The Song of Songs: Riddle of Riddles 9780567676139, 9780567676153, 9780567676146

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LIBRARY OF HEBREW BIBLE/ OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES

673 Formerly Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series

Editors Claudia V. Camp, Texas Christian University Andrew Mein, Westcott House, Cambridge

Founding Editors David J. A. Clines, Philip R. Davies and David M. Gunn

Editorial Board Alan Cooper, Susan Gillingham, John Goldingay, Norman K. Gottwald, James E. Harding, John Jarick, Carol Meyers, Daniel L. Smith-Christopher, Francesca Stavrakopoulou, James W. Watts

THE SONG OF SONGS

Riddle of Riddles

Yair Zakovitch translated and edited by Valerie Carr Zakovitch

T&T CLARK Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, T&T CLARK and the T&T Clark logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain in 2019 Paperback edition first published 2020 Copyright © Yair Zakovitch, 2019 Yair Zakovitch has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Zakovitch, Yair, author. | Zakovitch, Valerie, editor. Title: The Song of songs: riddle of riddles / Yair Zakovitch; trans. and edited by Valerie Carr Zakovitch. Description: Great Britain; New York: T&T Clark and the T&T Clark logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2018. | Series: Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament studies; volume 673 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018009334 (print) | LCCN 2018025546 (ebook) | ISBN 9780567676146 (ePDF) | ISBN 9780567676139 (alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Bible. Song of Solomon–Criticism, interpretation, etc. Classification: LCC BS1485.52 (ebook) | LCC BS1485.52 .Z35 2018 (print) | DDC 223/.906–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018009334 ISBN: HB: 978-0-5676-7613-9 PB: 978-0-5676-9396-9 ePDF: 978-0-5676-7614-6 Series: Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies, ISSN 2513-8758, volume 673 Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

To Valerie ‫לבבתני אחתי כלה‬ my heart, my sister bride (Song 4:9)

CONTENTS Translator’s Note

ix

INTRODUCTION

1

Chapter 1 ON LOVE AND BEAUTY—THE COMPLEX RELATIONS BETWEEN THE SONG OF SONGS AND BIBLICAL NARRATIVE

5

Chapter 2 “KEEP YOUR THOUSAND, SOLOMON!” (SONG 8:12): A HISTORY OF THE TRADITION OF SOLOMON’S THOUSAND WIVES

23

Chapter 3 SONG OF SONGS—RIDDLE OF RIDDLES

33

Chapter 4 THRICE ASKED “WHO IS SHE” IN SONG OF SONGS

43

Chapter 5 A POETIC PORTRAIT: A STUDY OF SONG OF SONGS 6:4-10

53

Chapter 6 REAL OR IMAGINED? A WOMAN’S DREAM IN SONG OF SONGS 5:2–6:3

73

Chapter 7 “A WOMAN OF VALOR (‫ ”)אשת חיל‬PROV. 31:10-31—A CONSERVATIVE’S RESPONSE TO SONG OF SONGS

89

Chapter 8 WHEN DID THE ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE SONG BEGIN? 101 List of Abbreviations Index of Subjects Index of References

113 114 119

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE In translating this volume I have consulted regularly with a number of excellent translations made by some of our greatest scholars and translators: Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures: The New JPS Translation According to the Traditional Hebrew Text (1985), A. and C. Bloch’s, The Song of Songs. A New Translation with an Introduction and Commentary (Berkeley 1998), as well as R. Alter’s new translations of the different books (The Five Books of Moses [2004], The Wisdom Books. Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes [2010], Ancient Israel. The Former Prophets: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings [2013], and Strong as Death Is Love. The Song of Songs, Ruth, Esther, Jonah, Daniel [2015]) which, I have been told, will soon be published all together in two complete volumes. The nature of this book, however, in which meanings and connections between verses are detected and investigated, required that I not rely on any single translation and, indeed, that I change or even retranslate many details in order to enable English readers to better understand the interpretative possibilities discussed.

INTRODUCTION

The riddle of the Song of Songs, an anthology of secular love poetry in the midst of the sacred and religious books of the Hebrew Bible, the “manifesto of the monotheistic revolution,” intrigued me from my first forays into biblical research. Twenty-five years ago, I published a complete commentary on the Song of Songs, in Hebrew. A few years later, an expanded edition, this time in German, was published as part of Herders Theologischer Kommentar zu Alten Testament. In the years that followed, my interests brought me to study a wide variety of topics, including the detection of prebiblical traditions using what I have come to call “literary archaeology” as well as inner-biblical exegesis and its relationship with postbiblical interpretation (both Jewish and Christian), and to write commentaries on Jonah, Lamentations, and, of late, the Book of Psalms. Throughout, the puzzle of the Song continued to dog me and I returned to it again and again, work that has now produced the eight chapters in this volume. Earlier versions of five of the chapters have been published already as articles, three in Hebrew and two in English; three others are finding their readership here, for the first time. Each of the chapters, except one, were translated from the Hebrew by my wife, Valerie Carr Zakovitch, who also worked as the editor of this volume, trying to omit duplications and to make other adjustments in order to create—out of these many parts—a coherent whole. Chapter 1, “On Love and Beauty—The Complex Relations between the Song of Songs and Biblical Narrative,” describes the gaping chasm that lies between biblical narrative and the poetry of the Song of Songs, on the one hand, and the tangled web of connections between the two genres, on the other. Recognizing how the stories in the Bible—from Genesis to Esther—reflect familiarity with love poetry helps us to better appreciate the world in which these stories were created and to realize that both the Bible’s didactic, religious stories and its playful and earthbound poems were indeed the products of one society and its different sectors, female and male, liberal and conservative, powerful and powerless. The connection between love poetry and biblical narrative lies at the heart also of Chapter 2, “Keep Your Thousand, Solomon!” (Song 8:12): A History of the Tradition of Solomon’s Thousand Wives.” The tradition of Solomon as husband to a thousand wives appears twice in the Bible: at the end of Solomon’s life story in 1 Kings 11 and in the Vineyard Poem in Song 8:11-12. In this chapter, I elucidate the tradition’s development and trace its influence on other texts in the sacred corpus, in Kings, Isaiah, and Ecclesiastes and the role it plays in the Deuteronomistic historiography.

