02/10/2023 – Day 348 – Song of Songs – Chapter 3 – 4// A book summary & the word picture 4: 1 – 7.
Peter Kreeft wrote a book titled : “Three Philosophies of Life .” The book had three sections, each signifying a step in the sanctification process on the path to holiness. These steps are: Ecclesiastes: Life as Vanity; Job: Life as suffering; and Song of Songs: Life as Love. If you want to search on “07/25/2021, you will see a review post of Song of Songs, the third section. This post provided excerpts from the “26 characteristics of love ,both human and divine, that the poem implies.” We also have a blog post for our last cycle for today’s reading dated 04/03/2021.
For this cycle:
I am going to excerpt brief excerpts from Kraft’s summary of this section and cover a very interesting footnote that posits the notion that chapter 4, verses 1 – 7 can be vastly misunderstood if it is not interpreted as a word picture.
Ok, first excerpts from Peter Kreeft’s, “Three Philosophies of Life”:
“Before I write anything about Song of Songs, I must confess and confront a problem: I am way over my head, out of my depth, playing Little League baseball in a major league park. This book has been the favorite of the greatest saints and mystics, such as Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint John of the Cross, and Saint Thomas Aquinas, who was writing a commentary on it when he died… How can I play in their park?
I cannot, of course. I simply have no solution to the problem. So let us rush in anyway where angels fear to tread. Let us be the fools together. We may not be able to play in their league, but we can play in the same game. Song of Songs is about love, of course, and love is for everyone.
Another problem at the beginning: this is the only book in the Bible (except for the shorter version of Esther) that never once mentions God. How can this book be the saint’s favorite?
That question is much easier to answer: because God is everywhere in this book, symbolically. The bridegroom, Solomon, the Solar King, is a symbol for God, and his chosen bride a symbol for the soul, or the chosen people, Israel, or the Church, the new Israel. Symbolically interpreted, this is the most intimate book in the Bible. It describes the ultimate purpose of life, which we found at the end of Job: the meeting and marriage between ourselves and God. This is the highest and holiest and happiest hope of the human heart, the thing we were all burn hungering for, hunting for, longing for. This is the last chapter of life’s story, the point and purpose of it all.
It is also the hidden key to the rest of the Bible. The Bible is about real life, of course — it is the most realistic book ever written. And the point of the real story of life is love. The whole Bible is a love story because, God, the author, is love. Behind the appearances of a war story, a detective story, a tragedy, a comedy, or a farce, life is a love story. Thus Song of Songs is the definitive answer to the question of Ecclesiastes and to the quest of Job.
It is a double love story, vertical and horizontal, divine and human. The two great commandments are to love God and to love neighbor. Thus this love poem is to be interpreted two levels, divine and human. The bridegroom symbolizes God, but he is also any man, literally; and the bride symbolizes the soul, but she is also every woman, literally. To interpret a book or a passage symbolically is not to abandon the literal interpretation. There is a ridiculous, indefensible prejudice among most Biblical scholars, both professional and amateur, that we must choose between symbolic and the literal interpretations of any given book or passage. Fundamentals automatically bristle at the very word symbolic, and modernists automatically bristle at the word literal. I think it is high time we rediscovered the riches of the eminently sage and sane ‘fourfold method of exegesis of Saint Thomas and the medievals and recapture the hermeneutical heights from which we have fallen…
Song of Songs completes our Divine Comedy, but we must thank Ecclesiastes and Job, too, for it was Job who brought us here, and it was Ecclesiastes who moved us to seek this ‘here’, this Heaven, through honesty about the awfulness of the alternative…”
(Jimmy note – and the last two sentences of the book, pg # 140):
“Eternal joy, marriage to God, is ‘without price because Love has already paid the price, on Calvary.
Love, you see, can do anything. Love alone can fill Ecclesiastes’ emptiness — and yours. Love alone can satisfy Job’s quest — and yours.”
ISBN reference # 978-0-89870-262-0
And here is my footnote to Chapter 4, Verses 1 – 7 that I found helpful:
“If this word-picture of the bride’s beauty is taken as a visual image, the effect is grotesque — hair like goats, har, teeth like shorn sheep, lips like string or rope, brow (or cheek) like sliced fruit, neck like a tower strung with shields, breasts like immature gazelles.
But Hebrew word-pictures are not static photographic images; they attempt to convey the impression of dynamism, or strength and movement, in what is being described. It was the rich flow of the bride’s hair that the poet compared to a flock of goats streaming down the pastures of prosperous Gilead. The uniformity and cleanliness of her teeth and the richness of her lips were what those images sought to convey. The symmetry and the smoothness of pomegranate halves made a fitting analogy for the bride’s cheeks; the pomegranate was used to decorate the robes of the high priest (Exodus 28: 33-34) and capital of the temple’s pillars ( 1 Kings 7: 18-20). The bride wore an elaborate necklace that reminded the poet of the shields hung on the battlements of Jerusalem — a symbol of her pride and strength of character, and perhaps of her inviolable virginity. Her breasts were not obtrusive, but shyly hid themselves like fawns feeding under the watchful eye of their mother. “
We will wrap up our study of Song of Songs the next two Fridays, with readings through chapter eight, with the wrap up of the full year program two days later.
Soli Deo Gloria!