Original Meaning
RESPONSIVE TO THE unsettling dream and distasteful vision of chapter 3, the beloved man now showers the woman with intimate affirmations. She is once again (as in 2:8–15) the inaccessible one who requires to be wooed (4:1–15), but as this chapter closes, she again reveals that she is not resistant to this man who pursues her (4:16 and 5:1; cf. 2:16–17).
The return after the terrors of the night to the quiet normality of the relationship described in chapters 1–2 is signaled immediately by the return to familiar language in 4:1, whose opening words are exactly those of 1:15, albeit now with a slight expansion that mentions the “veil” behind which the woman’s eyes hide.1 It is perhaps significant, after the impersonal sexual activity implied in 3:6–11, that the lover should begin with his beloved’s eyes, even though he cannot see them clearly; for to look into the eyes is to encounter a person, not simply a body.
It is the beloved’s unique, individual beauty that transfixes him in its totality (note “all” in 4:7), as he considers first her head and neck. Only after he has surveyed this scene does he move on to still-familiar territory (4:5–6), mentioning those breasts that have been alluded to already in 2:17, in the context of a browsing in the lilies and an intimacy that lasts “until the day breaks and the shadows flee.” She is not to him merely one woman among many, coveted for sexual charms. She is the one and only woman for him (cf. 2:2), a person to be looked in the eyes.
From her eyes he moves next to her hair (4:1), which is compared to a flock of Transjordanian goats, perhaps in color or in movement as it flows down from her head.2 From her hair he goes next to her teeth (v. 2), which are shining white (like sheep that have been washed and shorn) and are perfectly matched. The mouth and some part of the side of the face (perhaps the cheeks)3 comes under consideration next (v. 3). Both have a pleasing redness about them—the color of the inside of a pomegranate when it is halved and lies open to view.
Her neck is like the otherwise unknown “tower of David” (cf. 7:4), heavily decorated with jewelry in the same way that the tower was decorated with warriors’ shields and perhaps other weapons (v. 4: the precise meaning of Heb. šeleṭ [NIV “shields of warriors”] is uncertain).4 We assume that the allusion is to a long and graceful neck, although we are dealing with the unique word talpiyyot, which lies behind the NIV’s “elegance”; thus, precision eludes us.5
What is striking about verses 3–4 taken together, however, is the way in which they echo 3:6–11, not only in the reference to the “warriors” (gibborim, 3:7 and 4:4), but also in their use of the unique Hebrew word midbar in 4:3 (where it presumably must mean “mouth” in parallel to “lips”), reminding us of the common Hebrew word midbar, “desert,” in 3:6. It is as if the lover is recontextualizing the traumatic experience of his beloved, placing it once again in a larger and more familiar framework (4:1, 5–6, referring back to 1:13, 15; 2:16–17). The fearsome warriors who guard the king’s bed are now denuded of their weapons, which are hung like trophies around the beloved’s neck.6 The thought of the barren desert, which is that same royal bed, is replaced by the thought of the beloved’s mouth, described as “lovely” (naʾweh) but also thereby evoking the image of the pastures (Heb. neʾot, sing. nawa) in which sheep and goats graze. Here is a “wilderness” (the beloved’s mouth) that is fertile and inviting to one who is a “gazelle” (cf. 2:8–17).7 The idea of fertility may also be hinted at in the use of Hebrew śepatayim, “lips,” which is often used of riverbanks (e.g., Gen. 41:3, 17), and rimmon, “pomegranate,” a well-known symbol of fertility.
These connections between the chapters only serve to emphasize the contrast between the two relationships described in them. The woman who is to Solomon only one among many daughters of Jerusalem—readily available and coerced to join him in his desert-prison—is to her lover an expansive and fertile landscape, magnificent, flawless (v. 7), and, as we will see, self-possessed. She is to be affirmed and enjoyed rather than controlled. The statement of intent in 4:6, that the man will spend long hours on the two scented mountains (his beloved’s breasts) is indeed only a response to an invitation that she has already issued to him to do so (cf. the discussion of 2:16–17). The context of his sojourn there is delight in her whole being (4:7).
