Gazelle Love...

Song of Solomon 2:8-13

Springtime Rhapsody

⁸ The voice of my beloved!
    Look, he comes,
leaping upon the mountains,
    bounding over the hills.
⁹ My beloved is like a gazelle
    or a young stag.
Look, there he stands
    behind our wall,
gazing in at the windows,
    looking through the lattice.
¹⁰ My beloved speaks and says to me:
“Arise, my love, my fair one,
    and come away;
¹¹ for now the winter is past,
    the rain is over and gone.
¹² The flowers appear on the earth;
    the time of singing has come,
and the voice of the turtledove
    is heard in our land.
¹³ The fig tree puts forth its figs,
    and the vines are in blossom;
    they give forth fragrance.
Arise, my love, my fair one,
    and come away.

 

 

A real “Romeo and Juliet” scene this is, isn’t it? Romantic poetry in the Bible. Fundamentalists go crazy with the “Song of Songs,” or the “Song of Solomon,” as many prefer to call it. What in the world IS this thing, anyway?

 

First of all, few would argue that the Song of Songs isn’t beautiful verse. If you have a normal libido, you will get a little hot under the collar in some points of the narrative, as it gets downright lascivious. This book of the Bible resembles Shakespeare more than spirit. As nasty as the prophets get when calling out Israel for its misbehavior, or as harsh as the chronicles of Israel’s history can be for God’s people ignoring or “shelving” God, the Song of Songs is a knee-weakening, love poem. Throughout the history of the canon, there have been those who have wanted to boot it from the Bible, either because it was embarrassingly sensuous, or because their attempts to “redeem” it for puritanical purposes seemed ridiculous, in the end. Thankfully, they failed.

 

Unless King Solomon was some kind of a literary muse, he was probably not the author of this text. He gets credit for it because he was, well, the king. (I must admit, however, that if even of a fraction of his 1,000 wives and concubines were more than a legend, he must have been some kind of lover.) I’m guessing he had a staff of groomers who helped him with his love life, including a few good verse writers. Since believers in the Bible assert that the canonical texts are “God-breathed,” there is a wide acceptance for the spiritual inspiration of scripture. However, the Song of Songs “tests” this holy idea, unless one heavily spiritualizes the meaning of it.

 

And this has been done a lot over the centuries. More conservative commentators have maintained Solomonic authorship, while more serious scholars admit that Solomon’s “signature” is a later addition. The dime store interpretation posits that the Song is a metaphor for God’s love of Israel, or among Christian conservative interpreters, God’s love for humanity that eventually persuades God to send Jesus to save us. It is my belief that this short-changes a powerful text in an attempt to over-spiritualize it, and to “wash” it of its erotic context.

 

So, let’s take a different tack. Let us assume it IS a love poem, and one that is divinely inspired. One partner in the narrative describes her “beloved” as a “gazelle” or a “young stag” staring in through the window at her. Discounting that her “beloved” is a peeping tom, we can assume she sees this eagerness on his part to gaze at her, to be desirable. She invites his sensuous curiosity, and is aroused by it. If you read on, you will find detailed descriptions of erotic and passionate love and desire on the part of both lovers. Legitimate eroticism is not only a divinely-created part of true love between two individuals who commit to love one another, but in the case of male/female relationships, it also becomes the progenitor for the biological process of procreation. It is my believe—and I believe the Bible’s—that procreation is not the main reason for eros, but a convenient, biological “side effect” of it. If God only created human sexuality to continue the species, I doubt we would find the Song of Songs included among Holy writ. No, I think this titillating narrative is in the book to encourage humans to seek these kinds of passionate relationships with another human being. As Judeo-Christian people, we believe in committed, covenantal relationships, and believe that as God’s ultimate plan played out, we were meant to commit to a single loving partner, “as long as we both shall live.” Polyamory, which has become more of “a thing” in our day, unfortunately, is a perversion of the kind of one-on-one love the Bible encourages, especially in this book. Spreading eros around among multiple partners not only waters down the power of its passion, but also erodes its ability to bond two humans in a life-long love. The Song of Songs endorses physical acts of love and properly-placed “lust” as much as it paints beautiful pictures with its erotic imagery. 

 

The sensual words of the Song function best when put alongside other biblical words about covenantal love. It’s not all about sex, but without the erotic, the other acts of committed love would quickly become drudgery. As one who has been married for over 44 years, I can hold my relationship alongside the “encouragements” of the Song of Songs to see my partner in more than just a “domestic” or “pedestrian” reality. I am in awe of her, of her daily care of me and the attention she gives me, but also for the rich heritage she has created as a mother and nurturer. She was primary in birthing and raising two wonderful children into responsible adults who continue to make benevolent contributions to the broader human community. They have also loved others in the way that I love their mother, creating and enjoying deeply meaningful relationships that spanned the spectrum from initial attraction and friendship to the heights of romantic and sexual love. My wife and life partner still makes me “flutter” when she enters the room. When I read the words of the Song of Songs, they make me think of her, the life we have made together, and the undying connection we have made with each other throughout the decades since we made our covenantal commitment over 44 years ago. Because of our commitment to God, to the principles of scripture for embracing the wide breadth of love they describe, and for keeping aflame the sensuality this text so vividly paints, our relationship has not “fallen into disrepair” or been stripped of its playful, hand-holding, embracing, “public displays of affection” more often observed in pubescent teenagers. The Song of Songs may be a too-often ignored balm to the libido and encouragement to all of God’s paired lovers to “keep it fresh.” This is not to say that we have to constantly “jump each other’s bones” or engage in “marital pornography” to have a fully biblical romance, but it does give us permission to admire one another at a level far greater than just “friends” might. Some of the most deeply-loving and sensuous couples I have known are no longer physically able to “have sex,” but they still ring each other’s chimes sexually and find the other profoundly desirable. This is the model of the Song of Songs. Its love is a fire, not merely a friendship. And when nurtured and let run a bit “wild” from time to time, it will grow and grow “until death do us part.”

 

Please note that this high, divinely inspired love is not limited to just couples who are capable of biologically procreating. This level of love is open to any two persons who may be brought together by personal, human initiative, as well as the Spirit of God, and who “find each other” to share a life together.

 

We would be remiss if we did not suggest that this unusual text may also be a blueprint for our relationship with the Divine Presence, as well. If our desire for God and God’s desire for us doesn’t reach beyond “Creator” and the created, would God have made the ultimate sacrifice of God’s offspring in order to save, redeem, and transform the world? God does not only love this world and us, the human creatures in it, like a “father” loves a child, but in a more intimate way, as well. And while God is Spirit, and we are invited to love and worship God in Spirit and in truth, God may, like the longing suitor in the Song of Songs, desire a closer relationship with us. In my own “mountaintop” spiritual moments, I have felt I could “embrace” God, and that God can and does embrace me. I read once that the place in our brain where our “spirituality” resides is immediately adjacent to the part of the brain that is home to our sensuality and sexual self, too. Is this an accident? Or does God love us so much more deeply than just a “heavenly parent”?  And are we capable of loving God with the beautiful  and appropriate sensuality and intimacy we find described in the Song of Songs? 

 

This kind of spiritual exploration may be more worthy of our study and practice. Perhaps this understanding of God’s “deeper love” for humanity could become the harbinger of a greater healing of the human condition and result in the final exorcism of the cancer of hate and bigotry that divide us along the lines of nationality, race, privilege, and religious beliefs? As our Jewish friends say, “From our lips to God’s ears.” Amen.