סוּסָה

From the study of Song of Songs 1:9

Range of meaning

A mare, female horse. This feminine form appears only here in the Hebrew Bible. The masculine sus (horse, often stallion) is common and is tied mostly to war, chariotry, royal power and foreign (especially Egyptian) wealth. Horses were not farm animals in Israel. Plough and burden work went to oxen and donkeys.

Against the English

BSB, ESV and WEB give a single animal ('mare', 'steed'). KJV 'a company of horses' makes it a group, following the Latin Vulgate. NLT turns the image into its supposed effect ('as exciting… as a mare among Pharaoh's stallions'). YLT 'my joyous one' takes the word from a different root, sus 'to rejoice', a reading few scholars accept.

How it drifted

The KJV's collective rendering comes from the Vulgate's equitatui meo ('to my cavalry'). Modern readers may also hear 'horse' as a homely or comic thing to call a woman. In the ancient world it was a compliment.

Used elsewhere in the period

The Septuagint (Greek) has tē hippō mou, 'to my mare' (feminine article). Greek love poetry uses the same kind of image: Theocritus (Idyll 18) says Helen adorns Sparta as a Thessalian horse adorns a chariot, and Anacreon addresses a girl as a 'Thracian filly'. An Egyptian tomb inscription of the officer Amenemhab, from Thutmose III's campaigns (15th century BC), tells how the prince of Kadesh released a mare among the Egyptian chariot horses to throw them into confusion, and Amenemhab chased it down and killed it.