Introduction: The Malbim's Approach to Shir HaShirim
In the extensive introduction, we learned the foundations of the Malbim's approach. For those who wished to bypass it and jump straight into the verses, we will summarize the outline briefly here. The core principle: man possesses bodily faculties and spiritual faculties. King Solomon in the parable represents the faculties of the body, while the maiden represents the faculties of the spirit - the divine, spiritual aspect of Solomon, which is the soul (neshamah). The beloved shepherd (the Dod) is the Holy One, blessed be He. The soul yearns and constantly reaches out to Him, seeking to sever the bonds of the physical, material body with all its desires and delicacies, spurning it and longing to unite with the Beloved.
The parable itself: King Solomon took a woman to be his wife, but this woman was already married to a shepherd, and her love remained bound to that shepherd. Although Solomon tries to entice her with all his desires, delicacies, palaces, and pleasures, none of this speaks to her, and she longs to reunite with the shepherd who remained in the wilderness. He comes to her at the palace, watching her ways, peering through the lattice and waiting for her, and from time to time she escapes and joins him. Then the daughters of Jerusalem, representing Solomon's forces, arrive and bring her back to the palace. This continues until the fifth time, when she succeeds in escaping and is reunited with her beloved, the husband of her youth.
And the nimshal (the deeper meaning): Solomon's soul departs each time in prophecy toward the Holy One, blessed be He. The song is divided into five parts, corresponding to the five times Solomon's soul severed itself from bodily bonds and bonded in prophecy with the Holy One, blessed be He - the Shepherd in the parable - while the bodily faculties pulled it back once the vision ended. This occurred four times, and on the fifth time - when Solomon passed away - the union between the soul and the Holy One, blessed be He, became absolute and permanent, with the bodily faculties no longer having the power to return it to its place.
We will begin by studying the first section on the level of the parable, and afterward we will see how the verses align on the level of the nimshal. We will not do this for the entire book all at once, lest the connection between the parable and its meaning be lost, but rather section by section, so that we can clearly grasp the mashal alongside the nimshal.
"Shir HaShirim" - A Song Comprising Five Songs
שִׁיר הַשִּׁירִים אֲשֶׁר לִשְׁלֹמֹה׃ (א,א) - The Song of Songs, which is Solomon's. (1:1)
The Malbim explains: this is a song divided into five songs, which is why it is called "The Song of Songs" - a song that incorporates the songs of Solomon.
"Let Him Kiss Me with the Kisses of His Mouth" - The Maiden's Longing for Her Beloved
יִשָּׁקֵנִי מִנְּשִׁיקוֹת פִּיהוּ כִּי־טוֹבִים דֹּדֶיךָ מִיָּיִן׃ (א,ב) - Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for your love is better than wine. (1:2)
The shepherd, who is the beloved (the Dod), waits behind the door and the doorpost for his wife, who was taken to Solomon's palace to be one of his women. He stands there waiting, and she senses his presence and knows he is nearby. From this awareness, she yearns and pleads: if only he would draw near to me face-to-face; if only he would kiss me with kisses of love.
"Dodecha" (your love) is an expression of affection, as in "et dodim" (a time of love) - meaning a time of love and union, a matter of deep friendship and closeness. And she says, "For your love is better than wine" - my love for you is sweeter to me than the finest wine I receive here in the palace. In Solomon's palace there was certainly tremendous abundance, but it is physical abundance, and I prefer love with you in the shepherd's poverty over the halls of Solomon's palace.
