Corrupt
Affections
Song Of Solomon, also called Song of Songs, is one of the most
controversial books in the bible. I have, in my Christian
experience, only rarely heard the book preached from and only in
the context of godly romance (universally glossed over as
“romance” as opposed to godly sex) within marriage or as
an allegory of Christ and His Church. Neither interpretation is
wrong, but neither takes Songs simply or literally at its word.
Song of Solomon does not emphasize marriage, though the marriage
bond is implied by use of terms like “bride” and “groomsman,”
words later echoed by Jesus Christ in the parable of the Ten
Virgins. However, putting the emphasis on marriage in the
teaching or preaching of Songs is like placing your finger on a
scale while weighing objects to tilt the numbers in your favor.
Songs is not about marriage, not about a wedding. Songs is about
intercourse. It is about sex. It follows a couple, presumably
written by and, scholars argue, for King Solomon, from courtship
to copulation. In its larger eschatological consideration, Songs
broadly echoes the divine relationship between Christ and His
Church, but it places such divine revelation in the context of
erotica. This seems a strange choice of the prudish God of
Assumption most Christians worship, and most preachers are
embarrassed to read the steamier passages of the book from the
pulpit.
Our discomfort with Songs stems largely from our discomfort with
sex, a prudish immaturity which casts a shadow upon a
magnificent gift and perfect expression from God. Just the
mention of sex invites the scrutiny if not the ire of
conservative and even liberal Christians, who demonize any and
all sexual conduct, issuing only a reluctant waiver to married
persons while insisting all other Christian believers repress
any and all sexual urges under fear of spiritual death and
eternal damnation. None of this is scriptural. None of it comes
from God. Christian pastors stress abstinence, prize and even
reward celibacy as somehow noble, a meeting of God’s standard.
Which is faulty exegesis. God’s standard is not celibacy. God’s
standard is holiness. You can be as celibate as a Franciscan monk
and still miss the mark of God’s calling, which is to be Holy,
to emulate Him [I Peter 1:16]. Equating celibacy with Holiness blasphemes
God by reducing His dominion in our lives to what’s in our
underpants. It makes God seem petty and ridiculous and it
demeans His creation by reducing complex human values to
simplistic yes/no on/off Heaven/Hell equations. Our humanness is
of divine origin. Our carnal thinking—demeaning our own divine
origin—is a far greater sin than whatever is going on in our
bedrooms.
The biggest problem with most Christian interpretations of Song
of Solomon is that they are, in fact, Christian interpretations.
We bring our modern-era Christian mindset to a work written more
than 900 years before Christianity even existed. We apply a
moral standard of premarital chastity into an at best ambiguous
and self-serving rambling from a person to whom such a standard
was meaningless. King Solomon had 700 wives. Many if not most of
them were political liaisons, women he likely only met at the
wedding ceremony while he worked out treaties with their
fathers. He additionally kept 300 concubines—women he either
could not or would not marry for political or ethical
reasons—whose sole purpose was to satisfy him sexually. Our
modern view of premarital abstinence and post marital monogamy
is misplaced in the study of Song of Solomon. To properly
receive what God has for us in this book, these are moral values
we need to leave in the parking lot.
Matthew Henry, considered one of history’s most renowned
biblical authorities, regards Song of Solomon only or specifically as a
parable, one intended to reveal Christ’s relationship to his
church. In his introduction, he warns, “…to those who come to
the reading of it with carnal minds and corrupt affections [Song
of Solomon] is in danger of being a savior of death to death…”
It is certainly not my place (or desire) to debate learned
biblical scholars, but I am left wondering why, if God wanted to
tell us something, He would go out of his way to disguise it as
something else? Why, if human sexuality is considered a “corrupt
affection” (presumably outside the bonds of marriage), would
God choose such a vivaciously stirring sexual context in which
to place His divine revelation? I’m sure somebody with letters
after their name can explain that to me, so I’ll just assume
this all somehow makes sense.
Eye Of The
Beholder? Chapter 4: "Awake, north wind, and come, south
wind! Blow on my garden,
that its fragrance may spread abroad. Let my lover come into
his garden and taste its choice fruits."
Chapter 5: "I slept but my heart was awake. Listen! My lover is
knocking: "Open to me, my sister, my darling,
my dove, my flawless one. My head is drenched with dew, my hair
with the dampness of the night." I have taken off my robe--
must I put it on again? I have washed my feet-- must I soil them
again? My lover thrust his hand through the latch-opening;
my heart began to pound for him. I arose to open for my lover,
and my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with flowing myrrh,
on the handles of the lock..."