The woman’s full participation in this relationship and her personal control over this participation is underlined in 4:8–15, as her inaccessibility to the man is also again emphasized (reminding us of 2:8–15). Intimacy cannot be coerced by him. She must freely choose to come with him (v. 8) as he woos her, respecting her integrity and otherness. He woos her even though she is described as his “bride” and is thus already in a marital relationship of sorts with him.
Whether “bride” is being used here literally or only metaphorically to communicate intimacy and closeness of relationship is uncertain. The appearance alongside it of the word “sister” (ʾ aḥot, v. 10) does not, unfortunately, help us to decide the matter in either direction, for this term could be used metaphorically in the ancient world simply of a beloved one in general (as frequently in Egyptian love poetry) or of a wife in particular (e.g., Tobit 5:21 [NRSV, NAB]; 7:15 [NRSV, NAB]; 1 Cor. 9:5, where the NIV’s “believing wife” is lit. “sister-wife”). It was also possible for “sisters,” broadly defined, to be wives (e.g., Gen. 20:1–13, where Sarah is Abraham’s half-sister but also his wife).
What is significant about the language, however, is that the word “bride” (kalla) first appears in the Song of Songs only after the reference to Solomon’s wedding in 3:11 and appears only in 4:8–5:1. We may at least say, then, that we have portrayed here a true “marital relationship,” to be contrasted with what happened in Solomon’s bed. Here is a “marriage” that is about the one-to-one intimacy of persons—something clearly communicated by the constant repetition of “bride” throughout the section (4:8, 9, 10, 11, 12; 5:1), in conjunction with all the sensuous imagery employed to describe her.
There is no possession taken for granted here; there is no careless assumption by the man of owning the woman. He woos her, inviting her to come down from Lebanon and its mountain ranges in the north of Palestine (v. 8). These mountains do not signify nearness, as Gilead does (v. 1), but distance. They do not signify accessibility, but inaccessibility (cf. 2:14). They are not harmless places, like the slopes of Gilead where the goats graze, but dangerous places, where lions and leopards (perhaps panthers) prowl. Distance and danger must be overcome if the lovers are to be united as one; yet the man is drawn on because Lebanon is also the fragrant place (4:11, playing on Heb. lebanon and lebona, “incense”; cf. Hos. 14:6), where his beloved is to be found. He wanders through dangerous land, therefore, calling to her and inviting her to accompany him. She is worth the weariness and risk of the journey. These are the mountains that must be faced if he is indeed to rest on the “mountains,” her breasts (Song 4:6).
Various compliments follow, designed to persuade her to “descend,” including one that echoes her words to him (4:10; cf. 1:2) and thus reminds her of his identity. The beauty of the eyes and the loveliness of the adorned neck are once again praised in 4:9 (cf. vv. 1, 4),8 along with the attractiveness of mouth and lips in 4:11 (cf. v. 3), although on this occasion the desire of the man to have his own mouth and lips in contact with hers is more explicit. “Milk” and “honey” are delights to be savored and consumed; they are also items reminding us of the Promised Land, which replaced, in Israelite experience, a wandering in a desert (e.g., Deut. 6:3; 11:9; see comments on Song 4:3). The woman is to her lover a wonderful “landscape” indeed—now described in 4:12–5:1 as a fertile “garden” (gan) in which are found choice fruits and spice-producing plants and trees (4:12–14). As a garden she is unparalleled—no ordinary garden in ancient Palestine would have contained such a diversity of plant life, drawn from every corner of the ancient world.9 At the same time she is also a spring,10 a fountain, or a well (4:12, 15) that waters the garden.
Both the garden itself and its water supply are described in 4:12, significantly, as “locked up” (naʿul), “enclosed” (also naʿul), or “sealed” (ḥatum). There is no general access to them. Entry can only be attained by those who possess permission or a key. We are powerfully reminded of the imagery of the Garden of Eden in Genesis 2–3, a place of one-to-one intimacy, where a human couple are to be found naked and unashamed (2:25) before the fracturing of their relationship with God (and with each other) led to their exclusion from this paradise. The Hebrew word behind “orchard” in Song of Songs 4:13 is in fact pardes, a word borrowed from the Persian language (meaning “enclosure, park,” from which we get our word “paradise”).
