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The Glory of Kings: A Festschrift for James B. Jordan
Fyodor Dostoevsky
(Christian Encounters Series)
Athanasius
(Foundations of Theological Exegesis and Christian Spirituality)
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
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
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
“Awake, O north! Come, O south! Breathe my garden, let my spices flow.”
“Flow” (nazal) is what fluids do, water especially. It takes a massive blast from God’s nostrils to make the “flow” stand upright (Exodus 15:8). Ice melts and begins to flow (Judges 5:5), and clouds flow down with rain (Job 36:28). A flow of water came from the rock (Psalm 78:16) after Yahweh turned the flow of Egypt to blood (Psalm 78:44).
In the Song of Songs, though, spices flow, and spices blow because of the breath of the wind. At least we can say this: The garden of Song of Songs 4:16 is a new Eden, from which good things flow. We might also say this, paying attention to the north-south axis: The garden is also the temple, with the northward flow of light from the lampstand, and the southward flow of bread and frankincense from the table. And we can also say this: North is the direction from which invaders come; South is the direction to which Israel goes into captivity. Israel is set between invasion and enslavement, between north and south, but the fragrant flow from teh garden of Israel will take the scents of the Bride north and south.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, February 14, 2012 at 11:29 am
“Awake, O north! Come, O south! Breathe my garden!” The Bride needs to awaken the wind, which appears to be sleeping, not getting to the job of wafting out fragrance. What happens when the Wind gets going?
Israel is carried on eagle’s wings from Egypt (Deuteronomy 32:11). Deborah composes songs (Judges 5:12; cf. Psalm 57:8; 108:2). Warriors fight (2 Samuel 23:18; 1 Chronicles 11:11, 20). Emperors proclaim liberty to captives (Ezra 1:1). Love comes into the garden (Song of Songs 2:7; 3:5; then 4:16).
A lot happens when the Spirit stirs from His slumber. But it takes the Bride’s call to wake Him.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, February 14, 2012 at 11:17 am
The letter to the Laodiceans clearly ends with an allusion to teh Song of Songs. Jesus knocks and seeks entry to the Bridal chamber of the church, where he will sup with His Bride, sup on His Bride (Revelation 3:20). As almost everyone notices, that reaches back to Song of Songs 5:1, the Bridegroom’s entry into the chamber, the mutual feast, and the knocking that immediately follows.
But the Song is already in view earlier in the message to Laodicea. What Jesus wants from that church is hot food or cold food, let us say spicy food and soothing drinks. What he does not want is food warmed over on a hot plate. He wants a love that burns with the flame of Yah, love strong as death. When He comes to feast on the Laodicean Bride, He finds the food distasteful, and spits it out. That makes sense of Revelation 3:16: Why is the church in the mouth of Jesus? Yes, Jesus is the land spewing out inhabitants; but Jesus is also the Bridegroom who cannot eat a bride who produces only bitter grapes and vinegar.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, February 14, 2012 at 11:07 am
The sequence of Song of Songs 4:16 is significant. The verse begins with an invocation to the winds. The Bride awakens the north wind and invites the south wind, and these winds breathe out (haphiychiy, from puach, which rhymes with ruach) the fragrances of the garden. Wind blows from the north and carries the aromas south, while the south wind picks up the fragrances and bears them north. puach is typically associated with the breath of speech (Proverbs 6:19; 12:17; 14:5, 25; 19:5, 9), and here too the scented air from the garden conveys a message. Here is an allegory of mission: the Spirit blows through the garden of the church, picks up the scent of Christ, and carries it to the four corners. Or, the wind is itself the Spirit-born disciples. Either way, the church needs to be a cultivated garden to have an aroma strong and sweet enough to bear north and south.
In the midst of this dispersion, there is a shift of ownership. The wind blows through the Bride’s garden (ganniy), but she invites the Bridegroom to come to his garden (ganno). The garden is the Bride, and there is a mutual ownership: She has her vineyard in her possession, but it is also his; her fruit is also his. But the sequence is important: It is only after the breath of the winds has passed through her garden and been wafted abroad that Dodi is invited into a garden that qualifies as his. Allegorically, it’s the fragrance of the church, and the scented wind of the Spirit, that prepares the garden as the Bridegroom’s, where Jesus can come to eat His Bride and her choice fruits.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, February 14, 2012 at 11:01 am
In his 2005 Christmas encyclical, Deus caritas est, Benedict XVI explains why love has to be understood as both eros and agape, as ascending and descending love. He notes early on that the Bible rarely uses the word eros, arguing that “the tendency to avoid the word eros, together with the new vision of love expressed through the word agape, clearly point to something new and distinct about the Christian understanding of love.”
