Episode 313: Pete Ruins Song of Songs

Pete: You’re listening to the Bible for Normal People, the only God-ordained podcast on the internet. I’m Pete Enns.

Jared: And I’m Jared Byas.

Two quick housekeeping notes before we jump into today’s episode, so don’t skip ahead because the first is about Pete’s new class on Genesis called Back to the Beginning. 

Pete: Yeah. The class is about all those big ‘why’ questions people ask when they read Genesis like, why did God create a paradise with temptation built right into it? Why didn’t God just stop the serpent?

And why tell Abraham to sacrifice his son? 

Jared: The class is happening live on Wednesday, November 19th from 8 to 9:30 PM Eastern time, followed by an exclusive Society of Normal People Q-&-A. Learn more and sign up at thebiblefornormalpeople.com/genesisclass. 

Pete: And second, our newest commentary on 1 and 2 Chronicles is out now, and it’s written by the ever talented Dr. Aaron Higashi. 

Jared: Yeah, I love the approach Aaron takes to move past just a boring retelling to show us what’s behind the curtain and how F1 and 2 Chronicles is one of the boldest theological projects in the Bible, and it’s a model for us today on how we can read the Bible. 

Pete: 1 and 2 Chronicles for Normal People is available now.

Wherever you get your books, you can start reading it today with a free chapter download at thebiblefornormalpeople.com/chronicles. 

Hey, everybody, welcome back to The Bible for Normal People and another episode in the Pete Ruin series. And today we’re diving into one of the most surprising, fascinating, and what-in-the-world-do-I-do-with-this books in the Hebrew Bible, and that’s the Song of Songs or sometimes called the Song of Solomon. And right from the start, let’s be clear, this is not your typical book. There is no law, no history, no covenant, no standard theology. It’s poetry. In fact, it’s sensual poetry in the Bible.

Well, that has challenged Bible readers for a very long time. Today we’re going to unpack a few things, authorship for one. Uh, why this book’s in the canon at all. How it’s structured, what it’s about, how people have interpreted it. And why it still matters. So let’s get started. 

Whether partnered or single, young or old, the song is for all of us, your longing, your delight, your capacity for intimacy.

These are not distractions from God. They might just be where God is most present for you. And if that feels a little scandalous, remember it’s in the Bible.

Okay. First, let’s talk about the authorship of the book and its composition, how it was brought together. The book begins with a title, the Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s. Now the first thing you notice is that phrase, song of songs. That is a superlative in the Hebrew language that we also see used elsewhere in the Bible.

King of kings, Lord of Lords, holy of holies in the temple. That’s a way of saying there’s no topping this, this song is the best song. Second, and this is a big scholarly question, did Solomon write this? And the short answer is no. At least not the book we have in our hands today. For centuries, Jewish Christian tradition assumed Solomon wrote the book, and I mean, who can blame them, right?

It’s, it’s right there in black and white, the Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s. And you know, in 1 Kings, Solomon was something of a ladies’ man. 700 wives and 300 concubines, a clear exaggeration. And he also wrote over a thousand songs. So attributing the song to Solomon makes sense, but most modern scholars are pretty sure that Solomon didn’t sit down with his harp and write this thing.

The phrase, which is Solomon’s in Hebrew, is the Hebrew word, Asher, which means which. And then L’Shlomo. That’s the name, Solomon, with the letter Lamed before it, which corresponds to the English L. Now, we saw something similar, if you recall in the Psalms episode where the phrase, a Psalm of David shows up quite a bit again with that letter lamed before David.

But it doesn’t necessarily indicate that David wrote these Psalms. Rather it could mean, and likely does mean a Psalm about David or for David, or inspired by David or something like that. And the same holds for the Song of Songs, which is L’Shlomo. One reason why Solomon is not considered the author concerns when this book was written, the consensus is that the song likely comes from the Persian period or maybe the early Hellenistic period.

So maybe the fourth or third century BCE, and folks, that’s a lot later than Solomon, who lived in the 10th century. Now, Michael Fox, the late Hebrew Bible scholar, and his commentary on the Song of Songs suggests a Persian period setting based on language and imagery. For example, the word for garden or orchard is pardis, that’s a Persian word.

