Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 34:2 (Spring 2020)
Article: Exploring The Garden Of Feminine Motifs In Songs Of Songs
Author: Timothy Paul Erdel

PP 34:2 (Spring 2020) p. 3

Exploring The Garden Of Feminine Motifs In Songs Of Songs

Timothy Paul Erdel

Timothy Paul Erdel is Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Bethel University in Mishawaka, Indiana. A former missionary with World Partners, he also wrote, “The Book of Ruth and Hope in Hard Times,” Priscilla Papers 25/1 (Winter 2011).

Song of Songs is filled with subtle but powerful metaphors and motifs that teach about the beauty, power, and nature of erotic love, as well as various abuses of erotic love (including social prejudice, patriarchal control and double standards, machismo, undue haste in sexual relationships, and infidelity). Furthermore, I affirm the notion common among many readers through the centuries who champion the possibility of spiritually uplifting analogies between human erotic love and divine-human relationships. Thus, I am suggesting both a “literal” interpretation rooted in creation that celebrates the genuinely erotic1 as a legitimate, divinely-sanctioned element of the human experience (echoing Eden), and also a more “typological” reading that acknowledges analogies to divine-human relationships based upon the human experience of the erotic.

The foregoing positions are standard in discussions of Song of Songs, though many commentators affirm only one, rather than both literal and typological approaches. The special focus of this article will be to explore the ways some of these themes take on new significance when the reader listens closely to the female voice in Song of Songs. Note in what follows that seemingly obvious interpretations profoundly change as a result of listening to her words, including the fundamental nature of the divine-human analogy that has been so beloved by so many.

The Beauty Of Erotic Love

The beauty of erotic love is such a basic and widely recognized theme in the Song of Songs that I will not take the time to argue for it.2 Many commentators have noted the multiple allusions to Eden. Garden imagery is pervasive throughout, and references to animals abound. There is a fresh, frank, and unashamed celebration of the human body (which can serve abuse survivors, among others, well—both here and in Gen 2:25). There are explicit references to bodily parts and direct descriptions of physical affection, beginning with the opening ode to kissing that ends in the king’s bedchamber (1:2–4). There are poetic but unmistakable intimations of sexual relations throughout the text. There is at least the anticipation of the two becoming “one flesh” in marriage. There is a joyful sense of eg...