The rabbis have a way with words. Always have. Jesus is a good example of this. Rabbi Yose said of the Song: “All the Writings are holy, but the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies.” It is this holiness of God that the Jewish people continually approach with their writings, their worship, their cultic practices, and their cultural values. The Song of Songs, then, tells us something significant about what is at the center of what it means to be the people of Yahweh, for in the Holy of Holies is the very earthly presence of the divine God. One can’t help but to think of the aesthetics and morality of the tabernacle, then, when considering the value and function of a text like the Song. The tabernacle, shortly following the giving of the Sinai law, gave a formative center to the traveling Israelites, and gave them a place where Yahweh would dwell among them. The tabernacle gave them shape, value, and direction as they wandered in the wilderness from Egypt to Canaan.
"The meaning of a text is context-bound: new contexts, new meanings. Hence new contexts provoke a change either in the function or in the value of a given text. The function of a theology source-text can be described as giving shape, value and direction to human existence."
Even with the ‘profanity’ of the Song in its absence of direct reference to God, it still tells the story of Yahweh and Israel. In this context of a budding and blooming love affair, the questions of identity and covenant are addressed. In my reading and research, I continued to think of the Tabernacle as an interpretive framework for the song. This perspective is clearly supported bywhat has become the most cited verse in the whole of the Song, 8:6: “set me as a seal”. The lovers are negotiating a covenant of love, affection, and intimacy. And as the covenant takes shape, their identities are formed by the other. This is the aesthetic and moral value of monogamous intimacy, told here in the story of two young lovers.
The value of the Songs has always been confirmed by the rabbis. But the sanctity of the Song has come primarily from its association with religious festivals. “In Israel the book came to be associated liturgically with the greatest Hebrew festival, being read on the eighth day of Passover.” Just as the Tabernacle is part of the Exodus story, the most formative narrative for the people of Yahweh, the Passover is a critical climax in the early moments of the Exodus. This epic and intimate Hebrew love poem tells a story of identity and covenant as it is read to all Israel on the last day of the feast of Passover. It was not necessarily part of the religious activity of the festival, but perhaps was part of the entertainment that ran parallel to such a large cultural and religious event. “The Song was simply part of the entertainment of the banquets that were common during religious holidays in Judaism. It became “sacred” simply by being associated with the religious festivals.”
Sources used in this post:
Jonneke Bekkenkamp, “Into Another Scene of Choices: The Theological Value of the Song of Songs,” in The Feminist Companion to the Bible, eds. Athalya Brenner and Carole R. Fontaine (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000)
Richard J. Clifford, The Wisdom Literature (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998)
Dennis F. Kinlaw, “Song of Songs,” in Expositor’s Bible Commentary with the New International Version: Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Vol. 5, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1991)
Tremper Longman III & Peter Enns, eds., Dictionary of the Old Testament: Wisdom, Poetry & Writings (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008)
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