The Poem of Love - Reflections on Song of Solomon 2:8-13, Proper 17, Year B

by Joihn Holbert on Monday, August 26, 2024

Proper 17.  September 1, 2024. “Song of Solomon” 2:8-13  “The Poem of Love”

          You will note that I put “Song of Solomon” in quotation marks, since that is hardly the proper title for this rich and little-known book of the Bible. The Hebrew title is quite literally, “Song of Songs,” but the grammar of that phrase may more accurately be rendered “The Most Beautiful Song.” Unfortunately, Solomon is mentioned in the first chapter of the book, among several other times, and older readers quickly connected the third king of Israel, known proverbially as a writer of songs and poems (1 Kings 4:32), with this lyric poem. However, anyone who reads Hebrew knows all too well that Solomon had nothing whatever to do with the composition of the book; its Hebrew demonstrates a very late quality grammatically, along with the fact that several Persian loan words are found in its lines (see e.g. pardes,  Song 4:13 whence comes our English word “paradise,” though here meaning “garden”).

          But the more interesting and long-contested question is: just what sort of book is this? Early Jewish commentators rather quickly turned to allegory to explain just what it was doing among the sacred scripture. Surely, they thought, it could not merely be a rich poem about earthly love, but must have a deeper meaning. Perhaps it is about the loving relationship between YHWH and Israel, or the similar connection between a worshiper and her/his God. Later Christian readers moved in the same narrative channels, and suggested that it was pointing to the relationships between Christ and his church, or a loving divine one seeking for human beings. However, along the way, a few readers determined that it was precisely what it was purported to be, namely a poem about the love of a man and a woman, at times unabashed in its erotic depictions of a love that was far more than simple male-female bonding, but marked instead by physical delights and wonderful portrayals of the acts of loving between lovers. Indeed, chapter 4 is replete with portraits of the physical gifts of the woman from eyes to hair to teeth to lips to cheeks, to neck, to breasts (Song 4:1-5). Then the poetry becomes quite suggestive indeed, as references to “the mountain of myrrh,” and “the hill of frankincense” are plainly a picture of the more hidden pleasures of the female body, a portrait made even more enticing later in the chapter with images of “a locked garden, a fountain sealed,” giving forth “fragrances wafted abroad,” by which the lover is led to “come to his garden and eat its choicest fruits” (Song 4:12,13,16). It must also be noted that intimate descriptions of bodies are hardly confined to the woman; Song 5 offers careful pictures of the male lover, too.

          And when the lover is said to “thrust his hand into the opening, while my inmost being yearned for him,” and “my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with liquid myrrh, upon the handles of the bolt” (Song 5:4-5), who could finally deny that the act of physical love was being there depicted for those with eyes to see? Yet, now that we may agree that acts of love are being herein portrayed, that fails to answer my question above: why then this book in our Bible?

          Let me suggest an answer. It has long been imagined that the Bible is devoid of portraits of this nature. After all, the idea of sexual love very soon became a dangerous notion, leading to celibacy for serious clergymen and cloistered serious women. Those with important leadership vocations were asked to reject the pleasures of the flesh in order to focus on the work of the spirit only. Was it not the case that the two most important men of the Christian story—Jesus and Paul—had denied the flesh, had never married, and thus had provided a model for all would-be followers of the Christian way? Little doubt that when the Most Beautiful Song was read, it plainly could not be speaking of such crassly earthly things like fleshy love. Gallons of ink were spilled in wild allegorical speculations based on the Song, determined to deny the poem was an erotic one. The most important commentators were Origin who wrote a ten-volume collection of homilies on the book and later Gregory the Great (died 604CE) devoted multiple volumes to elucidating the book, using the allegorical approach almost exclusively. The fact is that through the Middle Ages, the Song was the most popular book on which to comment in the entire Hebrew Bible!

          But when the more literal viewpoint took hold, and it was believed by nearly all readers that the book was an earthly love poem, beginning with the 17th century, ironically, perhaps due to a kind of latent prudishness, the Song since that time has played only the most marginal role as the subject of interpretation. This is a kind of tragedy. Here in our Bible stands a book that celebrates and describes in superb detail and with rich suggestiveness the love between the sexes. Could it not have played a more important role in the beauty and wonder of human relationships than it has in fact played? Why not allow the book its full power, announcing to the world that love of the flesh is God’s good gift, and nothing whatever to be ashamed of? I find its relegation to the margins of biblical study a sad commentary on the problematic nature of religion and the wonders of the flesh as God’s great gift to human beings. Is it not past time to allow the Song its full joy in the church? Can you preach from the Song in such a way as to bring this crucial part of human relationships to the fore in the context of churchly life?