From Behind the Veil: The Epistles of John

Deep Exegesis:The Mystery of Reading Scripture

Jane Austen
(A Biography)

Solomon Among the Postmoderns

The Baptized Body

1 & 2 Kings
Brazos Theological Commentary

The Promise Of His Appearing: An Exposition Of Second Peter

A Great Mystery: Fourteen Wedding Sermons

Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, And Hope In Western Literature

Miniatures & Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen

The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism

A Son To Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel

Against Christianity

From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution

Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy

Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper

A House For My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament

Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature

Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide To Six Shakespeare Plays

Wise Words: Family Stories That Bring the Proverbs to Life

The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church

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Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Need for allegory

In an 1837 exchange on the interpretation of the Song of Songs in The Congregational Magazine, one James Bennett argued that the Song had to be interpreted allegorically because a literal interpretation made the woman sound immodest: “What writer, with the feelings, or the reason, of a man, would begin a poem on his fair one by describing her as courting him?”  This is not a cultural bias, he insisted: “It would be more abhorrent from the secluded, submissive character of Eastern brides to ask a gentlemen to come and kiss them, than it would be from the dignified confidence of British women.”

This is not cultural but natural: “Though men like to court, they do not like to be courted; and while they think it cruel to be rejected when they could, they without mercy reject her who courts them. . . . No man, therefore, in his senses, would think to compliment his fair one by writing of her, to her, as if she had lost her retiring modest, her female dignity, and degraded herself by doing that for which every man would despise her . . . . Till fishes mount to sing with larks on the shady boughs, and nightingales dive to the ocean’s depths to court the whales, no man, of any age, of any clime, of any rank, can be supposed to write ordinary love-songs in such a style.”

Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Turn from allegory

Stephen D. Moore (in an essay on “The Song of Songs in the History of Sexuality”) notes that the shift from allegorical to literal/sexual interpretations of the Song is connected to shifts in understanding of male love.  Patristic and medieval commentators on the Song easily took the feminine voice of the Song as the voice of their own usually male souls, with results that often leave modern reader queasy.  Moore puts it in a typically provocative form, but the point stands: The allegorical interpretation thrusts into plain view a relationship ordinarily closeted.  It ‘outs’ the male believer.”

Nineteenth and twentieth-century commentators, working from the sharply defined sexual roles of the Victorian era, recoil against the confusions of the allegorical method, and turn the Song into a celebration of heterosexual love.  Moore nicely shows, however, that this quickly turns into a new allegorism of its own, as each metaphor is unpacked as a euphemism: “these ‘new’ allegorists give a sexual reading even to details that are ostensibly nonsexual.”

Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Love’s power

Exum notes that for the lovers of the Song “nature in all its glory reflects and participates in their mutual delight.  And everything is experienced more intensely, from the thrill of watching a lavishly outfitted palanquin approach from a distance . . . to the pleasure derived from the intimate contemplation of the beloved’s attributes . . . , from the anguish caused by the beloved’s absence, to the joys found in an exotic pleasure garden fit for a king.”

Not just for the lovers of the Song, of course.  For those who are in love, everything is tinted by that love.  If it doesn’t arouse anticipation at the lover’s presence or melancholy at his or her absence, it still is something to share, its pleasure doubled.

That must be a figure of what it’s like to love Yahweh your God with your whole heart.

Bible - OT - Song of Songs: The Song’s Imagery, again

Yesterday, I noted Exum’s observation that the Song’s imagery is not straightforward visual, but describes the experiences of the lovers.  Exum is drawing on a 1967 JBL article by Richard Soulen, who says, “It should be obvious that comparisons of the female body to jewels (7 1), bowls of wine (7 2a), heaps of wheat (7 2b), and so on, are not intended to aid a mental image of the maiden’s appearance or merely to draw parallels to her qualities; they, and others like them, seek to overwhelm and delight the hearer, just as the suitor is overwhelmed and delighted in her presence. Likewise, the point of comparison between the maiden’s hair and a flock of goats on the slopes of Gilead (4 ?) has nothing to do with Egyptian sculpture, color, motion, or with the quality of either the hair or the flock; it lies simply in the emotional congruity existing between two beautiful yet otherwise disparate sights.”  The images work because they are Eliot-esque “objective correlatives.”

