlines.

"And to illustrate, if not confirm, this supposition, I observe, from Lady M. W. Montague, Lett. xxv. vol. i. p. 158, that the inside of the Turkish coaches is (in our times) painted with baskets and nosegays of flowers, intermixed commonly with little poetical mottos."-Parkhurst.

8 While the company of virgins are contemplating the equipage of the bride, and are admiring its beautiful construction, their attention is suddenly called to another quarter: they have notice that the bridegroom is coming, "decked" with his splendid "ornaments." The marriage-ceremonies of the Jews, and other eastern nations, were always grand and imposing: we may easily imagine, therefore, the magnificence which would accompany a bridal procession of King Solomon.

We cannot, indeed, require a more convincing proof of the rich decoration of the person of the bridegroom on these occasions, than the circumstance of the royal Psalmist's having alluded to it, for a comparison of the most grand and beautiful object in nature -the rising sun: "He cometh forth as a bridegroom out of his

chamber."

With the crown with which his mother has crowned him,

On the day of his espousals,

On the day of the gladness of his heart!

INTERPRETATION OF THE SIXTH IDYL.

THE Conducting home of a bride espoused to King Solomon is, as we have seen, the exterior and ostensible imagery of this allegory. The conducting of the purchased people of Christ to his presence and blessed abode, is, I think, the interior and remote sense which is veiled under this thin and pellucid covering.

The first Idyl, the subject of which is, in like manner, the conducting home of a royal bride, has been explained of the first introduction of the favoured Christian into that state of joy and sense of the divine favour, which is wont to accompany that first fruits of the Spirit, by which the believer is sealed until the day of redemption.

The very different circumstances, however, of the procession we are now to contemplate, lead to the notion, that a different event is intended by the emblem. We explain the present allegory, therefore, with reference to the anticipated conveyance of the espoused of Christ from this world to the mansions above; and in its full amount, to the manifestation of the sons of God in the last day, when the New Jerusalem will be seen as a bride

adorned for her husband, and the assembled universe will be called to celebrate the " marriage supper of the Lamb "."

a

In view of these two events, the entrance of the soul of the faithful into paradise, and the glory to be brought to the church at large at the revelation of Jesus Christ, we may consider this present world as the wilderness, through which the perilous journey, supposed in the opening of the parable, has just been effected.

"Who is this," or "what bride is this that cometh up from the wilderness?" The beautiful land of Canaan, it is well known, was bordered on the south and south-east by the dreary and arid desert of Arabia. Through this desert, Israel had journeyed from Egypt to the land of promise. From this circumstance, and from the inevitable inconveniences of the journey by which their country was approached on this side, and the pleasing change which opened to the traveller's view when he had once passed the boundary, "coming up from the wilderness," appears to have been a constituted emblem among the Jews of the faithful servants of God, who, finishing their earthly pilgrimage, enter into their heavenly rest.

The question in the allegory before us amounts, therefore, in fact, to that put to St. John in the Apocalypse, while he stood contemplating a large

a Rev. xix. 19.

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