As he notes, “these distinctions have often been radicalized to the point of establishing a clear antithesis between them: descending, oblative love—agape—would be typically Christian, while on the other hand ascending, possessive or covetous love —eros—would be typical of non-Christian, and particularly Greek culture. Were this antithesis to be taken to extremes, the essence of Christianity would be detached from the vital relations fundamental to human existence, and would become a world apart, admirable perhaps, but decisively cut off from the complex fabric of human life.”
The detachment of love from eros is at the heart of the Enlightenment critique of Christianity: “In the critique of Christianity which began with the Enlightenment and grew progressively more radical, this new element was seen as something thoroughly negative. According to Friedrich Nietzsche, Christianity had poisoned eros, which for its part, while not completely succumbing, gradually degenerated into vice. Here the German philosopher was expressing a widely-held perception: doesn’t the Church, with all her commandments and prohibitions, turn to bitterness the most precious thing in life?” The issue at stake in debates over eros and agape is not about the definition of love narrowly construed; it is about the gospel’s relation to culture and human experience as a whole. If Christian faith is eros-denying, then it is an enemy of life.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, February 13, 2012 at 2:09 pm
The second half of Song of Songs 3 is arranged in a chiasm, centering on the gibborim who are expert in war:
A. What is coming?, v 6
B. Traveling coach of Solomon, v 7a
C. mighty men, vv 7b-8
Ca.mighty men of the mighty men
Cb. grasp sword
Cc. expert in war
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 11:20 am
Who is this coming from the wilderness? It’s traveling couch, born by sixty burly men. And it’s described as a sacrifice.
It “comes up” from the wilderness (‘alah). It is surrounded by pillars of smoke and is itself “smoked” (mequtteret, from qatar, “turn to smoke,” Exodus 29:13, 18, 25; 30:7, 8; Leviticus 1:9; etc.). It bears the pleasing aroma of myrrh and frankincense, like a tribute offering of rbead (Leviticus 2:2, 15, 16).
It is like the Bride of Psalm 45, who comes to her husband like an ascension offering. It is like Israel, arising out of the wilderness into the land like the smoke of incense. This is the Bridal food of God coming in sacrifice.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 10:55 am
Song of Songs 3:1-4 is a highly repetitive passage, but it does have a logic and unity to it. The structure appears to be:
A. On my bed: seeking the one whom my soul loves, v 1a
B. Sought but did not find, v 1b
C. I arose and surveyed the city (‘asovvah ba’iyr) for the one whom my soul loves, v 2a
D/B’. I sought the one whom my soul loves, but did not find, v 2b
C’. I found guards surveying the city (hassovvah ba’iyr): Have you seen the one my soul loves?, v 3
B”. I found the one whom my soul loves, v 4
A’. I did not let him go until I took him to the house of my mother, v 5
The word patterns are of course significant.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, February 6, 2012 at 11:46 am
Giffiths speaks of the “complex admixture of regret and lament for unworthiness . . . and delight in lovability” that marks human love, and adds: “The presence of the one without the other makes it impossible to receive the offer of love and therefore impossible to be a beloved. Were you to respond to the gift of love with an unruffled sense of your own beauty and worthiness to be given that give, you would not be a beloved – one who can return love – but rather a demigod receiving homage. And were you to respond to the lover’s gift to you of your new condition as a beloved with nothing but a sense of your own unworthiness and ugliness and filthiness, then too, you could not be a beloved but only a mirrored wall of self-hatred from which all offered love would be reflected directly back to its offerer.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, February 4, 2012 at 6:05 am
Some profound meditations about sex, time, life, the universe and everything from Paul Griffiths’s Song of Songs (Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible)
The first six verses of the Song “point the hearer first to what everyone knows about [human love and sexual desire], which is that the memory of lovemaking and the imagination of its repetition are at least as important for us as its performance. We are constituted as beings in time and as beings who are capable of being aware of ourselves as such. This is what makes memory and anticipation important for us, and it is remarkable that in the Song lovemaking is depicted almost entirely through their lens and not in terms of how the kiss and the caress seem as they are being given and taken. Hearing the Song as a depiction of human desire can intensify an awareness of this interesting fact about ourselves as lovers and beloveds. It reminds us of what we want when we want to be loved and to give love is not fully available to us in the performance of those acts. The intensity and complexity of human romantic and sexual need cannot find its fulfillment in the circumincession of two . . . human bodies and minds. If that circumincession were limited to its performance it would not be human lovemaking. In order to be that it needs to be placed in the order of time as an object of memory and anticipation and in the order of narrative as an event about which the right story can be told. Even when attention is restricted to the Song’s surface, therefore, the horizon it points to is open. The human desire to love and be loved, to caress and be caressed, exceeds its own fulfillment and indicates its own insufficiency. It begs for a story and for the memories and hopes that enframe stories. Every act of human physical love is therefore already and inevitable figural. The only question is: what does it figure?”
