What do the following words have in common?
- Unforgettable
- Crazy
- Truly
- Always
- Enchanted
- Amazed
They are all the titles of love songs. Here are the lyrics to two of the biggest-hit love songs ever recorded:
When no one else can understand me,
When everything I do is wrong,
You give me hope and consolation
You give me strength to carry on.
And you're always there to lend a hand
In everything I do. (Do you recognize it yet?)
That's the wonder,
The wonder of you.
Name that artist? Elvis, of course, a 1970 hit about the blessings good spouses bring to one another. Here’s the other love song:
Oh yeah, I’ll tell you something,
I think you’ll understand.
When I’ll say that something
I want to hold your hand,
I want to hold your hand,
I want to hold your hand.
Oh please, say to me
You’ll let me be your man
And please, say to me
You’ll let me hold your hand.
Now let me hold your hand,
I want to hold your hand.
The Beatles, naturally, the name of the song being pretty obvious.
What has happened to the love song? I like rock and roll as much as anybody, but let’s face facts: love songs these days are pretty crummy: ka-thumpa, ka-thumpa, ka-thumpa; oh baby, oh baby, oh baby, love me, love me, love me, ka-thumpa, ka-thumpa, ka-thumpa.
Here’s a love song, too:
8 The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills.
9 My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Look, there he stands behind our wall, gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice.
10 My beloved speaks and says to me: “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away;
11 for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. 12 The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.
13 The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away."
Song of Solomon 2.8-13
Now, that’s a love song! The Song of Solomon, often called the Song of Songs, is an unabashed love song. There are two principal speakers. The main one is a dark-skinned woman, probably African. The other is her lover, a man apparently of Israel. At places the book is fairly explicit about the erotic passion they feel for one another.
This is not a book of piety. It is probably more fitting for the book to be set to the blues than high-church music. Like the blues, the Song of Songs is about personal, individual struggles, the joys and sorrows of love, and the confounding chasm that exists between reality and fantasy. In both this ancient Jewish song and the American blues, the voice is first person singular voice and the subject matter is deeply, intensely personal.
Song of Songs is one of two books of the Jewish Scriptures that does not talk about God, does not even mention God. The other book is Esther. Esther’s religious significance is much more apparent than the Song. Esther refers to rituals of fasting and prayer and to the celebration of the Feast of Purim.
But the Song of Songs is patently secular. Besides not mentioning God, the book also does not mention any of Israel’s sacred traditions, no covenants, no mention of any of God’s saving acts in the history of the children of Israel.
The only religious content of the book might be its setting of the scene, the backdrop of the narrative, which features garden settings that may call to mind the story of the Garden of Eden. But that’s a stretch.
Song of Solomon is the only book in the Bible in which a female voice predominates. In fact, this book features the only unmediated female voice in all of Scripture. Elsewhere, women’s perspectives are filtered through presumably male narrators; Ruth, for example is about two women but is told in the third person. But in the Song of Songs, fifty six verses are directly spoken by the woman, only thirty six by her lover. The book may even have been written by a woman, even though a tradition gives credit to King Solomon. Solomon had seven hundred wives and concubines so the tradition arose that he must have been a great lover – or at least a tired one!
The ancient Jews were often uncomfortable with this book. What can you make of Holy Scripture that begins, “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth – for your love is more delightful than wine” (v. 1.2)? The Jews did not finally decide which books were definitely Scripture until after the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans. The Song of Songs, Esther, and Ruth were the only books to be strongly debated for inclusion. They were included because they were already held to be sacred, inspired writings.
The rabbis decided that if Song of Songs was a sacred book, it must have a sacred meaning. They concluded it was an allegory of God's love for his people, Israel. Early Christian scholars were also embarrassed by the frank sexuality of the Song and argued that it could not possibly be talking about erotic love. Some wrote that the Song was really an allegory of Christ’s love for the Church. Later, Christian consensus was that the Song concerned God's love for the Virgin Mary. Medieval monks went to extraordinary lengths to explain away the obvious sensuality of the verses. Bernard of Clairvaux recommended that monks and priests not be allowed to study the book while they were still young and prone to inflamed passions. How about that - he gave a book of the Bible an R rating!