"Your Name Is Like Poured-Out Oil" - Perception through Scent
לְרֵיחַ שְׁמָנֶיךָ טוֹבִים שֶׁמֶן תּוּרַק שְׁמֶךָ עַל־כֵּן עֲלָמוֹת אֲהֵבוּךָ׃ (א,ג) - Because of the fragrance of your good oils, your name is like oil poured forth; therefore maidens love you. (1:3)
Even though I do not see You and do not perceive You physically, I do perceive the scent. In ancient times, scented oil was applied to the body, and even balsam oil, with its uniquely exquisite fragrance, was an oil. Their aromatic substances were oil-based. "Because of the fragrance of your good oils" refers to the fine oil whose aroma spreads far and wide. "Your name is like oil poured forth" - we have no perception of You except through Your good name, like a person who takes oil or perfume and pours it from vessel to vessel, causing the scent to waft afar. Thus the beloved maiden says: I do not meet my Beloved directly, but I scent Him; I perceive His presence in the atmosphere, like a fragrance radiating from a distance.
"Therefore maidens love you" - "maidens" (alamot) are on a higher level than ordinary young women ("daughters"), and they love You because they discern Your goodness and Your exalted virtue. If they seek to bond with You merely by the power of the fragrance wafting from afar, how much more so had they met You face to face!
"Draw Me, We Will Run after You" - The Request for Freedom from the Palace
מׇשְׁכֵנִי אַחֲרֶיךָ נָּרוּצָה הֱבִיאַנִי הַמֶּלֶךְ חֲדָרָיו נָגִילָה וְנִשְׂמְחָה בָּךְ נַזְכִּירָה דֹדֶיךָ מִיַּיִן מֵישָׁרִים אֲהֵבוּךָ׃ (א,ד) - Draw me, we will run after you; the king has brought me into his chambers; we will exult and rejoice in you, we will extol your love more than wine; sincerely do they love you. (1:4)
Meeting with You is on a far higher plane than merely inhaling the fragrance of Your fine oils. Therefore, the maiden beseeches the Beloved: "Draw me, we will run after you" - take me out of this confinement, from the chambers of Shlomo in which I am locked away, and once I am free, I will meet You face to face. "We will run" is phrased in the plural - I and the maidens who are my companions, which allegorically represent the faculties of the soul and spirit: wisdom (chochmah), understanding (binah), knowledge (da'at), the intellectual faculties.
And why do I ask that You set me free? "The king has brought me into his chambers" - I am imprisoned within the chambers of Shlomo, chamber within chamber, and I have no way to get out on my own. Therefore I ask that You take action: "Draw me after You" - pull me and extricate me from the enclosure in which I am confined. And then, once I am free, "we will exult and rejoice in You," for the joy I find in You is far greater than the pleasure found in the chambers of Shlomo, than the indulgences and desires he provides for me in his palace.
Gil and Simchah - Renewed Joy and Permanent Joy
As we have learned several times, gil (exultation) always expresses a renewed burst of joy, whereas simchah expresses enduring, steady joy. Therefore, the maiden says, "We will exult and rejoice in You": at the moment of the encounter itself, there will be an exhilarating, renewed joy - "we will exult" (nagilah), and after I have united with You, it will be a constant, continuous joy - "and rejoice in You" (venismechah vach).
The Joy of the Body - An Illusory Joy
And why will this be true joy? Because the intrinsic joy I have with You far surpasses the joy of the chambers of Shlomo. For the joy of Shlomo's chambers - says the Malbim - is not an intrinsic virtue, but merely an illusory one. If we turn for a moment to the allegory: the soul is drawn here after the physical body, but bodily pleasures are illusory pleasures, not real ones.
And how do we know this? A person who indulges his desire suddenly realizes that it is not what he thought. The yetzer hara painted it for him in rosy colors, and in the end, it turns out to be nothing like what was promised. And what became clear? That much of it was mere imagination. The yetzer hara tempts a person through the power of imagination - this is one of its strongest powers. It paints the sin in rosy hues, creating fantasies of how good, how delicious, and how wonderful it will be, but ultimately a person sees that he was sold an illusion.