Among other things, Griffiths highlights how inhuman casual sex is. Sex that has no background story, sex that has no anticipation of future union or encounter, sex that seeks its fulfillment in the sheer performance of the act, sex that is isolated from a story that is a collection of memories and hopes – this memory-less and hope-less sex is nothing but animal sex. It is sex extracted from human existence. Everyone who indulges it, whether with a series of real partners or a series of digital partners, becomes bestial.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, February 4, 2012 at 5:46 am
Explaining the adjuration of Song of Songs 2:7 (repeated in slightly different form in 8:4), Cheryl Exum (Song of Songs (Old Testament Library)
Perhaps we can push the link of 2:8 and 8:6-7 a step further. The fire that inspires the flame of love, the love that is stronger than death, is the Flame of Yah Himself. And that fiery love does need to be roused at times, as David well knew (cf. Psalm 7:6; 35:23; 44:23; 57:8; 59:4; 78:38; etc.). That love might express itself in jealous wrath, in which case it is a danger, and even when it doesn’t it is a relentless power that is stronger than death and fiercer than Sheol. Once that love is aroused, no water can quench it, and so one must be prepared for the consequences before stoking up that Fire.
This is wisdom literature: As Solomon says in Ecclesiastes, do not be hasty to utter a word before the Lord, since He is in heaven and you are on earth.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, January 30, 2012 at 2:21 pm
The Bride of the Song declares that she is a “lily” (shushan), and her lover agrees (Song of Songs 2:1-2). The word is used eight times in the Song (2:1, 2, 16; 4:5; 5:13; 6:2, 3; 7:2), sometimes for the Bride, sometimes for her lips, sometimes for her breasts. Not surprisingly, gathering from the garden is linked to gathering lilies: The Bride is the pick of the garden.
A form of the same word is used in the titles to several songs: “On the shoshannim” (45:1; 69:1; 80:1). Lexicons suggest that the reference is to a musical instrument that in some way resembles a lily, but the link between the Song and the Psalms is suggestive of thematic connections. Psalm 45 is clearly a Song-like Psalm, an epithalamion, and Psalm 80, with its narrative of a vine and vineyard planted, abandoned, and (in hope) restored also picks up themes from the Song.
Psalm 69 has few verbal, conceptual, or thematic links with teh Song. It is a Psalm of lament, one frequently quoted or alluded to in the Passion narratives of the gospels. Perhaps, though, there is a connection with the Song, since the Psalm describes the passion of the Lover for His beloved and their house, which is Yahweh’s house. Perhaps we should read Psalm 69 as a poem of lovesickness.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, January 30, 2012 at 12:49 pm
I have commented before on the aural parallel between “fragrance” and “spirit” in Hebrew (reach, ruach). The theological import of that parallel is enhanced by the Song’s use of reach as the object of the verb “give” (Song of Songs 1:12; 2:13; 7:13). Perfumes, flowers, mandrakes “give” their aroma that is received by the breath/ruach of the recipient. Fragrance, like spirit, is given.
And fragrance gives spirit. The fragrance of burnt offerings calmed the Lord’s Spirit, moving Him from anger to favor; the fragrance of burning animals cooled His burning nose. In the Song, the lover and beloved are aroused when they catch the scent of the other. When we give off the fragrance of Christ, that too communicates the Spirit. Catching a whiff of Christ from us, a whiff that is the effect of the Spirit’s fire in us, unbelievers are stirred to seek the One whose fragrance draws them.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, January 30, 2012 at 12:14 pm
The NASB translates Song of Songs 1:16c as “our couch is luxuriant.” that is an unfortunate translation, because the word translated as “luxuriant” is actually “green” (ra’anan). The NASB translation suggests plush cushions and linen or silk sheets. The Hebrew indicates a bower. The lovers’ house has cedar beams and cypress rafters because they are outside on a bed of green. 1:16-17 thus seamlessly lead into the bride’s declaration “I am the rose of Sharon.”
But “green” also highlights the liturgical aspects of the passage. The temple was a “forest” or “grove,” an interior space that was conceived as a natural place (cf. Psalm 52:8; 92:14). Though man-made, the temple was a “green world” where (Northrop Frye has taught us) people, especially lovers, can flee to find renewal. Of course, there were alternate “green spaces” in Israel, the idolatrous shrines under ever “green tree” (Deuteronomy 12:2; 1 Kings 14:23; 16:4; 2 Kings 17:10). Israel sought new life by indulging in harlotry in these green places (Jeremiah 2:20; 3:6, 13). All the while, the green space of the temple was there, Yahweh’s own cedar-and-cypress grove where He promised to renew His bride on a green couch.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, January 30, 2012 at 11:34 am
There are few agreements among scholars about the structure of the Song of Songs, but many commentators recognize that the opening section is 1:2-2:7, a series of seven alternating speeches between teh beloved and the lover.
