Now it is plausibly conjectured that this Abishag of Shunam or Shulam
(a town north of Jerusalem) was the same as the Shulamite of the _Song
of Songs_, and that in the lines 6:11-12 she tells how she was
kidnapped and brought to court.
I went down into the garden of nuts,
To see the green plants of the valley,
To see whether the vine budded,
And the pomegranates were in flower,
Or ever I was aware, my soul [desire] set me
Among the chariots of my princely people.
She also explains why her face is tanned like the dark tents of Kedar:
"My mother's sons were incensed against me, They made me keeper of the
vineyards." The added words "mine own vineyard have I not kept" are
interpreted by some as an apology for her neglected personal
appearance, but Renan (10) more plausibly refers them to her
consciousness of some indiscretion, which led to her capture. We may
suppose that, attracted by the glitter and the splendor of the royal
cavalcade, she for a moment longed to enjoy it, and her desire was
gratified. Brought to court to comfort the old king, she remained
after his death at the palace, and Solomon, who wished to add her to
his harem, killed his own brother when he found him coveting her. The
maiden soon regrets her indiscretion in having exposed herself to
capture. She is "a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valley," and she
feels like a wildflower transplanted to a palace hall. While Solomon
in all his glory urges his suit, she, tormented by homesickness,
thinks only of her vineyard, her orchards, and the young shepherd
whose love she enjoyed in them. Absent-minded, as one in a revery, or
dreaming aloud, she answers the addresses of the king and his women in
words that ever refer to her shepherd lover:[289]
"Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou
feedest thy flock." "My beloved is unto me as a cluster
of henna flowers in the vineyards of En-gedi." "Behold,
thou art fair, my beloved, yea pleasant: Also our couch
is green." "As the apple-tree among the trees of the
wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under
his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet
to my taste." "The voice of my beloved! behold, he
cometh, leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the
hills." "My beloved is mine, and I am his: He feedeth
his flock among the lilies," "Come, my beloved, let us
go forth into the field, let us lodge in the villages.
Let us get up early to the vineyards.... There will I
give thee my love."
The home-sick country girl, in a word, has found out that the
splendors of the palace are not to her taste, and the thought of being
a young shepherd's darling is pleasanter to her than that of being an
old king's concubine. The polygamous rapture with which Solomon
addresses her: "There are three-score queens and four-score
concubines, and maidens without number," does not appeal to her rural
taste. She has no desire to be the hundred and forty-first piece of
mosaic inlaid in Solomon's palanquin (III., 9-10), and she stubbornly
resists his advances until, impressed by her firmness, and unwilling
to force her, the king allows her to return to her vineyard and her
lover.
The view that the gist of the _Song of Songs_ is the Shulamite's love
of a shepherd and her persistent resistance to the advances of
Solomon, was first advanced in 1771 by J.F. Jacobi, and is now
universally accepted by the commentators, the overwhelming majority of
whom have also given up the artificial and really blasphemous
allegorical interpretation of this poem once in vogue, but ignored in
the Revised Version, as well as the notion that Solomon wrote the
poem. Apart from all other arguments, which are abundant, it is absurd
to suppose that Solomon would have written a drama to proclaim his own
failure to win the love of a simple country girl. In truth, it is very
probable that, as Renan has eloquently set forth (91-100), the _Song
of Songs_ was written practically for the purpose of holding up
Solomon to ridicule. In the northern part of his kingdom there was a
strong feeling against him on account of his wicked ways and vicious
innovations, especially his harem, and other expensive habits that
impoverished the country. "Taken all in all," says the Rev. W.E.
Griffis, of Solomon (44),
"he was probably one of the worst sinners described in
the Old Testament. With its usual truth and
fearlessness, the Scriptures expose his real character,
and by the later prophets and by Jesus he is ignored or
referred to only in rebuke."
The contempt and hatred inspired by his actions were especially vivid
shortly after his death, when the _Song of Songs_ is believed to have
been written (Renan, 97); and, as this author remarks (100),
"the poet seems to have been animated by a real spite
against the king; the establishment of a harem, in
particular, appears to incense him greatly, and he
takes evident pleasure in showing us a simple shepherd
girl triumphing over the presumptuous sultan who thinks
he can buy love, like everything else, with his gold."
That this is intended to be the moral of this Biblical drama is
further shown by the famous lines near the close:
"For love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the
grave [literally: passion is as inexorable (or hard) as
sheol]: The flashes thereof are flashes of fire, a very
flame of the Lord. Many waters cannot quench it, nor
can the floods drown it: If a man should give all the
substance of his house for love, he [it] would utterly
be contemned."
These lines constitute the last of the passages cited by my critics to
prove that the ancient Hebrews knew romantic love and its power. They
doubtless did know the power of love; all the ancient civilized
nations knew it as a violent sensual impulse which blindly sacrifices
life to attain its object. The ancient Hindoos embodied their idea of
irresistible power in the force and fury of an amorous elephant. Among
animals in general, love is even stronger than death. Male animals of
most species engage in deadly combat for the females. "For most
insects," says Letourneau, "to love and to die are almost synonymous
terms, and yet they do not even try to resist the amorous frenzy that
urges them on." Yet no one would dream of calling this romantic love;
from that it differs as widely as the insect mind in general differs
from the human mind. Waters cannot quench any kind of love or
affection nor floods drown it. What we are seeking for are _actions or
words describing the specific symptoms of sentimental love_, and these
are not to be found in this passage any more than elsewhere in the
Bible. An old man may buy a girl's body, but he cannot, with all his
wealth and splendor, awaken her love, either sentimental or sensual;
love, whatever its nature, will always prefer the apple-tree and the
shepherd lover to the vain desires and a thousand times divided
attentions of a decrepit king, though he be a Solomon.
