Religion
Solomon's song
Martin Sullivan
How does it come about that a frankly sensuous and erotic group of love poems, called the 'Song of Songs' has found its way into the Old Testament and has canonical authority as one of those books containing information necessary to salvation?•
The answer is a simple one. Those who made the choice believed that the work came from the pen of Solomon and that it represented symbolically the relationship Christ, as the bridegroom bears to his, bride the Church. They were wrong on both counts. Some commentators have found in it a Syrian wedding ritual, a series of secular love songs, or simply a Hebrew poem showing the influence upon the chosen people of Canaanitish fertility cults. A more helpful approach to the understanding of the book and to an assessment of its value is to allow it to speak for itself. In nine short poems, some of them in the form of a dialogue between lovers, the compiler has given an interesting, and at times a charming anthology. The poems echo the recurring theme of love which is by no means exclusive to this book but is heard throughout the whole Bible. Nowhere is this better exemplified than by the prophet Hosea, who saw in his young profligate wife and his own fidelity to her, a glimpse of God's unfailing love for his people, no matter how often they might betray him or forsake him. "Go again, love a woman who is beloved if a paramour or an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the people of Israel" (Hosea 3).
The word of God, as proclaimed by the prophet, is spoken in an atmosphere of an unhappy marriage, redeemed by the love and forgiveness of one person. Christ took the old commandment about adultery and, filling in the rough sketch, gave it an entirely new dimension. It was said by them of olden time, "Thou shall not commit adultery, but I say unto you 'whosoever looketh upon a woman to lust after her, hath already committed adultery with her in his heart". The infinitive `to lust after' is the operative one. The act is secretly imagined in the mind, enacted there and enjoyed. It provides its own private blue cinema. What has a man who frequents this secret showing to. say with any conviction to an age of permissiveness?
To condemn immorality in the open and condone it in secret, is not good enough. The Song of Songs puts such hypocrisy to rout by its candour. Perhaps its best known quotations are not always recognised today and some repetition of them, therefore, may bring this book to the attention of readers once more.
Some years ago I attended a
retreat for clergy and heard one address directed to the business of a disciplined inner life, based on the text, "They made me keeper of the vineyards, but my own vineyard have I not kept." There were few present who knew that it came from the Song of Songs (1, 6) "Catch us the foxes, the little foxes that spoil the vineyards" (2, 15). The subtle burrowing of these little animals is strangely out of context, but whatever the writer had in mind, a doubt appears in the New Testament where Christ declared. "a little yeast leavens the -whole lump." Few lines are more touching than these, "Set me a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is as strong as death . . • Many waters cannot quench love neither can the floods drown it" (8. 1).
Was there a memory of those lines in the mind of St Paul when he wrote his famous 'Song of Songs' in Corinthians 13? I do not believe that the Apostle was thinking in abstract terms, but rather that he, too, was moved by a human friendship when he wrote, "Love is very patient and very kind, always slow to expose, always eager to believe the best, always hopeful, always patient. Love never disappears" (Moffatt's' translation). St Paul knew many people, men and women, whose names he gratefully records, and whose care of him and loyalty to him arose out of a love "stronger than death." This strange man was very human and very vulnerable. Perhaps the Songs of Solomon have earned their place in the canon after all.
Martin Sullivan is Dean of St Paul's
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