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?”)