with whom she is ultimately reunited. Other interpreters see Solomon as the sole male in the poem and treat the Song as a nuptial poem celebrating a royal wedding. Still others identify only the shepherd-lover in the poem and understand the Song as a celebration of the love he shared with his beloved. This is the reading followed in this Commentary. The first view founders on the difficulty of separating the male speakers on the basis of the text itself; some other criteria must be assumed. Seerveld’s