The word for concubine is pilegesh. And the word for litter or carriage is appiryon , which is a possible Persian word. Scholars call these loan words, and we have them in English too. We say kindergarten, right? That’s a German expression. Another scholar, uh, Cheryl Exum, points to parallels with ancient nearer love poetry, especially Egyptian, which circulated and might have influenced Israelite literature.

Robert Alter, whom we’ve had on the podcast, he notes that the Hebrew style of Song of Songs is relatively late compared to earlier biblical books, which supports a date after the Babylonian exile. In other words, late sixth century at the very earliest. And what about the composition of the book? Well, scholars debate whether the song is a unified work.

By a single author, you know, sitting down just writing the thing, or a collection of love poems that were later edited together. Now, my friend and uh, teacher Tremper Longman and Marvin Pope, his teacher argued that it’s best read as an anthology, a gathering of love lyrics that are strung together somehow.

Athalya Brenner, a feminist scholar suggests we read it as a collection of women’s songs, preserving a female perspective, often marginalized in the Bible, and we’ll get to that a little bit later on. Others like Richard Hess, who is an evangelical scholar, argue that there is more unity than we give credit for pointing, I think rightly so, to recurring refrains and themes in the book.

And there are some. In my opinion though, the presence of recurring themes and refrains do not necessarily imply unity of authorship. Those refrains and themes might be the work of an editor weaving all these individual love lyrics together. But either way most agree, it does reflect a long oral tradition of love poetry eventually written down and or edited into the form we have.

Now, the question of why this is in the canon, that’s that’s a head-scratcher. You know, why on earth is this book in the Bible? Now, it may be as simple as noting that Solomon is mentioned in verse one. That might have been enough to make the cut, but still the Song of Songs has no clear mention of God, except maybe a quick reference in 8:6.

Depending on how you translate it, the word there is shalhevetyah, often translated flame, but that ending yah is tantalizing because it sure looks like the first part of God’s name, Yahweh. So this could mean, it certainly could mean flame of yah or flame of Yahweh, in which case God is mentioned positively, I might add, with respect to human love, but it’s not clear. 

Plus, again, there’s no, as I said before, there’s no covenant, there’s no law, no prophecy, no wisdom teaching. It’s love poetry, passionate, explicit love poetry. And this is the book that is included in the cannon. You know, this is where history might help us.

By the late second temple period in Judaism, there was already debate about whether this book belonged. You have Rabbi Akiva, very influential rabbi in the early part of the Christian era, specifically here in the second century CE. He famously defended the Song of Songs. He said, quote, all the scriptures are holy, but the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies. 

See, for him, the song wasn’t really about human love. It was an allegory of a love between God and Israel, and in a way folks, you know, it had to be something like that. Otherwise, it wasn’t really relevant religiously. That allegorical reading made it safe for the canon, made it appropriate for the canon.

And I want to add here a comment from my own doctoral advisor, the Jewish Scholar James Kugel, who I mention a lot, and I mention this quote a lot actually because I found it so refreshing and helpful. He said, concerning the song of songs, that what made the book the word of God wasn’t the words on the page, but the interpretation given to the words, the allegorical interpretation.

And Christians followed a similar path, likely for similar reasons. Church fathers like Origen in the third century, insisted that this book must be about Christ and the Church and not about physical desire; otherwise, how could it be in the Bible, which is supposed to be spiritually relevant for its readers?

In fact, this is why Origen and others in and around his time advocated for allegorical readings throughout the Bible, not just the Song of Songs. Allegorical interpretations gave them a way of connecting to all sorts of awkward or plainly irrelevant moments of the Bible to their own lives. And just to mention one more historical figure, Bernard of Clairvaux in the 12th century wrote over 80 sermons on the song without ever getting past chapter 2, because for him it was all about the mystical union with God.

I, I mean, think about it. Don’t knock the idea. What is a stronger drive than sex, where we lose ourselves in a moment of ecstasy? Is that not a great analogy for the soul’s yearning for God? It seems like a metaphor waiting to be used. So with that in mind, it may not surprise you to know that in the Middle Ages, the Song of Songs was one of the most commented-on books of the Bible.

In Jewish tradition, we have half a dozen major medieval commentaries. While in Christian tradition there are dozens and even hundreds if we include sermons and mystical writings. So the short answer, the song made it into the canon ’cause it was spiritualized. Allegory was the ticket in. If people had read it at face value as erotic love poetry, it probably wouldn’t have survived the canonization process.