2

The Song of Songs

Romantic and sensual love is truly a puzzle, as we learn in Proverbs, another book that came to be attributed to Solomon: “Three things are beyond me; four I cannot fathom: The way an eagle makes its way over the sky; a snake’s way over a rock; a ship’s path through the high seas; and the way of a man with a woman” (Prov. 30:18-19). It is no wonder, then, that many of the poems in the Song are, themselves, riddles. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 present studies of specific riddle-poems and their solutions, with Chapter 3, “Song of Songs–Riddle of Riddles,” focusing on riddle-poems that lead their readers to more than one solution: when reading these poems for the first time, we might think their solutions to be patently clear, but on second reading, as we will see, a different solution—more daring than the first and sometimes its mirror opposite—reveals itself. Three fragments are included in the collection of poems in the Song of Songs, three questions that begin with the words, “Who is she” (Song 3:6; 6:10; 8:5a). In Chapter 4, “Thrice Asked ‘Who Is she’ in Song of Songs,” I will closely examine and compare these fragments and propose their Sitz im Leben. I will then discuss echoes of the popular genre in other biblical texts, including the appearance of the masculine version, “Who is he.” The second appearance of “Who is she,” in Song 6:10, receives its answer in the verses that precede it, a result of the answer being added at a secondary stage. How question and answer together produce a portrait of a woman who gazes out a window is the topic of Chapter 5, “A Poetic Portrait: A Study of Song of Songs 6:4-10.” A close reading of this descriptive poem, a wasf, will show also how it was influenced by conventions coming from both the literary and visual arts— visual depictions of the woman in the window and of the woman whose face is half covered. While the book’s fifth chapter deals with the woman’s outer appearance, Chapter 6, “Real or Imagined? A Woman’s Dream in Song of Songs 5:2–6:3,” deals with her inner world. In this chapter, I ask and answer a number of questions about the poem, including the extent of the dream within the poem, the reason for the many repetitions of words and expressions in it, the poem’s relationship with the book’s other dream poem in Song 3:1-5, and even the reason for depicting the woman’s lover as a statue. The woman in the dream leaves her home at night and, indeed, the Song of Songs distinguishes itself from biblical literature in that it grants women the freedom and ability to break with the conservative norms of a society that gave clear dominance to men. Not everyone approved of the liberal woman in the Song or of the book’s admiring attitude toward feminine beauty and sensual love. In Chapter 7, “‘A Woman of Valor (‫ ’) א ש ת ח י ל‬Prov. 31:10-31—A Conservative’s Response to Song of Songs,” I identify a voice of opposition to the Song that declares how “grace is deceptive, beauty illusory” and praises the industrious woman. The Song of Songs, which never mentions God, was the focus of heated contention among the Sages who argued whether to include it in the sacred Scriptures of Israel. A solution was found in the allegorical interpretation of the collection that understood the poems as depicting the love that exists between God and His people. “When Did the Allegorical Interpretation of the Song

Introduction

3

Begin?” is the question I pose in Chapter 8, the final chapter of this book. In it, I query whether the allegorical interpretation of the Song was the product of a shrewd stratagem to include a popular book within the canon, or whether the Song’s allegorization grew from a more ancient mode of interpretation, traces of which can be found in the Bible’s prophetic literature. The eight chapters in this book hardly bring the discussion of the Song of Songs to an end. Multitudes of questions remain unanswered and even unasked: these await the work of other scholars who will, I hope, raise their own questions and will each offer her and his own fascinating and compelling answers. * I would like to offer my deepest gratitude to my wife, Valerie, whose contribution to this book has been substantial. I am thankful to her both for giving its chapters new life in a new language and, especially, for her labors in ploughing its pages in order to plant these eight articles as chapters in one volume. Similarly, I thank Sarah Blake and the team at Bloomsbury T&T Clark for their help in getting this book published.

