A reflection on the Song of Songs would not be complete if it did not address the traditional mystical reading of the text.1 And although the approach of this chapter has been to read the text on a strictly horizontal level as the stage of a human love shared between a man and a woman, there is, I believe, a dimension of depth to the Song that has been noted by both rabbinic and ecclesiastic commentaries alike. There is a deeper layer in our Song which reveals an even more profound wisdom, a deeper secret, than the one we have been excavating so far. This secret has to do with our text being read as an allegory for the shocking, unheard of, preposterous love story between God and humanity. Read in this light, our text would lift the veil on a romance that has for the most part remained hidden and undisclosed in the pages of human history. A love that dare not come to the light of day, that prefers the intimacy of poetry whispered between kisses to the official recordings of historians.
Such is the secret love that the traditional allegorical interpretation has tried to systematically unveil in our Song and this in both the Jewish and Christian traditions of interpretation. Thus, according to the allegorical interpretation, God is played by the man in our story and humanity is represented by the woman. This interpretation is in turn confirmed by the Hebrew Bible itself where God is oft depicted as a bridegroom and Israel as his bride.2 Thus, deep beneath the twists and turns of this love story, one might then read the deeper drama of the love between God and humanity. As such, the woman represents the pining of humanity for God and the man represents the God who is finally conquered by the unrelenting faith and worship of his creation. The erotic encounters between the lovers must then be re-interpreted as those between God and his people, giving rise to new and fecund new interpretations of the way that God relates to humans.3
As such, the Song anticipates the experiences of the great mystics in both traditions, who, in fact, often refer back to our text in order to make sense of their own search for God.4 Again, it is interesting to note that in most cases, if not all, the mystic is described much like that of the woman in our Song: As one engaged on a long, painful quest for her beloved; in this case, the divine presence which, after a long dark night of the soul, manifests itself fully and in all of its light. Moreover, the stance of the mystics is often described as a feminine stance of receptivity and openness to divine light, again strengthening the case that God is male and that the faithful believer is female. As such, it is no wonder that our Song, with its predominant feminine character, has become one of the main references in the works of the mystics, again in both Jewish and Christian traditions.
This is not, however, the line of interpretation that I wish to adopt here in this mystical reading of our text. Our Song is, in my view, way too subversive in character to bend to this kind of patriarchal reading. On the contrary, I would suggest that a number of clues in our text point to a reading of the Song in which it is the woman who represents God and the man who represents humanity.5
The first clue that in the divine romance the woman plays a central role,6 and as such, perhaps a divine role, is the centrality given to the woman in our text. The woman is in control of the relationship from beginning to end, she is the alpha and omega of our Song. The text opens and concludes with her words whereby she lures the man to herself: āKiss me with the kisses of your mouth,ā and whereby she releases him at the end of the Song: āCome away my lover, be like a gazelleā (Song 8:14).7 As such, she resembles the God of Israel much more than the man who is given a rather secondary role in our text. Moreover, the woman is given a central role in arousing the man and not vice versa: āUnder the apple tree I roused you; there your mother conceived youā (Song 8:5). In this passage, the man is not only roused by the woman, he is birthed by her. Both roles however are divine roles: God birthing humanity in an act of creation and then arousing it to love him.
The second clue which, in my view, points to the woman playing the divine part is the passion that animates her. She is clearly the more emotional one, constantly pining, suffering, longing for her beloved. The Song climaxes in the end with her passionate plea for a love as strong as death, which no waters can conquer. As such, however, she again resembles the God of Israel in a more profound way than the man who seems rather dispassionate throughout the Song. A glimpse at the poetic rants of the prophets reveal striking similarities between the woman and a God himself always pining, suffering, longing after an elusive, dispassionate people: āMy people ā¦ have forsaken me,ā8 āhave I been a desert to Israel ā¦ why do my people say āwe are free to roam,āā9 āI am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her.ā10 The God here depicted by the prophets of Israel is much closer in character to the passionate woman of our Song, who is āsick with loveā than to the man.
