Song of Solomon

A friend has asked you “What is the best way to read Song of Songs?”. Write him or her a letter in which you offer some ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’.

My dear Rhinoceros,

You asked me about the best way to read Song of Songs. The short answer: in private, the same way you read your Star Trek fan fiction! Because while you could attempt Song of Songs in a local Bible study group, you’re most likely to end up feeling the same kind of frustration you do at your Star Trek conventions or clubs when people start arguing over whether Kirk was the best captain or not, or where those awful ‘captain’s log’ jokes actually originated. And, as you have stated quite assertively in the past on the subject of Bible study groups: “These people always approach a thing from a certain perspective, and that doesn’t give a sceptic like me real insight into the text”, and given that the Song of Songs can be quite controversial depending on who you ask, I think it’s best that you read it yourself and make up your own mind about what it means before you engage in dialogue with anyone else on the subject (even me!). Knowing you, I’m sure you’ll have millions of questions and a very vocal opinion to express once you’ve done your reading, and I look forward to that!

To get you going, here are some of my personal DOs and DON’Ts for reading the book:

DO

1. familiarise yourself with the book’s historical background, and the cultural context for married sexuality in ancient Israel so that you can understand what the text meant to its original readers;
2. appreciate that the book is a unified collection of songs or poems, and look for the many poetic devices that are employed throughout the text;
3. note that the book is one of the five Jewish Megilloth and is read publicly at Passover;
4. understand that the book can be read in the literal sense as a celebration of romantic love between a man and a woman, and it can also be read in an allegorical sense as a message about the nature of the relationship between God and his people, or Christ and the Church;
5. ask yourself what the text means to you today, and try to become aware of your own thoughts and feelings on the subject matter when you read the text: notice how you respond to it, whether it evokes any feelings in you, or whether reading it makes you cringe or blush; and
6. remember that sexuality is a good and wholesome thing that was created by God for the procreation of human beings, as well as to nurture an intimate bond of mutual love between two people in a permanent and faithfully loving marriage.

DON’T

1. succumb to the temptation to completely disregard any allegorical interpretations of Song of Songs based on the mere existence of some fanciful and arbitrary interpretations that have been made by both Jewish and Christian exegetes in the past;
2. fall for any heresies that suggest that the human body or sexuality is something dark or dirty that is to be denied, avoided or ‘conquered’ at all costs;
3. think that the author/s borrowed heavily from Kate Bush’s Song of Solomon lyrics – it was very definitely the other way around!
4. at any cost visualise Captain James T. Kirk as the bridegroom, Lieutenant Uhura as the bride, or Scotty and the rest of the crew as the daughters of Jerusalem: doing that might make you laugh so hard you drop the book!

Well, in all seriousness, you have eight chapters to get through, so I will leave my advice here for the moment and we can exchange ideas again once you’re done.

Be swift in your reading, my friend, like a gazelle or a young stag on the mountains of spices!