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SONG OF SOLOMON

“The Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s” (1:1), also called the Canticle of Canticles. One of the Five Scrolls read liturgically by Jews at various times in the ritual year, it is associated with the spring Festival of Passover. In Christian Bibles it is grouped with the other Solomonic writings, immediately preceding the prophets. As love poetry, seemingly devoid of religious content, it has always appeared anomalous; hence a long tradition of allegorical and mystical interpretation developed. The hyperbolic anxiety attached to it may be exemplified by Rabbi Akiba, who is reported to have declared that “the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies” (m. Yad. 3:5) and also that one “who trills it in the banqueting-house loses his share in the world to come” (Sanh. 102b). Nevertheless, its influence both on secular Western erotic poetry and on Jewish and Christian mystical traditions is unfathomable.

It is not known when the Song was written. Estimates range from the 10th to the 3rd century b.c.e., with the majority of recent commentators favoring the latter. Its early adoption as a proto-canonical text is proved by the presence of fragments among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Jerusalem is the center of its symbolic world, which induces most critics to regard it as the place of composition. Some scholars, however, see evidence of northern Israelite influence, both in geographical allusions and linguistic dialect. There is no unanimity, either, on the literary unity of the Song. Many critics argue from the lack of any coherent sequence in the Song that it is an anthology of love poems; this would allow for a diversity of dates and origins. Others hold that it was a highly articulated literary structure. A compromise position has been promoted by a number of authors, that it is an artful composition using preexistent and traditional materials.

Most of the Song consists of monologues or dialogues between a pair of lovers, with the female voice dominant. At times a third, impersonal voice, which may be identified with that of the narrator or poet, seems to intervene, and at two points at least (5:9; 6:1) there is a chorus of daughters of Jerusalem. Many critics, however, assign much more material to the chorus, sometimes introducing a male chorus as well (e.g., 8:8-9).

It is not clear what, if anything, happens in the Song. Much effort has been devoted to reconstructing a story. Reconstructions, however, generally necessitate considerable conjecture, and risk imposing a narrative structure on a nonnarrative, lyric discourse. The lovers speak to and about each other, in memory, anticipation, and desire; the boundary between reality and imagination is always ambiguous. For instance, at the center of the Song the man asserts that he has entered “his garden” (5:1), which, in context, is a metaphor for the woman; in the following verse, however, half-asleep she hears him outside her door, pleading to be admitted. We do not know if the lovers ever have intercourse; they are in any case figments of the poet’s imagination, and the task of the lyric is to communicate the sensations of love in language. It is less concerned with the adventures of a particular pair of lovers than with making them representative of all lovers. The different roles they play — king and shepherd, country and city girl — are evidence not so much of diverse origins as the intersection of different traditional paradigms of love. One persona particularly associated with the man is that of King Solomon, not only as supreme lover and poet (cf. 1 Kgs. 4:32[MT 5:12]), but as a symbol of human perfection.

The Song is composed of numerous units of various length, usually clearly demarcated from each other and without obvious continuity. These are either separate poems or, for those who think that the Song has literary unity, they juxtapose contrasting perspectives and genres. Various units match each other across the text, often with significant variations or inversions; proponents of unity regard this as the main principle of composition. Among matching units are formal portraits of the lovers, technically called wasfs (4:1-7; 5:10-16; 6:5-7; 7:2-7[1-6]), in which parts of the body are metaphorically elaborated; two dream sequences (3:1-4; 5:2-7), in which the woman searches for her lover through the nocturnal city; two descriptions of the spring (2:10-13; 7:11-13[12-14]). The climax of the book, corresponding to the description of the garden of love at its center (4:12–5:1), is a set of equivalences, in which love is said to be as strong as death and unquenchable (8:6-7).

The poetic quality of the book fully justifies the superlative asserted by the title, “The Song of Songs.” Like all great poetry, it is both sensually rich, a literary analogue of the sensory world of the lovers, and dense with significance. In particular, it is remarkable for its intense, sometimes bizarre, imagery, the richness of its vocabulary, and its pervasive alliteration and wordplay. The metaphors often attain a life of their own, subverting the difference between figure and referent. The distance between the image and its subject is a source of aesthetic tension and hermeneutic richness, and allows the openness of interpretation. Some scholars have noted the phonological patterning and the connections between alliteration and metaphor throughout the Song, and intertextually elsewhere in the OT, so that sounds and meanings are mutually generative.

Through metaphor, the experience of the lovers is transferred onto the world and language. The lovers are compared with animals and flowers; they thus become representative of the land of Israel in springtime. In one of the formal portraits or wasfs there is an extended comparison between the woman and the land (7:1-6[2-7]). This has led some to argue that the Song is concerned with an erotic vision of the world. The metaphors culminate in the opposition of love and death; love is of ultimate value, because it alone is immortal. The Song may be compared to Ecclesiastes, seeing in both a reaction to the anomie of the Hellenistic age. Furthermore, the Song may be associated with the Wisdom tradition, with its search for value and its humanism.

A large number of recent scholars have discussed the feminist implications of the Song. Some have postulated female authorship, pointing to the dominance of the female voice in the Song, and its inversion of patriarchal values. Others find female authorship improbable, given the conditions of literary production in the ancient world, suggesting that the Song is a male erotic fantasy, and that the centrality of the woman expresses male desire.

Some critics hold that the Song has an element of self-parody, subverting its own ideal of beauty; thereby it promotes love as that which transpires between real, imperfect human beings. Others see it as infused with a comic vision, of the integration of the world through love.

Various scholars have investigated parallels between the Song and other ancient Near Eastern erotic literature. Correlations are especially close with the love poetry of ancient Egypt. Other critics have explored intertextual connections between the Song and the rest of the OT, including Ecclesiastes and the garden of Eden, which they see reconstituted and questioned in the Song. Those who read the Song as a political or religious allegory find in it numerous allusions to the prophetic or historical literature.

The spiritual significance of the Song, and the reason for its incorporation in the canon, have been subject to much discussion. Some hold it to be a purely secular work; others find references in it to mortuary or other cults. At the climax of the book (8:6) the name of God appears albeit as a suffix to the noun šalheḇeṯ, “flame.” Frequently interpreted as a conventional superlative (“mighty flame”), it might also mean that love is the flame of God, which burns on the altar. The frequent references to the geography of the land of Israel and to King Solomon, as well as one to David, suggest that Israel’s history and landscape are drawn into the network of comparisons and allusions. If Solomon represents Israel at the height of its glory, that glory is nostalgically evoked and critiqued, in the context of its passing.

Bibliography. A. Bloch and C. Bloch, The Song of Songs (1995, repr. Berkeley, 1998); A. Brenner, ed., A Feminist Companion to the Song of Songs (Sheffield, 1993); M. V. Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs (Madison, 1985); M. D. Goulder, The Song of Fourteen Songs. JSOTSup 36 (Sheffield, 1986); F. Landy, Paradoxes of Paradise: Identity and Difference in the Song of Songs (Sheffield, 1983); R. E. Murphy, The Song of Songs. Herm (Minneapolis, 1990); M. H. Pope, Song of Songs. AB 7C (Garden City, 1977).

Francis Landy

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

SONG OF SOLOMON

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)