The Bridegroom of the Song celebrates the physical beauty of his Bride.  For most of church history, this was seen as a human type of Yahweh’s love for Israel and Christ’s for the church. Christ too has a bride, who is one-flesh with Him, the bride who is His body.  And the New Testament includes some Pauline blasons on the beauty of the bride-body (Romans 12; 1 Corinthians 12).  For Jesus too admires His Bride, delights in her, desires her... Read more

Plowing is sometimes used as a sexual metaphor in Scripture (Judges 14:18), but, as Walsh points out, in the Song these metaphors are absent, and instead we have metaphors of vineyards, orchards, gardens.  This is partly explained by the facts of Israel’s agri-economics: They were not, as Mesopotamia was, a predominantly grain-producing nation but produced a wider variety of crops.  But then so did the Greeks, and yet Greeks resorted to  plowing metaphors in their erotic poetry. The difference, Walsh... Read more

The Song is erotic poetry.  Is it pornography?  Carey Walsh ( Exquisite Desire ) rightly says No.  But what’s the difference? Walsh suggests several differences.  Erotic writing forms empathy with the lovers by exploring desire and internal psyche, the psychology of wanting.  Pornography reduces people to objects, and body parts.  Erotic writing, further, honors time; it is about waiting and yearning; porn can’t wait.  Pornography, for the same reason, is repetitive; it’s only about the sex act itself, over and... Read more

The word for “bride” ( kallah ) has a strange career in the Old Testament.  Up through 1 Chronicles 2:4, it exclusively means “daughter-in-law.”  In the six uses in Song of Songs, it is translated as “bride,” and after the Song the prophets use the word almost exclusively to mean “bride” (cf. the exceptions in Ezekiel 22:11 and Micah 7:6). Does this mark out a progression in Israel’s history with Yahweh?  Is the canon as a whole following the sequence... Read more

Twice the Song of Songs uses the phrase “breath of the day” to describe daybreak (2:17; 4:6).  Literally, this perhaps refers to the breezes of dawn (cf. Song of Songs 4:16). More theologically, though, the coming of daybreak means new life and breath for the world.  As the sun causes the shadows of darkness to flee away, so the breezes breathe new life into the world. Morning breaks, every morning, like the first morning. Read more

The bride’s neck is a “tower” (4:4), and her temples are like a “slice” of pomegranate (4:3).  There is only one other place in the Old Testament where those two words occur together – the story of Abimelech’s death in Judges 9, where a woman pushes a “slice” of a millstone off a “tower” and crushes Abimelech’s head. In her enticing beauty, the bride is similarly dangerous, though the singer of the Song of Songs seems to be enjoying being... Read more