Seven! That makes one curious if there is a more-than-numerological parallel with Genesis 1. As usual, some of the parallels are stronger than others.
A. 1:2-7: The bride longs for a kiss, describes herself as black from the sun (v. 6). The reference to the sun might connect this with Day 1, or the play with darkness and blackness. The parallels here are meager.
B. 1:8-11: The lover speaks to his darling, telling her where to find him and complimenting her adorned cheeks and neck. Not much firmament here, it seems.
It gets better, though.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, January 30, 2012 at 10:55 am
In the aforementioned article, Rabin suggests that the poet of the Song lived in a time of extensive trade between Judea and the east, and that this fits the time of Solomon. He also suggests that the poem was likely written as an allegory: The poet “had in mind a contribution to religious or wisdom literature, in other words that he planned his work as an allegory for the pining of the people of Israel, or perhaps of the human soul, for God. He saw the erotic longing of the maiden as a simile for the need of man for God,” similar to the comparison of the longing Psalmist of Psalm 42 with a deer panting for water.
Religious uses of eroticism make yet another connection with India: “In Indian legend love of human women for gods, particularly Krishna, is found as a theme. Tamil legend, in particular, has amongst its best known items the story of a young village girl who loved Krishna so much that in her erotic moods she adorned herself for him with the flower-chains prepared for offering to the god’s statue. When this was noticed, and she was upbraided by her father, she was taken by Krishna into heaven. Expressions of intensive love for the god are a prominent feature of mediaeval Tamil Haivite poetry. The use of such themes to express the relations of man to god may thus have been familiar to Indians also in more ancient times, and our hypothetical Judaean poet could have been aware of it. Thus the use of the genre of love poetry of this kind for the expression of religious longing may itself have been borrowed from India.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, January 24, 2012 at 11:31 am
In a 1973 article comparing the Song of Songs to Tamil poetry, Chaim Rabin points to evidence of contacts between the Indus Valley and lower Mesopotamia during the time of Solomon. On the spices listed in Song 4:12-14, he writes that these verses evoke the “atmosphere of a period when Indian goods like spikenard, curcuma, and cinnamon, as well as South Arabian goods like incense and myrrh, passed through Judaea in a steady flow of trade. This can hardly related to the Hellenistic period, when Indian goods were carried by ship and did not pass through Palestine: it sets the Song of Songs squarely in the First Temple period.”
Supposed Hellenistic loan-words (appiryon in 3:9 and talpiyyot in 4:4) don’t disprove this earlier dating: “The phonetic similarities between the Greek and Hebrew words is somewhat vague [the Greek source words are phoreion and telopia], and this writer considers both attributions to be unlikely, but even acceptance of these words as Greek does not necessitate a late dating for the Song of Songs, since Mycenaean Greek antedates the Exodus.” He admits that if pardes (garden, Paradise) in 4:13 is Persian, then “it would necessitate post-exilic dating,” but he thinks it more likely that both the Hebrew words and the Greek paradeisos have a “different origin.”
What Rabin does not say, of course, is that a linguistic parallel cannot by itself tell us the direction of influence. Is it impossible that the Greeks and Persians borrowed words from Hebrew?
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, January 24, 2012 at 11:19 am
I offer some reflections on what the allegory of the Song of Songs can teach us about sex at http://www.firstthings.com/
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, January 13, 2012 at 3:57 am
Many of the goddesses of ancient paganism were domestic types. The goddesses were mother goddesses, or weaver goddesses or sometimes associated with higher arts of civilization – writing and other cultivated elite arts. Tikva Frymer-Kensky notes (In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth
In addition to these domesticated goddesses that modeled what good girls would have to do, many ANE cultures had at least one untamed, wild goddess.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, January 7, 2012 at 6:34 am
The first phrase of Song of Songs 1:5 is usually taken as a contrast – “black but lovely,” though some have noted that this is not a necessary translation of the phrase. It seems the most likely, though, that the blackness is seen as a negative, but in spite of her blackness, she remains beautiful. Verse 6 confirms that there is something negative about her coloring – she is blackish, swarthy (in Hebrew a form of the same word) because she has been forced to work outside, and has been “gazed upon” by the hot sun, and she expects the daughters of Jerusalem to despise her because of her coloring. She has suffered some punishment and the color of her skin is a sign of that suffering.
Though there is a contrast here, there also seems to be a connection. Her blackness has somehow become a mark of her beauty. What does that imply?
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, January 7, 2012 at 6:29 am
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