Having said this, the writer rejects this approach to the text for his own interpretation of the Song. I find this hard to understand. Paul states clearly that the love relationship between husband and wife, of which sexual relationship is a part, is an image of the relationship of Christ with the Church. Quoting Gen. 2:24 he says: "'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.' This is a profound mystery-- but I am talking about Christ and the church." [ 1 ]
Denying the typical interpretation of the book has serious consequences. It means that we accept the fact that a human marriage relationship, with all that it involves, has meaning in itself, that there is no spiritual dimension in love and sex, that any human relationship without God is valuable in its own right. Treating the Song of Solomon purely as a love poem, as Dr. Carr does, may help to understand what the writer of this Song wanted to express when he wrote about the lovers, but it doesn't take into account that the Holy Spirit is the actual author of this book and that He wants to tell us more than just what we read on the pages of the book.
I do not mean to suggest that the lovers were conscious of the fact that they were acting out a spiritual reality. Very few people who are in love and who have sexual relations with one another go beyond the thrill of the experience of the moment and most have no understanding what they are actually doing. But this doesn't mean that what they are doing has no deeper meaning. Man is very short-sighted and he hardly ever understands what God wants him to be. But this does not diminish God's plan with man or deducts from the value of the role he plays in this world.
c. Drama
This approach to the book holds the view that the poem was, originally, a piece that was acted out for a specific occasion. The Tyndale Commentary says: "As early as AD 250, Origen declared that the Song was 'a marriage-song which Solomon wrote in the form of a drama.'" The commentary continues to quote Aristotle, who said that the essence of a drama is that is has a beginning, a middle and an end, that it should be a self-contained and a self-consistent unit and that it must show elements of progression in the story, development of theme and character and some sort of conflict and resolution. It is obvious that, although there are elements of conflict and resolution there is, as the commentary correctly, concludes scarcely any development or progression in the story. Carr concludes: "The Song, as it now stands, is unactable."
d. Natural
The commentary adopts the view that the Song should be interpreted in a "natural" or literal way. We quote: "This approach interprets the Song as what it appears naturally to be - a series of poems which speak clearly and explicitly of the feelings, desires, concerns, hopes and fears of two young lovers - without any need to allegorize or typologize or dramatize to escape the clear erotic elements present in the text."
The definition sounds enticing, but my objection is that it condemns people who disagree as ones holding "unnatural" views. It is obvious that the Song of Solomon is a compilation of poems celebrating the "being in love" of two young people, a boy and a girl. And we may presume that it was the first intent of the author to convey the miracle of erotic love. But the problem remains that if erotic love is a self-contained entity, without any reference to other realities, it is meaningless. Everything in life that cannot be seen in relationship with God is meaningless, because God is the meaning of all of creation. There is a fine line between spiritualizing and seeing the spiritual dimensions of a book.
We should always remember that Inspiration of the Scriptures means that the Holy Spirit is the ultimate author of the Bible. If the Song of Solomon is incorporated in the Canon of Scripture it is because it is inspired. And the Holy Spirit has a way to pack more than one truth in words. The clearest example is Caiaphas' prophecy in John 11:49-52. Addressing the Sanhedrin he said: "You know nothing at all! You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish." John comments on this with the words: "He did not say this on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one." Obviously, Caiaphas and the Holy Spirit used the same words, but they did not mean the same thing.
Now, I am not saying that we should not read the Song initially and primarily as a literal love song. The Holy Spirit, clearly, assigns a God-given, role to erotic feelings. But having those feelings is part of our being human and being human is part of God's plan. And God is Spirit. So this romance would have no meaning if it had no spiritual dimensions.
Dr. Carr does say some beautiful things, though, in his introduction to the text. We quote: "In one sense, the Song is an extended commentary on the creation story - an expansion of the first recorded love-song in history. 'Then the man said, ''This is at last bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called '''Woman,''' for she was taken out of Man.'" (Gn. 2:23). The author of Genesis draws the obvious conclusion from this: 'Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleave to his wife, and they become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.' (Gn. 2:24f.). The fulfillment of the creative act is unity, support, and an openness before each other and God."
He goes on to say: "the Song does celebrate the dignity and purity of human love. this is a fact that has not always been sufficiently stressed. The Song therefore, is didactic and moral in its purpose. It comes to us in this world of sin, where lust and passion are on every hand, where fierce temptations assail us and try to turn us aside from the God-given standard of marriage. and it reminds us, in particularly beautiful fashion, how pure and noble true love is."
