Note 37 — INTRODUCTION.

The precedent of the Talmud in taking the beloved as the Lord, and the loved one as the Congregation of Israel, and in explaining the text in such a manner as to make it square with her doings, has quite prepared us for the Chaldee exposition, the author of which most probably was himself one of the later Talmudists. How could the paraphrast do otherwise? “Are not the words of the sages more excellent than even the wine of the Law?”37 “Is not he who transgresses the words of the scribes more guilty than he who transgresses the words of the Law?”38 Having, therefore, been once settled by the sages that this Song describes the doings and sufferings of Israel, it only remained for the expositors to apply their exegetical canons, viz.: of transposing, changing, or omitting letters; explaining words by others of a similar sound; making each letter of a word begin another word; reducing an expression to its numerical value, and explaining the text accordingly, &c. &c., in order to palm upon this book, in a consecutive order, the remarkable events in connection with the history of the Jews.