More needs to be said, though.  The specific images are set within a biblical framework and system of images.  And, besides, as Michael Fox (The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs) points out, there has to be some sensory feature connecting the image with the referent if the metaphors are to function as metaphors at all:

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Bible - OT - Song of Songs: The Song’s Imagery

Commentators often resort to some embarrassing expedients in trying to explain the bodily imagery of the Song of Songs.  The assumption is that the images are mainly visual.  Breasts are like fawns grazing among the lilies?  Well, the fawns must be bent over, their backs rounded and their little tails sticking erect like nipples.

Exum wisely demurs.  The point is not to describe either lover visually but “to convey to the reader the emotions the speaker experiences upon beholding the loved one.”  The metaphors, she goes on to suggest, are also part of a process of distancing and construction, a process that gives non-exchangeable meaning to each body part.  The different descriptions also reveal sexual ideals: The man, described in third-person by the woman, is statue-like, hard, made of stone and metal; the woman is soft, organic, full of fragrance and fruit.  In any case, it’s the associations of the imagery, not primarily or only their visual appearance, that’s important.

Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Sight and speech

In her commentary on the Song of Songs (Old Testament Library), Cheryl Exum notes the finely rendered sexual differences between the way the man and woman of the Song, evident in the different ways they express their desires for one another.  The woman tells stories: “They are the only parts of the Song that display narrative development or what one might call a plot.”  But the man doesn’t tell stories; rather, he “look[s] at her and tell[s] what he sees and how it affects him.”  In short, the man majors on sight, the woman on speech; the man gazes and records, but “the woman constructs the man primarily through the voice.”  Strikingly, she quotes him more than once; he never quotes her.

Exum characterizes the difference as between lovesickness and awe.  The woman describes herself as lovesick when her lover is present, and then again when he is absent: “The woman tells others, the women of Jerusalem, what love does to her.”  Both parts of that sentence are important: The woman confides in others in a way the man never does, and she is referring not to the affect that her lover has so much as the effect that love has.  The man however tells the woman directly “what she does to him.”  He describes her effect not as lovesickness but as conquest: “Turn your eyes away,” he pleads, “for they overwhelm me.”  Exum comments: “As a man, he is used to feeling in control.  But love makes him feel as though he is losing control.  He is powerless to resist; his autonomy is challenged.”  In short, “He is awestruck; she is lovesick.”

And then we allegorize?

Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Solomon’s crown

Song of Songs 3:11 speaks of the crowning of Solomon on the day of his wedding.  Most commentators refer to the Orthodox practice of crowning grooms and brides as new Adams and Eves.  I’ve got no problem with that, but I suspect there’s something else.

First, as Ernst Wendland says in an article (forthcoming in Lovely, Lively Lyrics: Selected Studies in Biblical Hebrew Verse [Dallas: SIL Academic], generously supplied by the author) there are many verbal links between the appearance of Solomon’s palanquin (3:6-11) and the description of the bride in 4:1-7.  That the palanquin and the bride are the same is also suggested by the parallel of 3:6 and 8:5.  Wendland notes that these two questions are in structurally similar locations in the poem – each at the climax of its respective half of the Song.  8:5 is explicitly a question about the bride, perhaps so too 3:6.

Second, beyond the verbal links that Wendland notices, there are structural indications that the two sections form sub-portions of a larger unit.  At least there seems to be an inclusio around the two sections:

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Bible - OT - Song of Songs: My dove

The beloved is a dove.  Why a dove?

We can answer by taking a detour through temple theology.  The temple is made according to the pattern of the mountain, reflecting the beauty of Yahweh’s original glory.  The temple is glory come to earth.,

And the glory of Yahweh is like a bird fluttering over Israel (Deuteronomy 32:11), like a bird hovering over the formless emptiness of the original creation (Genesis 1:2).

That glory is the Spirit, who comes to Jesus like a dove.

So: The beloved is the temple, made in the image of the Spirit-dove.

Hence: “My dove.”

Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Seal on the heart

Keel interprets the “seal” on the heart of the lover as the woman herself (”set me as a seal”) and connects this to ANE beliefs about death-warding and life-giving amulets.  The bride is the one who stands between death and chaos and her lover.