Chapter 1 ON LOVE AND BEAUTY—THE COMPLEX RELATIONS BETWEEN THE SONG OF SONGS AND BIBLICAL NARRATIVE

A chasm deep and wide gapes between the poems of the Song of Songs and the other books in the Hebrew Bible. The remarkable contrast between the two sides is not in the Song’s omission of any reference to God but in its relation to beauty, love, and women, in its essentially erotic content. In the first part of this chapter, I will note the most significant markers that distinguish the Song from biblical narrative and that create the impression that it is a foreign element grafted onto a body of religious literature. In the second, I will show how, despite its apparent foreignness, a network of allusions and shared imagery bind the Song to the biblical narrative and show us that the poems and stories are in constant dialogue with one another. The first clear difference has to do with descriptions: the biblical narrator steers clear of descriptions, whether of human bodies or landscapes.1 It is the genre that dictates this: the dramatic story2 presents its characters as they act and speak, the plot playing out like on a stage with no time or room for descriptions that would interrupt its development. In the Song of Songs, on the other hand, we find detailed descriptions of both the woman’s body (4:1-7; 6:4-10; 7:1-7) and that of the man (5:10-16). Moreover, beauty, without being particularized, is mentioned in the biblical narrative only at the moment it becomes instrumental, where it not only serves as a catalyst for the plot’s development but—importantly—brings unwanted complications.3 Sarah’s beauty, for example, is not mentioned when the reader first meets her, but only when it becomes important, when her beauty places her and Abraham in danger (Gen. 12:11, 14). We also hear of the beauty of the married women that attract David’s attention. Abigail, we are told, “had a good mind and was beautiful” (1 Sam. 25:3), and Bathsheba’s beauty is mentioned immediately

1. On the absence of physical descriptions in the Hebrew Bible in contrast to the Homeric epic, see E. Auerbach, Mimesis, The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 3–23. 2. See Y. Zakovitch, “Man sees only what is visible but the Lord sees into the Heart”: Disguise and Retribution in Biblical Narrative (Jerusalem: Academon, 1998), 93 [Hebrew]. 3. See S. Bar Efrat, Narrative Art in the Bible (London: T&T Clark, 2008), 48–64.

6

The Song of Songs

since it is her appearance that causes the king to sin and thereby bring ruin to his house (2 Sam. 11:2). The king is punished through his sons, the first blow coming when Amnon, David’s firstborn, begins to desire his own sister, who is, of course, beautiful (2 Sam. 13:1). We are repeatedly made aware that beauty—female and male—invites unwanted results: Joseph’s beauty, too, brings trouble, awakening the unwanted attentions of Potiphar’s wife (Gen. 39:6-7). In general, the biblical storyteller seems usually to agree with the poem “Woman of Valor” that closes the Book of Proverbs, “Grace is deceptive, beauty illusory” (31:30; for a discussion of that poem and its relation to the Song, see Chapter 7, “Woman of Valor”). In contrast, Song of Songs praises both feminine and masculine beauty. So, for instance, says the lover to his beloved: “And you, my beloved, how beautiful you are! Your eyes are doves” (1:15), and she answers him, “You are beautiful, my love, and gentle” (v. 16). The genres differ also with regard to revelations of love. While in the Song of Songs, the root ‫ אה״ב‬describes buoyant and delightful relations (1:3, 4, 7; 2:4, 7; 3:1, 2, 3, 4, 5 10; 5:8; 7:7; 8:4, 6, 7), when it is used in biblical narrative to describe a man’s relation with a woman, happiness is surely absent. The root sometimes appears in contexts involving forbidden relations such as the love of foreign women—for example, Samson’s love for Philistine women who try to reveal his secrets and betray him to his enemies (Judg. 14:16; 16:4, 15) and Solomon’s love for foreign women, which brings destruction to his kingdom (1 Kgs 11:1-2). Two stories of rape, the rape of Dina and the rape of Tamar, also begin with “love” (see Gen. 34:3 and 2 Sam. 13:1, 4, 15). Even when a context is ostensibly sanguine and a husband indeed loves his wife, his love comes at the expense of another woman who is not loved: Jacob’s love for Rachel (Gen. 29:18, 30), Elkanah’s love for Hannah (1 Sam. 1:5), and compare also Est. 2:17 and 2 Chr. 11:21. The two sides’ approaches to erotica also demarcates the Song from biblical narrative. The song abounds with sensual images and metaphors and, though presented delicately and never explicitly, its poems usually lead to the lovers delighting in their physical union. In biblical narrative, on the other hand, sex is often indecent, loveless, and violent. It is often used by the narrator in order to bring a man down: Reuben loses his firstborn status for having relations with Bilhah (Gen. 35:2122) and Amnon loses his—as well as his life—after he rapes Tamar (2 Samuel 13). The leading characters in biblical narrative are men: patriarchs, judges, priests, kings, and prophets. This rule was acknowledged by Ben Sira in his “In Praise of the Fathers,” in which he reviews “our gracious ancestors in their generations” (44:1), all of whom are men. The Bible’s women are kept safely within their husbands’ shadows. Indeed, women are often not even named, as is the case for the wives of Noah and Lot, Jacob’s sons’ wives (apart from Judah’s wife Batshua), or Jeptah’s wife, the mother of his daughter. Exceptions inevitably exist and female protagonists can be found: Rahab (Joshua 2), Deborah and Yael (Judg. 4–5), Delilah (ibid.: 16), the wise woman of Tekoa (2 Samuel 14), the wise woman from Abel of Beth-Maacah (2 Samuel 20), Solomon’s mother Bathsheba (1 Kings 1), Jezebel (1 Kings 21), the wealthy woman of Shunem (2 Kings 4), Naomi, Ruth, Queen Esther, and others. However, in most of these stories, either the woman

