Column on the Song of Songs

NOTE: This column was published in the October 2006 issue of the Washington Window (www.edow.org/news/window).  This issue has only been made available online as a PDF, which doesn't seem to be working.  The version below is the last draft I sent the editor - and may vary from the final published version. 

I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem: Do not wake or rouse Love until it pleases.
-    Song of Songs 2.7; 3.5; 8.4

The Song of Songs is a gorgeous – and cautionary – tale of intoxicating love.  Oh, give me the kisses of your mouth, it begins, for your love is more delightful than wine (1.2).

“First time readers are invariable astonished to discover that such sexually provocative language and imagery can be found in the Bible,” warns Renita Weems.  Rather than instilling a typical Biblical fear of erotic desire, the Song celebrates Eros and supports loving the one our heart has chosen.

Although multiple characters construct the sometimes coy and always circuitous narrative, the primary voice in the Song is that of a woman talking to a female audience: the daughters of Jerusalem.  She shares her desire and dreams for her beloved, interspersed with pleas to us – the daughters of Jerusalem – to be cautious when approaching love.

What is the Song about? I adjure you to read it!  Its eight chapters arouse all five senses.  I have read it more than a dozen times, and each time it stuns me with its beauty, hits a new nerve in my life, and speaks to me as a sacred text.  Discover the reasons it has remained part of scripture for thousands of years.     

I approach this text today as a modern daughter of Jerusalem, trying to hear what the Spirit is saying to Her people.

NATURAL BEAUTY

Beauty is too often culturally constructed, constraining, and commodified.  The natural beauty in each of us is a blessing from God, who created us.

In the Song, the man has eyes like doves, lips like lilies, a belly of ivory, hands of gold rods, as stately as the cedars (5.12-15).  His mouth is delicious and all of him is delightful, she tells the daughters of Jerusalem (5.16).  

She is ripe and luscious with rounded thighs, breasts like clusters of grapes, a navel like a rounded goblet (7.2-3, 9). Like a cosmic beauty, she shines through like the dawn, beautiful as the moon, radiant as the sun (6.10).        

In the song, beauty is not just something “out there.”  It is to be smelled, tasted, seen, heard, and touched.  There is beauty in our naked flesh, formed in God’s image.  

Carnally, our beauty is best enjoyed in the company of another, united in mutual desire –unique people whose experience of love is universal.   

EROTIC NATURE

Sexual desire is part of human nature, nature itself can be erotic, and erotic love is natural (even when it opposes social obligations and moral norms).  We are challenged to believe this is true for the twenty-year-old stripper and forty-year-old virgin, those single and trice wed, large and small alike.      

Our culture is super-saturated with images of superficial sexuality – public displays of the private, having more to do with power than with love.  A different path of deeply sensual spirituality has been presented best through the centuries by artists and mystics – in image, metaphor, and song.   
 
The major metaphors in the Song are arousal and ripening; its verses are lush with images of gardens, animals, and flora.  When he goes down to the nut grove to see the budding of the vale… Before I knew it, he says, my desire set me (6.11-12). She calls to her beloved – let us see if the vine has flowered, if its blossoms have opened, if the pomegranates are in bloom… there will I give my love to you (7.13) 

As this desire builds, the female character becomes faint with love and calls out to the daughters of Jerusalem - Do not wake or rouse Love until it pleases. Ilana Pardes points out that the “verb ur (to wake, arouse, rouse) is one of the key words in the Song… time and again she warns the daughters of Jerusalem not to wake love till it pleases… for once this force is set into motion, it does not cease to stir, whether one is awake or asleep.” 

Twice the female is roused from her slumbers by dreams of her beloved, causing her to wander out in search of him.  When they are united in the final chapter, she tell us – under the apple tree I roused you; It was there your mother conceived you (8.5).  Are these reference to Eden or Eve?  An attempt to wipe clean the slate, to erase Original Sin?     

Or are we presented with an alternative view of nature and sexuality in the Song?  One where, as one scholar translates 1.16, “our bed is green.”

Although the Song nods to the fact that sex naturally leads to conception, the act is never consummated in the text, and the focus remains on desire, burning and intoxicating – leading to the union of two beings in love.  Let me be a seal upon your heart, the characters plead, for love is fierce as death (8.6). 

Ilana Pardes wonders if this text has remained in the canon because our erotic nature is “too great a power to eliminate altogether from the realm of faith.”  For once Love pleases – fully roused and ripened – we are blessed to become co-creators and con-celebrators with the divine. 

Sexiness can be learned, and sex earned – but both are best when they occur free and naturally. 

The Song of Song ends – O you who linger in the garden, a lover is listening; Let me hear your voice (8.13).  Perhaps God really is Love, a still small voice adjuring us to ask for love out loud.