Okay, now the structure of the book. These eight chapters. Okay. This is tricky because it doesn’t read like a story with a beginning, middle, and end. There’s no clear plot. There are no named characters. We get to know there’s no narrator. Instead, it’s a series of poems that move back and forth between a woman’s voice and man’s voice and then sometimes joined by a chorus. The daughters of Jerusalem.

Scholars have proposed different structures for a book like this. Phyllis Trible, for example, sees the song as a kind of dramatic dialogue between speaker, sort of alternating between them, and some like Roland Murphy, the Roman Catholic scholar, they note recurring refrains that create a loose framework. 

For example, the phrase, do not arouse or awaken love until it pleases. That occurs three times in chapters 2, 3, and 8, almost like section markers. There are also dream sequences in chapters 3 and 5 that give the book more added shape. And then there are, well, something that comes from Arabic and Persian, and it’s the term wasf.

And I have to be honest with you folks, I’ve never actually audibly heard that word pronounced, but it’s spelled W-A-S with the dot underneath the S, and then the letter F. So wasf, this is a type of poetry that originated outside of the Bible that this biblical author seems to have been using that style.

That style has to do with descriptions, long descriptions of the lover’s body in metaphors, the body from head to breast, and this is in chapters 4 and 7. So you have these two things. Again, maybe adding these two wasf poems rather to maybe add another sense of structure to the book. So, while the Song of Songs doesn’t have a plot, it, it does have, let’s call it rhythm, repetition, and literary artistry.

Some even see a progression, which I’m not convinced, but it may be true that the lovers search for each other, they find each other, they lose each other, and finally are reunited in a climactic affirmation of love in chapter eight. You know, actually as I think about it more, that’s, that’s not a bad way to read it, but not everyone’s convinced. You should know that. 

Okay. An overview of the book’s contents. Let’s take a quick walk through the song itself, and this will help ground our discussions afterwards. And we’ll go chapter by chapter. Really just for convenience, the flow of the book isn’t captured well by the chapter divisions, but we’ll still go with it.

So chapter one, it opens with the woman’s voice. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth. You already notice, the first person to speak is a woman. This is unusual in the Bible where women’s voices are often secondary or even muted, and she praises her lover, compares him to fragrant oils, and the man responds praising her beauty.

Chapter two, we have more dialogue, and here we have famous lines like. I am a rose of sharon, a lily of the valleys, and the man calls her a lily among thorns. There’s also this refrain about not awakening love prematurely, which some have taken to refer to marriage, though that’s not certain, and in fact I’d say it’s probably unlikely.

It could just mean, don’t rush it. Chapter 2, the first dream sequence we have here. The woman searches for her lover at night, finds him, brings him home, and later a procession of some sort is described with Solomon’s carriage and 60 warriors. And again, that procession is sometimes interpreted as a marriage ceremony.

Although that’s a conjecture, that’s, uh, not clearly what, uh, the story is trying to get across. Chapters 4 and 5, one of those wasf poems describes the woman’s beauty from head to breast, and then there is a consummation scene metaphorical. I have come into my garden, my sister, my bride. In chapter 5, there’s another dream.

The woman longs for her lover, but misses him. Then the watchman beat her, watchman of the city beat her, and, and we’ll get into what that might mean in a second. And then in chapter 6 and 7, you have more of this descriptive poetry, this wasf poetry. And then in chapter eight, a final celebration of love.

The woman declares that love is as strong as death, which I think means neither can be resisted. Both are inevitable. And love’s passion is like a blazing fire as a flame of yah, and the book closes with a desire for intimacy. Okay, so what do we notice? Well, there’s a lot going on in this song, but I want to put it this way.

What this seems to be about is just two lovers delighting in each other. Over and over again.

Let’s just briefly look at some of the main academic questions. Here are some of them, not all of them, but the kinds of things that scholars talk about when you get into the Song of Songs. So the first, and I’ve, I’ve mentioned this already. It’s the question of whether the book is a unity or an anthology, right?

Is this one story or a collection of poems stitched together? I already mentioned Tremper Longman, an anthology view, and Richard Hess, a unity view. And it might be worth raising the possibility that both can be true. And I just alluded to that earlier, the stitching together of a collection of poems.