Do we really believe such
provocative imagery is an accident?
Not The Word of God
By its own testimony, Song of Solomon is not the word of God. It is an erotic poem. Like
all
books in the bible, Songs is included in scripture for our benefit
[2 Tim 3:16], which is to say all scripture is God-breathed or
God-inspired, whether or not God Himself is specifically speaking in
those specific words. This is the thorny truth about The Apostle
Paul’s letters in the New Testament, upon which we Christians
base most of our doctrinal conclusions about right and wrong,
good and bad. Those letters, called epistles, are not the word
of God. They are, by their own testimony, the word of Paul. But
we believe them to be God-breathed and God–inspired and, thus,
meaningful and purposeful in our lives and in governing our
Christian conduct. The catch is: we can’t just toss the words
out into the atmosphere and claim them to be direct and
unambiguous commandments from God.
In the Moses story, Moses returned from Mount Sinai with stone
tablets etched by the hand of God. Thou Shalt Not Kill. The word
of God. Paul, however, was never speaking universally
or unambiguously, “Thou Shalt Not.” Paul was always speaking TO
someone ABOUT something, and, by reading Paul’s mail, we are
walking in at the middle if not the end of a conversation we
need to fully understand in order to put Paul’s words in their
proper context. But that's not what we do. Ironically, the
platform for much of our Christian conduct is based on a
plain-text reading of Paul and applying his words, spoken to
specific people and specific matters, in a universal manner.
This is the foundation of the prudish Christian mindset
regarding human sexuality and the church's traditional
repression of women: the baggage we bring with us when we
consider Song of Solomon.
This is ironic because, the every same ignorant refusal to
properly exegete Paul becomes our rationale for picking Song of
Solomon apart. We take Paul at his word, in a plain-text
reading, but a pain-text reading of Song of Solomon is s sexually
provocative
that, were it not smack in the middle of our King James, we'd
lynch people for reading it our loud in church. Our regressive
Christian sensibility tells us Songs couldn't
possibly be about sex, so we have to explain it somehow. we have
to invoke God where He is not mentioned, not worshipped, not
even alluded to. So we help God out, shoehorning in morality
lessons where none exist. And the sex in Songs must, we insist,
be between two married persons.
Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. The point of this essay isn't to
settle that debate, other than to say insisting Songs must be
referring to two married persons is just us bringing our baggage
to the study. We believe we're pleasing God somehow by insisting
Songs is something it isn't. Songs is not about marriage. Is not
about morality. Is certainly not the lesson in abstinence some of
us quizzically insist it is. Song of Solomon is about sex. We
want it to be about love, about romance. It is about desire. It
is one of history's most revered and well=written erotic poems.
This is something we all, as Christians, need to come to terms
with and stop breathing an inappropriate self-righteousness into
this work.
I Am Black: Imposing our sexual hang-ups on an erotic poem.
Keeping Your Own Vineyard
I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of
Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.
Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath
looked upon me: my mother's children were angry with me; they
made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have
I not kept. —Song of Solomon 1:5-6
The girl was black. This is significant only to the extent that
it is so rarely mentioned. Actually, the whole book, Song of
Songs, is rarely mentioned and then typically only in the arena
of Christian teaching on marriage or as an allegory, Christ and
the Church or Christ and the human soul, as husband and wife.
Only, God is not mentioned anywhere in this book, nor are thanks
or praises offered, or even oblique references made to Him, nor
is Song of Songs quoted anywhere in the New Testament. Song of
Songs is one of the megillot (scrolls)—found in the last
section of the Tanakh (the canon of the Hebrew Bible),
known as the Ketuvim (or "Writings"). It is also known in
English as Canticle of Canticles or simply Canticles.
Were these people married? There is no mention of a wedding
until Chapter 3 v11, and is referred to obliquely, the scripture
talking not about the wedding but about the crown King Solomon
wears, "...which his mother crowned him On
the day of his wedding, The day of the gladness of his heart."
Solomon’s numerous references to his lover as “my bride” are
often accompanied by other descriptors, including, “my sister”
(chapter 4 v9),
“my dove, my flawless one…” (Chapter 5). She is most often
referred to as "beloved," he as "my lover."
