SONG OF SONGS. – A poetic book of the Bible, included in the third class called the Kethōbhim, or Hagiographa; in the Hebrew Bible, it forms part of the group called the “Five Volumes,” or “Scrolls” (v. BIBBIA).
SUMMARY:
I. Name and content
II. Naturalistic interpretation
III. Typological interpretation
IV. Allegorical interpretation
V. Validity of the various interpretations
VI. Literary form
VII. Author and period.I. NAME AND CONTENT
The Hebrew title Šir hašīrīm literally means “C. of C.”; it has the force of a superlative, that is, “sublime canticle,” the most excellent of all (cf. in German Das Hohelied); therefore the interpretation given by certain ancient writers is not correct, according to which this title would mean “canticle among (other) canticles” composed by Solomon, to whom the book is attributed.The content of the book is altogether singular and, judging by appearances, seems unexpected in a sacred collection such as that of the Bible: in fact, according to the literal sense, it speaks of the mutual love between two persons who may be designated as the Bridegroom and the Bride. Moreover, the composition does not even at first sight display a well-connected conceptual structure, but rather gives the impression of detached passages that only vaguely refer to one another. A summary of its content may be given as follows:
The Bride’s amorous desires for the Bridegroom; dialogues between the two, with an appeal to the “daughters of Jerusalem” (1:2–2:7). In a soliloquy, the Bride describes a visit paid to her by the Bridegroom, repeating the description of spring that he recited beneath her window and the praises he addressed to her (2:8–17). Having lost the Bridegroom, the Bride searches for him at night in the city; a solemn procession is then described, ascending from the desert and consisting of armed men surrounding Solomon’s litter (3:1–11). The Bridegroom describes the Bride’s physical beauty (4–5:1). The Bride recounts that, having heard the Bridegroom knocking at her door during the night, she delayed opening it, and that when she did open it he had gone away; she then searched for him through the city and encountered the “daughters of Jerusalem,” to whom she gave a description of the Bridegroom (5:2–6:3). A new description and praise of the Bride by the Bridegroom (6:4–12). Description of the “Shulammite” (7:1–10). The Bride invites the Bridegroom to follow her into the flowering countryside (7:11–8:4). The Bride comes up from the desert leaning upon the Bridegroom: memories of the past and intentions for the future are expressed (8:5–7). Dialogue between the Bride and her hostile brothers; the Bride asserts that her vineyard is worth more than Solomon’s famous one; an invitation from the Bridegroom and his companions to the Bride, and her reply (8:8–14).
This schematic summary already makes clear how difficult it is to form a judgment both on the literary form of C. and on its meaning; and indeed, throughout the centuries, in Judaism as well as in Christianity, the most diverse answers have been given to both questions. To begin with the question of meaning, which is the more important, the answers given are extremely numerous, since they range from those that regard C. as an entirely profane and erotic composition to those that make it the subject of lofty mystical speculation; they may be grouped into the following three classes.
II. NATURALISTIC INTERPRETATION
According to this view, the C. aims at nothing other than celebrating the love of a man and a woman. It seems that, as early as the end of the first century A.D., some Jews interpreted or at least employed the C. in this sense; but every trace of them soon disappeared. Among Christians its first representative was Theodore of Mopsuestia (d. 428), who regarded the C. as a short poem written by Solomon in praise of his Egyptian wife: indeed, it seems that, because of its profane character, Theodore wished to exclude the C. from the biblical canon; but his opinion, perhaps shared by others, was condemned in 553 by the Fifth Ecumenical Council, nor did it reappear among Christians for many centuries. Protestantism brought it back to light, since it was vaguely expressed by Castellion (Châtellion), a friend and follower of Calvin: but precisely because of this opinion, Calvin banished Castellion from Geneva (1544). After a few other hesitant attempts, Herder (1778) defended the naturalistic interpretation in its entirety, regarding the C. as a collection of separate erotic songs: after him, this interpretation gained ever more ground among Protestants.K. Budde believed that he had found a well-defined ethnological basis in support of the naturalistic interpretation in the wedding customs of the Hawrân, the region northeast of Palestine. These customs had been presented by Wetzstein, in the article Die syrische Dreschtafel, in Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1873, pp. 270-302, according to the following summary. In that region the wedding celebration is held especially in spring, and, lasting seven days, is called the “king’s week”: during that period, in fact, the bridegroom appears as king and the bride as queen, and the ceremony assigns them almost royal garments, a retinue of “the bridegroom’s friends” and “the bride’s friends,” and especially the “throne” on which the two sit. This “throne” is made from the boards of the threshing floor (Dreschtafel), covered with carpets and cushions, and solemnly carried to the village threshing floor on the morning following the wedding. The festivities of the “king’s week” consist of banquets, songs, and dances, among which the wasf, that is, the “description” of the physical beauty of the bride and groom, has particular importance, but especially the “sword dance”; this is performed on the threshing floor on the evening of the wedding, before the first nuptial night: the dancer is the bride herself, surrounded by a double chorus of men and women, and during the dance she brandishes the sword with which she keeps away a young man pretending that he wishes to abduct her.
