Commento su Cantico dei cantici 1:5

I am black but comely, etc. You, my friends, let me not be light in your eyes. Even if my husband has left me because of my blackness, for I am black because of the tanning of the sun, but I am comely with the shape of beautiful limbs. Though I am black like the tents of Keidar, which are blackened because of the rains, for they are always spread out in the wilderness, I am easily cleansed to become like the curtains of Shlomo. The allegory is: The congregation of Yisroel says to the nations, “I am black in my deeds [i.e., sins], but I am comely by virtue of the deeds of my ancestors, and even some of my deeds are comely. If I bear the iniquity of the [golden] calf,²⁰According to Targum the faces of the Bnei Yisroel actually turned black like the skin of the Cushites, when they sinned with the golden calf. After they repented the blackness went away. I can offset it with the merit of the acceptance of the Torah.” [Scripture] calls the nations, “the daughters בְּנוֹת of Yerusholayim” because it is destined to become the metropolis for them all, as Yechezkeil prophesied, “I will give them to you as surrounding villages לְבָנוֹת,”²¹Yechezkeil 16:61. and similarly, “Ekron, and its suburbs וּבְנֹתֶיהָ.”²²Yehoshua 15:45.

These are the shekhinah’s words, who descended with our father Jacob to Egypt, as it is written: “I will descend with you to Egypt” [Gen. 46:4]. She participated in Israel’s exile, as our sages state: “When they were exiled to Egypt, the Presence was with them, as it states: ‘Was I not exiled with you with the house of your fathers when you were in Egypt?’ [I Sam. 2:27].”⁴⁷In Tractate Megillah 29a. She complains and thunders forth about her being in exile, traveling darkened with the angelic forces apportioned to the world’s nations. She says, I am dark: Swarthy from exile. If I am not lovely like the pavilions of Solomon: The name of the Holy One, blessed be He,⁴⁸“Solomon” here refers to God, specifically to tiferet. like the essence of the heavens in its purity. And so it says: “He stretches the heavens like a tent” [Ps. 104:2].⁴⁹The rest of the sefirotic world is pure and lovely; only shekhinah is “darkened” because of her involvement with the lower world.