1. On Love and Beauty

7

is presented unfavorably or she is brought precisely in order to help the narrator portray a man in unfavorable light. The Bible almost never mentions the birth of its female characters. Can we even imagine the story of a barren woman who is told that she will soon give birth to a girl? If a girl’s birth is mentioned, it is of only minor importance and is mentioned only out of necessity. Thus, in the account of the births of Jacob’s children, etymologies are given for the name of every son, but after Leah gives birth to the last of her sons the story notes only dryly that “afterwards she bore a daughter and she called her name Dinah” (Gen. 30:21), without bothering to explain the name’s meaning. Dinah’s birth, we can be certain, is only mentioned because of the subsequent story of her rape (Genesis 34). Concerning women’s deaths the Bible is equally reticent, their deaths and burials being of no interest except as a means toward another goal. Thus, for example, Judah’s wife Batshua dies (Gen. 38:12) in order to prepare the way for her husband to have relations with Tamar, who has disguised herself as a prostitute, almost exactly like the convenient clearing away of Lot’s wife from another story (Gen. 19:26) in order to set up Lot’s daughters’ sexual need for their father. Only rarely do we have a detailed portrayal of a woman’s death such as what is found with the death of Jezebel (2 Kgs 9:30-37). Although the writer of the Book of Kings was hardly fond of Jezebel, he describes her as a queen in every respect, a woman who knows also to die as one. Because of women’s secondary status, even books that are called after their eponymous female protagonists begin and end with men: the Book of Ruth opens with Elimelech and closes with David; Esther begins with King Ahasuerus and ends with Mordecai. The unequal status between men and women is established—and explained—at the very beginning. In the first story of the Creation, man and woman are equal (Gen. 1:26-28). But in the second story, in Genesis 2, the woman is created only after all other living creatures have been found inadequate to serve the man as a “fitting helper alongside him” (Gen. 2:18-19). The female is thus created in order to fill a deficiency for the male, from whom she is created. And just as God presents all creatures to the first man to name, allowing him to thereby enact his mastery over them (v. 19), so too does He bring also the woman to be named (vv. 22–23). And though a verse then explains how man’s rule over women is not absolute, “Therefore does a man leave his father and his mother and cling to his wife” (v. 24), the balance shifts again in the immediate continuation of the story when the woman tempts her husband to eat from the forbidden fruit and, as part of her punishment, he is given final dominion over her: “And for your man shall be your longing, and he shall rule over you” (3:16). This superior position of the man disappears in the Song. Society’s norms have not disappeared, of course, so the beloved cannot do all she desires (e.g. 8:1-2), and her freedom of movement is limited both during the day (1:7-8) as well as the night (3:1-5; 5:6-7), but she is not discouraged. Her brothers may regulate her behavior and try to control her, but she rebels against these constraints and against her brothers and, as we will soon see, finds her own way (see 1:5-6; 8:8-10).

8

The Song of Songs

The equality between the sexes in Song of Songs raises the possibility that many of the poems in its collection were created by women,4 a supposition supported by a number of considerations. Women’s poetry is not unknown to the Bible, which attributes several poems to women including victory songs (see Exod. 15:20; Judg. 5; 11:34; 1 Sam. 18:6-7), songs of lament (Jer. 9:16-19; 2 Chr. 35:25), and the song of the harlot (Isa. 23:15-16).5 Statistics reveal that the woman’s part in the Song is greater than the man’s: out of its 117 verses, 61.5 are spoken by her and only thirtythree by the male. (This imbalance holds also when one counts words instead of verses.) Moreover, in the Song, the young woman’s world is fuller than the man’s— while he speaks only to her, she speaks to him but also to her brothers and to the daughters of Jerusalem. She is also more daring than he, usually initiating their intimacy (1:9-14, 15-17; 2:1-3; 4:12–5:1). The woman’s boldness is noticeable not only in the lovers’ dialogues but also in her monologues (1:2-4; 2:15, 16-17; 3:15; 7:11-14; 8:1-4; 8:5b; 8:6a). In only two of the dialogues is the man given the last word (1:7-8; 4:12–5:1) while the rest of their interactions conclude with hers (1:9-14, 15-17; 2:1-3; 7:8-10; 8:13-14), and even in her exchange with her brothers is this the case (8:8-10). We sometimes observe her superior wit (8:13-14) and see her mocking her brothers when they try to ridicule her (8:8-10). Finally, the Song of Songs includes a number of dreams, night dreams (3:1-5; 5:2–6:3) and daytime reveries (1:2-4; 2:4-7; 2:8-13; 6:11-12; 8:1-4.), all of them the musings of the woman. * Notwithstanding this deep gap that separates between biblical narrative and the Song of Songs, however, numerous details on both sides create a web of connections that hold the Song and the biblical narrative together, and it is to these that we now turn. A first group of connections are cases where the Song’s poets seem to have culled the Bible’s stories for details, which they then embedded them into their poems. We see this, for example, in Song 7:11-14, where the young woman invites her beloved to go with her to the field, and which opens with the words, “I am my lover’s, he longs for me, only me” (v. 11). This, of course, is a response to Eve’s curse in Gen. 3:16: “And for your man shall be your longing, and he shall rule over you.” Our young woman is no longer dominated by a man’s wishes. Instead, a balance seems to exist between the lovers: she is devoted to him, “I am my lover’s,” while he longs for her. In the poem’s continuation, the young woman turns to the man and even suggests that they go together to the field, where she willingly gives him her love.

4. See P. Trible, “Love’s Lyrics Redeemed,” in God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978), 144–65. 5. On genres of female poetry in the Bible, see S. D. Goitein, The Art of Narrative in the Bible (Iyunim 23; Jerusalem: The Jewish Agency, 1956), 106–10 [Hebrew].