That’s a stretch, but he provides some biblical support: “Whether it is the cunning Michal (1 Sam. 19:9-17); the determined Abigail, who bets everything on one card (1 Samuel 25); the wise woman of Maacah, who saves her city (2 Sam. 20:14-22); or the heroic Rizpah, who day and night keeps the vultures and the hyenas away from the bodies of her sons until they can be buried (2 Sam 21:8-14) – again and again it is women whose love stands between death and their husbands, their sons, their city, and their people (cf. Esther).”  Men fight death too, but often attempt “to defeat the weapons of death with the weapons of death.”

Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Liberated tyranny

Robert Jenson notes in his comments on the Song of Songs 8:1-2 that the lovers long for public recognition of their love.  The bride wants to be able to kiss her lover in the street like a brother.  Jensonn contrasts this to the contemporary claim that sex is a purely private matter between consenting adults.

For the Song, “however private the act of sexual union may indeed be, its existence and character is vital public information. . . . Where sexual union is conceived of as ‘private’ and so is legally unregulated and just so legally powerless, community can be held together only by arbitrary fiat and, if it comes to that, by force.  Sexual ‘liberation’ and political tyranny are but two sides of one coin.”

Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Structure of the Song

Richard Davidson’s structural analysis of the Song is particularly helpful in showing the coherence of the last section of the Song, often viewed as a collection of disconnected fragments.  8:5-14 matches 1:2-2:7 in that both are arranged in seven speeches, alternating between female and male voices.

More strikingly, Davidson shows, very persuasively, that these two sections form a chiastically arranged inclusion around the entire poem, as follows:

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Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Structure of Song of Songs

Gordon Johnston’s aforementioned article reviews and evaluates a number of structural analyses of the Song.  He doesn’t find any of the following persuasive, but they provide some helpful pointers to the shape of the Song.

The Targum and many Jewish commentators see the Song as an allegorical poem about Israel’s history, a view that Johnston helpfully summarizes:

1. Prologue: Opening Praise (1:2–4)

2. Exodus, Sinai, Conquest (1:5–3:6)

3. Early Monarchy and Building of the Temple (3:7–5:1)

4. Israel’s Apostasy, Babylonian Exile, Repentance (5:2–6:1)

5. Second Temple Period up to the Diaspora (6:2–7:14)

6. Eschatological Events and Messianic Kingdom (8:1–10)

7. Epilogue: Concluding Prayer (8:11–14)

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Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Solomon and Egyptian Love Lyrics

In a 2006 Vetus Testamentum article, Hector Patmore takes aim at Michael Fox’s claims about strong parallels between the Song of Songs and Egyptian love lyrics.  He points out that even Fox recognizes significant differences: Egyptian love poems are monologues not dialogs (reminds me of Don Quixote, where the whining courtly lover is interrupted by the “cruel” shepherdess who doesn’t see why she’s villainized for not loving him back); the girls in Egyptian poems are passively waiting, not seeking  as in the Song; the Song’s wasfs are not straightforward physical descriptions, but metaphorical and allegorical; the Song focuses more on the external public emotions of the lovers than the twists and turns of their internal states.  The themes that Fox finds in common between the Song and Egyptian lyrics, moreover, are too generic to be useful.  Patmore shows that the same themes show up in virtually any love poetry from any age.  Was Solomon influenced by Marvell or Robert Burns?

Despite the weaknesses of Fox’s work, Patmore complaints that he has not found “a single recent scholar who has deemed it necessary to present the case in support of the secular-sexual reading other than by reference to Fox.”

Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Rival Lovers?

Gordon H. Johnston of Dallas Theological Seminary has some devastating criticisms (in an article in Bibliotheca Sacra) of the still-popular notion that the Song of Songs represents a love triangle involving Solomon tangling with a young shepherd over a beautiful shepherdess.  He argues that ”All three-character versions play with smoke and mirrors to create the illusion of a love triangle. Nowhere does the Song have a poem in which more than two main characters appear or speak. The only direct mention of a shepherd figure occurs in 1:7–8, but this is hardly adequate to create a full-fledged character around whom to reconstruct an elaborate dramatic love triangle. Many speeches that are most naturally read as uttered by Solomon must be assigned to his alleged rival; otherwise the so-called “shepherd-lover” would have no more than one verse of speech.”