This line of interpretation of God as woman puts me at odds however with more traditional lines of interpretation. But I believe that this inversion of the rolesāGod as woman and the human race as maleāis in line with the Song of Songās general impulse. We have seen how our Song calls for a re-evaluation and re-imagining of traditional roles and patterns. Its reversal of the male and female rolesāthe woman playing a more active role and the male a more passive oneāopens a whole new era of interpretation, opens up a scope of new possibilities, of new dynamics of interactions between men and women. Why not prolong this line of thought where traditional roles are reversed to dare attempt a reversal of traditional metaphors for God too? Perhaps renewed understandings of God and of his love for us might be disclosed were we to venture on this new ground.
To think of God as woman, and especially of God as embodied by the woman in our Song, paints a totally new picture of God than the one we are used to. As such, a healthy iconoclasm might result from this in which rigid definitions of God might be shattered for fresh new insights on his nature and on his love for us. We are so used to thinking of God as a male warrior figure ever ready to fight our battles and redeem us from evil, that the idea of him being embodied by an African Princess in love seems unthinkable, even blasphemous. But why is that? The Hebrew Bible contains as many feminine metaphors as masculine ones for our exploration, notably in the prophetic works. There, God can be seen depicted as a mother feeding her infant,11 as a woman giving birth,12 as a mother comforting her child.13 To depict God as woman is as such not so far-fetched.
To depict God as an African princess, however, is a rather extraordinary turn of events! This is not a metaphor that anyone could have anticipated from reading the Hebrew Bible. And yet, our Song seems to draw the curtain on this yet undisclosed face of God. I personally rather like the idea. Have we not for far too long imprisoned God in the persona of an imperialistic and authoritarian dictator that is controlling, judgmental, superior and detached? But āGod is not a Christianā judiciously affirms Desmond Tutu. āIndeed he isnāt!ā would agree our Song. God is a woman in love, and an emotional woman at that! And as such, a completely different portrait of God emerges: A God who loves passionately, even recklessly without a thought for the āshouldsā and āshould notsā of society. But likewise, a portrait emerges of a God who is shy, who does not want to overstep his boundaries, who understands, like the Shulamite, that patience is needed in order for his beloved to grow fond of him.14 And so, just like the Shulamite, God has two ways of approaching his beloved: Reckless abandon and discrete reserve. The exploration of these two responses to love will, in turn, draw up the portrait of a profoundly feminine God. We turn then to the first one of these: The reckless abandon of God.
The first thing that one notices about the Shulamite is her lack of prudence. She is pictured in the beginning of the text as one who has neglected her āvineyardā (Song 1:6), making her brothers angry with her. We have seen how the vineyard represents here the womanās sexuality. To neglect the vineyard thus clearly implies that the Shulamite has not kept herself āpure,ā she has not guarded her sexuality. As such, the brothersāwhose job is to protect their sisterās sexual purityāare angry with her. She has not only dishonored herself but as such, she has dishonored them. That is why they are angry rather than merely concerned and pained. The woman that we encounter in the first pages of our Song is someone who clearly has no thought to her own purity, to her own honor. She does not ākeepā herself, guard or protect herself as she is supposed to. Likewise, she does not wait for the man to take the initiative in the traditional way of modesty. Rather, she brazenly initiates the relationship with the shocking words: āKiss me with the kisses of your mouthā (Song 1:1). Rather than prayerfully waiting for the man to initiate romance, the woman takes matters in her own hands and plunges, without a thought to the risks involved, into a relationship with him.
As such, she shatters all religious stereotypes as to how a God-fearing woman should act. She evades any ideal that religion might want to project upon her. She does not keep herself as required of her, she lacks modesty and discretion and she openly expresses her passion in a way that is uncharacteristic of Biblical feminine characters. And yet, here she is in the Bible. And if we were to believe Rabbi Akiba, in the holiest part of the Bible! As though we might also learn something from her, something in fact of utmost importance. As though something might be discovered here about love in its primal and wild form, before it finds itself harnessed and contained by conventions and social constructs. As such, the Shulamiteās love, although inappropriate and unconventional, does not constitute a degraded form of love, but rather must be seen as a revelation of love in its original state, in all of its wildness, before human fallenness, when all things were still new. Phyllis Trible makes precisely this observation when she defines the Song of Songs as a return to Ed...