Song of songs; Draw me after you

The next topic I want to explore is the intended meaning of the Song of Songs.
The first passage I’m considering is part of the first chapter, ch.1 vv2-6.
(The translation being used is the RSV)

I need to explain my naming of the “speakers” in these passages.
The two main characters of the Song are frequently called “the Lover” and “the Beloved”, giving the first name to the male.
Those labels make the male the active pursuer, following the conventions of romance.
They mask the reality of this poem, that the woman is patently doing most of the pursuing.
That should be one of the clues that this is not a conventional romance.
So I’m calling these characters “the Woman” and “the Loved One” in that order.

It isn’t always clear, from the text, how the dialogue in this poem is to be broken down.
Readers and translators are obliged to use their own judgement.
In the fourth verse, for instance, the speech jumps from one person to another in many translations.
My own view is different. I’m going to maintain that the Woman is the only speaker in this passage, from the second verse down to the end of the seventh.

v2 This verse sets the tone for the whole poem, which begins (as it ends) with a speech from the Woman.
Addressing the Loved One, she tells him that she wants his love.
She compares him with the pleasant taste of wine and the pleasant smell of oil, and his name (perhaps) with the gentle touch of oil.
(I’m aware of the word-play in the last comparison, but I don’t have enough space or Hebrew to comment on word-plays in general)

These are reasons why “the maidens” in general should love him.
So she’s not a “unique” lover. She regards herself as one of many.

v4 This verse follows on from the previous verse, describing the Loved One as someone to be pursued.
“Draw me after you”; the Woman speaks to the Loved One, expressing her desire to follow him.
Perhaps also suggesting that she needs his help to do so.
“Let us make haste”; in each other’s company.
Alternatively, she speaks to the “maidens” mentioned in the previous verse, proposing that all of them should follow the Loved One together.
She then goes back to addressing the Loved One;
“We will exult and rejoice in you; we will extol your love more than wine”.
She says “We” because she now speaks for that whole band of maidens, not just for herself.
Finally, in the last line of the verse, the rest of the maidens have become “They”; “Rightly do they love you”.
This would not have been said in the normal romance, where the other girls would have been her rivals.
That’s another clue that the Song of Songs is not a normal romance.

(I’m setting aside, for the moment, the line “The king has brought me into his chambers”, which implies a different set of circumstances. I’ll come back to it when I look at the rest of the chapter.)

v5 The Woman is now addressing “the daughters of Jerusalem”.
She admits that she is “dark”, but claims that she is also “comely”.
It’s not clear to me whether she means “dark like the tents of Kedar and comely like the curtains of Solomon” or “dark and comely combined, like each of them”.
The message, either way, is that they’re both true at the same time.

v6 She begs them not to look down on her because of her dark skin.
The dark skin is explained in the second half of the verse; she spends her time in the open air, as a keeper of the vineyards.
It’s clear from the same explanation that she comes from a local family, and that she’s under the authority of her immediate relatives, which rules out the popular theory that she’s an African slave.
In fact the mental association between slavery and black skin is a fairly modern one, which should not be projected back into the ancient world.
Slaves in the ancient world were not just from Africa, but would have come from all over the place.
Having a “dark skin”, here, is not about her ethnic origin but about her social status;
The “scorching by the sun” is literal, not metaphorical, and it marks her out as a peasant girl, one who works in the open fields.
If she’s going to be despised for this reason, it will be by the city girls, “the daughters of Jerusalem”, with a social status which enables them to remain indoors.

She says that her instructions have come from her brothers, “the sons of my mother”.
Why not “the sons of my father”?
I think the simplest answer is “polygamy”.
If a man could have more than one wife, the children of the same mother would be a distinct and more compact group, a very strong social support.
When Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, was raped by Shechem, she was avenged by Simeon and Levi, both sons of her mother, while her father and her half-brothers held back (Genesis ch.34).
Again, when Tamar was raped by her half-brother Amnon, it was her full brother Absalom who took her under his wing (2 Samuel ch.13).
It seems that a girl’s most natural protectors and guardians, in that kind of society, would be the sons of her own mother, closer sometimes even than her father.

She says they were angry with her and they made her keeper of the vineyards, but I’m not sure which came first.
Did they put her over the vineyards because they were angry with her (and wanted to restrain her movements)?
Or were they angry with her because they had put her over the vineyards (and she kept moving away)?
However, the two meanings could quickly merge, if the wandering away and the getting brought back were frequent events.

What have we discovered about this Woman?
We know there is someone she loves.
She believes she has a close relationship with him (“The king has brought me into his chambers”). But it isn’t always as close as she would like (“Draw me after you”).
She doesn’t find it amiss that others should also love him.
She’s conscious that others might hold her in low esteem (“I am dark”), but ready to protest that she deserves a better opinion (“ I am also comely”).

I believe this Woman is God’s people.

One of the recurring themes of the Prophets is the picture of the woman who represents God’s people.
God calls himself her husband, claims her as his bride, and talks about the love that he feels towards her.
In this poem, she loves him in return.

Many scholars, on the basis of the language, believe that the Song was written in the period after the Return from the Babylonian exile.
That would certainly help to explain some of the features of this chapter.
It would explain the sense of loss and failure expressed by “my own vineyard I have not kept.”
If the community was sadly diminished, and also conscious of moral failings (as described in Malachi), that would explain why they might think themselves despised.
It would account for the way that Solomon, king of the ideal kingdom before the disaster, is placed on a pedestal in this poem, and invoked in the first verse.

Most of all, it would explain the Woman’s intense longing, to know the Loved One more closely, once again.
We don’t have to assume that the “sons of her mother “ are hostile to this (though we can, if we like, identify them with the Samarian rivals).
The issue in v6 might be just a “Mary and Martha” dispute;
Is the Woman better occupied in the “Martha” task of caring for the vineyard, or should she be allowed, like Mary, to seek out her Loved One more directly?