Well, that can create a unity. Good editors do that. They bring things together in a way that makes sense. And that’s certainly the case with other biblical books. The contents of Genesis and Exodus, for example, were not written as is out of whole cloth, but various traditions were edited together to create a unity of sorts, a unity where you can sort of tell where the stitch marks are, but it’s still a unity.

And that’s an editor’s job after all, to bring different parts together and make them into one. Second thing, who are the speakers? Well, you have the woman, the man, and possibly the daughters of Jerusalem. Sort of a chorus, but not all scholars see it that way. Roland Murphy, who I mentioned, says that the daughters of Jerusalem are really a foil for the passionate words of the woman.

She’s the one actually speaking, and, uh, the woman’s voice dominates. She speaks more than the man, which is striking. Third, is it allegory? Well, historically, yes, it’s been taken that way, but the question is, was it written as an allegory? And that’s a much more difficult question to answer, but I think it’s safe to say that most modern scholars read it more literally as love poetry, but still allegory remains influential in Judaism and Christianity. 

Again, as I said before, because they have to. A fourth thing is gender and power dynamics. Feminist readings highlight the prominence, a female desire, just as it is a good thing. Womanist scholars like Renita Weems ask how these poems might empower women of color.

Reclaiming sexual desire as sacred. Whether the original meaning of the Song of Songs had anything to do with these things is entirely besides the point. The Song of Songs as a history of being creatively engaged by readers and feminist readings and Renita Weems womanist scholars and their readings, they’re contributing to that creative, intentionally creative accessing of the text.

Then the fifth one is the role of violence is something that scholars talk about in this book. And the disturbing scene, which I alluded to before, is in chapter 5, verse seven, where the watchmen beat the woman. And this certainly raises questions. Some see it, and I have to say I’m attracted to this option, but some see it as symbolic of societal constraints on female desire.

Keep it to yourself. Don’t flaunt, right? All that kind of stuff we still hear. So, um, you know, if that’s the case, this is certainly a liberating book indeed. And anyway, these are some of the kinds of questions that keep scholars busy and that remind us that this book is not simple. Okay. Let’s look briefly at the history of interpretation, how the song has been understood and in Judaism.

Again, I repeat what I said before. Rabbi Akiva in his declaration that the Song of Songs is like the Holy of Holies. He made the song safe. And later Jewish Interpreters continued reading it as a story of love between God and Israel. The Passover liturgy includes it. Which links God’s redemption to intimacy. Love.

All right now in Christianity, I mentioned Origen and Bernard of Clairvaux in the 12th century and countless mystics who turned it into a guide for the soul’s union with Christ. John of the Cross, who I’ve mentioned at times, uh, over the years. Uh, the Dark Night of the Soul Guy, uh, the Mystic. Who was mentored by Theresa of Avila, more on her in a second.

Um, but John of the Cross of the 16th century, he wrote mystical poetry that echoes the song and his mentor, whom I just mentioned, Theresa of Avila. She is the subject of a famous and somewhat risque sculpture called The Ecstasy of St. Teresa. And you should Google that at some time. But, you know, put the kids to bed first.

But it’s, it’s quite evocative. The sculpture has Theresa, like reclined with an angel standing over her ready to thrust his sword. I’m pausing for a dramatic effect, ready to thrust his sword into her. Paging Sigmund Freud. This sculpture was inspired by one of her visions, which she wrote about, and, and it was published and widely circulated in Western Europe in the early 17th century.

The sculpture depicts one of her visionary experiences when an angel came to her and repeatedly stabbed her with a flaming gold arrow. And I’m, I’m gonna read a couple lines of what she says here. 

I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron’s point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart and to pierce my very entrails. When he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great that it made me moan. And yet so surpassing was the sweetness of the excessive pain that I could not wish to be rid of it. 

Okay, well that could be taken in more than one way. Right? And if you look at the sculpture, you can’t help but notice that the angel’s spear that he is about to thrust into her is pointing, not at her stomach, but a little bit lower. Nor can one help but notice the expression on Theresa’s face, which could easily be interpreted as an expression of sexual pleasure. All of which is to say that the intensity of the soul’s longing for God is expressed in the one human activity that leaves one very much in the moment with a singular all-consuming experience.