And this is what the Ben Ish Chai explained: take the word olam (world) - look at its hidden letters: the letter ayin contains yud and nun; vav contains another vav; lamed contains mem and dalet; combine their numerical values and you get dimyonim (illusions). This world is a world of illusions, and the yetzer hara sells illusions within it. Consider how things are photographed, how products are marketed to us: they show you cereal with touches of pecan, and you imagine it contains fifty percent pecans; but when you open the box, you see it might have five percent. Such is the yetzer hara: the picture looks beautiful, impressive, and deeply alluring, but when you actually encounter the reality, you see that it falls far short of the hype - you were sold an illusion. It turns out that all worldly matters are illusions, and therefore true joy is found in "we will exult and rejoice in You," for the joy in the palace of Shlomo is merely imaginary joy.
"Meisharim Ahevucha" - Direct Love and Indirect Love
"We will recall your love more fragrant than wine" - Your love will be dearer to me than the wine and pleasurable delights in the palace of Shlomo, "for rightly (meisharim) have they loved you." And what does meisharim mean? Directly, as opposed to indirectly.
When speaking of the love of Shlomo - that is, the soul's love for physical pleasures - this is not intrinsic love, but indirect love. For when a person loves worldly matters, he does not love the essence of the thing itself, but rather the good, the pleasant, and the beneficial - the outcomes produced by it, not the object itself. Therefore, the moment he achieves satisfaction through it, he is no longer interested in it.
People say they love food. There is a well-known riddle: Does the fisherman love fish? If he loves them, why does he eat them? He strikes them on the head with a club - is that how one treats someone he loves? Physical matter is not something we love for its own sake, but rather something that can satisfy our desires; hence, it is an indirect love. So it was with Amnon and Tamar: "And he loved her" - what kind of love was this? Lust and the fulfillment of desire. The proof is that the moment it was over, the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love with which he had previously loved her. This teaches that what seems to us like love is not intrinsic love, but merely love for what can be derived and extracted from the thing.
In contrast, love for the Holy One, Blessed is He, is intrinsic love: He is loved for His very essence. Not because it is worthwhile to me, not because of what I gain, not because of some profit, but love of Hashem for His own sake, as He is the ultimate, intrinsic Good. Therefore, the soul says, "Rightly have they loved You": love for the Holy One, Blessed is He, is direct love, stemming from the intrinsic greatness of the Beloved; whereas love for Shlomo, for the matters of physicality, is indirect love, through which one merely attains physical desires and the satisfaction of cravings.
"I am black, but comely" - Merely External Blackness
שְׁחוֹרָה אֲנִי וְנָאוָה בְּנוֹת יְרוּשָׁלָ͏ִם כְּאׇהֳלֵי קֵדָר כִּירִיעוֹת שְׁלֹמֹה׃ (א,ה) - "I am black, but comely, O daughters of Jerusalem, like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Shlomo." (1:5)
So that the daughters of Jerusalem around her in the palace would not realize she was speaking to her Beloved, the maiden turns to them and addresses them. She says to them: Know that although I appear black - for she was a shepherdess, and from tending the sheep she became sunburnt - my darkness is not like the darkness of a Cushite. The darkness of a Cushite is intrinsic and cannot be removed in any way. But with me, although I appear dark on the outside, I am "comely": when the cause is removed, the effect is removed as well. My darkness came from sun exposure, and when I am no longer exposed to the sun, the darkness will leave me.
"Like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Shlomo" - the tents of Kedar are desert tents, which are black. Their blackness is caused by intense exposure to the sun, yet they can still be washed and made as clean and pristine as the tapestries of Shlomo. Thus the maiden offers an analogy about herself: although you see me as dark, my darkness is neither internal nor intrinsic to my nature; rather, just as the tents of Kedar can be washed and become like the tapestries of Shlomo, so too I will be cleansed, and you will see how comely I truly am.
