Excerpt from The Song of Songs Unveiled: A New Translation and Exposition of the Song of Solomon
Dear reader, the portion of the Holy Scriptures of which the following pages form a new Translation and Expo sitiou, is one to Which, as a Whole, no key has been found by any of the ancient or modern writers on it, though they have been very numerous, and some of them very able. It has been the lot of this Song to be misunderstood, mis interpreted, and misapplied, both by Jew and Christian. The Rabbinical writers, While they acknowledged the sacred ness of the Song, enveloped it at the same time in such a thick and impenetrable cloud of Cabalistic mysteries and absurd dreams of human invention, that its real contents are effectually hidden from the most careful and patient inquirer. Early Christian writers having, for the most part, yielded to their well-known propensity to mystify and spiritualize everything, have done over again the work of the Cabalistic Rabbis, and buried the real Song out of sight by their fanciful superstructures. Among modern Christian writers, some follow in the footsteps of the ancients, While others follow new inventions of their own. Some mystify and spiritualise it out and out, others make a Wholesale pre sent of it to Pharaoh's daughter, and others still think of equitably dividing it between the combatants, and while endeavouring to find in it both Christ and Solomon, the Church of Christ and Pharaoh's daughter, lose all, and find nothing. In the following work the author undertakes to prove that Solomon's Song celebrates the most prominent and important events of the ancient Church and her relation to the Covenant Angel, from Horeb to Calvary; but as the scheme is fully explained in the Introduction it is unnces sary to enter on it here.
The chief object of the author in the following pages is to rectify the mistranslated words and phrases, which in some instances have obscured entire passages, and to ex plain the metaphors and figures employed by the royal penman; but more especially to illustrate every passage by comparing it with the portion of Sacred History whose events it celebrates. Though the practical application has by no means been lost sight of or neglected, and an occa sioual exhortation or warning has been given where it has forced itself upon the mind of the author, still the field for practical application has increased so wonderfully by the new aspect which the Song assumes in this Book, that to have made it practical throughout would at least have doubled the volume, and perhaps have greatly interfered with the power and beauty of the historical connexion which he has shown to exist between this Song and the sacred his tory of the ancient Church of God. Besides, the author trusts that some of the masters in Israel, considering the Song in the entirely new aspect in which it appears in the following pages, and appreciating the new and rich field for practical application which is here unfolded, will under take such a work, and do it far more justice than the author, who is a foreigner to the English language, could be ex pected to do.
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