Text: Song of Solomon 2: 8-17
Natasha Walter in her recently published book titled, The Living Dolls: The return of Sexism paints a frightening picture of an erroneous sexual culture. Walter, a Briton, predominantly speaks about the western society, but she cautions that it is spreading globally too. This culture, what she calls as ‘’Hypersexualisation”, tells young women that the best they can aspire is to become a pole-dancing glamour model, and their gender preferences are biologically determined rather than socially constructed. This culture turns women into the primped and hollow dolls that are given to play with as children. Walter contends that though feminism has made determinative influences in the social order, a male chauvinism with antagonism towards women is fostering this culture to objectify female bodies as locales of exploitation. Let us go back to the text and search in it how Hebrew poetry views human sexuality.
For many of us it may be awkward to hear these words from the pew; it is even more uncomfortable to speak them from the pulpit. Love poetry describing the erotic body and the description of sexuality within the confines of worship is beyond taboo. Yet we hear these words from within the canon, from the holy book that we claim as guide for our lives. Tucked in neatly between Ecclesiastes and Isaiah, the church has historically tiptoed gingerly over it.
The Song of Solomon has been interpreted as an allegory, a collection of pagan fertility cult liturgies and an anthology of disconnected songs extolling human love. The allegorical interpreters include the Jewish tradition which viewed the book as an allegorical picture of the love of God, for Israel. Church leaders, including Hippolytus, Origen, Jerome, Athanasius, Augustine, and Bernard of Clairvaux, have viewed the book as an allegory of Christ's love for His bride, the church. However, the Song nowhere gives an interpreter the suggestion that it should be understood as an allegory. I reserve the position that the purpose of this book is to extol the human love and any attempt to view it as an allegory is our shyness or incapacity to speak of sensual love and affection in the context of a church. This song is the beautiful portrayal of a priceless gift of God to enjoy and celebrate. Before going any further I feel I must honestly admit that I am not speaking coherently to my differently sexual oriented brothers and sisters as the further treatment is focusing on a heterosexual audience.
Sexuality is the gift of God to enjoy and celebrate
The poetic form employed in the songs is called in Arabic as wasf, a love poem in which the lovers describe one another's bodies using images from nature and architecture. That is why we see lot of imageries from the nature in this passage and about the buildings in 4:4-5. The passage contains many words that are peculiar only to these passages and not seen elsewhere in the Jewish Bible and it suits the spirit of the book as a whole as there is no other book as Song of Solomon in the Canon. The preceding sections of the song seem to have a royal setting though outdoor scenes also were mentioned for example in, 1:14; 2:1-3. But the setting for 2:8-3:5 is the country side, where the lovers meet each other.
The influence of ancient west Asian art makes the portrayal yet more imaginative and rich in drawing the score for the song. Lover, asks his darling to go for a walk in the countryside. The elaborate description of spring probably meant to do more than simply emphasizing the beauty of the setting. It is likely that he was also describing their relationship. In a sense when one falls in love, the feeling is like spring and everything seems fresh and new. The world is seen from a different perspective, which is how the lover felt when he was with his beloved. Several statements refer to the beauty of the spring. Flowers appear in the spring, adding delightful colours to the landscape, inducing people to sing for joy. Doves sing, announcing spring's arrival. Fig trees put forth their early fruit. Grape vines blossom, giving off their fragrance just before the grapes appear. In total, spring stimulates the senses of sight, sound, taste, and smell.
These verses call upon to enjoy the sensual pleasures promised by the nature as nature gets ready to affirm the continuance of life. What a spectacular portrayal of nature’s joys intertwined with sexual union? The sexual union completes the sensual pleasures through the sense of touch. The culmination of their sensual pleasures marks the beginning of an authentic spirituality, where one gives oneself for the other. These verses bring to us the celebration of humankind's return to the Garden of Eden. In the garden, humanity was "naked and was not ashamed"; humanity was free to eat of the goodness of the garden, to live in harmony with the animals, and to walk and talk with God. Upon the expulsion from the garden, humanity found itself in a world of hard work and difficult life. The Song offers a glimpse of a return to Eden, to the innocent state that the world was created to be, a return to nakedness and no shame, to the utter joy of creation and being in the presence of God. Born to mutuality and harmony, a man and a woman live in a garden where nature unites with them to celebrate the one flesh of sexuality. Their love is truly the celebration of themselves being the very bone and flesh of the other.
