Gazelles & Warriors in the Song of Songs

The Song of Songs (or Song of Solomon) is like a garden in the desert, lush and unexpected. It has more in common with Egyptian love poems than with other books in the Tanach. It's been elaborately allegorized, interpreted in dazzling multiplicity, and called the holy of holies. It's at least 2,000 years old and still packs a poetic punch.

There are many words and phrases that are unique in the Bible and notoriously hard to understand. Here is verse 3, line 5:

I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem,   

by the gazelles, and by the hinds of the field,

that ye stir not up, nor awake my love,

till he please.

In context, this line doesn't actually seem too strange. The translators are largely consistent here...with the exception of the Septuagint, which balks at swearing by gazelles and hinds (hinds are young female deer). The phrase in question in Hebrew:

בִּצְבָא֔וֹת א֖וֹ בְּאַיְל֣וֹת הַשָּׂדֶ֑ה

Bitz'vaot (by the gazlles) o (or)  b'aylot (by the hinds) hsadeh (of the field)

The Septuagint translates:

ὥρκισα ὑμᾶς θυγατέρες Ιερουσαλημ ἐν ταῖς δυνάμεσιν καὶ ἐν ταῖς ἰσχύσεσιν τοῦ ἀγροῦ ἐὰν ἐγείρητε καὶ ἐξεγείρητε τὴν ἀγάπην ἕως ἂν θελήσῃ

“I have adjured you, o daughters of Jerusalem, by the powers and forces of the field,

Do not stir up or awaken love until it wishes.”

Why does the Septuagint translate “by the powers and forces” rather than “by the gazelles and by the does”?

The translator of the Septuagint knows the words as "gazelles and does" and translates them accordingly in Deuteronomy in describing clean and unclean animals. (Deut 12:15, 12:22, 14:5, 15:22). Closer to our passage, the bride compares her lover to a gazelle leaping on the mountains, and the Greek translates "gazelle:" Songs 2:9, 4:5, 7:3, 8:14,  δορκάδι, deer, gazelle, n.f.; in Songs 2:17, δόρκωνι, roe [deer] n.m.. There are two different Greek words but both are for ruminant herbivores, not “powers and forces.” 

So the translator (no surprise) knew what he was reading. But does swearing by gazelles and deer make any sense?  Clearly other translators, like Jerome, saw this as part of the poem's pastoral vibe. But then again, these animals are used elsewhere in the Songs only as part of a metaphor or simile. Moreover they are known for swiftness, as in 2 Samuel 2:18, “Asahel was as quick on his feet as one of the gazelles in the field.” So, the translator might wonder, why swear by a shy animal that would run away?

But what else might these words mean?  The Hebrew word for gazelle, צְבִי (tz'viy) has a second root meaning “beauty, honor” as in the passages Isaiah 13:19, “Babylon, the most admired of kingdoms” and Jeremiah, 3:19, “a beautiful heritage among the armies of nations", nachalat tsviy tsvaot goyim) נַחֲלַת צְבִי צִבְאוֹת גּוֹיִם.

"Beauty" might work as a swear-by but now we have a better choice.  The clue is in Jeremiah’s wordplay: צְבִי צִבְאוֹת, heritage among the armies: צָבָא, army, host.  Heritage=tsviy, (with plural tsvaot) and armies=tsvaot. These root words for "beauty/heritage" and "army" are homonyms...so Jerome sounds like "inheritance of the infantry," only better.

Adonai Tsvaot is Lord of the Hosts, a frequent appellation of God in the Bible. So in fact the verse sounds like "swear by of-the-Hosts"; and “swear by of-the-hosts” could be a read as a shortened form of God's name used out of respect given the context. If I were an Alexandrian Jew, translating my sacred work for a large audience of intellectuals and--heavens forfend--classicists, I might not want to show Jews swearing by animals. (Clean animals, but still). But now I have another interpretation for my tsvaot.

The Greek for Lord of the Hosts: frequently κύριος τῶν δυνάμεων, kurios ton dunameon, (I Kings 18:15, 2 Kings 3:14, Psalm 24:10). So, δυνάμεσιν dunamesin of the field makes sense. δύναμις dunamis means “power, might, strength.”  And "deer" is similar to a word that means "ram" or "oak" or "leaders"; and in it you can hear "El."  Parallelism is the engine of biblical poetry, and isxus, force/strength is a good parallel for dunamis, power.  Isxus also captures the idea of "leaders."

Now we have a nice compromise: the "powers and force of the field" have a nice pastoral quality connoting the numinous powers of the countryside and for the in-crowd, we're really swearing by Jahweh.

                                                                                                                                                        

Michael Fox, in his wonderful "The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs" (The University of Wisconsin Press, 1985) cites a more scholarly and complete version of this argument: 

The best explanation is that of Gordis (1961:26-28), who argues that צְבָא֔וֹת and אַיְל֣וֹת הַשָּׂדֶ֑ה are circumlocutions for titles of God, the first for צְבָא֖וֹת אֱלֹהֵי, (God of) Hosts, the second for and El Shadday… The author uses these animal names to avoid divine titles in a secular context…We see here the first sign of a tendency, which becomes important in the Talmudic period, to substitute for divine names and titles in oaths various words, sometimes meaningless words such as “by the fish net” and “by the life of summerfruit.” (Fox, 110)

The "El Shadday" comes from the deer and of-the-field, sadeh. 

So what does the poem say:  armies, gazelles or God?  In a poem filled with wordplay, the answer is surely "yes." Gazelles are often used figuratively of young warriors in the ancient Near East (although the Septuagint translators wouldn't have known that) and the warriors of David make an appearance later in the Song. The circumlocutions for God certainly work; and the gazelles and deer are like the maidens of Jerusalem (all are feminine) and fit the lush pastoral setting.

So knowing all this, we come to the next question: is the speaker, the bride, asking the maidens of Jerusalem to swear by a pun?

“How are you going to make it move? It doesn't have a – "

"Be very quiet," advised the duke, "for it goes without saying."

And, sure enough, as soon as they were all quite still, it began to move quickly through the streets, and in a very short time they arrived at the royal palace.”

― Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

I leave it to you, dear reader, to translate.