1. On Love and Beauty

9

A more complicated relationship exists between the Garden Song (4:12–5:1) and the story of the Garden of Eden in Genesis. The Garden Song is, in fact, a mirror image of that story, something that was sensed already by the Rabbis. In rabbinic literature, we find the following tradition about the second-century sage Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, who is known by the acronym Rashbi: And Rashbi said, Every time that it is said [in the Bible] ‫“( ויהי‬And it was”), it refers to something that took place, stopped for an extended period, and (then) returned to be as it had been. As it is written, “I have come to my garden, etc.” (Song 5:1). When God created the world, He wished to have a dwelling in the Lower Realm like He has in the Upper Realm, so He called out to Adam and commanded and said to him, “From every tree of the garden you may eat. But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you may not eat” (Gen. 2:16-17), but he transgressed His commandment. So the Holy One, blessed be He, said to him: “As I have a dwelling in the Upper Realm, so I wanted a dwelling in the Lower Realm. One thing I commanded of you, yet you did not keep it.” Immediately, the Holy One, blessed be He, removed his presence to heaven. How do we know this? “They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the evening breeze” (Gen. 3:8). (Tanḥuma Buber, Naso, 19:1)6

Let us look at what is similar between the poem and the story in Genesis:

a. Both texts are set in a garden in which we find a woman and a man. b. Both gardens contain water: “A river runs out of Eden to water the garden and from there splits off into four streams” (Gen. 2:10); “A locked garden . . . a locked well, a sealed spring. . . . A garden spring, a well of living waters that stream from Lebanon” (Song 4:12, 15). c. In the Song’s garden are spices, including “aloes” (v. 14), a detail that reminds us of Balaam’s blessing, “Like palm groves they stretch out, like gardens by a river, Like aloes the Lord has planted . . .” (Num. 24:6), and the medieval commentator Rashi notes, “the Lord has planted—in the Garden of Eden.” Spice plants growing in the primeval garden are mentioned in a number of texts, including Jubilees: “And on the day that Adam went out of the garden he offered frankincense, galbanum, and stacte, and spices as a food-offering of soothing odor; and so he did every day in the morning, at sunrise, from the day he covered his shame” (Jub. 3:27).7 In this regard, the poet of the Song does not refer only to the Garden of Eden tradition as it was preserved in the first chapters of Genesis, but to other versions—written or oral—of the tradition.

6. For more on the connection between the Garden Song and the Garden of Eden, see the Targum of the Song of Songs to 4:12-13, and Song of Songs Rabbah to chapter 5:1. 7. For the spice plants in the garden, see also in The Life of Adam and Eve (known in Greek as The Apocalypse of Moses), 29:2-6; see R. H. Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913), 148.

10

The Song of Songs

d. A breeze blows through the garden: “And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking about in the garden in the evening breeze” (3:8); in the Song of Songs the young woman calls out to the winds: “Awake, north wind! O south wind, come, breathe upon my garden, let its spices stream out” (4:16). e. Eve and Adam eat from the fruit of the Garden of Eden, including from the forbidden tree, the Tree of Knowledge: “And the woman saw that the tree was good for eating and that it was lust to the eyes and the tree was lovely to look at, and she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave to her man, and he ate” (3:6). Also in the Song the woman is the one who invites her lover to eat from the fruit: “Let my lover come into his garden and taste its delicious fruit” (4:16). Eating the tree’s fruit in the Garden of Eden leads to the sexual act, while in the Song the act of eating is a metaphor for lovemaking. Against the backdrop of these parallels, let us now look at what most differs between the two texts:

1. In the story of the Garden of Eden, the man and woman are found inside the garden and it is only at the story’s end that, having been expelled, the garden is locked behind them. The Garden Song, on the other hand, opens with the garden locked and the woman within, and ends with the man being invited inwards to the woman (who is the garden, as we hear at the beginning, ‫)גן נעול אחותי כלה‬: she says, “Let my beloved come to his garden” (4:16), to which he responds, “I have come to my garden” (5:1). 2. In Genesis, it is the eating of the fruit that causes expulsion, while in the Song eating is the purpose of the man’s return to the garden. 3. In the story, God is present inside the garden and God’s injunction is directed at both man and woman. In the poem, God is not mentioned and there are no prohibitions; barriers have been dropped, the garden has opened, the fountain is no longer sealed, and the woman and the man are able to give themselves entirely to their love. 4. The mood in the Garden of Eden story, particularly toward its end, is stern and cheerless. The mood in the Song cannot be more different; at its end, there is even a buoyant joyfulness as we suddenly realize we are at a wedding feast, and the man-groom turns to his guests with the cry: “Eat, lovers, and drink: Drink deep of love!” (5:1). The parallels with the Garden of Eden story—and the upending of it—make clear that the Song has used the narrative in order to invert it and to allow love to grow, uninhibited by feelings of guilt or other worries. Smiles and goodwill have replaced the divine prohibition.8

8. F. Landy, Paradoxes of Paradise: Identity and Difference in the Song of Songs (Sheffield: Almond Press, 1983), 183–89.

