Outline of Song of Songs

AN OUTLINE OF the Song of Songs is already implied in those printed versions of the NIV that place italicized headings in the text referring to Beloved, Lover, and Friends. Although I often agree with the interpretations of the text implicit in the insertions as they relate to changes in speaker, I have not allowed them to determine how I have broken the text up for discussion in the commentary (which is dictated, in the context of widespread disagreement among scholars as to how best divide the Song up into sections, as much by the need to have passages broadly similar in length to comment on as by anything else). I am, in fact, in general unhappy to find such interpretative glosses standing in what is supposed to be primarily a translation of the Bible. I am unhappy in particular about the choice of Lover and Beloved to represent the male and female protagonists respectively, since it implies male initiative and female passivity—quite against the grain of the text of Song of Songs itself.