The memory of Solomon’s own construction of gardens and parks lingers in Ecclesiastes 2:1–9, alongside his accumulation of slaves, treasures, and women; it may also linger implicitly here in chapter 4. The emphasis on the inaccessible wonders of the woman is, in this context, significant. Solomon possesses women in his pursuit of paradise. The true love recognizes the sanctity of paradise and respects her boundaries.
The wooing of the man now draws a response from the woman, which may begin in 4:15 (since this can be read in the Heb. as a female exclamation rather than as part of the male description: “a garden fountain . . . !”) or even in 4:16a (although this may be spoken by the man), but is certainly found in 4:16b. The hope is expressed, either by the man or the woman, that the wind will blow on the garden, sending its fragrance out into the countryside and thus guiding the lover to find it, as he searches the mountains of Lebanon for his beloved. The fragrance should “spread abroad” (nzl, 4:16), just as the waters “stream down” (nzl, 4:16) from the mountains. She in turn makes it clear just how willing she is that he should enter the garden and taste its fruit. There is no hesitancy or fear; she welcomes his approach.
Verse 1 of chapter 5 reports the resolution of the whole situation. The man finds the garden and consumes what is within—the myrrh and the spice (4:14), the honeycomb and the honey (perhaps referring to liquid and solid honey, 4:11, although the Heb. word for “honeycomb” is not the same as the word in 4:11), the wine and the milk (4:10–11). As in 2:16–17 the obstacles have been overcome and there is “feasting.”
The final part of 5:1 appears to give us the words of some approving bystanders, who encourage the couple to “eat” and “drink” to their hearts’ content.
In summation, the man speaks to his beloved in Song of Songs 4 as a husband speaks to his wife, placing the “events” of chapter 3 in the context of their special relationship. He commends her for her beauty while respecting her as one who has her own boundaries and must be wooed (even though they already have a sexual relationship), so that their physical acts of love may be truly mutual. The imagery is once again gentle and pastoral, in contrast to the imagery of the frightening dream and the fortified palace of chapter 3. The man journeys to a far country to find his paradise, and he is welcomed in to taste its fruit.
Bridging Contexts
HITHERTO WE HAVE carefully side-stepped the question of precisely what kind of relationship is assumed in the descriptions of the love match we have read throughout Song of Songs 1–3 and have now found in 4:1–5:1, although we have certainly affirmed that this song has important implications for our understanding of Christian marriage (among others of our relationships). The point has now been reached in our reflections, however, where the question presses itself insistently upon us. Are the lovers married?
It is difficult to imagine that the Song of Songs itself intends to present them to us as legally married. The woman is one of Solomon’s wives or concubines; it is not easy to imagine how she could at the same time be married to her lover in any normal and public sense. Song of Songs 8:1 certainly implies that there is no public recognition of any marriage, since a public kiss would allegedly lead to public contempt. Song of Songs 8:8–12 further suggests that the relationship between the man and the woman lies outside the parameters of a normal marriage contract, since their relationship is there implicitly contrasted with such a contract between the woman’s brothers and Solomon (see further below).
Yet at the same time, it is undeniable that the language used in this song of the lovers’ relationship strongly implies a marriage-like relationship. Nowhere is this more clear than in 4:1–5:1. It is not just that the man calls the woman “bride” and “sister,” claiming this marital language for their union over against the claims of Solomon. It is the fact that this language is embedded in poetry that places emphasis on exclusivity in the relationship here and throughout the book (not least in 8:6–7) and does so in a way that reminds us obviously of the story in Genesis 1–2, which certainly has marriage in mind (2:23–25). As has often been noted, another passage with evident connections to Song of Songs 4 is Proverbs 5:15–19, which reads:
Drink water from your own cistern,
running water from your own well.
Should your springs overflow in the streets,
your streams of water in the public squares?
Let them be yours alone,
never to be shared with strangers.
May your fountain be blessed,
and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth.
A loving doe, a graceful deer—
may her breasts satisfy you always,
may you ever be captivated by her love.
