Song of Solomon 5:3

I have put off my coat; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them?

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(3) Coat.—Heb. cutoneth=cetoneth; Gr. χίτων, tunic.

Benson Commentary

Song of Solomon 5:3. I have put off my coat — My day clothes, as persons use to do when they go to rest. How shall I put it on? — It is inconvenient and troublesome to do it at this time. I have washed my feet — Which the eastern people commonly did when they went to bed.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

5:2-8 Churches and believers, by carelessness and security, provoke Christ to withdraw. We ought to notice our spiritual slumbers and distempers. Christ knocks to awaken us, knocks by his word and Spirit, knocks by afflictions and by our consciences; thus, Re 3:20. When we are unmindful of Christ, still he thinks of us. Christ's love to us should engage ours to him, even in the most self-denying instances; and we only can be gainers by it. Careless souls put slights on Jesus Christ. Another could not be sent to open the door. Christ calls to us, but we have no mind, or pretend we have no strength, or we have no time, and think we may be excused. Making excuses is making light of Christ. Those put contempt upon Christ, who cannot find in their hearts to bear a cold blast, or to leave a warm bed for him. See the powerful influences of Divine grace. He put in his hand to unbolt the door, as one weary of waiting. This betokens a work of the Spirit upon the soul. The believer's rising above self-indulgence, seeking by prayer for the consolations of Christ, and to remove every hinderance to communion with him; these actings of the soul are represented by the hands dropping sweet-smelling myrrh upon the handles of the locks. But the Beloved was gone! By absenting himself, Christ will teach his people to value his gracious visits more highly. Observe, the soul still calls Christ her Beloved. Every desertion is not despair. Lord, I believe, though I must say, Lord, help my unbelief. His words melted me, yet, wretch that I was, I made excuses. The smothering and stifling of convictions will be very bitter to think of, when God opens our eyes. The soul went in pursuit of him; not only prayed, but used means, sought him in the ways wherein he used to be found. The watchmen wounded me. Some refer it to those who misapply the word to awakened consciences. The charge to the daughters of Jerusalem, seems to mean the distressed believer's desire of the prayers of the feeblest Christian. Awakened souls are more sensible of Christ's withdrawings than of any other trouble.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

She makes trivial excuses, as one in a dream.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

3. Trivial excuses (Lu 14:18).

coat—rather, the inmost vest, next the skin, taken off before going to bed.

washed … feet—before going to rest, for they had been soiled, from the Eastern custom of wearing sandals, not shoes. Sloth (Lu 11:7) and despondency (De 7:17-19).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

I have put off my coat, my day clothes, as persons use to do when they go to rest.

How shall I put it on? it is inconvenient and troublesome to do it at this time. Thus she tacitly reflects upon the Bridegroom for coming to her so unseasonably, and giving her such disturbance, and puts him off to another time, and excuseth her non-admission of him by her present indisposition, and the difficulty of the thing required of her.

I have washed my feet; which the Eastern people commonly did when they went to bed, partly to cool their feet, and partly to cleanse them from that dust and sweat which they had contracted in the day time by labour and travel, as being used to go barefoot.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

I have put off my coat,.... In order to lie down on her bed at night, and take her ease; meaning her conversation garments, which she had not been careful of to keep, but had betook herself to carnal ease and rest, and was off her watch and guard, Nehemiah 4:23; and being at ease, and free from trouble, affliction, and persecution, was unwilling to arise and go with her beloved, lest she should meet with the same trials and sufferings as before, for the sake of him and his Gospel; which may be greatly the sense of her next words;

how shall I put it on? which suggests an apprehension of difficulty in doing it, it being easier to drop the performance of duty than to take it up again; and shows slothfulness and sluggishness, being loath and not knowing how to bring herself to it; and an aversion of the carnal and fleshly part unto it; yea, as if she thought it was unreasonable in Christ to desire it of her, when it was but her reasonable service; or as if she imagined it was dangerous, and would be detrimental to her rest, and prejudicial to her health;

I have washed my feet; as persons used to do when come off of a journey, and about to go to bed (e), being weary; as she was of spiritual exercises, and of the observance of ordinances and duties, and so betook herself to carnal ease, and from which being called argues,

how shall I defile them? by rising out of bed, and treading on the floor, and going to the door to let her beloved in; as if hearkening to the voice of Christ, obeying his commands, and taking every proper step to enjoy communion with him, would be a defiling her; whereas it was the reverse of these that did it: from the whole it appears, that not only these excuses were idle and frivolous, but sinful; she slighted the means Christ made use of to awaken her, by calling and knocking; she sinned against light and knowledge, sleeping on, when she knew it was the voice of her beloved; she acted a disingenuous part in inviting Christ into his garden, and then presently fell asleep; and then endeavoured to shift the blame from herself, as if she was no ways culpable, but what was desired was either difficult, or unreasonable, or unlawful; she appears guilty of great ingratitude, and discovers the height of folly in preferring her present ease to the company of Christ.

