The king hath brought me. — The dramatic theory of the poem (see Excursus II.) has been in a great measure built up on interpretations given to this verse. We understand it as a repetition, in another form, of the protestation of love made in Song of Solomon 1:1-3. Like them, it forms a stanza of five lines. The clause, “the king hath brought,” &c, is — in accordance with a common Hebrew idiom, where an hypothesis is expressed by a simple perfect or future without a particle (comp. Proverbs 22:29; Proverbs 25:16) — to be understood, “Even should the king have brought me into his chambers, yet our transport and our joys are for thee alone; even then we would recall thy caresses, those caresses which are sweeter than wine.”
The upright love thee. — Marg., they love thee uprightly; Heb., meysharîm, used in other places either (1) in the abstract, “righteousness,” &c, Psalms 17:2; Psalms 99:4; Proverbs 8:6 (so LXX. here); or (2) adverbially, Psalms 58:2; Psalms 75:3 (and Song of Solomon 7:9 below; but there the Lamed prefixed fixes the adverbial use). The Authorised Version follows the Vulg., Recti diligunt te, and is to be preferred, as bringing the clause into parallelism with the concluding clause of Song of Solomon 1:3 : “Thou who hast won the love of all maidens by thy personal attractions, hast gained that of the sincere and upright ones by thy character and thy great name.”