Song of Songs, Chapter Two, verse eight: The voice of my beloved! behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills.
We’re changing scenes again. If you remember, in verse seven we left the two of them sleeping it off (or at least he was sleeping; she was dishing to her girlfriends and then shushing them). Now, the Bride is hearing her boyfriend’s voice. I think this is the first appearance of the image of the Bride hearing but not seeing her fellow; this works particularly well if you are projecting of the figures onto the people Israel and the Divine.
Chapter Two, verse nine: My beloved is like a roe or a young hart: behold, he standeth behind our wall, he looketh forth at the windows, shewing himself through the lattice.
He is there, but not there. Nearby, but not visible. Watching her, but from outside. Read as a religious allegory, it’s way less hot than read as pr0n.
Chapter Two, verse ten: My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.
Just to distract us from the seduction, isn’t kumi, rise up, what Jesus says to one of the people he heals? (later) OK, found it, Mark 5:41, he says “Talitha cumi” to the little girl. I’m not saying it’s a reference—what else would he say?—but rise up seems to be part of the typescene for healing, which makes its use in this scene, between the Lord and the People, a healing scene. What? Yes, I know, it’s pr0n. I’m doing the job of the Rabbis, who had to keep saying “Hey! Not pr0n! No pr0n in Scripture! Just allegory!”
Chapter Two, verse eleven: For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over [and] gone;
Ah, whew. We’ve gone to poetry. It’s spring...
Chapter Two, verse twelve: The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing [of birds] is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;
Fertility images. Turtledove, by the way.
Chapter Two, verse thirteen: The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines [with] the tender grape give a [good] smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
It’s the first of May, when they can go outside and ... Hey! Allegory!
Chapter Two, verse fourteen: O my dove, [that art] in the clefts of the rock, in the secret [places] of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet [is] thy voice, and thy countenance [is] comely.
Here it’s the man that is looking for the woman. They seek each other, they want to see each other face-to-face, him looking for her, her looking for him, hearing each other’s voices, but never quite touching. If this is allegory, it’s interesting that the Lord is seeking his Bride/people as eagerly as she seeks the Divine.
Chapter Two, verse fifteen: Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines [have] tender grapes.
I have no idea. Are the little foxes rivals for his love? Some translations have this attributed to the chorus, that is, to the Daughters of Jerusalem.
Chapter Two, verse sixteen: My beloved [is] mine, and I [am] his: he feedeth among the lilies.
I’m sure he does. The lilies. I’m sure he feeds right there among ’em. OK, here’s as good a place as any for bringing up something that’s been bothering me as I read through this. It’s clear that this text is a fragment from a genre that has no other representatives in Scripture. Nor do we, as far as I know, have any other Hebrew romantic or erotic works from that time period or any period close to it. So what we know of the vocabulary is all from totally different kinds of works. That’s one reason why so many words in the Song of Songs appear nowhere else in Scripture, and we have to guess their meaning from only the one bit of context, or from patterns we know about the formation of other words from similar roots. All that’s fine, and everybody struggles with it. What I’m wondering is if there is a sort of vocabulary particular to this genre that uses words we think we know, but with other meanings.
Imagine you knew the English language from, say, newspapers. You have ten years or so of the Times and the Post, with pictures and stuff, and perhaps you have some translations of some of the articles into your native language, which helps a lot, although you do have to be careful, because the translators have their own agendas, and their translation had to be vetted by your government, who they couldn’t risk offending. Still, if you worked at it, you could get quite a good working grasp of the language, and could with sufficient study, get to the point where you felt you could translate something new.
The new thing you get to translate is a Penthouse letter.
Well, the first time you see the word cock, aren’t you going to be thrown for a bit of a loop? Searching through your concordance, you might well be able to figure out that the word is occasionally used for a male bird, as in cockerel or peacock. You might even translate it as rooster, with perhaps a note saying that it seems that the poet intended it as a sort of stand-in for the penis. Similarly, the poet uses the word cat to refer to the female genitalia. It’s a trope. It’s a sort of extended metaphor, our body parts as animals. You’d be inclined to find other references to that metaphor, and my guess is you would find them.
Now, I don’t claim that shoshanna is ancient Hebrew slang for tits. I suspect that the poet really is coming up with lovely language, capable of being interpreted in different ways. I’m saying that if there was commonly used Hebrew slang for tits that only was used in ancient Hebrew pr0n, and it seems very likely to me that there would have been, we would have a lot of difficulty recognizing it, particularly since the only surviving records from people who might have actually read some were from the same people who were waving their hands and saying “Hey! Allegory!”