We have to scrupulously evaluate whether the marriages in our families celebrate sexuality as portrayed in the Song. We often tend to adhere to the gender constructions of men with six packed muscular structure and with an attitude “I’m from Mars”, while women as pacifists, enduring all kinds of circuses by these machismos through internalising. We need a redeemed masculinity and femininity which consider both as complementing partners which stimulate mutual celebration of sexuality. Now why did this desirous celebration of sexuality become undesirous? Why is it for us difficult to talk and teach such a beautiful state of our lives in the context of a church? As v.15 says we have to catch those foxes that destroy this beautiful vineyard of our lives.
Sexuality is precious and should be guarded against all vices
Foxes were noted for their destructive tendencies in crop fields, so the reference to those animals probably suggested metaphorically some problems in the relationship of the couple. Craig Glickman in his book, ‘A Song for Lovers’ comments that, I quote “the foxes represent the obstacles or temptations that have plagued lovers throughout the centuries. Perhaps it is the fox of uncontrolled desire which drives a wedge of guilt between a couple. Perhaps it is the fox of mistrust and jealousy which breaks the bond of love. Or it may be the fox of selfishness and pride which refuses to let one acknowledge his fault to another. Or it may be an unforgiving spirit which will not accept the apology of the other.” End quote Their willingness to solve the problems together is an evidence of their maturity.
In the Egyptian love poetry foxes represent sexually aggressive men, who tamper the mutual intimacy expected in the conjugal relationship portrayed in the songs. 15th verse has a feminist intonation that sees male domination as the root cause for the vices in sexual relationships. As we read Matthew 5: 28 Jesus in his teachings about adultery, identifies men as the primary agents of adultery. His rebuke is addressing men who look at a woman lustfully. Natasha Walter in her book argues that the men in the hypersexualised society are encouraged to view female bodies as a mere object of pleasure. At the same time women are asked to make their bodies more sexually appealing to present themselves as attractive products for bargain rather than devote on intimacy, imagination and love. This reduces sexual intimacy to mere acts of performance where they are appraised completely based on their performance quotient. Our sisters, brothers and children who were pulled to the flesh trade making them commercial sex workers by this culture are indeed the sinned against. Their precious sexuality is stolen from them asking for compromises to be compensated with filthy money.
In the pretext of hypersexualisation there is a wider outcry that the younger generation is taking marital life lightly and engage in premarital and extramarital, uncommitted sex. Predominantly our response is a blatant ‘NO’. A Christian ethical response to this will be to educate that these casual uncommitted sex sells us short as relational beings, capable of inter personal love. It just involves two persons using each other’s bodies for individual pleasure without interest in and concern for the person, who each of them is.
The couple in the song is very much contrary to what is described about man-woman relationship in the hypersexualised societies. The relationship between the woman and the man is one of mutual desire and enjoyment. Neither one of the lovers nor the couple itself fits a gender-determined stereotype. They are fiercely committed to each other. Both of them use much of the same colourful and provocative imagery to describe each other and the love they share. These imageries are not used as means to bargain on their bodies rather to express their joy of self giving and love making.
The song certainly applauds the glories of lovemaking and more importantly, it celebrates the depth of the commitment shared by the woman and man. Chapter 8:6-7 has been described as the zenith of expressions of the entire Song. The woman maintains that their love possesses a force that can easily rival the power of death and Sheol the place of death. It can even withstand the chaotic primal and flood waters. Neither death nor chaos is a match for the love that joins these two. No power from the netherworld and no treasure from this world can compare with the strength and the value of love. This realisation about one’s sexuality and the mutual love they share enables the couple to engage in the sexual talk as a mark of protest.
