The Four: A Survey of the Gospels

Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom

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 - Isaiah Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Inverted Blason

Borrowing from the Song of Songs, Isaiah describes Judah the Bride from head to foot.  He moves from head to heart to foot and back to head (1:5-6).  Four body parts are mentioned (3 different, with “head” used twice).  He is inspecting Judah to the four corners.

Instead of a beautiful and seductive bride, though, she has become filled with blemishes and oozing sores.  The four body parts are matched by the fourfold description of her illness: wounds, bruises, puetrefying, sores (v. 6).

Judah has become completely unsound.  The word is metom, and related to the root tamam, “to be complete.”  She is imperfect, full of blemishes, and, unlike the Bride of the Song, wholly unsuitable as bridal food for Yahweh.

Bible - OT - Song of Songs: God and Eros, again

Jim Rogers of Texas A&M writes in response to my post about God and Eros (the rest of this post is from Jim):

Re: your question, “What assumptions about sex are behind the common opinion that the Song is only an erotic poem, only a celebration of human sexuality and marriage, full stop?”

I think a part of the answer is this: Commentators (and many Christians more generally) come to the other parts of Scripture dealing with sex with materialist/anthrocentric assumptions, so why wouldn’t they do so also for the Song?

For example, we read Gn 2.24 as pertaining primarily to the type and not, first, to the antitype. But Paul doesn’t:

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Bible - OT - Song of Songs: God and Eros

The erotic intensity of the Song is, these days, an argument against allegorizing.  Walsh rightly argues the opposite: “Desire for an absent lover pulsates throughout eight chapters in a heady mixture of glee, frustration, exhaustion, and surrender.  Experientially, readers would be able to relate to these descriptions with the desires they themselves harbor for love, harvests, or the most absent object of all, God.  In this biblical thirst for otherness, the supernatural other cannot help but be recalled, if only as a phantom memory. . . . A Song devoted to the impassioned longing for an absent lover . . . cannot help but resonate with any latest desire a reader of the Bible feels for God.”

Which raises a question: What assumptions about sex are behind the common opinion that the Song is only an erotic poem, only a celebration of human sexuality and marriage, full stop?  (Tremper Longman: “There is absolutely nothing in the Song of Songs itself that hints of a meaning different from the sexual meaning.”)  When commentators express such opinions, are they already implicitly assuming a materialist view of sexuality?  Are they coming to the text with a presupposition that sex has no inherent transcendent meaning?  To put it the other way round: Doesn’t sex itself hint at a meaning different from the sexual meaning?

Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Desire and text

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.”

Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Incarnate voice

Song of Songs 5:2 (as Albert Cook points out in The Root of the Thing) says, “the voice of dodi knocking,” implying that the voice itself has become personified and seeks entry to the bride’s chamber.

Then we allegorize, in light of Revelation 3:20, where it is Jesus who knocks at the door of the church at Laodicea.  That too is the voice of the beloved knocking, for Jesus is the incarnate voice of Yahweh, the incarnation of the voice that spoke creation, that shakes the cedars, that resounds like the thunder and the waterfall.

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

In response to the overview of the Song of Songs that I proposed a few days ago, James Jordan suggests the following, more compressed, scheme:

1. Israel in bondage, longing for her sleeping Lord to awake, 1:2-2:7.

2. Yahweh comes and calls Israel to the springtime, 2:8-17.

3. Yahweh’s absence = Yahweh’s withdrawal from Israel because of Israel’s grumblings, 3:1-4.

4. The construction of the tabernacle and the beginning of Israel’s love-feasts with Yahweh, 3:6-5:1.

5. Israel’s rejection of Yahweh and Yahweh’s withdrawal during the time of the judges; Yahweh’s eventual return and re-covenanting, 5:2-6:3.

6. Yahweh and Israel restored to fellowship under David and Solomon; temple, elevation of the bride, 6:4-7:10.

7. Yahweh’s Love stronger than death, 6:5-7.

The climax of the history of Israel so far, then, is the Davidic dynasty and Yahweh’s dwelling in the temple.  At the same time, this history from Exodus to Solomon is a type of Israel’s history as a whole, and so Yahweh’s withdrawal from His bride in chapter 5 is also a preview of the exile.

Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Sleeping and Awakening

Raymond Jacques Tournay argues convincingly that the cautions about “awakening love” in the Song refer to the sleeping bridegroom, rather than the sleeping bride.  The motif comes to a conclusion in 8:5, where the bride says that she awakened the lover under the apple tree.

Which might mean: The Song is set between Eve’s creation and Adam’s awakening.  Or, the Song is set on Holy Saturday.  Or, the Song is set between Jesus’ “building” of His bride and His “awakening” in judgment.  Or, tropologically, between our entry into the king’s chambers and the wedding feast.

Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Love and death

How does the theme verse of the Song (8:6) summarize the message of the Song?  Death is never mentioned earlier in the Song, and the threats to the bride do not seem mortal threats.  She is wounded in the streets, but survives the attack and finds her lover again.  Otherwise, the main threat is the threat of absence.

If we want a love poem that more literally illustrates the theme of 8:6, it would be closer to Sleeping Beauty than the Song of Songs.  8:6 is genuinely summarizes the Song if the Song is taken allegorically/typologically.  8:6 makes sense only if we recognize that the relatively minor threats to the bride in the poem actually point to more serious threats.

A lover’s absence is painful.  It is not deadly.  Suppose that lover is Yahweh, though, and everything changes.  Yahweh’s absence is death for bride Israel, and the separations that the bride suffers in the Song become cries of dereliction.

With that in mind, we can offer this typological overview of the Song, a Song of Yahweh fiery love triumphing over deadly absence:

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Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Adam and Sacrifice

James Jordan has pointed out that Adam is first called “man” (Heb. ‘ish) when Eve is presented to him (Genesis 2:22).  He further suggests that ‘ish is punningly connected with the Hebrew word for fire, ‘esh.  Adam, the man of earth, becomes enflamed, burns with Pentecostal flame, when he sees his bride.  Enflamed, he turns poet, and sings.

The same sequence is replicated in the sacrificial system.  When an adam wants to draw near to Yahweh, He needs to do it through an animal, an animal that gets divided and turned into smoke in the altar fire (Leviticus 1:2).  Each Israelite adam, made from earth, has to be divided in two and inflamed before he can be near Yahweh.  He must be transformed from adam to ‘ish through the ‘esh of Yahweh.  He has to be transformed by fire into bridal food, ishishah.

Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Yahweh’s absence

The Song of Songs is about Yahweh and Israel, but the history it allegorizes is not a history of grueling slavery, battle, conquest, exile.  All that history is portrayed as light romantic comedy.  Which it is: Light romantic comedy is the story of the world.

The crises that the bride suffers in the Song are crises of absence.  The lover has gone from her bed, he knocks and then leaves her.  Just so, Israel’s national crises are fundamentally crises of Yahweh’s absence.  Shiloh becomes Ichabod, the glory leaves the temple for Babylon. 

Yahweh’s absence might seem to be unremittingly bad, but the Song indicates otherwise.

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Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Typological consciousness?

The Song portrays the longing of the bride for her lover, the king, Solomon.  There is an advent scene in 3:6-11, but this Solomon is elusive.  Even at the end of the Song, the bride is still urging the lover to hurry up and come to her.  A once and future Solomon, an already-not yet Solomon.

Now, could Solomon himself have written this?  It seems odd that a man could have written about himself in this fashion.  Can you say “hubris”?

But, consider:

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Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Wine-giver

Wine is a sign of kingship, and so Solomon is a king of wine.  His kisses are better than wine; he is himself a source of intoxication for the bride, Israel (Song 1:2, 4).

Solomon, though, is not merely a giver of wine, but in giving the wine of his love to Israel, he makes Israel into a nation of wine-givers.  During his reign, every Israelite sits (enthroned) under a vine and fig tree.  Every Israelite has his own vineyard, his own domestic “temple” and house of wine.

The Song depicts this by its transfer of wine imagery from the lover to the beloved.  In the first three references to wine in the Song, it is the lover’s love that is intoxicating like wine (1:2, 4); he brings her to a “house of wine” (2:4).  But then the bride becomes the wine-giver; her love is better than wine (4:10) and her mouth is the best wine (7:9).  Eventually, she takes him to her “house of wine” (8:2).  Elevated to royalty, her love becomes an intoxicant for her lover the king.

Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Degrees of Metaphoricity

Kingsmill calls attention to the common imagery used by the Song of Songs and the overtly “wisdom” literature, especially Proverbs.  She makes a good case.  But the difference between the Song and the other wisdom literature is notable. 

Proverbs 8:7 says, “My palate will meditate on truth.”  Kingsmill links this to Song 2:3: “his fruit is sweet to my palate.”  The two passages share a common image of tasting, and the common term “palate.”  But unless you already know that the Song is about wisdom, you wouldn’t read Song 2:3 metaphorically. 

This is not necessarily an argument against Kingsmill; she is convincing in showing that Proverbs and the Song share an imaginative world, and that does strongly suggest that the Song is intended as wisdom literature.  But the two books express that common world quite differently.

The Proverb calls attention to its metaphoricity; the Song enters more deeply into metaphoricity. If it is about wisdom, it is so in a far more veiled way than the other wisdom literature.

Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Doorways

The apertures of our body are doorways that mediate between outside and inside.  We normally think of them as intake points: Light enters our eyes and we see, molecules tickle the sensors in our noses and we smell, mouths and tongues are for tasting and eating.

