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Article Excerpt
The biblical book of love poetry called Song of Songs assigns arresting roles to nature, to humankind, and to love. The Song's poetic treatment of the physical world and of the dimensions of love experienced by a young man and woman within that world convey a perception of the world unique in the Hebrew Bible. The Song features and entwines nature, humanity, and love so insistently that the reader can comprehend any one only in terms of the other two. In the pages that follow I first treat the Nature/Humanity/Love triad. I then study the ways nature imagery is used to evoke love in Song of Songs, and finally I examine both nature and love in light of their combined poetic representations.
NATURE/HUMANITY/LOVE AND NATURE/HUMANITY/GOD
Several biblical books and traditions treat the tension among nature, humanity, and God. In Gen 1:28-30, for example, God enjoins humankind to subdue the earth. God gives to humankind dominion over the animals and plants for food. God is, after all, the creator of all and establishes the hierarchies. Psalm 19:1 expresses another dynamic at work among nature, humanity, and God. Humans contemplate the world and its creatures and gain religious appreciation from their inspection. For the psalmists, nature is, to be sure, God's creation, and it functions wholly at God's pleasure. A third relationship emerges in the Lord's speech out of the whirlwind in Job 38-40. The Lord barrages Job with a storm of questions concerning natural cosmological phenomena. Job cannot answer a single question, for these mysteries are under God's control and not within human understanding. Song of Songs totally lacks any notion of God the creator, or any notion of God at all. (1) Therefore, the cosmic triadic construct, nature/humanity/God, is alien and inapplicable to the Song. Nevertheless, a new and bold cosmic triad, nature/humanity/love, finds clear expression in Song of Songs and defines its world.
Some lines of the Song even demonstrate an implicit likening of Love to God. As the Song recalls verses from other biblical books, lines from the Song exhibit a significant shift. The other biblical books carry clear references to God; the Song features love and the amorous in place of the divine.
Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; For love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave, Its flashes are flashes of fire, A raging flame. Many waters cannot quench [drown] love, Neither can floods [rivers] drown it. (Song 8:6-7)
Robert Alter wisely notes that the first two lines above are "reminiscent of the injunction in Deut 11:18 to bind God's words on heart and hand and as a frontlet between the eyes." (2) The Song seems to replace the image of God with the image and power of love. No longer are God's words bound on the arm and heart, but it is the lover who is so bound.
The continuation of the Songs passage in 8:7 demonstrates additional and analogous alterations of another biblical passage, Isa 43:2. The sharing of identical lexical choices is striking. "Waters," "rivers," "drown," "fire," and "flame" each appears in Isa 43:2 as well as in Song 8:7, but with a significant difference. In the former, God's power over the waters and rivers and fire and flame is prominent; in the latter, it is love that is impervious to these threats and to death. Song 8:6 and 7 suggest that Love displaces not only Yahweh but Mot, "Death," and the primordial personified waters of chaos subdued by Yahweh. (3)
A further example of Love supplanting God is in Song 2:7 and 3:5. The Song's oath evokes more familiar and more appropriate terms in other biblical books. The shift in Song of Songs is toward language that is more in keeping with the erotic nature imagery of the Song.
I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, By the gazelles (seva'ot) or by the hinds of the field ('aylot hassadeh): Do not stir up or awaken love Until it is ready. (My translation)
The two elements of nature upon which the daughters of Jerusalem are made to swear, seva'ot ("gazelles") and 'aylot hassadeh ("hinds of the field") sound astonishingly like YHWH seva'ot ("Lord of Hosts") and 'el sadday ("God Almighty"). YHWH seva'ot is a frequent epithet for God in the Prophets and Psalms, and 'el sadday in the Torah and Job. Song of Songs, however, replaces the divine with animals that are repeatedly used as metaphors for the lovers and evocative of their amatory relations in the Song of Songs universe. Song of Songs, again features Love in place of the Divine in the following:
Your lips distill nectar, my bride; Honey (debas) and milk (halab) are under your tongue; The scent of your garments Is like the scent of Lebanon. (Song 4:11)
and
I come to my garden, my sister, my bride; I gather my myrrh with my spice, I eat my honeycomb with my honey (dibsi), I drink my wine with my milk (halabi). Eat, friends, drink, and be drunk with love. (Song 5:1)
"Eating" and "drinking" are erotic metaphors here, in Prov 5:15 and 30:20 and in other ancient Near Eastern poetry and Rabbinic literature as well. (4)
These verses also employ various forms of the Hebrew words for "milk" and "honey." The Song of Songs verses describe the sensual...
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