On this ethnological basis Budde constructed his interpretation (contemporary articles in The New World of Boston, March 1894, p. 56 ff., and in the Preussische Jahrbücher, 1894, p. 92 ff.), applying it to the C. (commentary, 1898). The C. would be a collection of wedding songs performed during the “king’s week” in some Jewish district, probably in the vicinity of Jerusalem: Solomon and the Shulamite of the C. would be the bride and groom of the “king’s week”; Solomon’s litter would be the “throne” of the bride and groom; the Bridegroom’s companions and the daughters of Jerusalem would be their respective retinues; their descriptions would be the wasf, and the bride’s dance would have been preserved in the double-rank dance contained in the C. (7, 1 ff.).
Today the naturalistic interpretation is still predominant among rationalist or Protestant scholars, and it also has representatives among Jewish scholars (cf. U. Cassuto, Il significato originario del C. dei C., in Giornale della Società Asiatica Italiana, 1925, pp. 23-52).
III. TYPICAL INTERPRETATION
According to this interpretation, the C. recounts a well-connected love story, whether real or imaginary, but the ultimate aim of this narrative is not the story in itself, but rather the higher moral meaning symbolized in it; hence the C. would have two meanings, the literal or immediate meaning, which is nevertheless a “type” of a second meaning, the moral or mediated one.Among the proponents of this interpretation, the literal meaning has been determined in various ways: it would refer to Solomon’s love affairs with the Egyptian woman, or with the Shulamite, or with an obscure shepherdess, while according to others it would be a fictitious plot concerning the love between a shepherd and a shepherdess, or between married Jewish nobles, etc. The moral meaning, too, has been determined variously, especially in relation to the religious principles of the respective interpreters; thus, as a rule, Jewish scholars have found it in the love of the God Jahweh for the Jewish nation, whereas Christians have found it in Christ’s love for the Church, or for individual souls.
The typical interpretation appears, clearly defined, for the first time in the 12th century, both among the Jews with Ibn Ezra and among Christians with Honorius of Autun: the latter sees in the C. a description of Solomon’s marital love, which is nevertheless the type of Christ’s love for the Church. Another proponent of this exegesis is not found until 1569, when the Spaniard Luis de León published his commentary, which followed the “typical” interpretation: this appeared such a novelty that the author had to defend himself against the accusation (along with other charges) before the Spanish Inquisition, although he emerged from it with a simple admonition. But a few years later this interpretation found very wide acceptance both among Catholics and among Protestants; in the 19th century, however, it began to decline, and today it has almost entirely disappeared among Protestants, while among Catholics it is still sometimes followed by parenetic writers, who seem to depend exclusively on Calmet’s “typical” commentary.
IV. ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION
According to this interpretation, the C. is an extended metaphor: the entire composition contains a single meaning, to express which the author employed metaphorical expressions drawn from the language and customs of love. Thus the C., according to this interpretation, does not have a twofold meaning—the historical meaning of the plot considered in itself and, subsequently, the moral meaning toward which the plot is directed (as the “typical” interpretation maintains); rather, it has only the moral meaning, expressed, however, through extended metaphors, that is, through an allegory.The allegorical interpretation is the oldest known interpretation of the C. If this book entered the biblical canon, it was—as scholars of every tendency unanimously acknowledge—under the essential condition that it be interpreted allegorically, at least at the time of its canonization. Subsequently, in accordance with this Jewish tradition, we find the allegorical interpretation in the Targum, in the various Midhrâšim, and in other rabbinic writings, which—despite variations of many kinds—agree in the exegetical principle that the C., under the allegory of a bridegroom and a bride, deals directly with the relationship between the God Jahweh and his chosen nation, Israel. When the Bible passed into Christianity, this traditional exegetical principle concerning the C. passed into Christianity as well; but it was usually updated and brought into harmony with the further progress of divine revelation. Thus the oldest Christian expositors saw in the Bridegroom an allegory of Christ and in the Bride an allegory of the Church. This application was fully justified by the Christian Sacred Scriptures themselves, according to which Christ is “the end of the Law” (Rom. 10:4; cf. Mt. 5:17); accordingly, what the book narrated concerning the relations between Jahweh and Israel, as an intermediate stage, was applied to this ultimate end of the whole of revelation. Other Christian expositors, developing this application further with predominantly homiletic and paraenetic aims, extended it to the relations between Christ and Mary, Christ and the faithful soul, and the like, without claiming in such applications to undertake a historical-critical investigation of the book’s original meaning.
