(4) Beautiful . . . as Tirzah.—There is no sufficient reason for the employment of Tirzah side by side with Jerusalem in this comparison but the fact that they were both capitals, the one of the northern, the other of the southern kingdom. This fixes the date of the composition of the poem within certain limits (see Excursus I.). Jeroboam first selected the ancient sanctuary of Shechem for his capital; but, from some unexplained cause, moved the seat of his government, first to Penuel, on the other side Jordan, and then to Tirzah, formerly the seat of a petty Canaanite prince. (See 1 Kings 12:25; 1 Kings 14:17; 1 Kings 15:21; 1 Kings 15:33; 1 Kings 16:6; 1 Kings 16:8; 1 Kings 16:15; 1 Kings 16:18; 1 Kings 16:23; Joshua 12:24.) Robinson identified Tirzah with Tellûzah, not far from Mount Ebal, which agrees with Brocardus, who places Thersa on a high mountain, three degrees from Samaria to the east. Tirzah only remained the capital till the reign of Omri, but comes into notice again as the scene of the conspiracy of Menahem against Shallum (2 Kings 15:14-16). The LXX. translate Tirzah by εὐδοκία, Vulg. suavis; and the ancient versions generally adopt this plan, to avoid, as Dr. Ginsburg thinks, the mention of the two capitals, because this made against the Solomonic authorship.
As Jerusalem.—See Lamentations 2:15. As to the idea involved in a comparison so strange to us, we notice that this author is especially fond of finding a resemblance between his love and familiar localities (see Song of Solomon 5:15; Song of Solomon 7:4-5); nor was it strange in a language that delighted in personifying a nation or city under the character of a maiden (Isaiah 47:1), and which, ten centuries later, could describe the new Jerusalem as a bride coming down from heaven adorned for her husband (Revelation 21:9, seqq.).
An army with banners.—Heb. nidgalôth, participle of niphal conjugation = bannered. (Comp.—
“And what are cheeks, but ensigns oft,
That wave hot youth to fields of blood?”)

(5) Overcome.—Marg., puffed up; Heb. hirîbunî, from the verb rahab, a word whose root-idea seems to be to show spirit against oppression or prejudice. (See Isaiah 3:5; Proverbs 6:3.) The Hiphil therefore = make me spirited, or bold. (Comp. Psalms 138:3.) The LXX. and Vulg., however, followed by many moderns, take it in the sense of scare or dazzle.
For the rest of the description, see Note, Song of Solomon 4:1, seqq.

(8) There are threescore queens.—Presumably a description of Solomon’s harem (from comp. with Song of Solomon 8:11-12), though the numbers are far more sober than in 1 Kings 11:3. Probably the latter marks a later form of the traditions of the grand scale on which everything at the court of the monarch was conducted, and this, though a poetic, is a truer version of the story of his loves. The conjunction of alamôth with concubines, pilageshîm (comp. παλλακή, pellex), decides for translating it puellœ rather than virgines.

(9) My dove . . . is but one.—“While the monarch’s loves are so many, one is mine, my dove, my perfect one: one, the delight of her mother, the darling of her who bore her.” It is impossible not to see in this a eulogy on monogamy, which, in practice, seems always to have been the rule among the Jews, the exceptions lying only with kings and the very rich. The eulogy is made more pronounced by putting an unconscious testimony to the superiority of monogamy into the mouths of the “queens and concubines,” who praise and bless this pattern of a perfect wife.

(10) Who is she.—This verse is supposed to be spoken by the admiring ladies. The paragraph mark in the English Version should rather be at the beginning of the next verse. (Comp.—
“But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!
Arise, fair sun,” &c—Romeo and Juliet.)
But the poet heightens his figure by combining both the great lights of heaven with the dawn, and putting the praise in the mouth of “the meaner beauties of the night,” who feel their own inferiority “when the moon doth rise,” still more before the “all paling” sun.