To put it plainly, human sexual intimacy is the closest thing humans have to describing the deeper-still intimacy between the soul and God, and I think that’s what these allegorists are trying to get across. Now in the Reformation, Protestants, well, they mostly kept the allegorical symbolic line, but sometimes acknowledged the plain sense.

Most saw the book as a love of God or Christ for the Church, and vice versa, though I’m not aware of any reformers who were the subject of a sculpture. Anyway, the modern era. Last point here, historical criticism against scholars like Marvin Pope and Michael Fox pushed for reading it as secular love poetry, not allegory. 

Feminist, and womanist scholars of the late 20th century emphasized the radical affirmation of the song of songs of women’s voices and bodies. Now for what it’s worth, I am of the opinion that the book is an edited anthology of ancient love poetry that came to be read allegorically in Judaism and Christianity, to make the book speak to the spiritual life.

But one can accept both as true. There would be a tension between saying the book is originally ancient love poetry and the book was written as an allegory. You see, if I was making a claim about its purpose for being written, it would be a little bit maybe contradictory to say, well, it’s ancient love poetry.

Oh, it’s also an allegory. That’s the intention of the author. I think rather, the book’s original meaning came to be eclipsed by an allegorical meaning. And, um, you know, others have that position as well. But I do want to say, I think this is still a topic of discussion. I don’t think this has been solved, and I’m not sure how it’s going to be solved.

It might just always be a matter of opinion and people’s theological and hermeneutical ceilings, how low they are and what they can tolerate in a book that is in the Bible. Okay. Let’s look at some key theological themes. The Song of Songs doesn’t wear its theology on its sleeve. Unlike Psalms, Isaiah, or Deuteronomy.

You don’t get, you know, thus says the Lord, commandments, or even explicit references to God, except perhaps again, 8:6, where a blazing flame could be read as the flame of Yahweh. Still, scholars and theologians have teased out some major theological themes that I think are worth noting, and the first is the goodness of human love and sexuality.

See, at the center of this is erotic love, it’s unapologetic, it’s mutual, and it’s joyful. In contrast to traditions that see sexuality as dangerous or needing strict regulation, the song affirms desire as part of creation’s goodness. The man and the woman are equals in their passion and they pursue one another, and the physical body is celebrated as beautiful and desirable.

How often do you see that in the Bible? Right? So there you have it. Um, the second theme is creation theology. See, the song is drenched in nature imagery, gardens, vineyards, mountains, rivers, spices, animals, fruits. And some scholars see this, and this is a tantalizing idea. Some scholars see this as evoking the language of the Garden of Eden.

A return to the goodness and the harmony of creation as expressed in sexual love. So sexual love here, according to this way of thinking, is not a fall from grace, but a participation in the fruitfulness of creation itself. Third is mutuality and equality in love. The female voice dominates the poem. She speaks more than half the time, and she takes initiative and desire and pursuit.

And this mutual longing subverts patriarchal control by highlighting reciprocity and delight between lovers. The relationship becomes a model for intimacy grounded in freedom and respect. I’m not gonna suggest that the writer would’ve gone on a women’s lib march in the sixties. I’m, I, I think we should be careful not to sort of impose our thoughts and categories on this writer, but, you know, all these things that I just said are true.

The women’s voice dominates. There is a mutual longing and it does subvert patriarchy where you don’t normally see this. It’s usually one way. And the establishment of a relationship for intimacy grounded in freedom and respect, you know, a model for intimacy. I think those things are true and it’s worth thinking about how this story might subvert, uh, speaking only as a Christian here, Christian predispositions towards the um, you know, the, the, the almost demonization of sex and in the Bible it’s only about being married and things like that. 

I think the Song of Songs is a challenge for that kind of reading. A fourth theological point is that love is powerful, uncontrollable, and sacred, and that’s verses 6-7 of chapter 8.

It’s often called the Theological Heart of the song. Love is strong as death. Passion fierce as the grave. Many waters cannot quench love. See, love is depicted as basic, elemental, unstoppable, something ultimate. And even without overt mention of God, love is portrayed as I would go so far as to say something transcendent and sacred.