Sexual talk as a voice of protest
The final verses of the passage figuratively express the sexual union of the couple. Some translators consider the lilies mentioned here to be lotus flowers, which were symbols of sensuality and fertility in Egypt and Canaan. They were committed to each other and the woman knew that her beloved belonged to her and she belonged to him. Her thoughts of their mutual possession of each other naturally led to her desire for physical intimacy. So in her mind she invited him to turn to her like a gazelle. Gazelles are often portrayed as the companions of the goddess of love in ancient west Asian art. The original text refers to a mount of Bather in Hebrew al harē bather in v.17. The original site of this mount is not yet found. It seems preferable to take the mentioning of mountains as a subtle reference to the woman’s breasts. In an implicit way the woman wants that intimacy to last during the night till the day breaks at dawn and the night shadows vanish.
This language expressing the longing of the woman towards sexual intercourse is a clever interpolation of the writer to voice the sexual preferences of the women in a predominantly androcentric world, where a woman who speaks of her sexual desires is bringing shame to the honour of her man. The Song of Songs is telling to its readers of all times that the preferential passages that they would normally deem to be 'religious' or expressing God's will for them, is not the only way to talk about the manifold experiences of life. Even if the Song of Songs is interpreted as a metaphor, the reality of the language and its immediate 'real life' references imply how important are they to human life. All we need indeed, is a radical readjustment of our concepts on what should be deemed 'holy' and what should be ‘profane’. The song does not present a negative protest but a positive celebration that protests by implication.
There is no doubt that the Song of Songs was written within the circumstances of a patriarchal society dominated by the preferences of men, in the realm of sex as elsewhere. Though there are not much supporters to the argument of female authorship of songs scholars like S.D. Goitein asserts that the framework and the plot of the Song of Songs is authored by a woman. Another suggestion is that a woman was the author of Song of Songs perhaps one of Solomon's wives or a female sage from a later period of ancient Israel. The woman's voice dominates the chapters and verses of the book, fifty six of its verses are the voice of the female character, while thirty six are the voices of the male. In addition, the feminine voice opens and closes the dialogue of the book. Altogether the spirit breathed in the songs suggests a female authorship. This indeed registers the fact that women even in that patriarchal society were capable and imaginative to acknowledge their protest.
Tissy Mariam Thomas is a lecturer of Psychology, teaching in Christ College, Bangalaru, who authored a book in Malayalam titled ‘iranginadappu’ which means ‘walking outside’. She prophetically dared to write about the irritating and painful experience of a woman going out on the streets of Kerala. She says, I quote “each time when I sat down to write my column, scores of bitter experiences and a number of scars came rushing into my mind and it was deeply disturbing. But I was happy, overwhelmed, and proud and even felt a little more empowered as I could see people were irritated, shocked, hostile and surprised with the incidents narrated.” These are the voices of protests of bold women from our patriarchal society. What is our message today?
Our message for this day is that, we should be cautious when we too often stigmatise people who speak of their sexuality, about their preferences or their experiences by branding them as ‘immoral’. Immorality is a dubious term which does not have a definite meaning unchangeable over the time. Morality calls us for an adherence to the expected norms of the society. So to envision a change where everyone gets an opportunity to celebrate their sexuality responsibly in their words and deeds, beckon us to be ‘immoral’. It is risking us for the sake of authentic celebration of our sexuality.
Indeed the Song of Solomon removes the envelope, challenges the status quo, and empowers that our bodies are spaces for the divine to reveal in our frail attempts to love one another. While the theme of sexual relationships does appear in Proverbs and in Hosea, they are often associated with negative connotations of adultery, which is condemned. Hence we never find a celebration of the pleasures of physical love or an admiration elsewhere. Today we ourselves are puzzled in the mesh of finding out where we stand in understanding our sexual bodies under a huge span of extremes. We see that there is a growing fear in the church and society that the younger generations are getting hypersexualised. But at the same time there is a conscientious silence towards the discussions relating to sexuality. Many simple behavioural changes in adolescents are considered as severe mental ailments and called upon counsellors for a cure, while society itself needs more clear guidance on understanding such changes. This is a matter of grave injustice, which we are doing to the generations to come.
The male and female protagonists of the passage affirm to us that their sexuality and love is indeed divine, nurtured by nature and gifted by God. They realise in their intimate life that there can be obstacles they needed to overcome and to consider sexuality as precious and worthy and never allow it to get vitiated. Their bold talk on enjoying their bodies and sexuality reminds us to take our sexuality seriously, to be bold enough to address our desires and all the more to reject the Greek dualism that still rules us which puts Spirit as good and body as evil. If we trust on the biblical passage through which we went through this day, we have to stand our ground and say with boldness that these, our sexual bodies are indeed good, the gardens of authentic celebrations of life. May the divine love constantly challenge us to take this bold step and fight all forces that distort authentic celebration of our sexuality. Amen.
