The Song of Solomon (SoS) has had a long and varied history of interpretation: Marvin Pope, in his 1977 commentary [1], provides a bibliography of commentaries on SoS that is over 50 pages long. For centuries SoS was most often interpreted to be an “allegory” of the relationship between God and Israel or between Christ and the Church. This has often been perceived as an attempt to suppress the sexual content of the book by overly pious interpreters and
there is likely some truth to that argument. Starting in 1826 commentators tended to reject the allegorical interpretation in favor of a “dramatic narrative” interpretation [2], i.e. they tried to demonstrate that SoS was originally a play but these attempts have fallen out of favor since they require excessively elaborate assumptions about the text and there is no record of how SoS was originally presented to support the theory. T. J. Meek stated in his commentary on the Song of Songs in “The Interpreter’s Bible” (1956): “It lacks structure. There is no movement to a conclusion; matters are as far advanced at 1:4 or 2:4 as they are in 8:4”[3].This has been the generally accepted point of view since that time, i.e. that SoS is a loose collection or anthology of randomly selected love poems, wedding songs, etc. In 1973 Exum [4] attempted to show a systematic structure in SoS but was only partly successful. In 1985 Fox [5] summarized the situation as follows: “The usual argument made for the Song’s disunity comes from commentators who see no comprehensive structure and leave the burden of proof to those who assert the Song’s unity. But if the burden of proof where shifted, how could one prove disunity? . . . I do not grant the validity of the assumption that the lack of a comprehensive design proves a book to be an anthology.” But he then states “Since I do not think any such design has yet been demonstrated, I will not rely on an argument from design in asserting the book’s unity.” Even a commentator attempting to assert the unity of SoS failed to see a “comprehensive design” in the book. The key step in overturning this point of view came in 1993 when Garrett [6,7] published a chiastic pattern of words in SoS demonstrated by Robert Alden (unpublished). Garrett developed his interpretation (of the centrality of the bride’s emotional struggles upon entering into marriage) in conjunction with this structure. That pattern is further developed in the following slide. Once one accepts the chiastic structure it is natural to look for other related patterns (the subject of the remaining slides).
References:
1. M. Pope, “Song of Songs,” New York: Doubleday (1977); pp. 236-288 lists significant commentary up to 1977.
2. H. Ewald, “Das Hohelied Salamo’s”, Gottingen: R. Deuerlich (1826).
3. T.J. Meek, “Song of Songs” in The Interpreter’s Bible, Nashville: Abingdon Press (1956), vol.5, p. 92.
4. J.C. Exum, “A literary and Structural Analysis of the Song of Songs,” ZAW 85 (1973), p. 47.
5. M. Fox, “The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs,” Univ. of Wisconsin Press: Madison (1985) p. 205-6.
6. D. Garrett, “Song of Songs” in The New American Commentary, Nashville: Broadman Press (1993), p. 376.
7. D. Garrett, “Song of Songs” in The Word Biblical Commentary, Nashville: Thomas Nelson (2004).