JPN: Christianity: Bible: Song of Songs

The Song of Songs

I wrote someplace that the Bible doesn't really have that much about sex, despite the obsession of various Christians with trying to stop people from having it. However, there is one book that seems to be about nothing else but, and that is this one.

In the history of the church, the erotic elements of this book have been interpreted as being praise of Solomon's favorite wife, about God's love of Israel, the relation of a student to wisdom itself, and so on.

Over the last 200 years or so, the natural understanding of the text has regained ascendancy.

Othmar Keel
The Song of Songs
A Continental Commentary
Fortress Press, 1994, 290 pages

Keel's contribution is an extensive analysis of love poetry in related cultures as well as an examination of many drawings, carvings, and so on. The book reproduces over a 100 line drawings of these images and it serves to provide background and perspective on various images in the Song of Songs.

He pays considerable attention to trying to reconstruct the way that various metaphores are used, thus we find images like "Your neck is like the tower of David" jarring because we use comparisons for shape and size. But Hebrew uses comparisons for function, so "to speak with the neck" is to speak with pride.