For many of us it may be awkward to hear these words from the pew; it is even more uncomfortable to speak them from the pulpit. Love poetry describing the erotic body and the description of sexuality within the confines of worship is beyond taboo. Yet we hear these words from within the canon, from the holy book that we claim as guide for our lives. Tucked in neatly between Ecclesiastes and Isaiah, the church has historically tiptoed gingerly over it.
The Song of Solomon has been interpreted as an allegory, a collection of pagan fertility cult liturgies and an anthology of disconnected songs extolling human love. The allegorical interpreters include the Jewish tradition which viewed the book as an allegorical picture of the love of God, for Israel. Church leaders, including Hippolytus, Origen, Jerome, Athanasius, Augustine, and Bernard of Clairvaux, have viewed the book as an allegory of Christ's love for His bride, the church. However, the Song nowhere gives an interpreter the suggestion that it should be understood as an allegory. I reserve the position that the purpose of this book is to extol the human love and any attempt to view it as an allegory is our shyness or incapacity to speak of sensual love and affection in the context of a church. This song is the beautiful portrayal of a priceless gift of God to enjoy and celebrate. Before going any further I feel I must honestly admit that I am not speaking coherently to my differently sexual oriented brothers and sisters as the further treatment is focusing on a heterosexual audience.
Sexuality is the gift of God to enjoy and celebrate
The poetic form employed in the songs is called in Arabic as wasf, a love poem in which the lovers describe one another's bodies using images from nature and architecture. That is why we see lot of imageries from the nature in this passage and about the buildings in 4:4-5. The passage contains many words that are peculiar only to these passages and not seen elsewhere in the Jewish Bible and it suits the spirit of the book as a whole as there is no other book as Song of Solomon in the Canon. The preceding sections of the song seem to have a royal setting though outdoor scenes also were mentioned for example in, 1:14; 2:1-3. But the setting for 2:8-3:5 is the country side, where the lovers meet each other.
The influence of ancient west Asian art makes the portrayal yet more imaginative and rich in drawing the score for the song. Lover, asks his darling to go for a walk in the countryside. The elaborate description of spring probably meant to do more than simply emphasizing the beauty of the setting. It is likely that he was also describing their relationship. In a sense when one falls in love, the feeling is like spring and everything seems fresh and new. The world is seen from a different perspective, which is how the lover felt when he was with his beloved. Several statements refer to the beauty of the spring. Flowers appear in the spring, adding delightful colours to the landscape, inducing people to sing for joy. Doves sing, announcing spring's arrival. Fig trees put forth their early fruit. Grape vines blossom, giving off their fragrance just before the grapes appear. In total, spring stimulates the senses of sight, sound, taste, and smell.
These verses call upon to enjoy the sensual pleasures promised by the nature as nature gets ready to affirm the continuance of life. What a spectacular portrayal of nature’s joys intertwined with sexual union? The sexual union completes the sensual pleasures through the sense of touch. The culmination of their sensual pleasures marks the beginning of an authentic spirituality, where one gives oneself for the other. These verses bring to us the celebration of humankind's return to the Garden of Eden. In the garden, humanity was "naked and was not ashamed"; humanity was free to eat of the goodness of the garden, to live in harmony with the animals, and to walk and talk with God. Upon the expulsion from the garden, humanity found itself in a world of hard work and difficult life. The Song offers a glimpse of a return to Eden, to the innocent state that the world was created to be, a return to nakedness and no shame, to the utter joy of creation and being in the presence of God. Born to mutuality and harmony, a man and a woman live in a garden where nature unites with them to celebrate the one flesh of sexuality. Their love is truly the celebration of themselves being the very bone and flesh of the other.