New allegorical interpretations were subsequently proposed over the centuries, but they found no lasting acceptance. Thus, certain medieval rabbis supposed an allegory of the relations between Solomon and personified Wisdom; others, of Averroist tendencies, saw in it the relations between the active intellect and the human soul; some followers of the Kabbalah proposed allegorical interpretations of a cabalistic nature; a political allegory was supposed as early as Luther, and afterward by others down to the end of the nineteenth century; finally, in our own day, an astral allegory has been proposed which, in accordance with ancient astral cults, sees the Sun in the Bridegroom, the Moon in the Bride, the phases of the stars in the love of the Bridegroom and the Bride, and so forth. An allegorical liturgy in honor of the god Tammûz (Hadad, Ibid) and the goddess Istar (Astarte) has likewise been proposed.
V. ESAME DELLE VARIE INTERPRETAZIONI
The naturalistic interpretation falls into the serious error of explaining the C. by confining itself solely to the text of the book and rejecting what the most ancient tradition testifies concerning the book itself. There nevertheless arises the fundamental difficulty of explaining how the book, which would originally have had a merely erotic meaning, entered the canon of the Sacred Scriptures among the Israelites; it is true that the response is made that it entered the canon because, at a certain point, the book was interpreted mystically, in accordance with the allegory that later became traditional: but this response merely shifts the difficulty somewhat; it does not resolve it, because one is led to ask again how a religious allegory, supremely delicate for the Jews, could have been based on a notoriously erotic composition, which even in Christian times lent itself to indecorous applications by certain Jews, as the Talmud attests (Tôsephtâ' Sanhedhrin, XII, 10). On the contrary, if the allegorical interpretation—as far as we can determine—always accompanied the C., thereby permitting its entry into the canon, this demonstrates that it arose with the C. itself, precisely as tradition maintains. And, by disregarding this tradition, one errs from the outset in interpreting the C., just as learned Arabists erred for centuries, and as the Arab masses still err, by interpreting erotically the poems of Ibn al-Fârid (1182-1235), which are instead essentially allegorical, in accordance with the custom prevailing among the Muslim Sufi mystics. As for the sole positive proof, namely the analogy with the nuptial customs of the Hawrân, it should be observed that we have no evidence whatsoever that among the ancient Jews there was practiced a nuptial “week of the king” with the precise ceremonies described above, although the Bible, Flavius Josephus, and the Talmud have preserved either fleeting occasional references or entire treatises concerning nuptial customs; the few points of contact concern general customs, which may be found, to a greater or lesser extent, among the most diverse and distant peoples.The “typical” interpretation, especially that which finds its “historical meaning” in the matrimonial affairs of Solomon, appeals generically to tradition. But this appeal does not appear justified, since, even granting that in Jewish tradition Solomon was at times a symbol of the Messiah, not every individual detail of his life lent itself to this symbolic use, and least of all did his relations with women, given that the Bible itself reproached him for his sexual waywardness (I Reg. 11, 1-4; Eccl. [Vulg.] 42, 21-22). And in fact neither his marriage to the Egyptian woman, nor, still less, his alleged loves with the Shulamite or other women, had such resonance as to rise spontaneously to the status of a “type” of the love of God Jahweh for Israel. On the other hand, the C. contains no explicit reference linking its presumed “historical meaning” with its “moral” meaning, so that the entire composition could very well be interpreted as an occasional epithalamium, without any higher moral purpose. This is all the more true if one wishes to attribute the “historical” plot not to Solomon but to a simple shepherd or similar unknown figures.
The traditional allegorical interpretation is based on the external testimonies offered by rabbinic Judaism and by biblical literature itself (testimonies of which the other later allegorical interpretations are entirely devoid, such as the Averroist, cabalistic, political, astral, etc., which represent fanciful attempts by individual schools). Explicit testimonies demonstrate that among the Palestinian rabbis, toward the end of the 1st century A.D., the C. was regarded as a sacred book by immemorial tradition (Jâdhâjim, III, 5; cf. Abâth dhê-R. Nâthân, I); around the same time, the abuse began to spread of singing passages from the C. in a profane manner at banquets, especially wedding banquets. Rabbi 'Aqîbâ' rose against this custom with the severest threats (Tôsephtâ' Sanhedhrin, XII, 10; cf. Sanhedhrin, 101 a).
