A Moral Value in the Song of Songs

I discuss (and debate) a variety of interpretations of the Song and the identity of its characters in my The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs (Madison, WI 1985), 227-43. This book includes translations and commentaries on both groups of poems and a literary comparison from various angles.

The lovers in the Egyptian love songs too use royal terms to describe each other and themselves, such as “prince,” and “prince of my heart,” Mistress of the Two Lands (i.e., the queen), and even “my god.” As one woman says, “I am the Mistress of the Two Lands when I am with you.” When the man in Song 7:6 says “a king is captured by the locks!” he means that she has made him a “king” and he the one “trapped” by her beautiful hair. It is overly literalistic to assume that the mention of a king and of Solomon in the Song means that King Solomon is actually present.

I think of John Donne, whose profound idea of love is strongly aligned to the one I see in the Song. In “The Sunne Rising” he says of his beloved,

She’is all States, and all Princes, I,
Nothing else is.
Princes doe but play us; compar’d to this,
All honor’s mimique; All wealth alchimie.

Sometimes just the sex, as in Proverbs 5:19 and Ezekiel 23:17. But like “lovemaking” in an earlier English usage, it includes more than sexual intercourse, such as kisses (Song 1:4).

Revocalizing דַּדֶּי‍הָ (dadeyha: “her breasts”) as דַּדֶּי‍הָ (dodeyha: “her love”), which better fits the context better. But there is a word-play here.

Revocalizing דּוֹדִי ( dodiy: “my beloved,” addressed to the man) as דּוֹדַי (doday: “my dodim, sexual love). The traditional text lacks an object for “I’ve stored up.” The emended text reads, “”The mandragoras give off fragrance, and at our doors are all sorts of luscious fruits, both new and old, (namely) my dodim, which I’ve saved for you.” The change improves the syntax without changing the consonantal text. Some might find it more comfortable to understand this to mean that she has saved up her sexual fruits and will not bestow them at present, but given their behavior thus far, I think she means that she has saved up her fruits for him alone, just as she has been a locked garden for all but him. And the fruits in that garden he has already enjoyed (5:1).

For a discussion of these issues see my Song of Songs (above, n. 1), xxiv-, 191-93 and passim.

The delightful tresses of the Egyptian ladies remind me of the Shulammite’s locks, said to resemble a herd of black goats flowing down the mountainside (4:1; 6:5) and also to be like “thrums” (7:6), which are the fringe of warp threads left on the loom. And it is not too fanciful to think of the ornaments of the Egyptian musicians when imagining the Shulammite’s necklace and golden bangles (circular ornaments) in 1:10-11.

One set of songs is said to be by “the Great Entertainer,” in the feminine. Apparently, the author was a woman, a professional singer and poet. It is similarly possible that poet of the Song of Songs, which speaks entirely from the woman’s perspective (the man speaks only as she hears him), was also a woman’s.

ר’ עקיבא או’: “המנענע קולו בשיר השירים בבית המשתאות ועושה אותו כמין זמר אין לו חלק לעולם הבא.”

All translations are my own and appear in my Song of Songs (see n. 1).

From “The Extasie,” by John Donne. The following lines too from this poem can be applied to the Song:

But as all several souls contain
Mixture of things, they know not what,
Love these mix’d souls doth mix again
And makes both one, each this and that.