These passages share the water imagery, specifically the language of “streaming/running down” (nzl, Prov. 5:15; Song 4:15–16), “well” (beʾer, Prov. 5:15; Song 4:15), and “spring/fountain” (maʿyan, Prov. 5:16; Song 4:12, 15), as well as the imagery of the deer in reference to the breasts. The Proverbs passage clearly concerns marital faithfulness and intimacy, even in the face of external sexual threats. It seems that we are more than justified, then, in understanding Song of Songs 4 as an exchange between two lovers who stand in a marital relationship to each other and in reading chapters 1–3 in that light as well.
The conclusion to which we are driven by all this interesting but conflicting evidence is this: Although the two lovers themselves regard their relationship as a marriage, it is not recognized as such by others (beyond those “friends” whom they from time to time address). It is partly for this reason, we imagine, that the relationship is constantly threatened by obstacles (implied in the dreams of 3:1–4 and 5:2–7). It can only truly flourish away from the public gaze—away from the city, in the private spaces of the countryside. For the public world presupposed by the Song of Songs is one of power and coercion, not a world that permits the love relationship between the woman and her lover that is described here.
Commentators who have recognized that we are dealing with three main characters in the Song of Songs have not found it easy to accept that we are thus dealing with a text that in some ways is rather subversive. It undermines a legal marriage and holds up for our approval a “marriage” that society does not recognize. Perhaps some readers of this commentary will themselves find this reality shocking. If so, it will be important to follow shock with reflection on why, precisely, we are shocked. It should not be because a biblical author is thus seen to undermine what is considered legal and even right in a particular society, for any conscientious reader of the Bible knows that its authors frequently undermine what is considered legal and even right in all sorts of societies—and do so unashamedly out of the conviction that God’s laws and righteousness are the only proper measure of what we do.
When, for example, Jezebel obtains for Ahab the piece of land that belong to Naboth (1 Kings 21), and does so using due legal process, the action is not for that reason right. There is prophetic resistance. In the New Testament, likewise, the apostles find themselves forbidden by the properly constituted authorities from preaching the good news of Jesus Christ, but they make their position very clear: “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). There is prophetic resistance.
All throughout history Christians have rightly resisted societal norms and laws in pursuit of the kingdom of God and have even managed from time to time to change them. It is not the mere fact, then, that the man and woman of the Song of Songs resist legal and societal definitions in pursuing their love that should shock us—although we may find it shocking still, if we have been taught that the main purpose of Christian faith is to undergird social stability and if we have been led to believe that submission to authority is the highest Christian virtue. It is certainly unlikely that many men throughout history would have found such a reading of the Song of Songs anything other than an outrageous assault on their prerogatives to dispose of women as they willed, passing them from one to the other by means of legal contract.
Those who possess power seldom welcome subversion. They always look to phenomena like religion only for legitimization of the way things are at the moment. We may imagine that many men, historically, would therefore have seen in the undermining of Solomon’s marriage in this song the undermining of society itself. Personal freedom in general has only recently come to be widely seen as a good thing, as we are reminded by the following words from a famous treatise opposing the abolition of slavery and attacking the abolitionists’ manner of interpreting the Bible in support of their cause precisely because of the broader societal upheaval it might produce:
Significant manifestations of the result of this disposition to consider their own light a surer guide than the word of God, are visible in the anarchic opinions about human government, civil and ecclesiastical, and on the rights of women, which have found appropriate advocates in the abolition publications. Let these principles [of interpretation] be carried out, and there is an end to all social subordination, to all security for life and property, to all guarantee for public or domestic virtue. If our women are to be emancipated from subjection to the law which God has imposed upon them, if they are to quit the retirement of domestic life . . . if they are to come forth in the liberty of men, to be our agents, our public lecturers, our committee men, our rulers, if, in studied insult to the authority of God, we are to renounce in the marriage contract all claim to obedience, we shall soon have a country . . . from which all order and virtue would speedily be banished . . . there is no deformity of human character from which we turn with deeper loathing than from a woman forgetful of her nature, and clamorous for the vocation and rights of men.11
We should assuredly be more shocked by these relatively recent words in pursuit of social stability (and using the Bible for support) than by the Song of Song’s ancient and biblical words that undermine the status quo in pursuit of personal freedom.
