Komentarz do Pieśń nad pieśniami 4:4

Your neck is like the Tower of Dovid. An erect posture is a sign of beauty in a woman. The allegorical meaning is: “Like the Tower of Dovid,” i.e., the fortress of Tzion, is a place of strength, stronghold, and a fortress. So is “your neck,” i.e., the Chamber of Hewn Stone, which was Yisroel’s strength and fortification, and that tower was built as a model of beauty, so that everyone should look at it, to study its forms and the beauty of its architecture. The word תַּלְפִּיּוֹת is of the grammatical structure of, “He teaches us מַלְּפֵנוּ more than the beasts of the earth,”²⁷Whose radicals are respectively רמה and בנה. and the first tav in תַּלְפִּיּוֹת is [a prefix] like the first tav in תַּרְמִית [deceit] and תַּבְנִית [construction].²⁸Yirmiyahu 51:11.

A thousand shields are hung upon it. It was the custom of the princes to hang their shields and their quivers on the walls of the towers.

Quivers. Quivers in which they place arrows, as in, “Prepare the arrows, fill the quivers הַשְּׁלָטִים,”²⁹I.e. Teaching [אלף] the Torah acts as a shield [המגן]. and it corresponds to the Chamber of Hewn Stone, from where instruction goes forth, for the Torah act as a shield to Yisroel.³⁰I Divrei Hayamim 16:15. It is also possible to render that אֶלֶף הַמָּגֵן is the same as מָגֵן הָאֶלֶף, the shield of the thousand, alluding to, “the word [of the Torah] He commanded for a thousand generations.”³¹Alternatively, שלטי are shields. (Metzudas Tzion)

All the quivers of the mighty. We find that disciples are described as arrows and quivers,³²The shields represent the great scholars of each generation. (Gra) as the matter is stated, “Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of youth. Fortunate is the man who has filled his quiver with them.”³³Tehillim 127:4-5.