THE UNITY of the SONG of SONGS by ROLAND E. MURPHY Durham, North Carolina Scholars Seem to Be in Agreement That the Song of Song
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THE UNITY OF THE SONG OF SONGS by ROLAND E. MURPHY Durham, North Carolina Scholars seem to be in agreement that the Song of Songs deals with love. Beyond that, there is little consensus. Human love (the moderns), or divine love (the ancients, both of synagogue and church), or both? A collection of several disparate poems, or a few? Poems set within a marriage celebration or without? Poems of the Solomonic period or of various times and places ? The questions can be multiplied, but this article will concentrate on one issue: the unity of the work, as evidenced by the many repetitions within it. The large number of repetitions within eight chapters makes the Song unique within the Hebrew Bible, with the exception of Qohelet. There are several hapax legomena; yet many ordinary words are repeated over and over. Hence the question arises: are the repetitions significant enough to warrant the claim that the Song is, by and large, a unity, and not simply a loose collection or anthology of disparate poems? In other words, one would not expect to find this inner thread of unity (significant repetitions) in poems that are widely presumed to have been written over many years by different hands. What if one should urge that the unity was achieved by an editor who locked together several poems by means of these repe- titions ? Perhaps an adequate reply is that the original poet would have been as expert at this kind of thing as the (later) editor would have been. The repetitions can be treated under the headings of "refrains", themes, and simple repetitions of words and phrases. 1. Refrains We shall understand refrain as a simple reprise, a group of words which recurs several times. This prescinds from any strophic im- plications. Thus there will be a difference between the "refrains" in the Song and the strophic refrains in Is. ix 11-20 ("his wrath is not turned back, and his hand is still outstretched"). 1. The adjuration about the awakening of love. This lengthy verse appears three times, once with minor variations: ii 7, iii 5, viii 4 (variations). There is in v 8 a fourth adjuration (uttered by the woman 437 to the Daughters) that is evocative of this particular refrain. The three adjurations occur at the ends of what many commentators (L. Krinetzki, R. Gordis, H. Ringgren) judge to be poetic units. 2. The refrain about embracing occurs twice, and significantly just before two of the three adjurations: ii 6 and viii 3. It does not occur before iii 5 (third adjuration), but it should be noted iii 4 speaks of the woman takiug hold of the man, not letting him go till she had brought him unto her mother's house. 3. The mi Zj't ("who is this ?") refrain occurs twice, hailing some- one coming from the desert. In each case the "this" is variously identified: Solomon's litter (iii 6-7) and the woman (viii 5). The third instance (vi 10) is a cry of admiration from "daughters" (pre- sumably, queens and concubines). There is perhaps some significance that this refrain follows immediately upon the adjuration refrain in the two specific instance of "who is this coming up from the desert" : iii 5-6, viii 4-5. Two of these refrains (iii 6 and viii 5) occur at the beginning of what many commentators (Krinetzki, Gordis, Ringgren) judge to be poetic units. 4. The possession refrain ("I am my lover's, he is mine") occurs with only variations in word sequence in ii 16 and vi 3 and substan- tially also in vii 11 where the interesting variation about the man's "yearning" (tefuqdh : cf. Gen. iii 16) appears. With the exception of vii 11, the instances appear at the end of units (ii 16 goes with the ending of ii 17). 5. The day/shadow refrain is characterized by deliberate variations in ii 17 (cf. ii 8b-9a!) and iv 6. In the former the woman invites the lover to turn and be like a gazelle on the mountain(s) (thus ii 17 forms an inclusio with ii 9). In the latter, without a mention of the gazelle, the man affirms his resolution to go to the mountain. A third form appears in viii 14 without the day/shadow phrase, where the woman invites the man to flee and be like a gazelle on the moun- tains. The movement in these refrains is to the mountain(s); the metaphor of movement is the gazelle (except iv 6) and twice the time (day/shadow) is mentioned. This is perhaps the most interesting example of variations of a refrain. II. Themes 1. The garden motif is central to iv 12-16 (cf. viii 13). Associated with it is the image of the lover going to the garden: iv 16 ("Let my .