It is not just any freedom that this song upholds, however. This brings me to a second possible reason why a reader might be shocked. It is possible for the Song of Songs to be perceived as undermining marriage itself, in its juxtaposing of coercive power within marriage and mutual love outside it. We are far from justified in reading the song in this way, however. It does not hold up for our approval a casual relationship between promiscuous people that might one day soon be abandoned by one or both parties out of boredom or the appearance of an alternative lover. Rather, it holds up for our approval a deeply committed, exclusive relationship that is in all but legal reality a marriage (and which indeed began before the woman’s marriage to Solomon, 1:6). It does so in a textual (and a historical and social) world in which choices were severely limited and in which what is called marriage was far from the kind of relationship intended by God for his creatures. It is not marriage as such that is undermined by this song, then, but marriage as it has often been practiced—an institution that speaks of male power and prerogative and that robs women (and their chosen mates) of self-determination.
It is not clear, when we set the Song of Songs in the context of the rest of the Scriptures, how far Christian readers would be justified, if our circumstances were the same as or similar to those of the couple in this song, in behaving in the same way. The Old Testament in particular constantly throws up questions like this to readers who read it as 2 Timothy 3:16 commends for “teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (e.g., if I were in Esther’s shoes, should I behave as Esther did?). The Scriptures overall are not so interested in that question as they are in exhorting us to pursue a genuinely Christian marriage in the first place, rather than capitulating to the spirit of the age (which is all too often also the spirit of the church).
As the Scriptures seek to lead us in this direction, they constantly touch on themes already found in the Song of Songs. The woman is to be viewed by the man as someone made equally in the image of God and redeemed to be a sister in Christ; Paul’s phrase for a wife in 1 Corinthians 9:5 is indeed the composite Greek adelphen gynaika, “sister-wife.” There is to be mutuality in the relationship as each submits to the other out of reverence for Christ (Eph. 5:21–33). There is to be radical commitment to each other (and especially from the male side, Mark 10:2–12) in a one-to-one relationship (1 Tim. 3:2, 12) and constant physical self-giving to one another (1 Cor. 7:3–5). Christian marriage is the “marriage” of the lovers in this song and represents the ideal toward which we strive, even if the reality of our marriages often fall short of it in so many different ways.
Marriage will usually also have its legal and public aspects, which are important in providing (among other things) community support, accountability, and protection for those who are married. Those who are able so to marry and yet choose not to do so inevitably invite questions about any claims they may make concerning serious, lifelong commitment. Yet all this should not be allowed to obscure the fundamentally relational nature of Christian marriage, beyond and beneath all that is legal and public. Marriages often begin to go wrong, in fact, precisely when one or both of the parties involved in them begin to depend on or take refuge in their legal and public nature, rather than continuing to work daily at a relationship they refuse to take for granted.
Christian marriage itself reflects, however dimly, the relationship we are called to in Christ with God. We are called to worship a God who affirms us and respects our freedom, even as he woos us and desires our intimacy. We are called to love a God who loves us one to one in a radically committed way (although we are always, as Christian individuals, also part of the church and the world God also loves), looking for our commitment in response. He is a God whose self-giving is constant and is best exemplified on the cross and who asks us in return to present ourselves as living sacrifices on his altar (Rom. 12:1).
This “marriage” with God is also, above all, not about law but about relationship. This marriage, too, can go wrong when daily attention is not given to its growth because assumptions are made about its formal status. It is the teachers of the law and the Pharisees, we should recall, who in the Gospels take refuge in legality when summoned to relationship. Disciples of Jesus are called to a different way of living.
