September 6, 2006 - Song of Songs

I had made up my mind to preach on humor in the Bible this week. When I got ready to look for specific examples, I took a moment to look at the lectionary texts that were assigned for this week; I noticed that one of the texts was the Song of Songs. Hmmm, I thought, this text doesn't come up very often and it's really interesting. Maybe I'll just take a look at that before I figure out what humorous texts to use for my sermon. Well, needless to say, I never got any further than the Song of Songs.

So, what is the Song of Songs? It is a book of the Bible, all 8 chapters of it, located in the Old Testament Writings which include the Wisdom Literature of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Job. And yet the Song of Solomon stands apart. Perhaps because it is unabashedly sexual in nature; perhaps because it never mentions God anywhere in the text. The only other book never to reference God is the Book of Esther, and yet Esther is a story of Jewish survival and it presupposes its faith in its mention of worship and references to praying, fasting, and the celebration of the Jewish feast of Purim (The Women's Bible Commentary, p. 156 Editors Carol Newsom and Sharon Ringe). Song of Songs by contrast is a collection of love poems by a woman and her male suitor, interjected with comments and responses by the "daughters of Jerusalem." It is a book of poems with no plot and no easy conclusion.

I first heard mention of this book in the Bible when I was attending Bible studies in high school. I had never heard of it in my younger church school classes. We had read about Moses and Abraham, Sarah and the early Hebrews. We had heard about King David and Solomon and Saul and Ruth. Of course we had heard of Mary and Jesus who came to fulfill the promises of all of these Old Testament characters. But we never heard about Jesus' personal life or him being in love with anyone or anything other than God and the early church community. So when mention was made of the Song of Solomon it was of course referred to as a metaphor for the deep love that Christ had for his church. Even though when I read the text it sure seemed about something other than Christ's love for the church, I dutifully interpreted the love poems to be simply metaphorical. I think my response was most accurately summed up by "whatever." Who in their right mind in high school wants to focus on passages like, "My beloved is all radiant and ruddy, distinguished among ten thousand. His head is the finest gold; his locks are wavy, black as a raven. His eyes are like doves besides the springs of water, bathed in milk, fitly set." I was happy to have my Bible study leader de-sexualize this passage and just see it as a metaphor of the deep love that Christ has for me and his Church.

And yet over the years this text asserted itself now and again. I remember that when Jake was in seminary and Walter Wink came to visit; she asked Jake to read the male's passages while a woman read the woman's passages. I heard for the first time the voice of a lover in these passages. So much for Christ's love for the church. Then I began to perform weddings for people. Mostly they selected I Corinthians for their biblical passages, or maybe the verses in Ruth when she pledges her loyalty to Naomi. But once in a while someone would choose the Song of Songs and I would hear about, "The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes, leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills. My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag."

The imagery is odd for a 21st century urban dweller. It speaks of human desire and love in nature-imagery: we hear descriptions of the human body that are compared to goats and ewes, gazelles and deer, doves, dates pomegranates and a raven. Other parts of the body are compared to beds of balsam wood, lilies and pillars of alabaster, goblets, heaps of wheat, as well as a palm tree. Hard to imagine someone talking that way today and it hints of a time long ago when people lived in an agricultural society.

The bottom line is that people have found all kinds of allusions and imagery in this story to try and understand its inclusion in the biblical canon. It's a frisky text, perhaps a canonical glitch, a deliberate oversight, or maybe as one person suggested, unadulterated smut that just snuck in when no one was paying attention. Why is it included? Are they correct in suggesting that it is a grand metaphor for God's passionate love for Israel, which evolved into Christ's great love for his church? Or did the early Rabbis understand that a religion based on 613 commandments simply needed a touch of sensuality and earthiness? Judaism never shied away from the mysteries of the flesh. Eve and Adam walked around naked until Eve ate the apple and offered it to Adam. David and his throne were scandalized when he spotted Bathsheba bathing one day and had to have her as his wife?even though she was already married. The story explores the power of seduction in desire. As a result people end up dead and God is displeased. These stories end up in scripture and they describe human nature so accurately. Yet, when a Rabbi in 1912 wrote an interpretation of the Song of Songs that suggested a literal interpretation rather than the allegorical reading, saying that it was simply a love poem between two people, the reaction in his German Jewish community was so strong that it cost him one of the most prestigious chief rabbinates in Germany (Daphe Merkin, in Out of the Garden, p. 247).

Some scholars suggest that this controversy hides some deeper reflections that we should be having about this text. This text raises some questions about love between men and women. In a book which frequently presents women as subordinate characters who are possessed and passive, confined to their roles as procreators and reduced in their power, here is an extended poem in the voice of a woman extolling the virtues of mutual relationship and eros. Renita Weems writes in The Women's Bible Commentary that the female voice in this book is the "only unmediated female voice in scripture." Her voice is not mediated through a narrator, but through monologues, soliloquies, and love songs (Ibid). "Nowhere else in scripture do the thoughts, imaginations, yearnings, and words of a woman predominate in a book as in the Song of Songs." (Ibid) We should be noticing that this woman is free to express herself and claim her own desires and yearnings.

We should be noticing that there is a reference to her darkened skin; coupled by her male lover's extolling of her beauty. He describes at length how beautiful she is amidst a culture that admired fair skinned women who did not have to labor outside in the sun. Is this a description of class critique embedded in this love poem?

We don't have any evidence that a woman wrote any of the books of the Bible, and yet this poetry rings with an authentic female voice and experience of love and desire; could we perhaps be reading a text written by a woman, written by one of Solomon's many wives?

There is always a context for poetry. It emerges out of a particular social reality and setting. Without even trying at times we hear of practices and customs that are relevant to its time and reflect the tensions and struggles of the person in their own time. Renita Reems says that they often seek to "challenge or defend the way in which people are socially constituted." (Ibid., p. 159) Think how Jane Austen's characters reflect their time - parlor games and etiquette show us the customs of the day when woman were limited in their roles. In the Song of Songs, the lovers, especially the woman's voice, clearly contends that her suitor belongs to her and they push against some force which conspires to keep them apart. Do we hear echoes of Romeo and Juliet who were kept apart because of a long-standing family feud? And ultimately, the relationship implied in this tantalizing text is mutual, interdependent, and not based on domination and submissiveness. What a welcome message for us to hear in our day when story after story in the media reminds us that we have not achieved equality and respect between men and women; when our music is full of misogyny and hateful banter about women as objects.

I don't have any conclusion about this text - whether it really is a metaphor or simply an ancient eastern love poem. Maybe, like many good pieces of literature, it operates on several levels. I also acknowledge that it is sharply different from other texts in scripture - texts about laws and wars, rebuilding cities and temples, calling disciples and challenging people to share the good news that God loves us and calls us into relationship, the question of why God allows evil to be present in the world. However, I wouldn't call this lesser than those big issues. In fact, perhaps we should ponder more on how we love others. The Song of Songs stands solidly within our Bible and expresses perhaps the strongest of human emotions and forces. The re-reading of it occasionally invites us to reflect on desire, and to discipline ourselves to look for some expression of passion which is mutual and life-giving, Godly and gracious. Thank God for the inclusion of this love poem in our sacred literature. Amen.