18.  This song is not a dramatic representation, in which the action steadily advances to the end, but a series of descriptive pictures, the great theme of which is the separation of the bride from her beloved—­the heavenly Bridegroom—­for her sins, and her reunion with him by repentance.  In the spiritual application of its rich and gorgeous imagery we should confine ourselves to the main scope, rather than dwell on particulars.  Thus the fruitfulness of the church is set forth under the image of a garden filled with spices and precious fruits.  But we are not to seek for a hidden meaning in each particular spice or fruit—­the saffron, the spikenard, the myrrh, the pomegranate, the apple, the nut; and the same is true with respect to the descriptions of the bride and bridegroom with which the book abounds.

The book has always constituted a part of the Hebrew canon.

The language of this book is pure and elegant, with all the freshness and energy of the best age of Hebrew poetry.  Its most striking peculiarity is the uniform use (except once in the title) of the abbreviated form of the relative pronoun as a prefix—­shekkullam for asher kullam; shehammelek for asher hammelek, etc.—­which is manifestly a dialectic peculiarity of the living Hebrew adopted by Solomon for the purpose of giving to his song a unique costume.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE GREATER PROPHETS.

1.  We have already seen (Chap. 15, Nos. 11 and 12) that from Moses to Samuel the appearances of prophets were infrequent; that with Samuel and the prophetical school established by him there began a new era, in which the prophets were recognized as a distinct order of men in the Theocracy; and that the age of written prophecy did not begin till about the reign of Uzziah, some three centuries after Samuel.  The Jewish division of the latter prophets—­prophets in the more restricted sense of the word—­into the greater, including Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, chronologically arranged; and the less, or twelve Minor Prophets, arranged also, in all probability, according to their view of their order in time, has also been explained.  Chap. 13, No. 4.  Respecting the nature of prophecy and the principles upon which it is to be interpreted, much remains to be said in another place.  In the present connection, a brief account will be given of the place which the prophets held in the Theocracy, followed by a notice, in this and the following chapter, of the separate books of prophecy belonging to the Hebrew canon, according to the order in our English version, Daniel being reckoned with the greater prophets, Lamentations considered as an appendix to Jeremiah, and the minor prophets arranged by themselves.