1. On Love and Beauty

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From Genesis we turn to the use made by the Song of Songs of King Solomon’s name. The entire compilation of poems in the Song gets attributed to Solomon in the first verse (1:1), similar to two other biblical books that also came to be attributed to him, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, along with Psalms 72 and 127 in the Book of Psalms and a number of the extra-canonical books (The Wisdom of Solomon, The Psalms of Solomon). Several considerations must have influenced the Song’s attribution. First, Solomon was considered a poet, “and his poems were five and a thousand” (1 Kgs 5:12). Tradition also credits Solomon with a thousand wives (1 Kgs 11:3) so that he was seen as a sort of expert on love and women. Many of the items associated with Solomon’s great wealth—gold and silver (see 1 Kings 9–10), ivory (10:18, 22), precious stones (10:2, 10-11), perfumes (10:2, 10), cedars and cypresses (5:22-24; 7:2-3; 9:11; 10:27)—play important roles also in the Song of Songs: gold and silver (Song 1:11; 3:10; 5:14-15; 8:9), ivory (5:14; 7:5), precious stones (5:14), perfumes (1:3, 12-14; 3:6; 4:13-14 5:1, 5, 13; 6:2; 8:14), cedars and cypresses (1:17; 3:9; 5:15; 8:9). More than anything else, however, the explicit references to Solomon in the Song’s poems were probably the most important factor in the book’s attribution, though, ironically, a close reading of these references shows that he was not, in fact, the book’s composer. The sumptuous magnificence of Solomon’s palace—first alluded to in Song 1:5 when the young woman compares her beauty to “the tents of Solomon”9—is a key element in the poem that begins with the words “Here is Solomon’s bed” (3:7-11). At first, these five verses seem to be a wedding poem that mentions the king’s name in the first lines of each of its three stanzas (3:7, 9, 11), but it soon reveals itself to be a poem of derision that mocks the king and the type of love he represents. In the poem’s first stanza, we are still outside the king’s bedroom as we see the guards that are positioned there, “Encircled by sixty warriors of the warriors of Israel, all of them trained in warfare, skilled in battle, each with sword on thigh because of terror by night” (vv. 7–8). Unlike his father, David, who was a warrior, Solomon never fought in any battle but was a peacemaker, as we find in his name derivation in 1 Chr. 22:9: “Solomon will be his name and I shall confer peace [‫]שלום‬ and quiet on Israel in his time.” The poem looks on Solomon’s lack of military experience with irony: Solomon never fought because he was a coward. David, we know, had thirty chiefs (see, e.g., 2 Sam. 23:13),10 but whereas they were busy fighting Philistines, his son’s sixty fighters, the heroes of Israel, are kept on guard duty. Notice, too, how, in the wedding poem in Psalm 45, the groom is the one who

9. Some have proposed that “tents of Solomon,” a parallel to “tents of Keder,” does not refer to King Solomon but to salmah, a nomadic tribe known from Assyrian, SouthArabian, and Nabatean inscriptions, from the Talmuds (BT Baba Bathra 56a; JT Shevi’it 6, 5 [36b], and from the Aramaic Targums (Targum Onqelos to Gen. 15:19; Num. 24:21; Targum Jonathan to Judg. 4:17; and more); see H. Winckler, Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament (Berlin: Reuther & Reichard, 1903), 152. 10. For a unit of thirty men, see also the story of Samson’s thirty companions (Judg. 14:11), below example 11.

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The Song of Songs

fastens his sword to his thigh, “Gird your sword upon your thigh, O hero” (v. 4), while in our poem it is the guards who wear the swords; the metaphorical meaning of a sword fixed and ready on a hero’s thigh—a groom’s thigh—is, of course, not lost.11 A bedroom surrounded by sixty guards —each with his “sword” ready for action—would hardly be conducive to any intimacy or lovemaking within. The poem’s second stanza describes the royal bed in a way that reminds us of the king’s elaborate and magnificent throne, “King Solomon made him a palanquin [bed] of wood from Lebanon. He made its posts of silver, its back of gold, its seat of purple wool . . .” (Song 3:9, cf. 1 Kgs 10:18-20). This stanza’s closing words, “Within, it was paved with love of the daughters of Jerusalem,” shows how, even within the bedchamber, chances for intimacy are scarce: its floor is covered with the maidens of Jerusalem who all love the king and who, we know, are many (1 Kgs 11:1ff.). The “daughters of Jerusalem” connect the second and third stanzas, where we find “O daughters of Zion, go forth and gaze upon King Solomon in the crown with which his mother crowned him on his wedding day, on the day of his heart’s rejoicing” (v. 11). Though it speaks of the crown worn by the groom (on the custom of grooms wearing crowns, see Mishnah Sota 9:14), this verse alludes to the story that it was Solomon’s mother, with her keen talents of persuasion, that secured her son’s kingship and how he, the passive son, did nothing to achieve it (1 Kings 1). Preceding this derisive poem, we find a poetic fragment: “Who is she that rises from the desert like columns of smoke, in clouds of myrrh and frankincense, of all the powders of the merchant?” (3:6). This fragment interrupts the redactional juxtaposition between the poem about the young woman who dreams in her bed about her lover and then leaves her bed to seek him out, in 3:1-5, and the poem in 3:7-11, about Solomon’s bed, in which Solomon is depicted as fearful and passive. One can imagine how the initial juxtaposition of these two poems further highlighted the king’s humiliation. The person who inserted the fragment between the two poems did so because he interpreted it also as speaking about King Solomon: as speaking about the visit of the Queen of Sheba to the king, a visit that was not limited to riddles and extravagant presents as described in 1 Kings 10, but included also a sexual relationship. (For a full discussion of this fragment, see Chapter 4, “Thrice Asked.”) The final reference to Solomon in the Song is in the poem that begins with the words “Solomon had a vineyard in Baal-hamon” (8:11-12), in which the lover mocks the king who has a thousand wives. The speaker contrasts between his relations to his own vineyard—relations that are emotional and profound and that cannot be valued with money—to the king’s attitude toward his own vineyard, which is measured only by its value in silver. (On this poem, see further in Chapter 2, “Keep Your Thousand.”)

