Song of Solomon 2:12

the flowers appear on the earth The outburst of spring flowers in Palestine is wonderful. Stanley, Sinai and Palestine, p. 139, says: "The hills and valleys … glow with what is peculiar to Palestine, a profusion of wild flowers, daisies, the white flower called the Star of Bethlehem, but especially with a blaze of scarlet flowers of all kinds, chiefly anemones, wild tulips and poppies. Of all the ordinary aspects of the country, this blaze of scarlet colour is perhaps the most peculiar." Cp. also Dr Post, in Hastings" Dict. of the Bible, vol. 11. p. 24.

the time of the singingof birds is come The words of birds, as is indicated by the italics in the A.V., are not in the Hebrew. All it says is that -çth hazzâmîrhas come. Now zâmîrmay mean either -pruning" or -singing," and most of the ancient versions, e.g. LXX, Vulg., Targ., have translated it pruning, though the word does not occur elsewhere in the O.T. with this meaning. But in favour of this translation we have the fact that the various agricultural operations of the year are in Heb. named by words of an exactly similar form, e.g. qâtsîr, the harvest of grain, &c. Further, in Jeremiah 51:33, we have the entirely analogous expression -çth haqqâtsîr= -the time of harvest." It cannot, therefore, be doubted that the translation - the time of pruning" is thoroughly justified. Against it there is the fact that in Song of Solomon 2:13 the vines are in bloom, and they cannot be pruned when they are at that stage. But there is what is called summer pruning, one purpose of which is to help in the formation of the fruit or blossom-buds of fruit trees. This is done while the shoots are yet young and succulent so that they may in most cases be nipped off with the thumb-nail. The time for this would be just before the blooming, and both pruning and blooming would be processes appropriate to spring. For the meaning singing, there is the fact that zâmîroccurs a number of times with the meaning song(e.g. Isaiah 25:5; 2 Samuel 23:1, &c.), but always of human singing. There is no instance of its being used of the singing of birds.

the voice of the turtle is heard in our land The turtle-dove is named here, not as a singing bird, but as a bird of passage which "observes the time of its coming" (Jeremiah 8:7); that is, it unfailingly appears in the spring, and by its voice announces its presence in the now leafy woods where it cannot readily be seen. Tristram says (Nat. Hist. p. 219), "Search the glades and valleys in March, and not a turtle-dove is to be seen. Return at the beginning of April, and clouds of doves are feeding on the clovers of the plain. They stock every tree and thicket. At every step they flutter up from the herbage in front, they perch on every tree and bush, they overspread the whole face of the land, and from every garden, grove, and wooded hill, pour forth their melancholy but soothing ditty unceasingly from early dawn to sunset."