Contemporary Significance
Now Eros makes a man really want, not a woman, but one particular woman. In some mysterious but quite indisputable fashion the lover desires the Beloved herself, not the pleasure she can give. No lover in the world ever sought the embraces of a woman he loved as the result of a calculation, however unconscious, that they would be more pleasurable than those of any other woman.12
The view of erotic love articulated by C. S. Lewis in this passage is precisely that of the Song of Songs. It is widely divergent from the view of the modern world at large, which has reduced eroticism to animal responses to sexual stimuli. It has nothing to do, either, with the ancient world of “Solomon.” Any woman (or indeed, any man) will suffice for the mere purposes of sex, and he or she need not even be particularly physically attractive to the one who seeks it. It is the gender of the other, rather than the person, that is the crucial thing (does this entity have the appropriate equipment?); and the calculation of pleasure, whether conscious or unconscious, is central to the whole transaction. Personhood is in fact an obstacle to the exchange and must ruthlessly be repressed, suspended, and ignored if the exchange is to take place. This is the reality of abuse and pornography, of the harem and the brothel, and even of some marriages. We live in a world saturated by sex while desperate for love. True erotic love is in short supply in it.
Eros focuses on the particular woman, the particular man—the beloved himself or herself. In the midst of the reality of the sexualized and depersonalized world (represented in Song 3:6–11), in which men and women question their unique worth and beauty, experience assaults on their sense of self, and know deep alienation, eros calls us to affirmation, respect, and intimacy—the antidote prescribed in 4:1–5:1.
The duty of affirmation of those whom we love has already been discussed (see comments on ch. 2). It is worth emphasizing again here, however, for 4:1–5:1 provides us with a beautiful example of its practice and of the way in which affirming words function to “push back the chaos and shape our lives into order and beauty.”13 The “chaos” of the Solomonic court is recontextualized and disempowered by the man as he places its harsh reality within the framework of his relationship with the woman. She may be only one of many women to Solomon, but she is the one and only woman for him, and he tells her so at length and in detail.
Whether in our ordinary relationships or specifically in our marriages, we cannot engage in enough such affirmation of the unique worth and beauty of those whom we love. It is itself a major way in which healing comes to our lives (cf. comments on ch. 3) as we seek to recover from the influence of a world that depersonalizes and degrades. The effects of this world on us may initially be so great that we feel deeply embarrassed about affirming our lovers in such direct ways, and we may be reluctant to do so. Many of us have suffered such emotional damage that we have learned to keep all emotion tightly bottled up inside us where (we falsely believe) it can do no damage. We avoid words that might uncork the bottle and spurn them when others use them toward us. We become terrified of direct verbal intercourse, and sexual intercourse thus becomes a silent, awkward affair that does not minister to our emotional and spiritual needs as well as our physical needs. We deprive ourselves and others of a great gift—the gift of affirming words that might, in the context of a loving and trusting relationship, bring deep healing to our lives. It is a serious deprivation as we seek to love our spousely neighbors as ourselves.
The Song of Songs leads us along a different path, exhorting the expression of intimacy through thought, imagination, and word as well as action, as lovers take up each other’s whole attention. It is in the healing that such things bring, indeed, that the power of activities like pornography is diminished, for that power is bound up closely with deprivation of personal love and affirmation in the first place.
Eros calls us to affirmation, but it also calls us to respect. The most noticeable feature of 4:1–5:1, after the strong implication of female powerlessness in 3:6–11, is the way in which the man goes out of his way to emphasize that the woman is a person in her own right with boundaries that must be respected. He may be her intimate, but he is so only by invitation. He does not own her, nor can he control her. If he is to enjoy her, it must be at her summons. Throughout our passage there is a recognition, in other words, that even though the couple are in a marital relationship, each remains as “other” to the one who loves. There is, consequently, much wooing in the passage. The man accepts that the relationship can only be good if it is mutual, and he pursues his beloved with a passion. He recognizes his beloved as a person before he regards her as a woman.
There is an enduring message here, too, for those who are married. It is an all-too-common root of marital trouble that one or both parties “settle down” in a marriage and begin to take the other person for granted. The legal contracts are signed, and all wooing in due course ceases. Too often there is in fact no ongoing sense of the other as other at all—a separate, unique person with whom it is an enormous privilege to spend one’s life. The transgressions of boundaries and the invasions of space become legion, and ownership and control become the governing categories of the marriage. Sexual interaction, which can only ever express what is already there in the relationship, becomes humdrum and predictable and is no longer about the union of two free spirits but about the slow expiration of two souls in bondage.