IV. The poetry of the Song.
The Song is written in the Hebrew language as poetry, which means that it uses parallelism as a figure of speech. It is generally understood that Hebrew poetry does not follow a pattern of rhyme and rhythm but of parallel thoughts. The problem is, of course, that nobody can know at this point in time what the poetry sounded like in the time it was written. So we cannot be sure that there was no rhyme or rhythm as we know it now. The parallelism, however, remains clear. Dr. Carr defines parallelism as "thought rhyme" rather than "word rhyme." We quote from his commentary: "This thought rhyme may involve the repetition of an idea (e.g. Song 2:8b, 'leaping upon the mountain,/bounding over the hills'); the reversal or antithesis of an idea in a consecutive line (e.g. Song 1:6c, 'they made me keeper of the vineyard;/but, my own vineyard I have not kept!'); or the addition of a derived idea in the second part (e.g. Song 2:6, 'O that his left hand were under my head,/and that his right hand embraced me!'). There are many variations on these basic patterns, but the essential elements are present throughout." The commentary proceeds to compare into detail the similarity between the Song and other ancient love poetry. There is an interesting paragraph about the vocabulary of the Song. Again, we quote: "Although the Song is a relatively short book of only 117 verses, it has an unusual large number of uncommon words. Of the approximately 470 different Hebrew words it contains - a very high number for such a small book - 47 occur only in the Song (some only once) and nowhere else in the Old Testament. Of the words which do appear in other part of the Old Testament, 51 occur five times or less, 45 occur between six and ten times, and an additional 27 between eleven and twenty times, leaving about 300 common words in the Song. There is widespread distribution of these less common words. All but eighteen verses scattered through the Song have at least one of these unusual words, several have six or seven such words. Fifty verses contain at least one word not used outside the Song, and an additional twelve verses contain words which occur not more than three times in the whole Old Testament. In other words, more than one third of the words in the Song occur so infrequently that there is little context from which accurate meanings can be deduced, and two thirds of the verses of the Song have uncommon words."
This makes for a highly interesting situation. It seems to indicate that the author was no common poet, but a person with an unusually rich vocabulary. It is said that Shakespeare used more words than most of the people of his time. The Song of Solomon must have been written by and Old Testament Shakespeare. This seems to indicate a person who had the riches of Solomon. The Song of Solomon could very well be what it claims to be: "The Song of Solomon."
The commentary continues to give a group of words which are found in the Song and which are common to Near East love poetry. "The lovers rendezvous in gardens or parks, bedrooms, fields, orchards, vineyards, or secluded valleys. They use imagery from nature, particularly plants or animals, to describe each other, or to set a mood for their love, e.g., figs, apples, lilies, pomegranates, raisins, wheat, brambles, nuts, cedar, vines, palm trees, raven, mare, foxes, gazelle, goats, lions, fawns, doves, leopards, ewes and sheep."
Farther down the commentator remarks: "But of considerable interest in the Song is the omission of certain common words and ideas. As noted above .... there is a strong religious element in the love poetry from Egypt and Mesopotamia, with the gods and goddesses, their priests and priestesses, playing major roles in much of the literature, while the Song of Solomon does not even mention God." "Even more striking is the omission from the Song of all the major religious words in the Old Testament vocabulary. Incredible as it seems, none of the following appears in the Song: the divines names Lord (either Yahweh or Adonai; but cf. 8:6), Baal (except in the place-name Baal-hamon, 8:11), El, Elohim or their compounds, Glory, Sea (yam, one of the major gods in the Canaanite cult); words associated with the worship celebration in Israel: ark (of the covenant), high place, throne, mercy-seat, temple sanctuary, tabernacle, or congregation; cult words: ram, ox, bull, altar, offering, atone, make atonement, use divination, celebrate a feast, bury or burial place .... basic theological terms which are frequent elsewhere in the Old Testament but omitted from the Song; evil, faithful, truth, covenant, bless, honour, sin, wisdom, grace, loving-kindness (mercy), law, statue, be clean, be unclean (ritually), fear (of the Lord), deliver, glory, commandment, justice, prophet or prophecy, to vow, save, do wrong, iniquity .... " etc.
