A Review Of Commentaries On The Song Of Songs -- By: Christine Marchetti

Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 32:1 (Winter 2018)
Article: A Review Of Commentaries On The Song Of Songs
Author: Christine Marchetti


A Review Of Commentaries On The Song Of Songs

Christine Marchetti

Christine Marchetti has been training and teaching since 2004. She received a BA in theology from St. Joseph’s College of Maine and an MA in biblical studies from Hartford Seminary.

Song of Songs: A Commentary

by J. Cheryl Exum, Old Testament Library (Westminster John Knox, 2005)

Song of Songs

by Richard S. Hess, Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms (Baker Academic, 2005)

Song of Songs

by Tremper Longman III, New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Eerdmans, 2001)

Reviewed by Christine Marchetti

The Song of Songs stands alone among the books of the Jewish and Christian canons as an unabashed exploration of sensual human love. Yet this interpretation was repressed for centuries, and the Song was instead read allegorically. Tremper Longman’s commentary notes evidence of early arguments that the Song deals with God’s relationship with humanity, and by AD 100, the allegorical interpretation was firmly established: Jews believed the poem reflects the relationship between God and Israel or between God and the individual soul; Christians followed suit, claiming the lovers’ romance symbolizes Christ’s love for the church. However, Cheryl Exum, Richard Hess, and Longman join a consensus of modern scholars who reject an allegorical interpretation, and they do so for similar reasons. Allegory assigns arbitrary meaning to poetic images: for example, Rashi, a medieval rabbi, suggests the woman’s breasts in 1:13 represent the cherubim that stood over the ark; Cyril of Alexandria believed that the breasts represent the Old and New Testaments. However, Exum, Hess, and Longman argue that the most significant problem with an allegorical interpretation is that it suppresses the Song’s clear literal meaning—erotic love. Allegory, Longman writes, imposes a “foreign meaning” on the text (22). Each of their commentaries emphasizes different aspects of the Song, but all of them regard it as a joyful celebration of human love.

Exum sees the entire poem as a movement toward the climactic statement that “love is as strong as death” (8:6), and she regards the Song as a unified whole. Hers is a systematic study of male and female gender differences and the role they play in the Song. She praises the poet’s literary skill, through which the two lovers represent all lovers, and “ultimately, love itself” (3). The Song, she avers, is sensual, but so clothed in poetic metaphor that it encourages a...

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