"That the sun has tanned me" - Guarding the Vineyards
אַל־תִּרְאוּנִי שֶׁאֲנִי שְׁחַרְחֹרֶת שֶׁשְּׁזָפַתְנִי הַשָּׁמֶשׁ בְּנֵי אִמִּי נִחֲרוּ־בִי שָׂמֻנִי נֹטֵרָה אֶת־הַכְּרָמִים כַּרְמִי שֶׁלִּי לֹא נָטָרְתִּי׃ (א,ו) - Do not look upon me that I am swarthy, for the sun has tanned me; my mother's sons were incensed against me, they made me a keeper of the vineyards, but my own vineyard I have not kept.
Do not think that I am black in my essence; rather, my darkness is merely external: "for the sun has tanned me [shezezafatni]." It is fascinating to examine the root of shizuf (tanning). The Malbim explains that in Lashon HaKodesh, shazaf denotes gazing or looking, as in "the eye of the falcon has not seen it [shezafato]" (Iyov 28:7) and "his eye looked upon him." That is to say, an eye that looks intently is called shozevet. Here, she speaks poetically: the sun stared at me, the sun gazed upon me relentlessly, and on account of this, I have become swarthy.
And as for why you see that the blackness has penetrated a bit deeper and is not merely superficial - that is because "my mother's sons were incensed against me [nicharu vi]." The root charah denotes burning, as in "His wrath flared [charah afo]," "fierce wrath [charon af]," and "like one who dwells in parched places [charerim] in the desert." "Nicharu vi" means that my bones were dried and scorched from the heat of the sun. And why? Because my mother's sons "made me a keeper of the vineyards," and I sat constantly among the vines, so that I became tanned and my skin was scorched, and thus I am now swarthy.
"My own vineyard I have not kept" - I did not watch over my own beauty, for all my focus was devoted to guarding the vineyards they demanded I keep. As a result, I paid no attention to my external appearance and became swarthy. This is my current state, but as stated, this is not an intrinsic, internal condition, but merely external.
A Linguistic Precision: "Noterah" and Not "Shomerah"
Pay attention to the wording: "they made me a keeper [noterah] of the vineyards, but my own vineyard I have not kept [natarti]." The Malbim points out that in Lashon HaKodesh, there is a fundamental distinction between the root natar and the roots shamar or natzar. Shamar and natzar apply to physical objects, whereas natar consistently applies to abstract, spiritual matters, such as "he bore [natar] a grudge against him." One can say, "guard [tishmor] the animal," but regarding a feeling in the heart, one cannot use the literal term of physical guarding; and conversely, the root netirah does not apply to physical objects, but only to something abstract.
If so, the verse appears puzzling at first glance: "they made me a keeper [noterah] of the vineyards" - a vineyard is a physical entity, so it should not have said noterah, but rather "shomerah of the vineyards" or "notzerah of the vineyards"! The Malbim answers: since the entire essence of Shir HaShirim lies in its allegory and metaphor, and the metaphor addresses spiritual matters, the verse intentionally chose a spiritual term - an expression reserved for abstract concepts. In truth, the vineyard mentioned here is not a physical vineyard at all, but a spiritual entity. This is the deeper meaning of "a keeper of the vineyards," as we will see when we explain the allegorical meaning.
In Summary:
We opened Chapter 1 according to the Malbim's approach: Shlomo represents the bodily faculties, the maiden represents the soul, and the shepherd-Beloved is the Holy One, blessed be He. In the opening verses, the soul yearns for her Beloved - "May He kiss me with the kisses of His mouth," treasuring His love above all the wine of the palace; for now, she perceives Him only like a scent wafting from afar - "like fine oil poured forth is Your name"; and she begs Him to draw her close and bring her out of the chambers in which she is confined - "Draw me after You, let us run," for the joy of the body is illusory and its love mediated, whereas love of the Creator is essential and direct - "sincerely do they love You." Finally, she turns to the daughters of Jerusalem and explains that the darkness clinging to her from the sun and the vineyards is not intrinsic but purely external; just as the tents of Kedar can be washed clean to become like the curtains of Shlomo, so too is she destined to be cleansed and revealed in all her radiant beauty.