Unlocking the Poetry of Love in the Song of Songs

Unlocking the Poetry of Love in the Song of Songs By Jack M. Sasson 010011 At barely eight chapters with a total of 117 verses, the Song of Songs is one of the shortest books of the Bible. In 1977, Marvin Pope of Yale University published his massive, 750-page commentary to the Song of Songs. That’s an average of nearly six and a half pages for each verse—and most of these pages are printed in small, densely packed type. One would have thought that Pope’s volume would dull, if not answer, all our questions about the Song of Songs for at least a decade or 012two. But at least four major works on the Song of Songs have crossed my desk since then, obviously a sign that authors feel the need to say more. This also demonstrates insatiable interest in this fascinating book, by scholars as well as by the general public. The Song of Songs no doubt contains more than its share of scholarly cruxes, both linguistic and interpretive. When it was written is also a question on which scholars differ widely. The traditional title of the book, the Song of Solomon, is based on the attribution of authorship to King Solomon. As in the cases of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, which tradition also attributes to Solomon, assigning the Song of Songs to Solomon allowed the pious Hebrew to give special sanctity to the collection. The tradition that the Song of Songs was written by King Solomon was doubtless based on the references to the lover as king (1:4, 12), on the mention of Solomon in several verses, and on the tradition (preserved in the 1 Kings 5:12) that Solomon was a writer of songs. Hence, the superscription to the Song of Songs: “The Song of Songs”—that is, the greatest of all songs—“which is Solomon’s” (1:1). If there is one thing that a majority of scholars agree on, however, it is that Solomon did not write the Song of Songs. This conclusion is supported by the Hebrew of verse 1 that allows the translation: “The greatest of all songs, which is offered to Solomon,” and in this way cancels the attribution of authorship, although it does not avoid the problem of dating. Another difficulty with the book is the propriety of such blatantly explicit love poetry in the Hebrew scriptures. The Song of Songs sensitively describes 013the physical attributes of the lovers, the awakening of young love, the power of their attraction, their surrender to love’s urge, their pain in separation, and their joy in ending it. What is all this doing in a sacred book? 1 Other difficulties abound. Anyone who reads the Song of Songs in Hebrew is quickly confronted with a very large vocabulary attested nowhere else in Hebrew scriptures. Perhaps this is not surprising, given the fact that erotic themes are also rare in the Bible. Nowhere else do we find the human body as richly detailed. Nowhere else do we smell spices, taste fruits and gaze on flowers, all of which are meant to evoke that most sensual of human interactions. Despite the fact that the Song of Songs is one of the shortest books in the Bible, it contains more hapax legomena than any other book in either Testament. Hapax legomena sounds like an obscure disease, but it is the scholarly designation of words that appear in scripture only once. (Hapax legomenon is the singular; it means “a thing said only once” in Greek. Because this is such a mouthful, scholars talk simply about hapaxes for short.)a Hapaxes are obviously going to present special problems of translation, so we have to seek help in order to understand them and other such difficult vocabulary of the Song of Songs. We therefore examine the ancient translations of the Hebrew Bible—for example, the Septuagint (Greek); the Vulgate (Latin), and the Peshitta (Aramaic). But when we do so, we soon discover that the ancient translators were just as bewildered as we and that they too had to invent meanings to suit the context. Since searching the vast storehouses of Arabic, Akkadian, Ugaritic, Sabaean, Ethiopic and other Semitic languages does little to improve on intelligent guesses, it is not surprising that modern scholarship has resolved only a handful of lexical cruxes in the Songs.1 Indeed, as consummate a Semiticist as he is, Professor Pope contributes far more authoritatively when he gathers together previous scholarship than when he offers a new lexical interpretation.b Modern researchers have not only failed to unlock the Song’s lexical secrets, they have also largely failed to find logical developments from one sentence of the text to the next. The proper connection between two adjacent clauses—remember that before the Dark Ages the Hebrew text had no punctuation—is almost never obvious. Scholars, attuned to other scriptural passages where prose has an inexorable logic and where poetry is couched in comforting parallelism, are often mystified by the Song’s frerender quent leaps from one context to another, as well as by changes in subject matter and in points of view. As a matter of fact, by far the longest sequence in the entire book that can actively be followed from its beginning to its end is found in chapter 5, from verses 2 to 16. A mere 15 verses, this sequence recounts, perhaps as a dream, the reaction of a woman who fails to take full advantage of her lover’s nocturnal visit. Other sequences, however, comprise only two to three full sentences, covering a couple of verses.2 Despairing of finding much continuity within the Song, some scholars have argued that the text simply linked short songs, one after the other. Other scholars asserted that the book was nothing but a collection of opening phrases to longer songs, much like titles printed in a “Hit Parade” list. Other ingenious proposals offered keys by which the Song could be interpreted as a single continuous composition. Invariably, however, these keys are too complex for anything less than a computer to retain. So we are still puzzling over the unity and coherence of the Song of Songs. Given this exotic vocabulary, as well as this lack of cohesiveness and coherence, how do 2 modern translators proceed? They have basically two choices—either to translate literally or to translate idiomatically. The first is more common, with the translator matching the Hebrew word for word in a modern language, while allowing for each language’s syntactic characteristics. These translations invariably focus on the meaning of each of the Hebrew poet’s words or phrases. Because the Song of Songs lacks obvious coherence, however, translators can easily become so absorbed in combing the vast resources contained in arcane dictionaries, concordances and lexicons that they may fail to perceive the poet’s overall meaning. Idiomatic renderings, on the other hand, try to recapture in a modern language the images that the ancient poet shared with his own audience. The best of such translations are those by artists who so penetrate an ancient language that they absorb its characteristics and partake of its genius. Having immersed themselves in an ancient culture, these translators come to empathize with its goals and aspirations. When we read such renderings of the Song of Songs, we no longer have to struggle with every quaint expression; we can enjoy the rich imagination of the ancient writers and their shimmering evocations of love and its entanglements.3 I would not want to forego either of these approaches I frequently turn to Marvin Pope’s book when I want a reliable literal translation of the Song. But I delight in Marcia Falk’s sensitive English 014recreation of the poetry of the Song.c Falk is herself not only a gifted poet but is also well schooled in the Hebrew language.4 This combination makes her translation very special. Let me compare Pope’s and Falk’s translations of the famous passage in the Song of Songs that proclaims love to be as strong as death (Song of Songs 8:6–7). (See the sidebar to this article). Both translations are very good, but they are also very different. Pope tries to match each Hebrew word as closely as possible with an English one. The word “signet,” for example, instantly throws you back to those ancient days when an elite that did not write used signet impressions stamped in clay, ink or wax to seal documents dictated to a scribe. Recent scholarship suggests that these signets or seals either hung on a concord around the neck (resting on the chest) or were tied with leather thongs on the arm. Delve further into the scholarly literature and you might link these signets to the image regarding love and death: Death need not part such signets or seals from their owners, since seals were often deposited in tombs so that the deceased could take them to the afterworld.5 All this and more is suggested by the translation “signet.”d Pope’s translation has other virtues. Although Hebrew writing does not distinguish between capital and lower-case letters, Pope nevertheless capitalizes “Love” and “Death” (except for the last occurrence of “death”). In this way Pope indicates that the poet personified these concepts. Pope’s translation, however, also underscores the failure of comparative Semitics to establish a satisfactory meaning for the word salhebetyaµh in line 6. Pope simply leaves a 3 blank space where the translation of this word ought to go. Finally, by placing the last two lines in brackets, Pope signals our difficulty in understanding precisely what the poet is saying.

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