If, then, this book, apparently erotic and containing no explicit declaration of allegory, was interpreted allegorically, this could have occurred because there already existed an ancient literary practice of intimating the relationship between God Jahweh and his favored nation Israel by means of the relationship between two spouses. The biblical passages, especially those belonging to prophetic literature, that demonstrate this practice are very numerous (Os. 2; Is. 54; 62, passim; Jer. 2, 2 ff.; 3; 31, 3 ff.; Ez. 16, 23; etc.); and in fact the practice is recognized by scholars of every tendency. It is therefore legitimate to suppose that the C. arose in some circle of learned and devout Israelites, among whom the traditional allegory concerning Jahweh was cultivated in a special manner and with further developments, to such an extent that it was not felt necessary to add an allegorical explanation to the composition (analogously to what the Sufi mystics did later).
VI. LITERARY FORM
From a literary standpoint, the C. has been regarded as a true drama, as a collection of separate songs, or as a composition of idyllic type.Already on a first reading one perceives that the composition has certain dramatic features, as was noted in antiquity (Origen: PG 13, 61); but only from the seventeenth century onward was an attempt made to divide the composition regularly into acts and scenes, though the results obtained were the most divergent with regard to the number of characters and scenes. Today such attempts have been abandoned by competent scholars, both because of their discouraging results and because ancient Hebrew literature shows no trace of drama of the Greek type.
That the C. is composed of separate songs might seem demonstrable from the apparent fragmentation of the
text that is already evident on a first reading. Yet, along with this fragmentation, one also notices a certain logical thread linking the various parts: the characters are the same from beginning to end, certain episodes recur (cf. 3, 1 ff. with 5, 6 ff.; 3, 6 ff. with 8, 5 ff.; 4, 1 ff. with 6, 5 ff. and 5, 10 ff.; etc.), as do certain characteristic expressions, while the language and style are uniform. Moreover, the hypothesis of separate songs fares, proportionately, no better than the hypothesis of drama, since a number of songs is extracted at will according to the preferences of individual scholars.
The hypothesis of a composition of idyllic type is the one that best accords with the traditional allegorical interpretation, and this is already a serious argument in its favor. The author, having established his fundamental amorous allegory, contemplates the various moments of this symbolic love, making the Bridegroom and the Bride speak and act as two ordinary spouses, while often also keeping in mind certain points of Hebrew history and geography—that is, events and places where Jahweh’s love for Israel was most clearly manifested. Thus the composition as a whole appears in different scenes, but scenes framed within a general idea.
VII. AUTHOR AND PERIOD
Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, the indication of the author was found in the book’s own «title» (1, 1): C. dei C. which is by Solomon. From that time onward, that indication began to be regarded as a simple literary device, and today this opinion is very widespread even among Catholic scholars. The same device, in fact, is found in the book of Sap., which bears the title Sapienza di Salomone, although it is unquestionably a work written in Greek many centuries after Solomon; a similar literary device is also found in Eccle., which is partly conceived as spoken in the person of Solomon. This title may have come from the author of C. himself, but more probably it was added later: this is also suggested by the circumstance that in this title the relative pronoun is used in the form 'dfer, whereas in the text of C. the form še appears consistently.Literary examination of the book makes it clear that the language employed there is not the classical Hebrew of Solomon’s time, but rather that used after the return from the Babylonian exile, that is, a Hebrew profoundly infected with Aramaisms: in the brief 8 chapters of the book, more than a dozen words, as well as numerous dialectal forms, are found that bear the influence of Aramaic; moreover, in 4, 13, the word pardes, «park», «orchard» («paradise»), appears; it derives from the Persian pairidaeza (cf. Greek παράδεισος), and thus points to the Persian period following the Babylonian exile (the other word 'prjou, which appears in 3, 9 and which some say derives from the Greek φορεῖον with the meaning «litter», is exceedingly uncertain). The same circumstance—that the author of C. established his amorous allegory with such assurance, without fear of being misunderstood—seems to require a period in which the practice of presenting the relationship between Jahweh and Israel under the symbol of two Spouses was already widely disseminated; but this dissemination was achieved chiefly through the circulation of the prophetic writings, especially those of Jer. and Ec., which flourished during the Babylonian exile: consequently, C. must also on this account be later than them.
Sufficiently certain elements for defining more precisely, within the period after the exile, the time when C. arose are lacking. The Septuagint version, which misunderstands certain words of the Hebrew text (4, 1. 3; 6, 7) and transcribes others because it does not understand them (4, 5; 5, 11. 14), may suggest that a considerable amount of time had already elapsed since the publication of the Hebrew text; one might therefore conjecture that this took place around the middle of the fourth century B.C. The followers
of Budde’s theory suppose that C. was committed to writing between the third and second centuries; some even think of the first century A.D.