Chapter Two, verse seventeen: Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be thou like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether.
It’s odd (and, I must say, sexy) that this near-visit, with him outside the walls, calling for her to come out, perhaps not knowing which window is hers, ends without them meeting. And it sets up the even sexier bit in Chapter Three.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.
Just for the record, I’ve noticed that nobody ever posts on these, so I just wanted to say that at least one person is reading them with interest. I just don’t have much to SAY, except things like “He said ‘clefts of the rock!’ Huh. Huh huh.” and the like.
Also, foxes? What’s not sexy about foxes?
I’m not sure what to make of the actual verse, per se, except to say “They said ‘tender grapes!’ Huh. Huh huh.”
peace
Matt
You read my mind; that’s exactly the sort of flattery encouragement I am looking for.
It’s not that foxes aren’t sexy as such, it’s that I have no idea why they are suddenly talking about them, or if they stand for anybody or anything else, what or who it is. And there’s a lot of huh. huh huh from this side, as well. I think that’s deliberate on the part of the writer; I doubt that any culture anywhere is sufficiently high-minded that there wasn’t a joke about tender grapes.
Thanks,
-V.
Inasmuch as Scripture is the Word of the Lord (or, as it were, Wench), what if the Song of Songs is included by said Being essentially to say, “Sex? It’s a fine thing. Be fruitful and multiply, sure, but have a good time, too.”
I realize that’s counter to a lot of dogma out there, but I would argue that
A) The Being is not really about dogma; that’s a human cultural thing.
and
B) The Being plays a deeper game than most people give it credit for. Rabbis excepted. I think it’s ok for the Being to want some people to get “sex = good stuff” from this, and other people to get Gd-and-Israel, and still others to get a nice quote or two for their wedding ceremony.
—–
On The Being’s Intentions versus Human Cultural Things
—–
It is my philosophy that the Bible is a Human Cultural Thing. It is:
It is also my philosophy that the Hand of Being is in all human things, cultural and otherwise, and that we ignore it at our peril. Particularly in a work like the Bible, which some segments of literary rabble-rousers might call the original Exquisite Corpse. This thing is a work of cooperative art, and in places where chaos plays so strong a hand, there you will see the aforementioned Hand at work the deepest.
Of course, I would say that.
—–
So:
Well, I think an Angle is a fine thing to have when doing a close reading. However, one problem that I have with the Song (and indeed with Biblical studies in general) is that the Narrative is a bit fractured. I think this is true for a number of reasons:
Still, overall: enhance, I think.
As you can see, I’m firmly in the “analogy is imposed after the fact” camp. As for Scripture with a capital S and also italicised, well, people are different one from another, and so are their Scriptures. But. I think that people who inscribe 6:3 on their wedding bands, or people who recite from the Song at seder. Or even people who read that bit about tender grapes while leering across the table at someone. Those people are making spiritual choices, whether they know/like it or not. So, sure.
I think I’ve made my thoughts on this clear already, but in case I haven’t: I don’t know that this is really the point. If you accept the analogy, you can get some interesting stuff out of it. If you reject the analogy, you can get some other, no less interesting stuff out of it.
In my opinion, of course, which I realize you don’t wholly share, it’s all the voice of the Divine, all the time. It’s just not necessarily talking to you right this instant, or me. But that doesn’t mean that it won’t say those words to you later (or hasn’t already to me) in some context that causes you to make an important, life changing, ethical or spiritual choice.
—–
I don’t personally find the imposition of a narrative, per se, on this very helpful.
I DO find the narrative structure of the 3 voices (Shepherd, Babe, and Chorus) useful, and I plan on approaching this work with that in mind some other time, at which point, I may come back to this question.
—–
As endorsement of passionate love, I don’t know. There’s plenty of evidence to believe that was Frowned Upon by the culture at the time. So, inasmuch as this is a Cultural Document, I would say no. I suspect that Shepherd and Babe, to the extent that there was a historical Shepherd and he made whoopie with a historical Babe, and that this whoopie was recorded for perpetuity by Solomon, did not end up together as Bride and Groom.
However, to the extent that this work is the voice of the Divine, I think it’s ok to be romantic about it and believe that the Being endorses passionate love, even if the culture from which the document sprang would not have.
—–
Done for now.
peace
Matt
Incidentally, have you read God is a Verb? I would be interested in your opinion on it. This may not be the place for it – it’s probably a distraction from this discussion – but if you’ve read it, I’d like to pick your brain.
peace
Matt
Lots of stuff here, Matt-
Thanks,
-V.
peace
Matt