In chapter one, we were introduced to the two lovers pining for one another. There we were on the front lawn of an old house, and now as we walk up to the porch and open the front door we are transported into a magical land of springtime as we are surrounded by images of flowers, trees fruit and foods. It’s really quite the vision we’ve stumbled into, I must say.
A proper commentator would struggle to find a significance for everything mentioned, and while this would be a worthwhile scholastic exercise, it would be the sort of thing that might cause us to miss the real impact of the word picture before us. Do you recall what flowers actually are? Yes, of course they are colorful, beautiful and fragrant; even romantic, but what are they really?
They are a reproductive system, as are fruit; the delivery system for seeds. Need I mention a gazelle or a stag?
My point is that this imagery in chapter 2 is quite erotic in nature, and provides the perfect adornment for the tale being told here. Of yes, dear reader, make no mistake: Love is thick in the air in this chapter.
In verse 1 we have a rose associated with “She”, an interesting selection indeed, for unlike the Lilly of the valley, a rose would have been extremely rare in the place and time this was all written. “She” is apparently quite the prize, and “He” confirms this in verse 3. “She” likens “He” to an apple tree in verse 3, a tree that produces fruit that contains seed… do I need to continue with this imagery? Then she wants him to take her to the “banquet hall” which seems better translated as “house of wine” as many older translations do, where she will be under his banner of love, partaking of his fruit and most likely wine, and then they are in a lover’s embrace…
I’m guessing you can handle the rest of the imagery on your own.
If “She” represents God’s people and “He” represents God, what is going on in this scene?
I’m sure that we can all come up with ideas on this question, I’ll toss out a couple for you to consider:
First, it seems to me that God’s people are utterly enthralled with Him, why you could see this rapture of theirs as… worshipful. They are surrendering entirely to His charms; they are giving themselves to Him. In fact, they are giving themselves to God with abandon, so great is their love.
For His part, God is OK with all of this; He finds the very sight of His devoted people positively enchanting, and is only too happy to sweep them up in His loving arms.
I want to leave plenty of room for other ideas, so I’ll step aside now and leave you to take it from here; see you next time!
Life Project Blog 
Last evening, interested in this study, a couple of friends and I went through this book rather carefully and reviewed your introductory posts. Their experience with this Book was rather as you have described, as it is diligently overlooked in most of the churches they have attended. But we resolved to look at it as we would any other text from Scripture, and doing so, found a few amazing things.
(1) While there is an amazing degree of SENSuality to the text, there is also amazingly little SEXuality to it. That is, there’s a lot of “come hither”, “I seek thee”, “where art thou”, and “you’re nearly here”…. and an extreme LACK of “Aha! Gotcha!” In fact, once you see this, it nearly becomes comical (in the sense of a sitcom)… the extent to which they keep missing one another. In fact, we started carefully from the beginning, verse by verse, looking for assurance that they were actually in the same ROOM or place, at the same time… and you’d THINK you were, but then you’d look and see that it’s a mental image (fantasy) by one of them, followed by some sort of petition of beckoning or yearning or “I can’t wait until” statement, that gives them away. We got clear to Chapter Five without finding assured “contact”, and got quite excited with anticipation as we saw them about to get into the same room at the same time as we approached verses 5 and 6… and then we slumped in defeated laughter as the text foiled us again… He was gone! They missed! AGAIN!!!
(2) It is obvious from the earliest verses that we have extreme passions of love here. You say “worship”, and that is indeed a good word. We have fixation, obsession, absolute love and focus of consciousness to the exclusion of nearly all else. Yes. Your post seems to draw very distinct and different “temperatures of passion” between them… that she is “worshipful”, “enthralled”, “rapture”… while He is but “Ok with this”, “enchanted”, and “only too happy”. Um… OK. Now, granted, this is written from mostly her point-of-view and she has vastly more narrative throughout the Book. But, He is Solomon the King, and busy with all that entails. When He DOES speak of her, I don’t see him being much less passionate than she.
(3) Once we realized how LITTLE “sex” is actually involved here, and could dismiss the erotibogies from all consideration, it became clear that this whole book seems to say three things. One, the focus of the lovers is entirely upon one another. Two, they find anything and everything about the other to be perfect and desirable. Three, this is a tale of unbridled passionate YEARNING. The whole thing, from beginning to end, is this declaration of their unbounded desire to be with and fulfill one another… WHEN they DO get together!
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Note about “Culture”:
You speak of apples, and seeds, and flowers here in this post, and say we can draw conclusions from implications of reproduction. Well… perhaps. But then again, perhaps not. Few areas of meaning are so culturally specific as “sex/eroticism”. It’s almost as tough as “humor”. It can be really misleading to read symbol and metaphor too far in “subtle imagery” this way. Jesus spoke often of “seeds”, and “harvest”, and “plowing”, and Paul spoke of “grafting”… and let’s not even MENTION the discussions of “fruit”… like (*gasp*) “Fruit of the Spirit!”… O my! Um… not all “code words” for sexual innuendo from OUR culture, will readily translate into theirs. We owe a great deal of this tendency to the romantic poets of Victorian era, and their need to be erotic while getting past the censors at the same time.
I’ve been struck, as I spend time in this Book, with how richly it speaks to the Wedding Feast. I know that for me, this story reads entirely differently in a context of the one year wedding traditions… the building of the house, transporting the bride, the week of feasting and revelling, the consummation… the “marital” relationship of betrothal, versus that relationship after consummation.
When I mentally overlaid all of that atop this story last night… the Lord seemed to bring forth all His teachings about the Bridegroom, the Wedding Feast… all that. It was unspeakably lovely. And yes, indeed, it made perfect “sense”, all that yearning, anticipation… contact, without contact… all that.
I wonder, Don… if we wouldn’t all benefit from a momentary intermission for you to lay out that cultural context of the wedding process for us? It seems like it may be relevant. But then, if not, that’s fine.
This is a wonderful study. Thanks so much for doing this. I’ve never looked at this text this way before.
Grace — LM
Hey LM! I simply cannot begin to tell you how much fun I have been having reading these comments; I’ve never looked forward to comments so much. Imagine my delight at being cast as the prude who hides sexuality for the first in my 30 year career of teaching Bible, so much of which has been spent being chewed out by the Dean for being overly candid about such things: Too funny!
Now about those images, you are quite right that they don’t translate to our culture very well, but that’s why I pointed out some of the ancient understandings of them A little on wedding feasting sounds good to me, but you know how I like to do these things… I only know what we’ve covered so far, so I can be surprised at what we discover later on; that’s half the fun of writing them.
By the way, I love your study last night… awesome, but don’t tell anybody about the yet
I am happily seated at your feet, stylus in hand, as you prepare for the next installment, Magister!
Really enjoying this! 🙂
It’s a fun one
I am going through this rather belatedly. However, this way I too get to see the comments.
Everything has its advantages.
Thus far, I cannot find any fault with your basic interpretation, however, I have observed that what we see in the Bible depends upon where we are standing. So, for example, I expect if we are young and look to the Song of Songs as a guide proper courtship, that is justifiable too. That is particularly true given what Little Monk had to say.
There is a case to made for that
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