Today, interpreters tend to see the book as an anthology of love poetry that captures the joys and sufferings of intimate relationships and of sensual love. Song of Songs tells a story familiar to any viewer of made-for-TV movies: a woman’s desire to love and be loved by a man who is strongly attracted to her but from whom she has not yet gained a definite commitment. And so her dilemma is whether to continue to love him or not.
The drama appears to center around their passion, but in the end, it is not about sex. It is about the power and politics of human love. The lovers’ humanity, not their passion, captures our attention. We are drawn first to contemplate the fact that we all need to be loved, then the Song makes us ponder where does erotic love fit into what love is really all about, especially in a modern culture that seems to think love is nothing but sex.
So while the book is talking about exactly what it seems to be talking about, does it have a deeper layer? Do the book’s verses of passion have a sacred subtext?
Passion has a burning intensity, whether romantic passion is involved or not. Yet while love and passion easily go together, passion itself is not love. “I love to play golf,” one might say, and play eighteen holes every day. But there is no love there, only passion, for golf cannot love back.
Love, to be love, is capable of being returned by the other. But even love can be frightening. Love requires commitment. And love and commitment and indeed, passion, are at the center of the story of men and women serving God.
The Bible is full of stories of people who play hide and seek with God’s calling. Their faith falters, their obedience is short lived, their worship wanes, and their commitment must be tested and reestablished again and again. The stories of Elijah withdrawing to a lonely cave, Jeremiah refusing to preach, Jonah sailing away to Tarshish, and Peter worshiping then denying Jesus are stories of men who resisted God’s total claim upon them. In the Song of Songs we see that relationships of love and passion must be nurtured, safeguarded, and cherished.
And so it is with loving God. Intimacy with God and with each other costs us our time and our energies and more. A willingness to be present, to remain, to be accountable, to see things through, to come out from hiding are necessary to nurture relationships, both with one another and with God.
The language of love matters, too. The Song of Songs uses the language and imagery of an agricultural culture to evoke passion and desire. The lovers compare one another to graceful animals and speak of their love as partaking of sweet fruit. Comparisons to stags, gazelles, and apple trees sound strange to people who live with manicured lawns in crowded neighborhoods and who know of deer only from petting zoos. How much stranger must the Song of Songs seem to big-city folk whose apartment buildings complexes have no lawns, and who take the subway to work.
And yet, everyone recognizes the seductiveness of the Song of Songs when they hear it. Even though much of the speech in the Song book is lost on our modern ears, we do hear it as a language of intimacy and longing.
So do not scoff at the Jews and Christians of long ago who saw the Song as an allegory of God’s love for his people. The intensity of God’s desire for his people to love him and one another righteously is inadequately described by human language. Even the Song of Songs, evoking the most primal elements of desire and passion, is not really adequate to the task. Yet the Song is not the only Scripture to use such language of love and romance and abundance. The Jewish prophets sometimes did also.
Speaking through Hosea, the Lord promised his people,
19 I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. 20 I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the LORD. 21 "In that day I will respond," declares the LORD "I will respond to the skies, and they will respond to the earth;
23 I will plant her for myself in the land; I will show my love to the one I called 'Not my loved one.' I will say to those called 'Not my people,' 'You are my people'; and they will say, 'You are my God.'" (Hosea 2:19-22, 23)
You see, God knows of the inconstancy of the way we love and commit. He knows of our need for passionate love, so he beckons us to divine romance. For romance is full of joy, not only duty; not only passion, but compassion. Just as lovers in the rush of their first attraction to one another, the divine romance makes every day a holiday and every meal a banquet. Somewhere along the way, the love of God for us and our loving of God in return is supposed to make us feel tingly all over, at least once in a while.
And so the voice of God is in this book, telling us in ways our hearts want to hear:
Arise, my love, and come away. For the winter is past and the sound of the doves is heard in the land. The time of singing has come. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.