Song of Songs

SONG OF SONGS. - A poetic book of the Bible, included in the third class known as the Kethōbhim, or Hagiographa; in the Hebrew Bible, it is part of the group called the "Five Volumes," or "Scrolls" (v. BIBBIA).

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," excellent above all others (cf. German Das Hohelied); therefore the interpretation given to it by some 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 entirely singular and, to all appearances, seems unexpected in a sacred collection such as that of the Bible: according to the letter, it speaks, in fact, of the mutual love between two figures who can be designated as the Bridegroom and the Bride. Moreover, at first glance the composition does not even show a well-connected conceptual structure, but rather gives the impression of detached passages that only vaguely refer to one another. A summary of the content may be the following:

Amorous desires of the Bride 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 recited by him beneath her window and the praises addressed (2:8-17). The Bride, having lost the Bridegroom, seeks him by night in the city; then a solemn procession is described that comes up from the desert and is formed of armed men surrounding Solomon's litter (3:1-11). The Bridegroom describes the physical beauties of the Bride (4-5:1). The Bride relates that, having heard the Bridegroom knocking at her door by night, she delayed in opening to him, and when she opened he had gone away; she then sought him through the city, and came upon the "daughters of Jerusalem" to whom she gave a description of the Bridegroom (5:2-6:3). A new description and praises of the Bride, made 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 resolutions for the future are expressed (8:5-7). Dialogue between the Bride and her hostile brothers; the Bride affirms that her vineyard is worth more than Solomon's famous one; invitation of the Bridegroom and his companions to the Bride, and her response (8:8-14).

Already from this schematic summary it appears how arduous it is to give a judgment both on the literary form of the C., and on its meaning; and indeed over the centuries, both in Judaism and 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 very numerous because they range from those that consider the C. a wholly profane and erotic composition, to those that make of it a subject of lofty mystical speculations; they can be grouped into the three following classes.

II. NATURALISTIC INTERPRETATION

According to this, the Canticle aims at nothing other than celebrating the love of a man and a woman. It seems that already toward the end of the 1st century A.D. some Jews interpreted, or at least employed, the Canticle in this sense; but every trace of them soon disappeared. Among Christians its first representative is Theodore of Mopsuestia (d. 428), who regarded the Canticle as a short poem written by Solomon in praise of his Egyptian wife: it even appears that, on account of this profane character of his, Theodore wished to exclude the Canticle from the biblical canon; but his opinion, perhaps shared by some other, was condemned in 553 by the Fifth Ecumenical Council, nor for many centuries did it reappear among Christians. Protestantism brought it back to light, since it was vaguely expressed by Castellion (Châtellion), a friend and follower of Calvin: but precisely on account of this opinion of his, Calvin banished Castellion from Geneva (1544). After a few other hesitant attempts, Herder (1778) defended the naturalistic interpretation in its entirety, regarding the Canticle as a collection of separate erotic songs: after him this interpretation gained ever more ground among Protestants.

K. Budde believed he had found a well-defined ethnological basis in support of the naturalistic interpretation in the nuptial customs of the Hawrân, the region to the north-east 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 feast is held especially in spring, and lasting seven days it is called the "week of the king": during that period, in fact, the bridegroom figures as king and the bride as queen, and the ceremony assigns them almost royal garments, a retinue of "friends of the bridegroom" and "friends of the bride", and especially the "throne", on which the two sit. This "throne" is made with the boards of the threshing-sledge (Dreschtafel), covered with carpets and cushions, and carried solemnly onto the threshing-floor of the village on the morning following the wedding. The celebrations of the "week of the king" consist of banquets, songs and dances, among which particular importance attaches to the wasf, that is, the "description" of the physical beauties of the spouses, but above all to 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 at bay a young man who pretends to want to abduct her.

