Charles Ellicott Commentary Song Of Solomon 1:4

"Draw me; we will run after thee: The king hath brought me into his chambers; We will be glad and rejoice in thee; We will make mention of thy love more than of wine: Rightly do they love thee." — Song Of Solomon 1:4 (ASV)

The king hath brought me. —The dramatic theory of the poem (see Excursus II.) has been largely 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,” etc., is—in accordance with a common Hebrew idiom where a hypothesis is expressed by a simple perfect or future without a particle (Proverbs 25:16)—to be understood, “Even should the king have brought me into his chambers, yet our transport and our joys are for you alone; even then we would recall your caresses, those caresses which are sweeter than wine.”

The upright love thee. —The marginal reading is they love thee uprightly. The Hebrew word, meysharîm, is used in other places either (1) in the abstract, as “righteousness,” etc., Psalms 17:2; Psalms 99:4; Proverbs 8:6 (so the Septuagint 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 Authorized Version follows the Vulgate, Recti diligunt te, and is to be preferred, as bringing the clause into parallelism with the concluding clause of Song of Solomon 1:3: “You who have won the love of all maidens by your personal attractions, have gained that of the sincere and upright ones by your character and your great name.”