We have to scrupulously evaluate whether the marriages in our families celebrate sexuality as portrayed in the Song. We often tend to adhere to the gender constructions of men with six packed muscular structure and with an attitude “I’m from Mars”, while women as pacifists, enduring all kinds of circuses by these machismos through internalising. We need a redeemed masculinity and femininity which consider both as complementing partners which stimulate mutual celebration of sexuality. Now why did this desirous celebration of sexuality become undesirous? Why is it for us difficult to talk and teach such a beautiful state of our lives in the context of a church? As v.15 says we have to catch those foxes that destroy this beautiful vineyard of our lives.
Sexuality is precious and should be guarded against all vices
Foxes were noted for their destructive tendencies in crop fields, so the reference to those animals probably suggested metaphorically some problems in the relationship of the couple. Craig Glickman in his book, ‘A Song for Lovers’ comments that, I quote “the foxes represent the obstacles or temptations that have plagued lovers throughout the centuries. Perhaps it is the fox of uncontrolled desire which drives a wedge of guilt between a couple. Perhaps it is the fox of mistrust and jealousy which breaks the bond of love. Or it may be the fox of selfishness and pride which refuses to let one acknowledge his fault to another. Or it may be an unforgiving spirit which will not accept the apology of the other.” End quote Their willingness to solve the problems together is an evidence of their maturity.
In the Egyptian love poetry foxes represent sexually aggressive men, who tamper the mutual intimacy expected in the conjugal relationship portrayed in the songs. 15th verse has a feminist intonation that sees male domination as the root cause for the vices in sexual relationships. As we read Matthew 5: 28 Jesus in his teachings about adultery, identifies men as the primary agents of adultery. His rebuke is addressing men who look at a woman lustfully. Natasha Walter in her book argues that the men in the hypersexualised society are encouraged to view female bodies as a mere object of pleasure. At the same time women are asked to make their bodies more sexually appealing to present themselves as attractive products for bargain rather than devote on intimacy, imagination and love. This reduces sexual intimacy to mere acts of performance where they are appraised completely based on their performance quotient. Our sisters, brothers and children who were pulled to the flesh trade making them commercial sex workers by this culture are indeed the sinned against. Their precious sexuality is stolen from them asking for compromises to be compensated with filthy money.
In the pretext of hypersexualisation there is a wider outcry that the younger generation is taking marital life lightly and engage in premarital and extramarital, uncommitted sex. Predominantly our response is a blatant ‘NO’. A Christian ethical response to this will be to educate that these casual uncommitted sex sells us short as relational beings, capable of inter personal love. It just involves two persons using each other’s bodies for individual pleasure without interest in and concern for the person, who each of them is.
The couple in the song is very much contrary to what is described about man-woman relationship in the hypersexualised societies. The relationship between the woman and the man is one of mutual desire and enjoyment. Neither one of the lovers nor the couple itself fits a gender-determined stereotype. They are fiercely committed to each other. Both of them use much of the same colourful and provocative imagery to describe each other and the love they share. These imageries are not used as means to bargain on their bodies rather to express their joy of self giving and love making.
The song certainly applauds the glories of lovemaking and more importantly, it celebrates the depth of the commitment shared by the woman and man. Chapter 8:6-7 has been described as the zenith of expressions of the entire Song. The woman maintains that their love possesses a force that can easily rival the power of death and Sheol the place of death. It can even withstand the chaotic primal and flood waters. Neither death nor chaos is a match for the love that joins these two. No power from the netherworld and no treasure from this world can compare with the strength and the value of love. This realisation about one’s sexuality and the mutual love they share enables the couple to engage in the sexual talk as a mark of protest.
Sexual talk as a voice of protest
The final verses of the passage figuratively express the sexual union of the couple. Some translators consider the lilies mentioned here to be lotus flowers, which were symbols of sensuality and fertility in Egypt and Canaan. They were committed to each other and the woman knew that her beloved belonged to her and she belonged to him. Her thoughts of their mutual possession of each other naturally led to her desire for physical intimacy. So in her mind she invited him to turn to her like a gazelle. Gazelles are often portrayed as the companions of the goddess of love in ancient west Asian art. The original text refers to a mount of Bather in Hebrew al harē bather in v.17. The original site of this mount is not yet found. It seems preferable to take the mentioning of mountains as a subtle reference to the woman’s breasts. In an implicit way the woman wants that intimacy to last during the night till the day breaks at dawn and the night shadows vanish.
