Borrowing from the Song of Songs, Isaiah describes Judah the Bride from head to foot. He moves from head to heart to foot and back to head (1:5-6). Four body parts are mentioned (3 different, with “head” used twice). He is inspecting Judah to the four corners. Instead . . . . Continue Reading »
Jim Rogers of Texas A&M writes in response to my post about God and Eros (the rest of this post is from Jim): Re: your question, “What assumptions about sex are behind the common opinion that the Song is only an erotic poem, only a celebration of human sexuality and marriage, full . . . . Continue Reading »
The erotic intensity of the Song is, these days, an argument against allegorizing. Walsh rightly argues the opposite: “Desire for an absent lover pulsates throughout eight chapters in a heady mixture of glee, frustration, exhaustion, and surrender. Experientially, readers would be . . . . Continue Reading »
What Carey Walsh calls the “jumpiness” of the Song ( Exquisite Desire ) has sometimes been taken as evidence of multiple authorship or sloppy editing. Walsh claims it is deliberate, a literary depiction of the desire that is the content of the Song. It is, as Walsh says, . . . . Continue Reading »
Song of Songs 5:2 (as Albert Cook points out in The Root of the Thing ) says, “the voice of dodi knocking,” implying that the voice itself has become personified and seeks entry to the bride’s chamber. Then we allegorize, in light of Revelation 3:20, where it is Jesus who knocks . . . . Continue Reading »
In response to the overview of the Song of Songs that I proposed a few days ago, James Jordan suggests the following, more compressed, scheme: 1. Israel in bondage, longing for her sleeping Lord to awake, 1:2-2:7. 2. Yahweh comes and calls Israel to the springtime, 2:8-17. 3. Yahweh’s absence . . . . Continue Reading »
Raymond Jacques Tournay argues convincingly that the cautions about “awakening love” in the Song refer to the sleeping bridegroom, rather than the sleeping bride. The motif comes to a conclusion in 8:5, where the bride says that she awakened the lover under the apple tree. Which . . . . Continue Reading »
How does the theme verse of the Song (8:6) summarize the message of the Song? Death is never mentioned earlier in the Song, and the threats to the bride do not seem mortal threats. She is wounded in the streets, but survives the attack and finds her lover again. Otherwise, the . . . . Continue Reading »
James Jordan has pointed out that Adam is first called “man” (Heb. ‘ish ) when Eve is presented to him (Genesis 2:22). He further suggests that ‘ish is punningly connected with the Hebrew word for fire, ‘esh . Adam, the man of earth, becomes enflamed, burns . . . . Continue Reading »
The Song of Songs is about Yahweh and Israel, but the history it allegorizes is not a history of grueling slavery, battle, conquest, exile. All that history is portrayed as light romantic comedy. Which it is: Light romantic comedy is the story of the world. The crises that the bride . . . . Continue Reading »
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