Charles Ellicott Commentary Song Of Solomon 6:4

"Thou art fair, O my love, as Tirzah, Comely as Jerusalem, Terrible as an army with banners." — Song Of Solomon 6:4 (ASV)

Beautiful ... as Tirzah. There is no sufficient reason for using Tirzah alongside Jerusalem in this comparison except that they were both capitals, one of the northern and 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, for some unexplained reason, moved the seat of his government first to Penuel, on the other side of the Jordan, and then to Tirzah, formerly the seat of a minor 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 east of Samaria. Tirzah remained the capital only until the reign of Omri but came into notice again as the scene of Menahem’s conspiracy against Shallum (2 Kings 15:14–16). The Septuagint translates Tirzah as εὐδοκία, and the Vulgate as suavis; the ancient versions generally adopt this approach, as Dr. Ginsburg thinks, to avoid mentioning the two capitals, because this argued against Solomonic authorship.

As Jerusalem. See Lamentations 2:15. Regarding the idea involved in a comparison so strange to us, we notice that this author is especially fond of finding a resemblance between his beloved 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 as 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 and following).

An army with banners. Hebrew: nidgalôth, participle of the niphal conjugation, meaning “bannered.” (Compare:

“And what are cheeks, but ensigns oft,
That wave hot youth to fields of blood?”)