This language expressing the longing of the woman towards sexual intercourse is a clever interpolation of the writer to voice the sexual preferences of the women in a predominantly androcentric world, where a woman who speaks of her sexual desires is bringing shame to the honour of her man. The Song of Songs is telling to its readers of all times that the preferential passages that they would normally deem to be 'religious' or expressing God's will for them, is not the only way to talk about the manifold experiences of life. Even if the Song of Songs is interpreted as a metaphor, the reality of the language and its immediate 'real life' references imply how important are they to human life. All we need indeed, is a radical readjustment of our concepts on what should be deemed 'holy' and what should be ‘profane’. The song does not present a negative protest but a positive celebration that protests by implication.
There is no doubt that the Song of Songs was written within the circumstances of a patriarchal society dominated by the preferences of men, in the realm of sex as elsewhere. Though there are not much supporters to the argument of female authorship of songs scholars like S.D. Goitein asserts that the framework and the plot of the Song of Songs is authored by a woman. Another suggestion is that a woman was the author of Song of Songs perhaps one of Solomon's wives or a female sage from a later period of ancient Israel. The woman's voice dominates the chapters and verses of the book, fifty six of its verses are the voice of the female character, while thirty six are the voices of the male. In addition, the feminine voice opens and closes the dialogue of the book. Altogether the spirit breathed in the songs suggests a female authorship. This indeed registers the fact that women even in that patriarchal society were capable and imaginative to acknowledge their protest.
Tissy Mariam Thomas is a lecturer of Psychology, teaching in Christ College, Bangalaru, who authored a book in Malayalam titled ‘iranginadappu’ which means ‘walking outside’. She prophetically dared to write about the irritating and painful experience of a woman going out on the streets of Kerala. She says, I quote “each time when I sat down to write my column, scores of bitter experiences and a number of scars came rushing into my mind and it was deeply disturbing. But I was happy, overwhelmed, and proud and even felt a little more empowered as I could see people were irritated, shocked, hostile and surprised with the incidents narrated.” These are the voices of protests of bold women from our patriarchal society. What is our message today?
Our message for this day is that, we should be cautious when we too often stigmatise people who speak of their sexuality, about their preferences or their experiences by branding them as ‘immoral’. Immorality is a dubious term which does not have a definite meaning unchangeable over the time. Morality calls us for an adherence to the expected norms of the society. So to envision a change where everyone gets an opportunity to celebrate their sexuality responsibly in their words and deeds, beckon us to be ‘immoral’. It is risking us for the sake of authentic celebration of our sexuality.
Indeed the Song of Solomon removes the envelope, challenges the status quo, and empowers that our bodies are spaces for the divine to reveal in our frail attempts to love one another. While the theme of sexual relationships does appear in Proverbs and in Hosea, they are often associated with negative connotations of adultery, which is condemned. Hence we never find a celebration of the pleasures of physical love or an admiration elsewhere. Today we ourselves are puzzled in the mesh of finding out where we stand in understanding our sexual bodies under a huge span of extremes. We see that there is a growing fear in the church and society that the younger generations are getting hypersexualised. But at the same time there is a conscientious silence towards the discussions relating to sexuality. Many simple behavioural changes in adolescents are considered as severe mental ailments and called upon counsellors for a cure, while society itself needs more clear guidance on understanding such changes. This is a matter of grave injustice, which we are doing to the generations to come.
The male and female protagonists of the passage affirm to us that their sexuality and love is indeed divine, nurtured by nature and gifted by God. They realise in their intimate life that there can be obstacles they needed to overcome and to consider sexuality as precious and worthy and never allow it to get vitiated. Their bold talk on enjoying their bodies and sexuality reminds us to take our sexuality seriously, to be bold enough to address our desires and all the more to reject the Greek dualism that still rules us which puts Spirit as good and body as evil. If we trust on the biblical passage through which we went through this day, we have to stand our ground and say with boldness that these, our sexual bodies are indeed good, the gardens of authentic celebrations of life. May the divine love constantly challenge us to take this bold step and fight all forces that distort authentic celebration of our sexuality. Amen.
[Georvin Joseph, the preacher of this sermon, is a final year B.D student of Gurukul Lutheran Theological College and Research Institute, Chennai, India.]