11. On “thigh” being a euphemism for the male sexual organ, see, for example, Gen. 24:2; Exod. 1:5; Judg. 8:30; and for the woman’s genetalia, see Num. 5:22.

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So far, we have seen examples of how poems in the Song of Songs allude to biblical narratives. The majority of connections between the Song and the rest of the Bible, however, should be explained instead by the influence of love poems, generally, on the Bible’s storytellers—poems like what we find in the Song of Songs though not necessarily the specific poems in that collection. Another possibility that cannot be excluded is that a common source may have inspired both the Song’s poets and the biblical writers. I will now bring a number of biblical stories in which a connection to love poetry can be detected. When the evidence indicates a direct relationship with the Bible’s love poems as they now stand, I indicate it. Examples are presented in the order they appear in the biblical corpus, from Genesis to the Book of Esther.

1. When Abram tells Sarai to “Please say that you are my sister” (Gen. 12:13) in order to save himself from the Egyptians, he intends, of course, to deceive them so that they will believe that his relation to her is not that of man and wife but of brother and sister. But the word “sister” has an additional meaning, which we find in the Song, where it refers to the man’s lover and the object of all his erotic desires, “You have captured my heart, my sister, my bride. . . . How sweet is your love, my sister, my bride” (Song 4:9-10) and “A garden locked is my sister, my bride” (v. 12),12 The epithet “sister” for a beloved woman was widespread in ancient Egyptian love poetry,13 leading us to wonder whether the story in Genesis was not premised on the knowledge that the Egyptians, specifically, could be fooled by the ambiguity of the term. 2. In Genesis 24 we find two elements that have been influenced by love poetry. Rebekah modestly veils her face when she first meets her future husband, Isaac, “And she said to the servant, ‘Who is that man walking in the field toward us?’ And the servant said, ‘That is my master.’ So she took her veil [‫ ]צעיף‬and covered herself ” (Gen. 24:65). This description of a woman’s face half-covered by a veil hearkens back to love poetry: in the Song we see how the veiled face of the woman excites her young lover, “Your brow behind your veil [‫ ]צמתך‬like a pomegranate split open” (Song 4:3 = 6:7).14 This story of Rebekah’s arrival in Canaan ends with her being brought to the tent of Isaac’s (deceased) mother, Sarah: “Isaac then brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he took Rebekah as his wife . . .” (v. 67). The motif of bringing the beloved to the mother’s chambers is again known to us from the Song of Songs where, however, it is the woman who is dominant, and she is the one who leads her beloved to the house of her mother: “. . . I held him fast, I would not let him go till I brought him to my mother’s house, to the chamber of her who conceived me” (Song 3:4). In another

12. N. Sarna, Genesis. The JPS Torah Commentary (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 95. 13. See M. V. Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1985), 12, 13, 136, 171. 14. On ‫ צמה‬as “veil,” see BDB, 855.

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The Song of Songs

place in Song, the young lover turns to her beloved and tells him: “I would find you in the street, would kiss you, and no one would despise me. I would lead you, I would bring you to the house of my mother, she who has taught me” (8:1-2).15 3. The next example deals with a literary type common in biblical narrative: a woman sets out, meets the man destined for her (or his messenger), offers him drink and brings him to her home (Gen. 24; 29:1-13; Exod. 2:15-21).16 This literary type appears in the Song of Songs in 8:1-4 where, we note, the maiden wishes to treat her lover as though he were her brother (another example of a previously discussed phenomenon of the lover being called a sibling). The account of the meeting of Jacob and Rachel at the well in Gen. 29:113 is the story that most resembles the poem. All the elements of the love poem are present in the narrative, though they now assume a very different form. The story also shares the poem’s wordplay between the roots ‫שק״ה‬ (to drink) and ‫( נש״ק‬to kiss; Gen. 29:10-11; Song 8:1-2)—a wordplay that is unique in the entire Bible to these two texts.17 The erotic edge, however, is absent from the narrative version: Jacob gives water to the sheep and Rachel gives Jacob nothing to drink. Jacob is not Rachel’s brother, yet he is like a brother to her, “And Jacob told Rachel that he was her father’s brother” (v. 12). Being a close relative enables him to kiss her in public, at the well. Verbs that occur in the poem, “I will kiss you” (‫ ;אשקך‬v. 1) and “embrace me” (‫ ;תחבקני‬v. 3), lose their erotic connotations in Genesis where it is Laban, Rachel’s father, who kisses and embraces Jacob (v. 13). The poem that precedes 8:1-4, in 7:11-14, ends with, “The mandrakes (‫ )הדודאים‬give a smell . . . .” There are no other references to this plant in the Bible except in the story of the birth of Issachar, Jacob’s son (Gen. 30:14-18). It seems that the storyteller in Genesis was aware of these two poems in the Song of Songs in their present order.18 As in the poem that opens Song 8,