On this ethnological basis Budde erected his interpretation (contemporaneous articles in The New World of Boston, March 1894, p. 56 ff., and in the Preussische Jahrbücher, 1894, p. 92 ff.) applied to the Canticle (commentary, 1898). The Canticle would be a collection of nuptial songs performed during the "week of the king" in some Jewish district, probably in the surroundings of Jerusalem: Solomon and the Shulammite of the Canticle would be the two spouses of the "week of the king"; Solomon's litter would be the "throne" of the two spouses; the companions of the Bridegroom and the daughters of Jerusalem would be the respective retinues of the two; their descriptions would be the wasf, and the dance of the bride would have been preserved in the dance in double file contained in the Canticle (7:1 ff.).

Today the naturalistic interpretation is still predominant among rationalist or Protestant scholars, and has representatives also among Israelite 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 it, the Canticle narrates a well-connected love story, whether real or imaginary, but the ultimate aim of such a narration is not that story in itself but rather the higher moral meaning that is symbolized in it; therefore the Canticle would have two meanings, the literal or immediate one, which however is a "type" of a second meaning, the moral or mediate one.

By the followers of this interpretation the literal meaning has been fixed in various ways: it would refer to the loves of Solomon with the Egyptian woman, or with the Shulammite, or with an obscure shepherdess, while according to others it would be a fictitious plot of the loves between a shepherd and a shepherdess, or between married Hebrew nobles, etc. The moral meaning too has been fixed variously, especially in relation to the religious principles of the respective interpreters; thus, usually, Jewish scholars have found it in the love of the God Yahweh for the Hebrew nation, while Christians have found it in the love of Christ for the Church, or for individual souls.

The typical interpretation appears, well 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 Canticle the description of the marital loves of Solomon, which are however the type of the loves of Christ for the Church. Another follower of this exegesis is not found again until 1569, when the Spaniard Luis de León published his commentary which followed the "typical" interpretation: which appeared such a novelty that the author had to defend himself from such an accusation (together with other charges) before the Inquisition of Spain, though he came out of it with a simple admonition. But a few years later this interpretation found a very wide following both among Catholics and among Protestants; with the 19th century, instead, it went into decline, and today it has almost entirely disappeared among Protestants, while among Catholics it is sometimes still followed by parenetic writers, who seem to depend exclusively on the "typical" commentary of Calmet.

IV. ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION

According to it, the C. is a sustained metaphor: the entire composition contains a single meaning, to express which the author made use of metaphorical expressions taken from the language and customs of love. Therefore the C., according to this interpretation, does not have a twofold meaning — the historical one of the plot standing on its own and subsequently the moral one at which the plot aims (as the "typical" interpretation would have it); instead it has only the moral meaning, expressed however through sustained metaphors, that is, through an allegory.

The allegorical interpretation is the oldest of which there is any record concerning the C. If this book entered the biblical canon, it was — as scholars of every tendency agree in admitting — on 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 again in the Targum, in the various Midhrâšim and in other rabbinic writings, which — albeit with variations of many kinds — agree on the exegetical principle that the C., under the allegory of a bridegroom and a bride, treats directly of the relations between the God Yahweh and his beloved nation of Israel. When the Bible passed to Christianity, this traditional exegetical principle concerning the C. passed over to it as well, but as a rule it was updated and harmonized with the further progress of divine revelation, so that the most ancient Christian expositors see in the Bridegroom an allegory of Christ and in the Bride an allegory of the Church; such an 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), and therefore to this ultimate end of all revelation was applied whatever the book narrated of the relations between Yahweh and Israel, as to an intermediate stage. Other Christian expositors, developing this application further with aims predominantly homiletic and parenetic, extended it to the relations between Christ and Mary, Christ and the faithful soul, and the like, without claiming in such applications to make a historical-critical investigation of the original meaning of the book.

