Note 24 — INTRODUCTION.

120, B.C. The Book of Wisdom has also been supposed to contain a clue to the interpretation of this Song. The author and the age of the Book are points of great contest. All that can be concluded with any degree of probability is, that the author was an Alexandrian Jew, who lived after the transplanting of the Greek philosophy into Egypt, and that he seems to refer to the oppression of the later Ptolemies.24 In ch. viii. 2, Solomon is represented as speaking to Wisdom; “Her I loved and sought from my youth, I sought to bring her home for my bride, and I became a lover of her beauty.” Because Solomon is here made to speak of Wisdom as his bride, it has been maintained to be an explanation of the Song of Songs, as though the brides were necessarily the same.25 Let any impartial reader peruse the description of Wisdom in the chapter quoted, and that of the bride in the Song of Songs, and he will be convinced that there is no intentional resemblance whatever.