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What Carey Walsh calls the “jumpiness” of the Song (Exquisite Desire) has sometimes been taken as evidence of multiple authorship or sloppy editing. Walsh claims it is deliberate, a literary depiction of the desire that is the content of the Song.

It is, as Walsh says, impossible to keep up with the lovers: “They are at home, out in the street, alone, together, in a pasture, atop a mountain, talking with others, in Jerusalem, near En-Gedi, talking to themselves, in a vineyard – all seemingly in a matter of seconds.” Just how life feels when we are full of desire: “Time speeds up and slows without your consent, locations shift, details are lustfully ignored under desire’s influence. . . . desire is never a clear-cut progressive journey, and the abrupt scene and voice changes testify to that truth.”

Desire’s power is so great that it is even capable of tampering “with the text that has it as its central theme.”

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, July 27, 2010 at 2:30 pm

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Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Desire and text

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Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Desire and text

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