New allegorical interpretations were subsequently proposed over the centuries, but they remained without following. Thus, certain medieval rabbis supposed an allegory of the relations between Solomon and personified Wisdom; others, of Averroist tendencies, of the relations between the active intellect and the human soul; some followers of the Cabala proposed allegorical interpretations of a cabalistic nature; a political allegory was supposed already by Luther, and after him by certain others down to the close of the 19th century; finally, in our own days, an astral allegory has been thought of, which according to the ancient astral cults sees in the Bridegroom the Sun, in the Bride the Moon, in the loves of the Spouses the phases of the stars, etc., just as an allegorical liturgy in honor of the god Tammûz (Hadad, Ibid) and of the goddess Ishtar (Astarte) has likewise been thought of.

V. EXAMINATION OF THE VARIOUS INTERPRETATIONS

The naturalistic interpretation falls into the grave error of explaining the C. by shutting itself up within the text of the book alone, and rejecting what the most ancient tradition testifies concerning the book itself. There arises, however, the fundamental difficulty of explaining how the book, which would originally have had a simply erotic meaning, entered the canon of the Sacred Scriptures for the Israelites; it is true that the answer is given: its entry into the canon came about because at a certain time the book was interpreted mystically, in accordance with the allegory that later became traditional: but by such an answer the difficulty is only shifted a little, not resolved, because the question returns as to how a religious allegory, most delicate for the Hebrews, could have been based on a notoriously erotic composition, which even in Christian times lent itself to indecorous applications on the part of certain Jews, as the Talmud attests (Tôsephtâ' Sanhedhrin, XII, 10). On the contrary, if the allegorical interpretation – as far as we can ascertain – has always accompanied the C., permitting its entry into the canon, this shows that it arose together with the C. itself, precisely as tradition holds. And, by neglecting such tradition, one errs from the very beginning in the interpretation of the C., as for centuries learned Arabists have erred and the Arab masses still err in interpreting in an erotic sense the poems of Ibn al-Fârid (1182-1235), which are instead essentially allegorical in accordance with the custom that became established among the Sufi Muslim mystics. As for the sole positive proof, namely the analogy with the nuptial customs of the Hawrân, it must be observed that it does not appear to us at all that among the ancient Hebrews there was practiced a nuptial "week of the king" with the precise ceremonies described above, although in the Bible, in Flavius Josephus and in the Talmud there have been preserved either fleeting occasional hints or entire treatises concerning nuptial customs; the few points of contact go back to generic customs, which can be found more or less among the most diverse and distant peoples.

The "typical" interpretation, especially the one that finds its "historical meaning" in the matrimonial vicissitudes of Solomon, appeals generically to tradition. But such an appeal does not appear justified, since, even granting that in Jewish tradition Solomon was sometimes a symbol of the Messiah, not all the individual traits of his life lent themselves to this symbolic use, and least of all did his marital vicissitudes lend themselves to it, since his marital straying was reproached to him by the Bible itself (I Kings 11, 1-4; Ecclus. [Vulg.] 42, 21-22). And in reality neither his marriage to the Egyptian woman, nor much less his supposed loves with the Shulammite or other women, had such resonance as to rise spontaneously to a "type" of the love of the God Yahweh for Israel. On the other hand, the C. has no explicit reference that links its supposed "historical meaning" with the "moral" one, so that the whole composition could very well be interpreted as an occasional epithalamium, without any higher moral aim. This holds all the more if one wishes to trace the "historical" plot not to Solomon, but to a simple shepherd or to similar unknown personages.

The traditional allegorical interpretation is based on the external testimonies offered by rabbinic Judaism and by biblical literature itself (of which arguments the other later allegorical interpretations are absolutely devoid, such as the Averroist, the cabalistic, the political, the astral, etc., which represent fanciful attempts of individual schools). Explicit testimonies show that among the Palestinian rabbis toward the end of the 1st century A.D. the C. was esteemed 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 profanely humming passages of the C. at banquets, especially nuptial ones. Against such a custom Rabbi 'Aqîbâ' rose up with the severest threats (Tôsephtâ' Sanhedhrin, XII, 10; cf. Sanhedhrin, 101 a).