In the Song, the movement is usually in the opposite direction.  Eyes are doves, carrying messages outward.  Noses give off fragrance (7:8) and mouths are sweet as if they were sources of wine (7:9).  Bodies in the Song do not passively take the world in; the body’s desires act on the world as what’s inside comes out through the doorways.

Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Mountain of Myrrh

Lexicons typically etymologize “Moriah” by linking it to the verb “see.”  Abraham tells Isaac that Yahweh will “see (as in “see to”) the lamb for the offering on the mountains of Moriah (Genesis 22:8, 14).  Moriah is where Yahweh provides a sacrifice.

From Song of Songs 4:6, another etymology suggests itself.  The lover says he will go to the “mountain of myrrh” and the “hill of frankincense.”  Mountain of myrrh is parallel to the hills of frankincense, and the latter are associated with the temple worship.  In Hebrew, “myrrh” is mor, so the lover is heading to the mountain mor, parallel to the mountain where incense is offered.  It hardly seems a stretch to suggest that the temple mountain of Moriah is the mountain of Yahweh’s myrrh, the mountain anointed with the fragrance of His presence.

Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Mangled Names

Tournay also has an explanation for the apparent mangling of names in the Song.  “Amminadab” appears where we might expect Abinadab, Shunammite where we might be thinking of Shulamite. 

This, he argues, is purposeful.  The names are to bring to mind their historical equivalents, but by changing the spelling of the names the poet also distances the names from their historical predecessors, thus pushing the poem toward an eschatological fulfillment.  The poem is not about an historical “Shulamite,” but instead about an eschatological bride.

Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Turn, Turn

Like other commentators on the Song, Raymond Jacques Tournay suggests that the “chariots of Amminadab” and the dance referredto at the end of Song of Song 6 allude to David’s entry into Jerusalem with the ark.

What he adds is an allusion to the exile ad return: “In Song 7:1, the fourfold entreaty ‘Come back’ can remind us of rhe return of the exiles of Judah from the four quarters of the world.”

The ark becomes the symbol of restored Jerusalem (as in Amos 9 and Acts 15) and the poet artfully connects the joyful dancing of returning exiles with the dance of David before the ark.  Plus, the return from exile becomes itself a “dance,” the “turning” of Israel in harmony with her divine Dance Partner.

Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Vineyard and bride

Let us stipulate that the vineyard is the temple and the bride is Jerusalem.  That clarifies two passages of the Song.

“They made me caretaker of the vineyards, but I have not taken care of my own vineyard” (1:6).  True enough; Jerusalem did not care for the temple-vineyard in her midst, but turned instead to the many vineyards (high places) scattered throughout the land.

“Solomon had a vineyard at Ball-hamon; he entrusted the vineyard to caretakers; each one was to bring a thousand of silver for his fruit.  My own vineyard is before me; the thousand are for you, Solomon” (8:11-12).  This passage is often understood to contrast Solomon’s “thousand vineyards,” i.e., wives, with the singular vineyard belonging to the lover.  If the temple is the vineyard, though, then the contrast is between the singular house belonging to Jerusalem (or to Yahweh) and the thousand vineyards that Solomon supports for the benefit of his thousand wives.

Bible - OT - Song of Songs: The Youth

Exploring the Jewish mystical theme of the shiur koma (the body of God), C. R. Morray-Jones writes, “the evidence suggests that the shiur koma tradition was originally concerned with two separate figures: the kavod of God himself, to whom the scriptural throne-theophany verses were applied, and the Youth, who was identified as the Beloved of the Song of Songs.  For reasons which are not yet clear, the latter identification was unacceptable to the rabbinic redactors of the tradition, who preserved the character of the Youth but transferred the description of the Beloved to the kavod.”

“The Youth” was called the “son of God” and in one place is linked with the name “Yedidah,” “Beloved of Yah,” the name given to Solomon.

Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Water from the belly

“As the Scripture says, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38).  As the Scripture says?  Where?

Edmee Kingsmill (The Song of Songs and the Eros of God: A Study in Biblical Intertextuality (Oxford Theological Monographs)) suggests the Song of Songs 4:15, where “living water” flows from the beloved, who is a garden spring.  Elsewhere in the Song, the lover praises her “belly” (LXX: koilia; 7:2), and her belly is aroused by the lover’s approach (5:4).

This works.  The beloved is the temple, and Jesus says that the water of the Spirit will flow from the one who drinks of Him.  Each believer is an Ezekiel 47 temple.  The beloved is the bride, of course, and the connection of well and bride is a staple of biblical imagery.  Living water flowing from the bride is, in part, the living water of a stream of descendants, so that betrothal near a well is a promise of the bride’s fertility.  Living water is for cleansing as well as refreshment (see Leviticus and Numbers), so those who drink from Jesus communicate not only life but purification.

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