(e) Homer. Odyss. 19. v. 317.

Geneva Study Bible

I have put off my {d} coat; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them?

(d) The spouse confesses her nakedness, and that of herself she has nothing, or seeing that she is once made clean she promises not to defile herself again.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

3. As all commentators remark, the reasons for not opening the door are of a very trifling kind, and such as are insurmountable only in dreams.

my coat] or tunic, a garment, generally of linen, worn next the skin by both men and women. The man’s tunic reached to the knee, the woman’s was longer.

how] Heb. ’çkhâkhâh, found elsewhere in the O.T. only in Esther 8:6. The use of this form has consequently some bearing on the date of the book. Budde remarks in this connexion that all the words occurring in this passage which are not used elsewhere occur in Judaeo-Aramaic.

I have washed my feet] Budde sees in this phrase an indication that the Shulammite was accustomed to go barefoot; but all wearers of sandals would have to wash their feet as much as those who might go barefoot.

defile them] soil them, Heb. ’ătanněphçm, found here only in O.T., but occurring in the Heb. of the Mishnah and in the Talmud. The suffix for them here is masculine, though the word for feet is feminine. This is one of the grammatical inaccuracies which are frequent in this book, but this particular irregularity is not uncommon elsewhere.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 3. - I have put off my coat; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them? Evidently the meaning is, "I have retired to rest; do not disturb me." She is lying in bed. The cuttoneth, or χτιών, was the linen garment worn next the body - from cathan, "linen." The Arabic kutun is "cotton;" hence the French coton, "calico, or cotton" shift. Shulamith represents herself as failing in love, not meeting the condescension and affection of her lover as she should. Sloth, reluctance, ease, keep her back. "Woe to them that are at ease in Zion!" The scene is, of course, only ideally true; it is not meant to be a description of an actual occurrence. Fancy in dreams stirs up the real nature, though it also disturbs it. Shulamith has forsaken her first love. She relates it with sorrow, but not with despondency. She comes to herself again, and her repentance and restoration are the occasion for pouring out the fulness of her affection, which had never really changed, though it has been checked and restrained by self-indulgence. How true a picture both of the individual soul and of the Church in its decline! "Leave me to myself; let me lie at ease in my luxury and my smooth, conventional ways and self-flattering deceit." Song of Solomon 5:3

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

3 I have put off my dress,

   How shall I put it on again?

   I have washed my feet,

   How shall I defile them again?

She now lies unclothed in bed. כּתּנת is the χιτών worn next to the body, from כתן, linen (diff. from the Arab. ḳuṭun, cotton, whence French coton, calico equals cotton-stuff). She had already washed her feet, from which it is supposed that she had throughout the day walked barefooted, - how (איככה, how? both times with the tone on the penult.;

(Note: That it has the tone on the penult., like כּכה, e.g., Sol 5:9, is in conformity with the paragog. nature of .ה The tone, however, when the following word in close connection begins with ,א goes to the ult., Esther 7:6. That this does not occur in איך אל, is explained from the circumstance that the word has the disjunctive Tifcha. But why not in איך אט? I think it is for the sake of the rhythm. Pinsker, Einl. p. 184, seeks to change the accentuation in order that the penult. accent might be on the second איך, but that is not necessary. Cf. Psalm 137:7.)

cf. איכה, where ? Sol 1:7) should she again put on her dress, which she had already put off and laid aside (פּשׁט)? why should she soil (אטנּפם, relating to the fem. רגלי, for אטנפן) again her feet, that had been washed clean? Shulamith is here brought back to the customs as well as to the home of her earlier rural life; but although she should thus have been enabled to reach a deeper and more lively consciousness of the grace of the king, who stoops to an equality with her, yet she does not meet his love with an equal requital. She is unwilling for his sake to put herself to trouble, or to do that which is disagreeable to her. It cannot be thought that such an interview actually took place; and yet what she here dreamed had not only inward reality, but also full reality. For in a dream, that which is natural to us or that which belongs to our very constitution becomes manifest, and much that is kept down during our waking hours by the power of the will, by a sense of propriety, and by the activities of life, comes to light during sleep; for fancy then stirs up the ground of our nature and brings it forth in dreams, and thus exposes us to ourselves in such a way as oftentimes, when we waken, to make us ashamed and alarmed. Thus it was with Shulamith. In the dream it was inwardly manifest that she had lost her first love. She relates it with sorrow; for scarcely had she rejected him with these unworthy deceitful pretences when she comes to herself again.