If then this book, apparently erotic and carrying in itself no explicit declaration of allegory, was interpreted allegorically, this could come about because there already existed an ancient literary custom of shadowing forth the relations between the God Yahweh and his beloved nation of Israel by means of the relations of two spouses. The biblical passages, especially of the prophetic literature, that demonstrate such a custom, are very numerous (Hos. 2; Isa. 54; 62, passim; Jer. 2, 2 ff.; 3; 31, 3 ff.; Ezek. 16, 23; etc.); and in fact the custom is recognized by scholars of every tendency. It is therefore legitimate to suppose that the C. is a composition that arose in some cenacle of learned and more especially Israelite men, among whom the aforementioned traditional allegory concerning Yahweh was cultivated in a special manner and with further developments, so much so that no necessity was felt to add to the composition its allegorical explanation (analogously to what the Sufi mystics did later).

VI. LITERARY FORM

In literary terms, the C. has been considered a true drama, or a collection of separate songs, or a composition of the idyllic type.

Already at a first reading one perceives that the composition has certain dramatic movements, as was noted already in antiquity (Origen: PG 13, 61); but only from the 17th century onward were attempts made to divide the composition regularly into acts and scenes, though the results obtained were the most discordant 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 the Greek type of drama.

That the C. is composed of separate songs would seem to be demonstrable from that apparent fragmentation of the text which appears already at a first reading. Yet, along with this fragmentation, one also notices a certain logical thread that links the various parts to one another: the characters are the same from beginning to end, certain episodes are repeated (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.), just as certain characteristic expressions are also repeated, while the language and style are uniform. Moreover, the hypothesis of separate songs fares, proportionately, as does the hypothesis of the drama, since a number of songs is extracted at will according to the inclinations of individual scholars.

The hypothesis of the composition of the 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, that is, having established his fundamental allegory of love, contemplates the different moments of this symbolic love by having the Bridegroom and the Bride speak and act as two ordinary spouses, but often also keeping in mind certain points of Hebrew history and geography, that is, events and places where the love of Jahweh for Israel was most clearly manifested: therefore the composition as a whole presents itself as in different tableaux, but framed together by a general idea.

VII. AUTHOR AND ERA

Until the beginning of the 19th century, the indication of the author was found in the very "title" of the book (1:1): C. of C. which (is) Solomon's. From that time on, this indication began to be regarded as a mere literary device, and today this opinion is very common even among Catholic scholars. The same device, in fact, is found in the book of Wis., which bears the title Wisdom of Solomon, although it is a work undoubtedly written in Greek and many centuries after Solomon; a similar literary device is also found in Eccles., partly conceived in the person of Solomon. This title may come from the author of the 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 the C. the form še appears constantly.

The literary examination of the book makes it clear that the language employed therein is not the classical Hebrew of Solomon's time, but that used after the return from the Babylonian exile, that is, a Hebrew deeply infected with Aramaisms: in the brief 8 chapters of the book there are found more than a dozen words, and numerous dialectal forms, that smack of Aramaic; moreover, in 4:13, there appears the word pardes, "park," "garden" ("paradise"), which derives from the Persian pairidaeza (cf. Greek παράδεισος), which points to the Persian period after the Babylonian exile (the other word 'prjou which appears in 3:9, said by some to derive from the Greek φορεῖον with the meaning of "litter," is extremely uncertain). The very circumstance that the author of the C. set up his love allegory with such confidence without fear of being misunderstood seems to require a period in which the use of presenting the relations between Jahweh and Israel under the symbol of two Spouses was already widely diffused; but this diffusion was achieved especially by the spread of the prophetic writings, especially of Jer. and Ec., which flourished during the Babylonian exile: therefore the C., also for this consideration, must be later than they.

Sufficiently certain elements for delimiting more exactly, in the period after the exile, the time when the C. arose are lacking. The Septuagint version, which misunderstands some 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 time had already passed since the publication of the Hebrew text; one could therefore conjecture that this took place around the middle of the 4th century B.C. The followers of Budde's theory suppose that the C. was put in writing between the 3rd and 2nd centuries; some even think of the 1st century A.D.

Giuseppe Ricciotti