Altogether Lovely

A Thematic and Intertextual Reading of the Song of Songs

Havilah Dharamraj

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781506423203
• eBook ISBN:
  9781506421728
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

The frank eroticism of the Song of Songs has long seemed out of place in the Hebrew Bible. As a result, both Jewish and Christian interpreters have struggled to read it as an allegory of the relationship between God (as husband) and Israel or the church (as bride). Havilah Dharamraj approaches the Song with a clear vision of the gendering of power relationships in the ancient Near East and through an intertextual method centered not on production but on the reception of texts. She sets the Song's lyrical portrayal of passion and intimacy alongside other canonical portrayals of love spurned, lust, rejection, and sexual violence from Hosea, Ezekiel, and Isaiah. The result is a richly nuanced exposition of the possibilities of intimacy and remorse in interhuman and divine-human relationship. The intertextual juxtaposition of contrasting texts produces a third text, an intracanonical conversation in which patriarchal control and violence are answered in a tender and generous mutuality.

I

Love in Separation

2

The Streets and Squares

An enduring trope of the romantic genre is the lover at the window or rose-trellised balcony of the object of his affection. The Song of Songs makes sure to feature one such vignette, but only as part of a larger—and deeply reflective—treatment of lovers in the situation of separation. In the Song, separation and seeking are twin themes that are sometimes foregrounded and sometimes recessed. Sometimes it is the man who seeks, and sometimes it is the woman. We will examine the poems in Song 2:8–3:5 and 5:2–6:3 to compare and contrast the man and woman in their roles as seeker.

Exum shows that these two seeking-and-finding poems have similar contours, with a significant level of correspondence^[1] at multiple levels: the verbal level, the story level, and, certainly, at the conceptual level. Each speech features first the man and then the woman, each seeking the other so as to end the state of separation. The man’s endeavor is presented as a visit to the house of the woman, a well-recognized trope. The woman’s effort is more unconventional, and even sits uneasily with the social norms of ancient Israel. She combs the city streets for him, and she does it at night.

Separation and Seeking in Song 2:8–3:5

Song 2:8–3:5 breaks quite naturally into two units, which we may call the daytime poem (2:8–17) and the nighttime poem (3:1–5). The latter is acknowledged as a unit spoken by the woman. There is sufficient agreement that the former is similarly unified by a single voice.^[2] Whose? Even though the unit contains a core stretch where the man speaks, his words are embedded into the matrix of the woman’s voice. She recollects and repeats to her audience lines that the man has spoken to her in the past.

In the daytime poem, the man comes seeking. The nighttime one describes the woman’s search for the man. The two poems are sequential with no clear narrative link between them, but with sufficient verbal links to invite the reader to consider them together.

The Man Seeks: Song 2:8–17

Listen! My beloved! [קוֹל דּוֹדִי]
Look! Here he comes [הִנֵּה־זֶה בָּה],
Leaping [מְדַלֵּג] across the mountains,
Bounding [מְקַפֵּץ] over the hills.
My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag.
Look! There he stands [עוֹמֵד] behind our wall [כָּתְלֵנוּ],
gazing [מַשְׁגִּיחַ] through the windows,
peering [מֵצִיץ] through the lattice. (Song 2:8–9)

The poem opens with an abrupt and hurried two-word exclamation, קוֹל דּוֹדִי: “I hear my beloved!”^[3] or, “Listen! My beloved!”^[4] Either the woman has been waiting just for this,^[5] or she is unexpectedly startled by his coming. In either case, the exclamation anticipates a happy end to separation. קוֹל probably describes the sound of his arrival rather than his voice.^[6] If this is a secret rendezvous, as is usually the case with lovers at windows, it is unlikely that he is giving himself away by calling to her from a distance. Rather, the sounds of his approach are probably familiar to her ears. From how readily (and unerringly) she can identify his arrival, this does not seem to be the first time he has come to this trysting place.

Clearly, both parties long to end the separation. If she hasn’t been at the window already waiting for a prearranged meeting,^[7] we know she has scrambled to it because hardly a heartbeat passes before her eyes catch up with her ears: הִנֵּה־זֶה בָּה. “Look! Here he comes.” She can see him making his way to her. For his part, there is urgency in his steps, communicated to the reader by the string of participles—he is “coming,” and that coming is by way of “leaping” and “bounding.” While her senses are straining, directed toward the sounds and sights that will reunite her with the man, the man closes the space between them with energy, making haste to get to where she is. As she watches him close the distance, it is this energy fueled by his eagerness that she describes: “leaping across the mountains, bounding over the hills. My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag.”

Certainly, this is animal imagery that, in the culture from which this literature arises, evokes the sensual. Gazelles and stags are symbolic of not only agility but also virility.^[8] However, here the description is sandwiched between two exclamations of seeing. “Look!” she exclaims on first catching sight of him at some distance. “Look!” she exclaims again, seeing him now as close as he can get in this situation, on the other side of her window. In both exclamations, the זֶה in הִנֵּה־זֶה, serves to emphasize the action in progress.^[9] In between the exclamations, speed has operated—the swiftness (and grace) of a stag, even a vigorous “young stag,” and this is the emphasis of metaphor.^[10]

Now he has reached his destination, and he is “standing” on the other side of the wall of her house. The blur of stag-like motion is replaced with motionlessness, but the energy is now transferred to his eyes.^[11] The flow of participles resumes. He is “gazing through the windows,^[12] peering through the lattice” in a continued endeavor to reach her. As far as catching sight of the beloved goes, the man is clearly disadvantaged. She can watch him at will. He must seek.

Verses 2:8 and 2:9 share a parallel structure:^[13]

2:8	2:9
My beloved [דּוֹדִי] . . . look! [הִנּה־זֶה]	My beloved [דּוֹדִי] . . . look! [הִנֶּה־זֶה]
he is coming [בָּא]	he is standing [עוֹמֵד]
leaping [מְדַלֵּג] across the mountains,	gazing [מַשְׁגִּיחַ] through the windows,
bounding [מְקַפֵּץ] over the hills.	peering [מֵצִיץ] through the lattice.

The ear catches the even tempo through the four matching participles. All alliteratively carry the mem preformative;^[14] the first pair is in assonance in piel; the second pair is in assonance in hiphil. Elie Assis observes that the “recurring structure” provides a rhythm to the lines and mediates a sense of “the man as acting ardently and swiftly in coming to the woman.”^[15] Indeed, elsewhere in the Old Testament, gazelles are associated with swiftness of foot (2 Sam 2:18; 1 Chr 12:9 [EV 12:8]; Ps 18:34 [EV 18:33]; Isa 35:6).^[16] Further, Assis draws attention to the heaping up of verbs that “express [the man’s] desire to hurry and to reach his beloved”: when he is at a distance, he comes, leaps, bounds; when he is close, he stands, peers, gazes.^[17] Bergant arranges the verbs differently but to similar effect. She notes that it takes verb pairs to describe the man’s actions, as if a single verb will not sufficiently express his intensity. He leaps and bounds (2:8); he gazes and peers (2:9). Shortly, he will speak and say (2:10); and when he invites the woman, he asks her to aris...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table Of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Love in Separation
• In Praise of the Beloved
• Gardens
• Love-and-Its-Jealousy
• Bibliography
• Author Index
• Scripture Index