This approach turns “many of the Canticle’s most beautiful lyrics into little more than seedy pick-up lines,” and since there is no obvious way to distinguish the voice of “Solomon” (villain) from the voice of the “shepherd” (hero), “evaluation of male speeches becomes arbitrary.”  Depending on the assignment of speaker, a single speech can be interpreted as “ardent and admiring” or as “leering and manipulative.”

Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Old to New

Song of Songs 7:11-12 contains a neat little allegory of redemptive history.  It begins with an invitation from the bride to the lover to “lodge the night” in the field.  The NASB’s “in the villages” in 7:11 might be translated “in the coverings,” since the Hebrew uses a form of the word kaphar.  To spend the night under coverings is to live through the Old Covenant.

But the morning invitation of verse 12 is an invitation to go out into the sunlight, into spring, out from under the covers, to see the vines budding and blossoms opening, and to give and to receive love.  Morning brings a return to the garden, where Mary speaks with the risen Gardener.

Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Living soul

Yahweh breathed into Adam’s nostrils and he became a living soul.

According to the Song, it’s the fruity breath of the beloved that enlivens the lover (7:8).  Keel notes that apples were considered an aphrodisiac in the ancient world.

Soul is desire in Scripture.  Having received the breath of life from Yahweh, Adam became a living soul – that is to say, a hungry and thirsty soul.  But when he saw Eve, he came alive in a new way, his soul was renewed.  (Dante wasn’t so far off!)

And then, as I believe I’ve written before, you have the Hebrew pun on “fragrance” (re-ach) and “spirit” (ruach).  The fragrance of the beloved’s breath is, as it were, life-giving spirit.

Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Conquest

Song of Songs 7 contains a number of references to the conquest.    The bride’s eyes are like “pools in Heshbon” (7:4), and Heshbon is the capital city of Sihon of the Amorites (Numbers 21:26), who was one of the first kings conquered by the Hebrews as they came to the Transjordan.  The bride is a tree with “clusters” from the vine (Song of Songs 7:7-8; eshcol), recalling the clusters gathered from the land, so huge that the place got named “Eshcol” (Numbers 13:23).  That the beloved is a palm tree takes us back to Exodus 15:27, not to mention Jericho the “city of palms” (Judges 3:13).

The bride is the land.  The lover is delighting in the land as Israel was supposed to delight in it, as Yahweh delighted in it.

This might help us with “pools of Heshbon.”

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Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Climbing trees

The romantic approach in the Song of Songs mimics the liturgical approach of Bride Israel to her Husband in sacrificial worship.  She is spiced and fragrant, so the King can delight in her aroma.  He inspects her and finds her “flawless” (4:7), and draws her near to taste her (4:10-11), draws her near to the garden to eat and drink (5:1).  That is the sequence of sacrifice: A flawless animal is ishshah or “bridal food,” as James Jordan has noted; the animal is turned to fragrant smoke as food for Yahweh.

But there’s another sacrificial sequence going on in the Song as well.

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Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Eucharistic bride

The bride’s navel is full of “mixed” or “spiced wine.”  Her belly is like a heap of wheat among the lotuses.  That is, she is the land of wheat and vineyards, she is the Eucharistic bride who never lacks bread and wine.  In loving her, the bridegroom feeds on her.

Then we allegorize, and the bride is the church and the lover is Christ and Christ is feeding on the bride’s Eucharistic banquet rather than the opposite.  Can we say this?  Can we say that the Eucharistic feast is in fact a mutual banquet, that in the feast of love between Christ and His bride, both feed on each other?

It seems we must, for they are one flesh.  It is a great mystery, but we speak of Christ and the church.

Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Like a Pillar

“Your belly is a heap of wheat surrounded by lotuses,” says the lover in Song of Songs 7:3.  Shortly (7:7), he will change the image to say that the beloved is a palm tree that he wishes to climb to gather the clusters that are his beloved’s breasts.

Much of this imagery is tied to the temple, and particularly to the pillars Jachin and Boaz at the temple entrance.  The pillars’ capitals are “lily deign” (or “lotus,” shushan, root of “Susan”; 1 Kings 7:19), they have clusters of pomegranates (1 Kings 7:18, 20), and the pillars have “bellies” (beten, 1 Kings 7:20; the same word used in Song of Songs 7:3).  ”Belly” often means womb, so the NASB’s “rounded projection” may be a decent translation of beten. It may imply that these pillars are not only bride, but mothers.

Hence:

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