Flowers blooming in The City of David
Song of Songs 2:10-14:
My beloved speaks and says to me: ‘Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away, for behold, the winter is past; the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heart in our land. The fig tree ripens its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away. O my dove, in the clefts of the rock, in the crannies of the cliff, let me see your face, let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet and your face is lovely.
Stray cats in Jerusalem are a bit like mosquitoes in Minneapolis (or, as I’ve beginning to discover, mosquitoes in Jerusalem): they are everywhere. Soon you forget to take notice and their meowing falls on deaf ears. But as I walked up the path to my monastic residence two weeks ago, I heard a different sort of kitty moaning. The racket pulled my gaze from the Transjordan mountains that sprawl across the Eastern horizon like plumbs stacked in a produce aisle. I looked and saw one cat trying to pin the other…only, the cat on the bottom didn’t seem to be putting up much of a fight.
Spring is indeed fast approaching.
Since the cannonization of Scripture, no book has drawn as much controversy as the Song of Songs. Early Church fathers Origen and Jerome suggested that the book should not be studied by anyone until he/she reached the age of thirty.
Over the course of Church history, many perspectives on the Song have been postulated. Some choose to understand the book as purely allegorical. This perspective, however, runs the risk of trivializing the powerful “springtime in Jerusalem” imagery presented in the book, as well has failing to take into account the original author’s intent.
I tend to agree with Keil/ Delitzsch and understand the book as pastoral (instructing would-be lovers on what a God-honoring pursuit looks like) against the backdrop of Solomon’s massive failures. This is not to say that Song of Songs cannot function allegorically, I’m simply arguing that the original author (likely Solomon) wouldn’t have understood it that way.
As we’ll see in the coming days, the Song is profoundly ironic in its poetic proclamation of a backwoods shepherd’s daughter teaching the great king a thing or two of what honor, chastity and monogamy (something Solomon had a hard time grasping) look like.
This series, however, is not meant paint a picture of a God-honoring relationship, nor is it aimed at arguing for a exegetical position on the Song. For the next three and a half months I’ll be in Jerusalem, drinking deeply of the spring air, smelling flowers, consuming mass quantities of fresh squeezed fruit juice, bumping into shepherds on the hillsides that surround Jerusalem, walking the same paths Solomon walked, and hopefully staying away from kitty wrestling matches–I may be scarred for life.
Each of the following few entries will constitute an attempt to bring an image or two from The Song of Songs to life, painting a picture of something or somewhere completely foreign to the context of the American Christian.
Maestro, cue the Barry White music:
Your lips are like a scarlet threat, and your mouth is lovely. Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate behind your veil. your neck is like the tower of David, built in rows of stone, on it hang a thousand shields, all of them shields of warriors (Song of Songs 4:3-4).
New Bryan Translation (NBT): “Baby, you are smokin’ hot. But you aren’t like one of those Canaanite honeys who flaunt it. Naw baby, you realize that beauty on the inside is way more important. I like that.”
Pomegranates are perhaps the most abundant fruit on the streets of the Old City. Vendors lean against stacked crates of the deep red spheres in virtually every nook and cranny of the limestone jungle. Few actually sell the fruit whole; rather, they (like this guy above) crush pomegranate halves in juicers (each providing about about eight ounces of sweet, thick juice). The color density of pomegranate juice is striking, and purchasing a cup of the stuff makes it very clear that Solomon is utilizing a sort of poetic parallelism in 4:3. Red lips, red cheeks. Good combo. Despite the fact that the king’s beloved is likely a poor shepherd girl from the hills around Jerusalem she apparently knows how to dress up real pretty.
Herod's reconstruction of the Tower of David
“Your neck is like the tower of David, built in rows of stone; on it hang a thousand shields of warriors” (4:4)
Apparently Solomon dug giraffe-like women. I imagine this affinity was strictly for utilitarian reasons: Solomon liked the oranges that grew on the tops of trees, and as a rather short guy (I have no biblical evidence of this), he couldn’t reach them…so he needed a long-necked woman to reach the fruit, like a giraffe.
Surprisingly, most scholars disagree,
“The point of the simile is not visual correspondence but a transfer of value: the beloved’s neck is the best of its kind, raised to transcendent value by being surrounded with glorious national associations” (Dictionary of Biblical Imagery).
I like my interpretation better.
The point is that this book, this Song, is ripe with imagery that is meant to connect our hearts with a real romance that took place within the confines of Jerusalem. One can almost taste the romance as falafel, saffron, frankincense and spring blossoms collide over the Old City, race up the surrounding Mounts: Scopus, Olives and Zion, before turning back to toward the center of the city and filling the Himmon and Kidron Valleys. Every heart is held in the grip of this land’s beauty.