Eros calls us (back) to the constant recognition of the other—the one who befriends us not because he or she has no choice but out of self-giving and committed love. It calls us to make wooing an ongoing feature of our marriages, not just a prelude to them. Eros thus constantly pushes beyond the legal institution of marriage to the heart of it, insisting that what is respectable is not necessarily good and that what has been accepted as normal is not necessarily to be accepted as what is right.
Eros calls us, finally, to intimacy. The natural and good end of affirmation and wooing is unrestrained and joyous sexual, emotional, and spiritual intimacy. The woman in 4:1–5:1 welcomes her lover with open arms into her garden, and he comes to feast. Here we need to confront a deep-seated difficulty that is connected with, but also goes beyond, our reluctance to affirm and be affirmed as unique and beautiful people. Many people, including Christian married people, have a difficulty with respect to sex. Indeed,
it is a strange paradox that among those most vociferous about their belief in the Bible “from cover to cover” is often found an attitude that sex is “nasty.” The Victorian embarrassment with sexual matters has not disappeared from the contemporary scene.14
The problem actually goes much further back, historically, than the Victorians (see the Introduction to this commentary). Many Christians throughout the ages have found it difficult, precisely because of their negative views of sexual expression, to contemplate a literal reading of the Song of Songs without at the same thinking of the book negatively as a “hot carnall pamphlet” (to use the words of the Westminster Confession of Faith). Yet the fact is that it is both a “hot carnall pamphlet” and a part of Scripture, and this is something with which all of us must come to terms:
The Bible . . . is, to be sure, fully aware of lust and the misuse of sex; but at the same time it is forthright in approving the wholesomeness of sex. The passionate, physical attraction between man and woman, who find in this the fulfillment of their deepest longings, is seen as a healthy, natural thing . . . the Song of Songs has an important emphasis here.15
The Bible approves of the wholesomeness, the wonder, the delight of sex. God confirms his blessing on it, as a wise pastor was known to tell couples during premarital counseling, by placing the Song of Songs at the center of the Bible. If we have a different view, we need to repent of it; and if our married lives reflect in any degree that different view, then this reality also needs to be addressed. It may be that we need help to do this, for a frigid and repressive attitude toward sexual intimacy can have deep roots and can arise from deep hurts. Recognizing that the attitude is problematic, however, is the first and necessary step towards healing and change, as we learn to give up control to a trusted lover and abandon ourselves to him or her. This abandonment is only itself a reflection of the self-abandonment toward God to which each of us is also summoned and which is acted out in the closing sections of the Psalter, where all creation gives itself away in praise of God and in loving wonder of him.
This last comment leads me to a final reflection on the nature of erotic love between a man and a woman. It is perhaps reflective of Christian unease, historically, with eros that there is still a tendency among Christian writers to distinguish too sharply between erotic love and agape, the love that Christians are exhorted to have for one another (which older translations call “charity”). C. S. Lewis himself made the distinction in his well-known book, The Four Loves.
Clearly agape is a much broader concept than eros; yet we err if we do not see the two as closely related. Biblical Hebrew certainly does not drive a wedge between erotic and “spiritual” love in this way, using the same root ʾhb for love of God (e.g., Deut. 6:5), love for fellow human beings (e.g., Lev. 19:18, 34), and love between a man and a woman (e.g., Song 7:6). A better way of thinking about the matter—one that does not set erotic and other loves in unhelpful tension with each other—is to see eros as agape directed toward a husband or wife, as we relate to them as sibling-neighbors who are also our most intimate lovers. This helps us to recognize that it is in the entire reality of human love that divine love is revealed.
We are not, after all, persons who can be subdivided into different parts, some of which are of interest to God and some not, and only some of which reflect the image of God. We are created as whole people in the image of God—our own body, soul, flesh, and spirit being elements that complement and fulfill each other. In the union of husband and wife, likewise, and in the intimate joy they share, there is also complementarity and fulfillment and an expression of transcendent love.
“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. (Eph. 5:31–32)