In her search, she rests in the confidence expressed in v5;
Nothing in the “blackness” of her situation prevents her from being “comely” in the sight of her God.

My interest in the Song of Songs was originally inspired by the reading of the sermons of Bernard of Clairvaux.
Especially by his comments on the words “I am black, but beautiful”, as applied to the spiritual state of the church or the individual soul. The idea of being sinful and imperfect, but still beloved by God.
Knowing the history of the church, I was very conscious of its imperfections, so it all rang very true.
However, my own interpretation obviously strikes out a very different line from Bernard, in all sorts of different ways.
Nor is there space for me to take the devotional approach.
But I would argue that gaining a good sense of the writer’s conscious intentions would provide the most sure foundation of any approach, including the devotional.

reply to post by DISRAELI


Reminds me of the Song of Solomon.

reply to post by lonewolf19792000

Yes, both versions of the title are in common use.
It doesn't make any difference to the interpretation, though, does it?
Do you agree, or disagree, with the line of interpretation being followed?

Originally posted by DISRAELI
reply to post by lonewolf19792000

 

Yes, both versions of the title are in common use.
It doesn't make any difference to the interpretation, though, does it?
Do you agree, or disagree, with the line of interpretation being followed?

I agree that it refers to the Church of Christ. From my own readings of the Song of Solomon, it's clear it is about the Church, possibly the Remnant but it seems to be speaking about the Ekklesia.

reply to post by lonewolf19792000

Although I would not quarrel with the "Church" application, I'm using the phrase "God's people" because I'm looking for the writer's conscious intentions, and I think the conscious application would be concerning his own time.
I believe that the likelihood that he was writing after the Exile is a very important clue to the whole atmosphere of the poem.

Originally posted by DISRAELI
reply to post by lonewolf19792000

 

Although I would not quarrel with the "Church" application, I'm using the phrase "God's people" because I'm looking for the writer's conscious intentions, and I think the conscious application would be concerning his own time.
I believe that the likelihood that he was writing after the Exile is a very important clue to the whole atmosphere of the poem.

The church is God's people. That is the entire point of the Menorah behind Christ in Revelation 1. The true Israel is the one who follows him. Not saying there won't be any "jews" included in that. It is clear that at some point the 2 herds become one under one shepherd, but the exact when of that occurence is anyone's guess.

reply to post by lonewolf19792000

On that point, my belief is the same as yours.
But I'm expounding the poem in terms of what the writer thought he meant, as the starting point and foundation of the Christian application.

Dark but comely

The social prejudice against the acquired sun-tan changed only in comparatively recent times (There’s a tart remark in Jane Austen about a man seeking wealth in the Caribbean and “spoiling his daughters’ complexions”).
I think the reversal of attitudes in Britain, at least, must have been the result of two developments.
On the one hand, the invention of factories took the working-classes indoors and gave them pale skins instead of tanned.
On the other hand, the invention of railways took the late Victorian upper classes to the Riviera in winter, and thereby turned the sun-tan into a new symbol of wealth.

reply to post by DISRAELI


If you are interested in the Song of Songs, you really need to find a Ferrar Fenton version, and read it there. Fenton perceived that the SoS was a wedding-day drama, and translated it in dramatic form. His approach works brilliantly.

reply to post by Lazarus Short

Thank you for that suggestion.
I've already got a perception of the poem in terms of Israel's relation with their God after the Babylonian Exile.
So it's more of a "what happened to our marriage?" drama.
This will come out more in the threads which deal with the later chapters.

For information;
This will be a fifteen-part series.
The next thread in the series will cover the second half of the first chapter.

reply to post by DISRAELI


I propose the spiritual meaning of the communion of the soul of man with God to the consummation.

reply to post by backcase

Yes, that approach is valid, and traditional (see Bernard of Clairvaux), but the primary interpretation needs to be one that can be followed through the details of the poem.

My take on the situation is this;
The writer, like all the Biblical writers, was writing in the first instance for the people of his own time.
So the first concern of the poem would be the God's people of his own time.
Once we understand what the poem tells us about the way God deals with his people, this can then be applied to later times (e.g. the church, as Lonewolf suggested), and also to his relations with individuals, as you have suggested.
Those interpretations can be built on the foundation of the first interpretation.

The sequel to this thread is to be found at
Tell me where you rest at noon
which covers the second part of the same chapter.

The most recent thread in this series is
Arise, my love, my fair one
(second half of second chapter)

The most recent thread in this series is
I will seek him
covering the beginning of the third chapter

reply to post by DISRAELI


thanks for introducing me to these further layers of study

“Draw me after you”; the Woman speaks to the Loved One, expressing her desire to follow him. Perhaps also suggesting that she needs his help to do so.

it will take me some time to study this, only having a crude understanding this far.. but immediately i see inferences to passages like genesis 1:26 (let us make man in our image) ..the way the original language (hebrew) is constructed constantly blows my mind and yields further layers and layers.. i don't know why people prefer to watch movies over this stuff?

i can only imagine the depths of places you must have previously explored to constantly build on this foundation.. nice.. i look forward to reading your whole series of these studies.. these would (also) be great as audio files.

reply to post by UNIT76

Thank you for those comments.
When I get to the end of the book, I'll do an Index thread which covers the whole series.
I did the same thing on Revelation and James, which also help to answer the question about where this approach is coming from.

As for audio files- not with my voice, I'm afraid.

reply to post by DISRAELI

As for audio files- not with my voice, I'm afraid.

et tu brutus?
still, i'd probably rather listen to you than some computer voice
/insert steve hawkings impression here
/puts reading glasses on
/boils kettle

ttys