Reading: Song of Songs 5-8, Psalm 12

There is quite the contrast between the ancient Song of Songs and the literary celebrations of love we construct today, but also some odd similarities. The primary mode of romantic storytelling in our society is the romantic comedy- usually a situation based, emotionally awkward narrative of two very different people winding up in love with one another by such unlikely circumstances that we are meant to believe fate had destined them to it. The ancient Hebrew poem spends a significant amount of time talking about work, productive vineyards, and there is a fight with the city watch in the middle of the night. The work of the woman in the vineyards of her family are held up as virtuous though it darkened her complexion, while the man is either compared to or actually is king Solomon, being carried around by servants. Not exactly the model of the rom com. The virtues being held up by the Song of Songs are a bit different.

Virtues of character and attraction are a funny thing. They change with the culture and the passage of time. Today we look back at stories about riots in the streets over a woman showing her ankles in public, or tales of duels fought over perceived slights to personal honor (in theory) or social standing (more likely the reality.) While I’m not sure that any one time gets to assume to be superior morally to any other, I must say I am grateful we live in a less uptight and dangerous era. On the other hand, the question of how seriously we take character virtues at all comes into question. Why am I rambling about this in the second half of the Song of Songs? Because I think much of this book, which celebrates the male-female relationship that the story of Scripture says reflects the image of God, is about the virtues of the man and woman. There are cultural elements that need not be dragged out of their context into the present- for example, there is nothing inspired about using the awkward compliments of the ancient era in the modern one- but there are qualities behind those elements that are worth looking at.

The woman in this song is a worker. There have been attempts to construct a narrative of the woman as enslaved in the harem of Solomon or by her own brothers around the words of the Song of Songs, which I think is going a bit far, but there is certainly a sense in which the Song expresses the woman’s desire to be with her lover as respite from work. Work is good, but relationship is properly a respite from it. The man is less talked about in the poem, but where he appears he is courageous, sneaking into the women’s quarters at night, then getting chased off by the city watch of Jerusalem. The primary speaker in the Song though, is the woman. The woman of work, of labor, rest, and relationship. There is a pattern here, that should remind us of the beginning of the Story. The creation. The role of humans as workers. The day of rest baked right into the nature of creation. The beginning of human relationship in the garden with God. The virtues held up as good by this ancient poem are the created order.

This is poetry, so interpretation is tricky. I tend to see it all in context of the story we have been reading, and I think that the writers and collector of the Hebrew Scriptures intended it to work that way. But I also think that poetry, more than any other genre of writing, changes with the reader. I don’t want to get overly reader-centric, but here I encourage you to read this one poetic example from the Scriptures without digging too far into “figuring it out.” Narratives. laws, proclamations, stories- these have one meaning and many applications. I think poetry legitimately has a bunch of meanings. Poetic expressions are works of creation. The Song of Songs I think celebrates the created order in a manner that appeals less to the mind, and more to the many states of the heart.