Although there is no book with which students of divinity are better
acquainted than with the "Song of Songs," there is also none of the same
dimensions over which theologians have expressed so much diversity
of opinion. Its authorship has been ascribed to Solomon for no better
reason than because that sensual sultan is one of the subjects of its
story. It is true it is one of the oldest books of the Old Testament,
and begins by calling itself "the Song of Songs, which is Solomon's";
but the book of Ecclesiastes, which is one of the latest in the Hebrew
collection, is also ascribed to Solomon, and possibly with as much
reason. It has been credited with unfolding the sublime mysteries of
the relation of Christ to his Church. It has been called an epithalamium
upon the marriage of Solomon with the daughter of Pharaoh. According to
a distinguished commentator, De Lyra, the first portion describes the
history of Israel from the time of the Exodus to the birth of Christ,
while from chapter vii. to the end gives the history of the Christian
Church to Constantine. The Roman Catholic theologian, Hug, makes it
treat of the ten tribes and Hezekiah. Cocceius, in accordance with his
principle that holy scripture meant whatever it could be made to mean,
found in the Canticle the history of the Church from its origin to its
final judgment. Hahn sees in it a prediction of the victory obtained
over the heathen, by the love of Israel, and finds the conversion of the
negro in the passage which says, "We have a little sister, and she
hath no breasts." In short, nearly every possible explanation has
been offered of this portion of the Word of God except the obvious and
natural one, that it is an erotic poem. That there is any allegory in
the piece is a pure assumption. The theory was unknown before the time
of the Talmud. The Canticles are never referred to in the New Testament.
There is not the slightest indication in the work itself that there is
any such object. Not the most delicate hint, save in the headings of the
chapters made by King James's bishops, that by the secret charms of the
young lady we are to understand the mysterious graces of the Christian
Church. In all allegories it is necessary the subject should be in
some way indicated. The parables of Jesus often proved puzzles to his
disciples, but they had no doubt they were parables. Moreover, the
allegory--if it is one--is absurd or blasphemous. Why should the Church
say of God: "His head is as the most fine gold, his locks are bushy
and black as a raven"? or compare his legs to pillars of marble,
or celebrate other parts of his divine person which are not usually
mentioned in polite society? Nor is it easy to see why Christ should say
to the Church: "Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn,
which came up from the washing; whereof every one bear twins, and none
is barren among them"; or why he should declare, "Thy neck is as a tower
of ivory; thine eyes like the fish-pools in Heshbon, by the gate of
Bath-rabbim; thy nose is as the Tower of Lebanon, which looketh towards
Damascus." Of course, to parody a phrase of Voltaire's, the Holy Ghost
was not bound to write like Alfred Tennyson, but, if intended for human
guidance, one would think the divine meaning should be a little more
apparent.
The truth of the matter is, an allegorical interpretation has been
forced into the Song of Solomon in order to relieve the Holy Ghost from
a charge of indecency. Grotius ventured to call the Song of Songs a
libertine work. Even the orthodox Methodist commentator, Adam Clarke,
earnestly exhorted young ministers not to found their sermons on its
doubtful phrases. He knew how apt religious people are to mix up carnal
desire and appetite with love to their blessed Savior, and was perhaps
aware that a number of Christian hymns might appropriately have been
addressed to Priapus.*
* See Rimini's History of the Moravians and Southey's Life
of Wesley* vol. i. pp. 188, 387.
In the Jewish Church no one under the age of thirty was permitted to
read the Song of Songs, a prohibition which may have assisted to give it
its sacred character. It is, nevertheless, not more indelicate than many
other portions of God's Holy Word, and viewed in its proper light as
an Oriental dramatic love poem, although it cannot be acquitted of
outraging modern notions of decency, it is not, I think, so much,
as some other portions of the Bible, open to the charge of teaching
immorality. On the contrary, its purpose is commendable. An attentive
reading of the Revised Version, which is without the misleading
headlines, and is divided to indicate the different speakers in the love
drama, will make this apparent, and show this little scrap of the Jewish
national literature to possess a certain natural beauty which has been
utterly obscured by the orthodox commentators who, from the time of the
early fathers to Hengstenberg and Keil, have sought to associate it with
Christ and his Church.
Sir William Jones, in his essay on the mystical poetry of Persia
and India, called attention to the sensuous images in which Oriental
religious poetry expresses itself. This connection will surprise no
one who has discovered from the history of religion that women and wine
formed important features in ancient worship. The readiness with which
ungratified sexual passion runs into religious emotion has frequently
been marked by physicians, and finds much corroboration in the
devotional works of monks and nuns. But the Song of Songs has nothing
religious about it. Even the personages are not religious, as in the
Hindu erotic _Gita Govinda_, by Jayadeva, which tells of the loves of
Badha and the god Krishna in the guise of a shepherd. Christ and his
Church only appear in the headings given to the chapters.
Though to be classed among erotic poems, the Song of Songs cannot fairly
be called immoral or obscene. The character of the interlocutors and
the division of the scenes is a little uncertain. It is, for instance,
dubious whether the first speaker is Solomon or the Shulamite. If we
take the version of M. Réville, the piece opens with the yearnings of
the heroine, whom "the king hath brought into his chambers," for her
absent lover. "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for thy
love is better than wine." She is black but comely; swarthy, because
having to tend the vineyards she has been scorched by the sun. She is a
Shulammite, or native of Shulam, now Solma, near Carmel--a part renowned
for the beauty of its women. It was Abishag, a Shulamite, who was chosen
when they sought for a fair damsel throughout all the coasts of Israel
to warm the bed of old King David. Solomon had seen the fair maid of
Shulam, and, when she went down into the garden of nuts "to see the
green plants of the valley," or ever she was aware, she was abducted. In
vain, however, does the monarch offer her the best place in his harem.
Amid the glories of the court she sighs for the shepherd lover from whom
she is separated. She tells how early one spring morning her beloved
engaged her to go out with him. "For, lo, the winter is past, the rain
is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the
singing of birds is come. And the voice of the turtle is heard in our
land and now, although she seeks and finds him not," she declares
"my beloved is mine and I am his." Her constant burden to her harem
companions is, "I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes and
by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up nor awaken love until
it please."* Love must be spontaneous, she declares, and she refuses to
yield to the wishes of the libidinous monarch. When Solomon praises her
she replies with praises of her beloved peasant swain. She longs for
him by day and seeks him in dreams by night. Solomon offers to place
her above his "threescore queens and fourscore concubines and virgins
without number"; but she is home-sick, and prefers the embraces of her
lover to those of the lascivious king. Her humble vineyard is more to
her than all the king's riches. The moral is, "Many waters cannot quench
love, neither can the floods drown it: If a man would give all the
substance of his house for love he would utterly be condemned." And a
far better one too than most morals to be drawn from the pages of the
Old Testament.
* Revised Version. The Authorised Version changes the whole
purpose of the piece by reading "that ye stir not up nor
awaken my love till he please."
The Song of Songs, which is _not_ Solomon's, is a valuable relic of
antiquity, both because it utterly refutes the orthodox notion of
biblical inspiration, and because it deals with the old old story of
human passion which surges alike in peasants and in princes, and which
animated the hearts of men and maidens two thousand years ago even as it
does to-day.