“I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.”
– Song of Songs: 6:3.
With spring in full force and classes finally winding to a close, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about my favorite book of the Hebrew Bible recently: Song of Songs. For those of you unfamiliar with it, I encourage you to go read it. It is astoundingly beautiful and takes all of 20 minutes to read start to finish.
What I find interesting about Song of Songs is that it doesn’t mention God at all – at least not explicitly. Not once. You might find yourself asking: so then why is it in the Bible at all?
There’s a long history of reading Song of Songs as an extended (and at times very elaborate) allegory explaining the relationship between God and Israel, or Christ and the Church. But in my mind that does a great disservice to the work as a piece of literature and limits its scope as a piece of sacred text.
At the most basic level, Song of Songs is a series of folk love poems arranged as an exchange between two lovers: The Shulamite woman and her Beloved. Their words are wildly romantic and often sexually explicit (no doubt a key factor in the move to read the work as allegorical).
But what happens if, rather than trying to reform Song of Songs into an elaborate religious allegory, we accept it for what it is and find God in that? If we allow ourselves to find God in the all-consuming love between these two all-too-human figures – to see God reflected in the transformative nature of their love. And from that reflect on the power of human love to reveal the love of God to us here in our lives.
To allow ourselves to find God in a love so strong that it empowers us to declare that we and our Beloved have become one. And in that, we see the face of God.
My Eyes Have Seen 