Chapter 1, verse 4: Draw me, we will run after thee: the king hath brought me into his chambers: we will be glad and rejoice in thee, we will remember thy love more than wine: the upright love thee.
Now, it’s confusing that this is all one verse. If you recall, halfway through verse two, the young woman turns from addressing some audience to addressing her lover directly. In this verse, it starts with the woman saying “pull me along”, followed by a—what—response? of “we will follow you”. Who are “we”? As I mentioned, I think of the piece as an oratorio, with the Daughters of Jerusalem as the chorus, and I think that’s who is promising or threatening to follow here. But who are they following? The guy. It’s the single masculine object, the Bridegroom, let’s call him, or Solomon, or the Lord, or whoever it is—the Bride wants him to pull her along, but the Daughters are willing to chase.
Then she tells them “the king hath brought me, etc, etc,” and they again respond “we’re so happy for you we could plotz” and she says “I understand why they’re always chasing after you.” It’s back and forth here, not only between the two voices, but the two voices are not always talking to each other. I’ll also infer that the relationship between the Bride and the Bridesmaids (can I call them that, or will y’all expect them to come on in matching seafoam-coloured dresses singing hail the bridegroom, hail the bride?) is not altogether easy. Is there possessiveness? Is there a hint of backbiting? Or is that my eyes reading it?
Anyway, in the next verse Chapter 1, verse 5: I [am] black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.
she is talking once again to the Bridesmaids, and with a kind of defiance. She is shachor, black. Who else is shachor? Any guesses? Trick question, the answer is nobody. Not anybody. Oh, in Leviticus 13, the priest has to look for black hair, which is shachor, and if there is black hair in the white lesion, then the poor sap isn’t a leper, so that’s all right. And when Job is whining about his illness, his skin is shachar, black. Sometimes people are kadar, black, in mourning, or in 1 Kings 18 the Heavens are kadar with clouds, but not shachor. Really, nobody else in all of Scripture is black. Not villains, not heroes, not judges, nobody.
And who else is comely? Comely here is na’veh, from na’ah we think, but our Bride is also yapheh. She is beautiful. Who else is beautiful in the Torah? I have a candy bar for the first person who can tell me everybody in the Torah who is described as beautiful.
Sarah, of course. Sarah gets into trouble, she’s such a hottie. Twice, at least. Who else? Not Leah, that’s for sure. Rachel, yes. Does her beauty get her into trouble? Well, it causes trouble, although not so much for her, I suppose. Who else gets into trouble for being such a hottie that somebody else’s spouse can keep hands off? Joseph, in the Potiphar’s wife episode. I also think Joseph is hot enough to put a spell on Potiphar, and on Pharoah, too.
There’s another hottie, later on, and it isn’t Solomon. It’s Solomon’s dad, David. David is so hot that Scripture mentions it three times: when Samuel anoints him in 1 Sa 16:12, when Saul is looking for a harpist in 16:18, and again when Goliath sees him in 17:42. In fact, if you weren’t told in verse one that this Song of Songs is Solomon’s, and there was a hunky shepherd in the story, who would you think it was? Not Solomon. The sweet psalmist, that’s who.
There are a handful of others described as beautiful, either yapheh or na'veh. Abigail, the wife of Nabal (of the vineyard), Tamar (the one that was raped by her brother), Absolom (who kills Tamar’s rapist, and who steals the hearts of the people, and was hanged in a tree), another Tamar (you would think they would stop naming girls Tamar, but nothing bad happens to this one), Abishag the Shunammite (who fails to seduce the elderly Solomon), Job’s replacement daughters. Bathsheba is ishah tovah mor’eh m’od, a woman very good to look at. Rebecca is also good to look at, but not yapheh. The daughters of men were good to look at, or so the sons of the Lord thought, in the days of Noah.
Oh, and Esther.
Abraham? Not a hottie. Moses? Not a hottie. Miriam? Deborah? Joshua? Adam? Isaac? Jacob? Benjamin? Not hotties. Beauty is interesting, in Scripture. It certainly isn’t evidence of a good soul, and it gets people into trouble more often than not. But if you want to know who is the most beautiful, it’s our nameless babe. The word yapheh occurs 41 times in Scripture, and 12 of those are in the Song of Songs. And Hebrew is a language that uses repetition for emphasis; usually instead of saying someone is very tall, one would say that he is tall tall. You can do that in English, but you have to work at it. Anyway, black and beautiful.
And I know that’s only two verses, but isn’t it enough for one day?
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.