The testament: continuities and discontinuities

Biblical Theology Bulletin, Fall, 1999 by Roland E. Murphy

It is only within the last fifty years that the literal sense of the Song of Songs began to prevail among Catholic biblical scholars, and it now seems firmly established. Most Protestants had adopted this stance over the last few centuries, but there were and still are many who adhere to the traditional Christian interpretation. The agreement about the literal sense is important, even though the meaning of the Song has not been exhausted thereby. Many portions of it are still not understood, and thus far have eluded convincing comment. It is difficult even for commentators like M. Pope or M. Fox to arrive at the literal historical sense of individual passages, or even to approximate it. There is, however, general agreement that the Song is love poetry. But love poetry, by its nature, can easily become a symbol on various levels of interpretation. Is there a more-than-literal meaning that continues it, and on what level: human or divine? Perhaps this question can be answered only by the community of faith and the guidance of hermeneutical insights. But a practical interpretation, an actualization, is expressed in the work of Nicholas Ayo, SACRED MARRIAGE (53-69), that is worth pursuing.

It is one thing to read the Song as inspired poetry about human sexual love. It is quite another thing to ask what it can say to modern society. In Israelite society the arranged marriage, or mariage de convenance, prevailed. It also exists in varying degrees among modern cultures. The Song is biblical evidence that the emotional or, for lack of a better word, the "romantic" aspect of union between the sexes found canonical validity in the sacred writings. It matters not if a particular interpretation brought about community acceptance. There is much speculation on this score, but in fact, we do not know how or why the Song prevailed as part of Scripture. Jewish tradition has preserved evidence of some doubts about its acceptance (Pope: 89-112; Murphy: 12-14), but the concern seems to center around a particular use to which the Song was put. That is also an issue for modern readers: how does the Song serve for spiritual sustenance? By spiritual I mean the betterment of a person's relationship to God and to others. Perhaps it can be described as follows: the joy of sexual union, in every sense of the word, is there in the Song, to be appropriated and to be lived with. The sexual interaction of the man and the woman is clearly acceptable and even blessed by its incorporation into Scripture (cf. Gen 1:26-27, 31; 2:18-25). It is not to be limited merely to the physical. The poetry opens out into other aspects of relations between the sexes.

An appropriate saying for this view is Proverbs 30:18-19. It begins with awe and admiration: "Three things are too wonderful for me, and four I cannot understand: the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship on the high seas, and the way of a man with a woman." This numerical proverb leads through three examples of mystery in order to emphasize a fourth. The word way is repeated in each case, to underline the final example. The "way" or course of these objects is simply not recoverable. At any one point it is impossible to capture the way that was traversed. When one thinks about it, the bird has no specific path mapped out, nor the serpent, nor the ship. Neither can the man and woman retrace all the byways that brought them together. As times and circumstances work out, they find themselves drawn together. From the very beginning a mysterious providence has guided them. "Finding" (Prov 18:22a) a wife is not a casual thing; a good wife is a gift from the Lord (Prov 19:14).