Love is strong as death. Passion, fierce as the grave. Fifth, God’s hiddenness or maybe the sacred hiding in the secular. The absence of divine names is itself significant. The song suggests that human love can reveal something of the divine without needing to use overt religious language or symbols. Jewish and Christian interpreters, as we’ve seen already across the centuries, have read it, allegorically Israel and God or Christ in the Church, or the Soul in God, something like that.

But even taken literally the text insists that ordinary human experience, desire, intimacy, joy has some theological weight simply by the sacred status to which love is lifted. Uh, there’s one more. There are many others we could explore, but um, the last one is eschatological wholeness, and this is something anticipated by later readers.

What that means is, you know, in both Jewish and Christian traditions, the song has been read as pointing beyond itself to a vision of ultimate union with God. Again, whether Israel’s covenant with. God or the church’s union with Christ or even mystical union with a divine, the lover’s longing and fulfillment provide a metaphor for the deep human yearning for God.

Yeah. Many, many mystics and Christians today, and you know, you have the, the Christian mystics in our midst, we have people like Richard Rohr and others. They talk about union as the ultimate goal of the spiritual path and. You can read the Song of Songs as metaphorically pointing towards that. Okay, so just in short, the Song of Songs offers a theology of creation, of embodiment of love, and it resists reduction to saying things like was just sex or just allegory.

And instead it holds together the conviction that human love is part of God’s good world and that desire itself has theological significance.

All right, so we’ve been on this journey through the Song of Songs, and I want to land the plane by looking at two things. First, how this book fits or doesn’t fit with the rest of the Hebrew Bible, and second, why a book like this still matters, why it deserves a place in our thinking beyond being the most awkward book to read aloud in youth group.

So first, the Song of Songs. How is this book in conversation with other Old Testament books? Well, one of the best ways to understand a biblical book is to set it alongside its neighbors and ask how is this the same? How is it different? And the Song of Songs is fascinating because it seems to resist the main theological moves of other biblical books while still echoing them.

So Genesis mentioned this already. The song borrows Garden imagery. When the lovers describe each other among vineyards, orchard, spices, flowing water, it can evoke echoes of Eden. Phyllis Trible again, she notes that the song Reimagines The Garden of Eden as a space of equality and delight, not hierarchy or curse.

Uh, side note here, folks, uh, this is off topic, but gender hierarchy is not part of the order of creation. In Genesis 1, male and female are both made in God’s image with no hint of hierarchy. And when Eve is created from Adam’s side, it is not as a subordinate. She is a helper corresponding to the man.

And that word helper, ezer, does not denote subordination. God, after all, is also called an azer. He is Israel’s ezer, helper, and she is corresponding to Adam, meaning of the same substance, not subordinate like the animals. So hierarchy enters the world where, well, not until Genesis 3:16, as part of the consequences of Eve’s actions.

Though that’s even a debated matter energetically, so let’s not go down that rabbit hole. Also, how about wisdom literature like Proverbs and Ecclesiastes? Well, in Proverbs, you get Lady Wisdom versus Lady Folly. A loaded metaphor and a very gendered, didactic setup for the book. Lady Wisdom, good, Lady Folly, bad.

These are abstractions. These are metaphors. And in Ecclesiastes we read everything is vanity, which is like sort of a weary resignation that pops up throughout the book. The guy’s not having a good day. But you see, I think here, here’s one way of seeing the relationship between Song of Songs and Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.

I think the Song of Songs pushes back. It’s not vanity, it’s joy. It’s not women as a metaphor for temptation or wisdom. It’s women as full participants in human desire and in speech. And again, the feminist scholar, Athalya Brenner, and the womanist scholar Renita Weems, they highlight how the song’s female voice is a substantive counterpoint to the silencing or stereotyping we see elsewhere in the wisdom texts.

How about the prophets? Well, prophets like Hosea and Ezekiel often use marriage as a metaphor for God and Israel, but it’s a lopsided and sometimes violent metaphor. The song, however, takes marital imagery and flips it. It’s mutual, it’s tender, it’s playful. Michael Fishbane, a Jewish scholar, he argues that this provided later Jewish interpreters with a model of covenant as intimacy rather than domination.

And lastly, the Psalms. While the Psalms sing about longing for God, sometimes in almost physical terms, you know, my soul thirsts for you. The song sings about longing too, but it’s not explicitly theological. Later mystics like Bernard of Clairvaux said, you know, aha. Well, the longing of the beloved for the lover is really the longing of the soul for God.