She does not refer to him as, “my husband.” The references are
sexual, not matrimonial. Of course, this does not preclude
their having been married, but the conventional presumption of
marriage in Songs is largely an invention of Christian theology
and doctrine. Whether these characters were married or not is
not a imperative for the narrative. If it were, we would likely
not see verses like Chapter 8: “Oh, that
you were like my brother, Who nursed at my mother's breasts! If
I should find you outside, I would kiss you; I would not be
despised.”.” This is not a sentiment expressed by married
women, in politically safe and God-blessed relationships.
The king (or his scribe)’s lavish flourishes of admiration and
undying love are undermined by the fact he has 699 other wives
and has, possibly, said very similar things to all of them.
Holding Song of Songs up as our standard for sexual intimacy
only within the bonds of marriage is, at best, specious,
considering not only the 699 additional wives but the 300 other
women Solomon was not married to but whose singular purpose was
for his sexual indulgences.
There’s interesting and useful themes within this book both for
the purposes of exploring our relationship to Christ and our
relationships with one another, but using it as a model for
proper Christian sexual conduct is a gross distortion of the
book’s purpose and meaning.
“Promise me, O women of Jerusalem, by the
swift gazelles and the deer of the wild, not to awaken love
until the time is right.” —Song of Solomon 2:7 ( NLT)
“Don’t excite love, don’t stir it up,
until the time is ripe and you’re ready.”
—Song of Solomon 2:7
(The Message)
“… do not stir up love until the
appropriate time.”
—Song of Solomon 2:7 (Holman Christian Standard)
“After studying these verses and several others from the Song of
Solomon, (3:5, 8:4) a common theme stands out – beware of
awakening romantic love before it is time. Romantic awakenings
lead to thoughts, accompanied by feelings that lead to actions.
It is God’s wonderful plan for romantic love. However, if these
awakenings happen during a season when they can’t be righteously
fulfilled, they often lead down a path of hurt and regret, not
only a loss of virginity.” —Vivian Padilla-Chapman, West
Carrollton Nazarene Church
I have no quarrel with my sister’s messaging, overall advice
and conclusions regarding teen sex, but, in love, I’ll disagree
with hers (and many Christian pastors and scholars’)
interpretation of the above verse. To me, this is another
example of Christians approaching scripture form a predetermined
conclusion. In other words, we believe thus-and-so and then
scour the scriptures to find verses to support that point of
view, rather than studying the scriptures in an unbiased fashion
and being led by what we discover there. Churches using Songs
2:7 to further their puritanical stance on sexuality
conveniently skip the original King James which, in context,
underscores the element of time as opportunity, as
opposed to appropriateness. This was a lament of a woman
in the throes of longing (or overcome by horniness, depending on
how you look at it). The verse has nothing to do with being
married or not married, but with the timing of her lover’s
arrival:
I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem,
by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up
, nor awake my love, till he please. 8 The voice of my beloved!
behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the
hills.9 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.10 My beloved spake, and
said unto me, Rise up , my love, my fair one, and come away.
—Song of Solomon 2:7-9 (KJV)
Too Hot For Sunday Morning: Pomegranate, possibly the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden.
Penthouse Letters
This is an erotic text, written or at least commissioned by King
Solomon for whatever purpose. It was likely included in the
biblical canon on the strength of its allegorical fit to Christ
and His Church, but biblical scholars are increasingly focusing
on the book’s literal meaning. It is the biblical equivalent of
a class porno flick or one of those Penthouse Magazine
letters.
Biblical scholars Noegel and Rendsburg, in their work, Solomon's
Vineyard: Literary and Linguistic Studies in the Song of Songs,
conclude: “The Song of Songs was written circa 900 BC, in the
northern dialect of ancient Hebrew, by an author of unsurpassed
literary ability, adept at the techniques of alliteration and polyprosopon
[a dialogue of speakers], able to create the most
sensual and erotic poetry of his day, and all the while
incorporating into his work a subtext critical of the Judahite
monarchy in general and Solomon in particular.”
At the end of the day, much of the bible is a mystery, one we
piece together at our own peril. Apocalyptic texts like Daniel
and The Revelation are full of cryptic imagery. We dive in, we
take our best shot at figuring things out, based one both
historical and theological exegesis. No matter what somebody
tells you, Song of Solomon is, at the end of the day, one of
those texts: a book eliciting strong differences of opinion
about its message, purpose and meaning. We should accept the
possibility that we won’t actually know, specifically and to the
note, all the answers about this text. In the meantime, we
should stop distorting it to fit our idea of what things should
be like. We should encounter the bible on its own terms and let
God speak to us.
Christopher J. Priest
23 September 2012
editor@praisenet.org
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