It would be strange if this purely profane poem, which was added to
the Scriptural collection only by an unusual stretch of
liberality,[290] and in which there is not one mention of God or of
religion, should give a higher conception of sexual love than the
books which are accepted as inspired, and which paint manners,
emotions, and morals as the writers found them. As a matter of fact
the _Song of Songs_ was long held to be so objectionable that the
Talmudists did not allow young people to read it before their
thirtieth year. Whiston denounced it as foolish, lascivious, and
idolatrous. "The excessively amative character of some passages is
designated as almost blasphemous when supposed to be addressed by
Christ to his Church,"[291] as it was by the allegorists. On the other
hand there is a class of commentators to whom this poem is the ideal
of all that is pure and lovely. Herder went into ecstasies over it.
Israel Abrahams refers to it (163) as "the noblest of love-poems;" as
"this idealization of love." The Rev. W.E. Griffis declares
rapturously (166, 63, 21, 16, 250) that "the purest-minded virgin may
safely read the _Song of Songs_, in which is no trace of immoral
thought." In it "sensuality is scorned and pure love glorified;" it
"sets forth the eternal romance of true love," and is "chastely pure
in word and delicate in idea throughout." "The poet of the Canticle
shows us how to love." "An angel might envy such artless love dwelling
in a human heart."
The truth, as usual in such cases, lies about half-way between these
extreme views. There is only one passage which is objectionably coarse
in the English version and in the Hebrew original obscene;[292] yet,
on the other hand, I maintain that the whole poem is purely Oriental
in its exclusively sensuous and often sensual character, and that
there is not a trace of romantic sentiment such as would color a
similar love-story if told by a modern poet. The _Song of Songs_ is so
confused in its arrangement, its plan so obscure, its repetitions and
repeated dénouements so puzzling,[293] that commentators are not
always agreed as to what character in the drama is to be held
responsible for certain lines; but for our purpose this difficulty
makes no difference. Taking the lines just as they stand, I find that
the following:--1: 2-4, 13 (in one version), 17; 2: 6; 4: 16; 5: 1; 8:
2, 3--are indelicate in language or suggestion, as every student of
Oriental amorous poetry knows, and no amount of specious argumentation
can alter this. The descriptions of the beauty and charms of the
beloved or the lover, are, moreover, invariably sensuous and often
sensual. Again and again are their bodily charms dwelt on rapturously,
as is customary in the poems of all Orientals with all sorts of quaint
hyperbolic comparisons, some of which are poetic, others grotesque. No
fewer than five times are the external charms thus enumerated, but not
once in the whole poem is any allusion made to the spiritual
attractions, the mental and moral charms of femininity which are the
food of romantic love. Mr. Griffis, who cannot help commenting (223)
on this frequent description of the human body, makes a desperate
effort to come to the rescue. Referring to 4: 12-14, he says (212)
that the lover now "adds a more delicate compliment to her modesty,
her instinctive refinement, her chaste life, her purity amid court
temptations. He praises her inward ornaments, her soul's charms." What
are these ornaments? The possible reference to her chastity in the
lines: "A garden shut up is my sister, my bride. A spring shut up, a
fountain sealed"--a reference which, if so intended, would be regarded
by a Christian maiden not as a compliment, but an insult; while every
student of Eastern manners knows that an Oriental makes of his wife "a
garden shut up," and "a fountain sealed" not by way of complimenting
her chastity, but because he has no faith in it whatever, knowing that
so far as it exists it is founded on fear, not on affection. Mr.
Griffis knows this himself when he does not happen to be idealizing an
impossible shepherd girl, for he says (161):
"To one familiar with the literature, customs, speech, and
ideas of the women who live where idolatry prevails, and the
rulers and chief men of the country keep harems, the amazing
purity and modesty of maidens reared in Christian homes is
like a revelation from heaven."[294]
Supersensual charms are not alluded to in the _Song of Songs_, for the
simple reason that Orientals never did, and do not now, care for such
charms in women or cultivate them. They know love only as an appetite,
and in accordance with Oriental taste and custom the _Song of Songs_
compares it always to things that are good to eat or drink or smell.
Hence such ecstatic expressions as "How much better is thy love than
wine! And the smell of thine ointments than all manner of spices!"
Hence her declaration that her beloved is
"as the apple-tree among the trees of the wood.... I sat
down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was
sweet to my taste.... Stay ye me with raisins, comfort me
with apples: For I am sick of love. His left hand is under
my head, and his right hand doth embrace me."
Hence the shepherd's description of his love: "I am come into the
garden, my sister, my bride: I have gathered my myrrh with my spice: I
have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my
milk."
Modern love does not express itself in such terms; it is more mental
and sentimental, more esthetic and sympathetic, more decorous and
delicate, more refined and supersensual. While it is possible that, as
Renan suggests (143), the author of the Canticles conceived his
heroine as a saint of her time, rising above sordid reality, it is
clear from all we have said that the author himself was not able to
rise above Orientalism. The manners of the East, both ancient and
modern, are incompatible with romantic love, because they suppress the
evolution of feminine refinement and sexual mentality. The documents
of the Hebrews, like those of the Hindoos and Persians, Greeks, and
Romans, prove that tender, refined, and unselfish affection between
the sexes, far from being one of the first shoots of civilization, is
its last and most beautiful flower.