SONG OF SONGS שיר השירים

There is widespread consensus that, although the book has no plot, it does have what can be called a framework, as indicated by the links between its beginning and end. Beyond this, however, there appears to be little agreement: attempts to find a chiastic structure have not been compelling, and attempts to analyze it into units have used different methods and arrived at differing results. The Song of Songs is arranged by character. Three parties join the song:

The bride – A hard-working shepherd girl with a rough home life (So 1:6).

The bridegroom – A handsome and stately shepherd. The text doesn’t explicitly say whether or not Solomon is the bridegroom, but the bride does reference Solomon’s wedding parade (So 3:6–11).

The chorus – The community of people celebrating the bride and bridegroom’s love and union.

If this were indeed an arranged song, think of it as a duet with a choir. And this song has three general movements: 1) The bride and groom prepare for the wedding. 2) The bride and groom profess their desire for one another. 3) The bride and groom are finally united.

It culminates in their marriage and mutual delight in one another: the bride is her beloved’s and his desire is for her (So 7:10).

Although unnamed, the Shulammite is specifically characterized in the Song of Solomon. She is described as very close to her mother, assertive, and extremely beautiful; images of plants and animals are often used to allude to her appearance.

Her narrative is sensual and filled with longing as she waits for her lover. The Shulammite does not shy away from declaring her feelings and desires, and the Bible portrays her as a complex woman whose eroticism is celebrated.

The Shulammite is the central figure in the Song of Solomon (also called Song of Songs or Canticles) and one of the most positive representations of young womanhood in the Hebrew Bible.

As the embodiment of erotic pleasure, innocent and savored for its own sake, she is to be contrasted, on the one hand, with the wily seductress of Proverbs 7, whose sexuality is insidious and destructive, and on the other with figures such as Tamar and Ruth, whose sexual boldness is in the service of perpetuating the family line. In the Shulammite, indeed, we find one of the most unqualified celebrations of female eroticism in all of Western literature.

Like her lover, the Shulammite is not given a proper name. The epithet “the Shulammite,” which occurs (twice) in only one verse of the Song (6:13) and nowhere else in the Bible, is of uncertain meaning. Although she is not as fully articulated as the characters in biblical prose fiction, the Shulammite has a distinct consistency of characterization throughout the Song.

In the Song of Songs, it is love that finds words — inspired words that disclose its exquisite charm and beauty as one of God’s choicest gifts. The voice of love in the Song of Songs, like that of wisdom in Pr 8:1 — 9:12, is a woman’s voice, suggesting that love and wisdom draw men powerfully with the subtlety and mystery of a woman’s allurements.

This feminine voice speaks profoundly of love. She portrays its beauty and delights. She claims its exclusiveness (“My lover is mine and I am his,” 2:16) and insists on the necessity of its pure spontaneity (“Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires,” 2:7).

She also proclaims its overwhelming power — it rivals that of the fearsome enemy, death; it burns with the intensity of blazing fire; it is unquenchable even by the ocean depths (8:6-7a). She affirms its preciousness: All that one possesses cannot purchase it, nor (alternatively) should it be exchanged for it (8:7b). She hints, without saying so explicitly (8:6), that it is the Lord’s gift.

God intends that such love — grossly distorted and abused by both ancient and modern people — be a normal part of marital life in his good creation (see Ge 1:26-31; 2:24). Indeed, in the Song of Songs, the faithful Israelite could ascertain how to live lovingly within the theocratic arrangement. Such marital love is designed by the Creator-King to come to natural expression within his realm.

The beautiful lyrics about heterosexual sensuality, desire, and love in the Song of Songs beg to be identified with and embraced. Yet as we read and reread, we become aware of small but persistent nuances that raise issues of gender and class and that cloud the general, seemingly idyllic picture that pervades much of the Song (Song 3:1-4 and Song 5:2-8 are the exceptions).

In theater as well as in fiction, the characters with the most lines are usually the more dominant. In the Song, female voices make up more than 60 percent of the text; their voices are bolder, more playful, more outspoken, serious, and artistic than the voices attributed to males. A woman’s voice opens Song 1:2 and concludes Song 8:14. The poem seems to imply gender equality, even female gender superiority.

This impression of female ascendancy is buttressed by one of the most poignant and comprehensive love “credos” to be voiced by a female: “Let me be a seal upon your heart, like the seal upon your hand. For love is fierce as death, passion is mighty as Sheol.” (Song 8:6-7, NJPS)

It is significant because of its fierceness and depth of emotion. It shocks us in its pain and exuberance, strength and weakness, in the hyperbolic radicalism that uses corporeal allusions as well as primal metaphors and symbols.

So, you may say, this is in keeping with the rest of this love lyric. Its female speakers are bold and physical and in general, are allowed to be so.

The introduction calls the poem “the song of songs”, a construction commonly used in Scriptural Hebrew to show something as the greatest and most beautiful of its class (as in Holy of Holies). The poem proper begins with the woman’s expression of desire for her lover and her self-description to the “daughters of Jerusalem”: she insists on her sun-born blackness, likening it to the “tents of Kedar” (nomads) and the “curtains of Solomon”.

A dialogue between the lovers follows: the woman asks the man to meet; he replies with a lightly teasing tone. The two compete in offering flattering compliments (“my beloved is to me as a cluster of henna blossoms in the vineyards of En Gedi”, “an apple tree among the trees of the wood”, “a lily among brambles”, while the bed they share is like a forest canopy).

The section closes with the woman telling the daughters of Jerusalem not to stir up love such as hers until it is ready. The woman recalls a visit from her lover in the springtime. She uses imagery from a shepherd’s life, and she says of her lover that “he pastures his flock among the lilies”.

The woman again addresses the daughters of Jerusalem, describing her fervent and ultimately successful search for her lover through the night-time streets of the city. When she finds him she takes him almost by force into the chamber in which her mother conceived her.