Sex In The Bible! A Reflection On The 'Song Of Songs'

The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills.  My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Look, there he stands behind our wall, gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice.

My beloved speaks and says to me: "Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance.

Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. (Song of Solomon 2:8-13)

"The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills."

Yes, in case you didn't recognise it, it's a verse from the 'Song of Songs', and indeed you can hardly be expected to recognise it, as the 'Song of Songs' is one book of the Bible that we almost never read.

It finds it's way into our three-year cycle of Bible readings only once every three years, and it's almost as if those who designed our cycle of readings (known as the 'lectionary') tried to sneak it in on one of those low-attendance Sundays that celebrated nothing in particular, not anticipating, of course, that this particular Sunday turned out to be a rather significant time of baptismal celebration when lots of people would thus be exposed to this controversial piece of Scripture

Why is the Song of Songs so controversial?  Well, it's part of what once may have been the sealed section of the Bible, restricted to Adult-Only viewing.

Perhaps we should have actually made that clear when this passage was first read today?  Perhaps we should have introduced the reading with a warning similar to those we receive before certain TV programs: 'the following reading is classified M - for mature audiences.'

Perhaps we should apply a rating system like this to all our Bible readings - eg. 'The following passage contains strong violence and is recommended for mature audiences.' Such a warning might be an appropriate introduction to any number of Sunday morning readings.

Of course the problem with the Song of Songs is not that it contains strong violence.  It doesn't!  It contains a sex scene, or rather a number of sex scenes of sorts, even though the excerpt we had today, from chapter 2, is one of the less bawdy sections of the larger poem.

My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag.   Look, there he stands behind our wall, gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice.

My beloved speaks and says to me: "Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away;  for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.  The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come …

Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away."

Evidently the action section of this story still lies somewhat ahead of today's reading, where the man is depicted as stealthily scuttling around his lover's garden in the middle of the night, throwing rocks at her window and trying to entice her to sneak out and join him for a romp. 

Even so, you might ask, is even this anticipatory scene really an appropriate section of the Bible to be dealing with on the day of a baptism, when there are so many children about?

Of course, I believe the connection between sex and children has been well established, and, mind you, we did make sure that most of the little ones were ushered out of the building before the sermon began.

At any rate, surely the more significant question to ask about this book - the 'Song of Songs' - is not whether it is appropriate material for children to read, but rather whether the Song of Songs should really be read by any of us?

What is this book doing in the Bible at all?  It's a book about sex and romance and (let's be honest) if you were to brainstorm key words that you would use to describe the Bible, 'sexy' and 'romantic' would not be two of them!

And please don't think that I'm manufacturing an issue here where there isn't one, for in truth this book has been a source of controversy for the church throughout its history, as indeed it was a point of debate and disagreement for the Jewish fathers long before the church even came into existence!

As late as the Council of Jamnia in AD 90, the Jewish Fathers were debating the place of the Song of Songs in the Scriptures.

As to the church, Theodore of Mopsuestia was probably the most prominent Church Father to question the legitimacy of the Song of Songs, though he was opposed by the Second Council of Constantinople in 553.

And yet the opposition did not end there.  Even during the Reformation the book was a point of controversy, as Sebastian Castellio was forced to leave Geneva, unable to be reconciled to John Calvin over the issue of whether the Song should not be ripped from the pages of Scripture!

And it's never just been the subject matter - sex and romance - that so bothered our fathers and mothers in the church. And it's not even the fact that the book appears downright bawdy at points (and it does).  It's more the fact that the two lovers depicted in the Song don't appear to be married,. Indeed, the whole context of their sneaking around almost necessitates that we assume that they were not in a publicly legitimised relationship.

And the church has had trouble coming to terms with this, and with the fact that the book never mentions God at all - a dubious honour that it shares with just one other Biblical book; the book of Esther - a book that is as notorious for its apparent promotion of wanton violence as is the Song for the way in which it seems to celebrate debauchery!

My beloved speaks and says to me: "Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. 

The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.  The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. 

Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away."

More disturbing still, in my view, than those who have tried to get rid of this book from the Bible have been those who have tried to defended it, as they have almost always done so on the basis of  allegorisation.

Allegorisation is that approach to Biblical interpretation where passages are not taken literally at all, but rather treated like parables of sorts, where each element in the passage is taken as a symbol for something else.

In this approach, rather than see the Song as a celebration of human love, it is seen rather as a parable of the love between Christ and the Church.  The man in the story is said to be Christ and the woman is the church.  His kisses (1:2) are the Word of God while the girl's dark skin (1:5) is sin, her breasts (the subject of much interest in the story [eg. 7:7]) are seen as the church's nurturing doctrine, and her two lips (4:11) are the law and the gospel - the latter lip obviously being the softer and the sweeter of the two!

Most bizarre of all, in this history of strange the defense of the Song, has been the popular association (first made  by St Ambrose) of the woman with the virgin Mary!  Not only can I personally see no reason to associate the woman with Mary, but I'd suggest that the girl in the story is almost certainly no virgin! 

For these and other reasons you would be hard pressed today to find a serious scholar who takes the allegorical interpretation of the Song of Songs seriously - at least in so far as upholding that this is how the original author (or authors) of the song intended it to be read. 

No. The Song was written as a love poem, and it was most surely originally intended to be read as a love poem.  It is a celebration of human sexuality, and the sad history of debate over this book's place in the Bible, and the even sadder history of its defense by the way of allegorisation, says more about the church and our negative view of human sexuality than it does about the Bible.

For in truth, the Bible has a greater appreciation of the joys of human love than we do, and the place of this book in the canon of Scripture demonstrates that there is room in the Word of God for a celebration of human sexuality, just as the incarnation of Christ demonstrates that there is room in the person of God for all that is truly human.

Sex, love, romance, friendship, affection, warmth - these are good gifts of God to be enjoyed and celebrated in song: 

"Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.  The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come …

Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.