According to the Tyndale Commentary most contemporary commentators do not accept the Song as a single composition but, rather, as a compilation of poems. But Dr. Carr remarks that there is "an inner cohesiveness around a central theme of the lovers' mutual longing and surrender." He then proceeds to ask the two questions: How is the book constructed? And, Who are the characters in the story? There appears to be no consensus on the division of the book. There are as many outlines as translations or commentaries. The outline followed by the Tyndale Commentary is already given above. It is based on two observations:
"1. The clause: 'Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.' (NIV) occurs in 2:7, 3:5 and 8:4 as a kind of refrain that concludes three of the five sections. The other two conclude with a common theme of consummation: 5:1b 'East, O friends, and drink; drink your fill, O lovers' and 8:14 'Come away, my lover, and be like a gazelle or like a young stand on the spice laden mountains' (both NIV).
2. Each of the sections begins with one or both of the ideas of arousal (2:10; 8:5) or the arrival of one of the lovers and the invitation of the other (1:2; 2:8, 10; 3:6; 5:2; 8:5f). The repeating cycle of invitation, exhilaration and warning lends structure to the whole poem."
Some commentators see the Song as an apologia for pure monogamous love, or a description of the stages in the lovers' relationship. But the question remains as to whether the whole tone of the Song is "morally correct." On commentator, Gollwitzer, goes to another extreme in his interpretation. We quote from the Tyndale Commentary: "Interpreters, in an effort to keep the Song from being considered immoral, regarded it as the dialogue of a married couple, an extolling of married love. But there is nothing in the text to suggest that the two lovers are husband and wife. On the contrary, it is because they are not married that they long for a place where they can sleep together without being disturbed (7:12 - 8:2). Setting aside the reference to the 'bride' in 4:8 - 5:1 as being 'only a term of endearment equivalent to ''sweetheart'', he concludes: 'There is no way around it. These two people are simply in love with each other, and are planning to sleep together without anyone's permission, without the benefit of marriage license or church ceremony. And that is in the Bible!" Mr. Gollwitzer seems to have a tendency to insert symbols of moral correctness of our time into Biblical times. The fact that there is no mention of a marriage license or church ceremony in a book written over two millennia ago does not, necessarily, imply licentiousness. While not agreeing with all the implications of Gollwitzer's position, Dr. Carr says: "His argument is essentially correct. The Song is an affirmation of human sexuality per se."
One of the questions asked often in regard to this book is: "Who is who?" We quote again from the Tyndale commentary: "The 'daughters of Jerusalem' are variously identified as the women of Solomon's harem, the companions of the girl, or the onlookers from the general population. .... The girl is usually identified as a country girl from Shunem, a small agricultural village in Lower Galilee ('Return O Shulammite' 6:13), who is the beloved bride(-to-be?) of the 'lover'. Some commentators suggest she is one of Solomon's many wives, perhaps even the Egyptian princess described in I Kings 3:1; 7:8. It is with the male character(s) the greatest divergence of opinion occurs. One common view is that there are two men here: King Solomon, his lechery not satisfied by his huge harem (1 Ki. 11:3), who attempts to add yet one more, the Shulammite, to that number; and the girl's shepherd-lover from Galilee, to whom she remains faithful against all blandishments of Solomon, and with whom she is ultimately reunited. Other interpreters see Solomon as the sole male in the poem and treat the Song as a nuptial poem celebrating a royal wedding. Still others identify only the shepherd-lover in the poem and understand the Song as a celebration of the love he shared with his beloved."
Another question is the intent of the author. What is the purpose of the Song? Three answers are given:
a. The Song is a cultic ritual, either in the context of Israel's religion or in connection with some heathen fertility rite. We could hardly accept this view and adhere to the doctrine of the inspiration of the Scriptures at the same time.
b. The Song is a didactic poem, to be interpreted as an allegory or type of the relationship between God and man. Evidently, many Israelites interpreted the Song that way, since it was part of the reading of Scripture during the Passover celebration.
c. The Song is a celebration. The question is: a celebration of what? The Tyndale Commentary quotes Rabbi Aqiba: "He who trills his voice in chanting the Song of Songs in the banquet house and treats it as a sort of song [Heb. zamir, not sir as in Song 1:1] has no part in the world to come." The Commentary goes on to say: "The Song is explicitly erotic in much of its imagery, and makes no apology for such an emphasis. ..... For the ancient Hebrew, sexuality was one of the facts of life to be enjoyed (cf. Pr. 5:15:21), but approved only within the confines of an established marital relationship."
[ 1 ]
Eph 5:31-32
Copyright (c) 1999, 2000
E-sst, LLC
All Rights Reserved
Please see the License at Copyrights for restrictions and limitations
Note: Copyright does not apply to KJV text.
Table of Contents
Copyrights