So in a way, the song is made into sort of, let’s call it a secular psalm. Same intensity, same passion, but with the divine impact left. Implicit not explicit as in the Psalms. So put all this together. The song, it doesn’t behave itself in a way. It’s like that family member who shows up at Thanksgiving and doesn’t follow the script, doesn’t talk about politics or arguing.

They just moan and groan about the meal itself, leaving everybody else embarrassed. See, this is the point. The song insists on delight in the midst of a cannon that often leans heavy on struggle, lament, and moral instruction. Alright, so in closing, what do we do with this book? Why should normal people care about the Song of Songs?

And the first point, and I, I like this a lot, the first point is that it re-humanizes faith. See, a lot of us inherited a version of faith where belief and behavior were everything and human experience is often secondary or in some traditions even harmful. Don’t look at your experience, just look at God or look at the Bible.

The song reminds us that being human is not a problem to solve. Our bodies, emotions and longings are not things to apologize for. They’re part of God’s good creation. Again, Cheryl Exum and Renita Weems and others show that this isn’t just theoretical. The text actively affirms women’s voices and agency in a way that pushes back against cultural silence.

A second point for us to consider is that it gives permission to value desire. Many traditions have treated desire as dangerous, sinful, or distracting. The Song of Songs, however, celebrates it. Desire becomes a lens through which we experience connection, whether that’s romantic intimacy, deep friendship, or the longing for God and it’s mutual, playful, and respectful, reminding us that longing itself can be transcendent again, maybe even sacred.

A third point is that, yeah, it’s fine. It speaks to marriage, but also beyond marriage. The song can teach about partnership, about mutual delight, not domination, which is a good thing to keep in mind in the marriage union, but limiting it to marriage is problematic, especially when it is anything but clear that the man and woman in the book are married or even engaged.

Maybe this book speaks to the single, the divorced, the widowed, and dare I say, the queer. This book still affirms your capacity for love and longing. Desire is not limited to a marital framework. It’s part of the human soul. Fourth, it expands our view of the sacred, tying some themes here together to see, here’s the radical part.

God isn’t named yet. The book is canonical. Maybe the sacred isn’t always explicit. Maybe God shows up in the longings, in the joys and the embodied experiences of love, and maybe any other experience we have. See mystics from origin to Theresa of Avila have found God in this book, not by reading between the lines, but by letting the poetry of desire itself point them towards God’s presence.

And the last point, it balances the canon. The Bible can get heavy. Have you noticed wars, laws, genealogies, laments, violence, drownings? So see, the song offers joy, delight, and celebration. It reminds us that embodied love, play,  intimacy, longing is part of faithful living. Perhaps the song insists that celebration is holy.

So the big takeaway, the Song of Songs is telling us that love matters. Bodies matter, and joy is sacred. And that can feel uncomfortable because it blurs the lines we often draw between spiritual and physical, between sacred and secular. But maybe that’s exactly the point. Maybe faith isn’t about escaping our humanity.

Maybe it’s about embracing it fully, because that’s often where we encounter God most profoundly, whether partnered or single, young or old, the song is for all of us, your longing, your delight, your capacity for intimacy. These are not distractions from God. They might just be where God is most present for you.

And if that feels a little scandalous, remember? It’s in the Bible, so blame the editors or writers or whoever. All right. The Song of Songs is tough to wrap our theological heads around, but it is well worth the effort to try and I hope that this brief podcast has given you a sense for a book that is largely neglected in polite Christian company.

Maybe it shouldn’t be. Alright folks, thanks for listening. This is the last Pete Ruins podcast of 2025. I’m weeping with yoe. More to come however in 2026. 

Jared: Well, thanks to everyone who supports the show. If you wanna support what we do, there are three ways you can do it. One, if you just wanna give a little money, go to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/give.  

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Jared: And lastly, it goes a long way. If you just wanted to rate the podcast, leave a review, and tell others about our show. In addition, you can let us know what you thought about the episode by emailing us at info@thebiblefornormalpeople.com.  

Outro: You’ve just made it through another episode of The Bible for Normal People.

Don’t forget you can catch our other show, Faith for Normal People, in the same feed wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was brought to you by the Bible for Normal People Team.