15. The word ‫ תלמדני‬is difficult, whether it is understood in the second person, “you [masc. sing.] will teach me,” as the words of the young woman to her beloved (so the Vulgate and the Aramaic Targum), or whether we read it as a third person, “she who has taught me,” the words of the woman about her mother (so in the Septuagint and the Peshitta). And perhaps it should be construed as ‫תלדני‬, “the one who gave birth to me”: since the young woman speaks about her beloved as one who suckles, so she employs the same lexical field when speaking about herself; cf. the beginning of the next poem, “There your mother conceived you, there the one who conceived you bore you” (Song 8:5). 16. On the prose expression of this literary type, see R. Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (London: Basic Books, 1981), 47–62. 17. For the relationship between these two verbs, see in the Septuagint to Song 1:2, where the expression, “Let him kiss me [‫שׁ ֵקנִי‬ ָ ִ ‫]י‬,” is translated as “Let him water me [‫שׁ ֵקנִי‬ ְ ַ ‫]י‬.” 18. Also Jeremiah makes use of two neighboring poems; see Chapter 8, “Allegorical Interpretation.”

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Leah leaves to meet Jacob (30:16) and tells him, “You must come in to me; for surely I have hired you with my son’s mandrakes. And he lay with her that night.” While the poem expresses pure love, none of it remains in the story: Leah purchases the services of Jacob in order to conceive a child. 4. With the birth of Zilpah’s second son, Asher, Zilpah’s mistress, Leah, gives the child a name and explains, ‫“ באשרי כי אשרוני בנות‬What good fortune! For the girls have acclaimed me fortunate” (30:13), that is, in my happiness they have blessed me and praised me. A woman’s praise of another woman is worthy of attention and superior to the praise of men. The only other example of it in the Bible is in Song 6:9: “Maidens see her and acclaim her; queens and concubines and praise her” (where we understand that they praise her for her beauty).19 5. About Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, it is said, ‫ לראות בבנות הארץ‬. . . ‫ותצא דינה‬: “Now Dinah . . . went out to see the daughters of the land” (Gen. 34:1), though after she leaves she is immediately seen by Shechem, the son of Hamor, who abuses her (v. 2). The combination “go out” (‫ )יצא‬with “see” (-‫ )ראה ב‬appears again only in the Song of Songs: “O maidens of Zion, go out and see King Solomon” (3:11). This suggests that the original version in Genesis read that Dinah went out to see the young men of the land, ‫בבני הארץ‬, which led to the tragic encounter with Shechem. The emendation to ‫ בנות הארץ‬stemmed from a desire to defend Dinah’s honor and justify the revenge her brothers took on the people of Shechem. This conjecture—that there was something inappropriate in Dinah’s venturing out—receives confirmation from the Rabbis’ understanding of the episode, where they blame Dinah for behaving like a prostitute. Jacob’s charge against his sons (who take revenge for their sister’s honor) is answered by a rhetorical question, “Like a whore should our sister be treated?” (v. 31), and the Sages explain: “And Dinah, Leah’s daughter . . . went out” (Gen. 34:1). The daughter of Leah, and not the daughter of Jacob. The verse refers to her in relation to her mother. Leah was a streetwalker [‫ ]יצאנית‬so too was this one a streetwalker. How do we know this? As it is written, “And Leah went out to meet him” (Gen. 30:16). (Tanhuma Buber, Vayishlach 7:1) As I have already pointed out, though Leah “went out” to greet a man, he was her husband, while Dina “goes out” to look for unfamiliar men. 6. In the next three examples, we see a number of shared elements between Genesis 38 and the Song of Songs. The young woman in the Song of Songs desires to know where she might find her lover in midday: “Tell me, you whom I love so well; Where do you pasture your sheep? Where do you rest them at noon? Let me not be as one who covers up beside the flocks of your fellows” (1:7). The root ‫ עט״ה‬means “wrap” or “cover up,” see especially Jer. 43:12: “as a shepherd wraps himself up

19. See Chapter 7, “Woman of Valor.”

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The Song of Songs

in his garments.” Thus, we should understand the young woman’s words as: Let me not wander among your friends’ herds while I am like one who covers her face (compare Mic. 3:7 “they shall cover their lips”),” that is, like a prostitute who does not shy from walking about among strange men. We see how a woman covering her face is a sign of prostitution in, for example, Gen. 38:15, where Judah errs in believing his daughter-in-law to have prostituted herself: “he took her for a whore for she had covered her face.” The significance of a woman’s use of a scarf for covering herself as marking her as a prostitute was understood, for example, by Rashbam in his commentary on this verse: “It is possible that that was the custom then of prostitutes, to cover their faces.”20 7. The expression “crimson thread” (‫ )חוט השני‬occurs three times in the Bible, all in erotic contexts. In the Song, the lover uses it in a poem about his beloved’s beauty, “Your lips are like a crimson thread” (4:3). In the story about Rahab the prostitute, Joshua’s spies direct her to “tie this length of crimson cord to the window” (Josh. 2:18), so that they will be able to identify her quarters when they return with the Israelite army.21 The medieval commentator Abarbanel identified the crimson thread with the rope she had previously lowered the spies with, “and that is why they said this length of crimson cord.” At the end of the story in Genesis 38, a “crimson,” again referring to a crimson cord (see Targum Jonathan and the Peshitta), is tied by the midwife to the hand of Zerah—the twin who was meant to emerge first—after Tamar has become pregnant through her incestuous relations with Judah, her father-in-law (v. 28).22 8. Finally, when Hirah, Judah’s messenger, with his master’s pledge in hand, fails to find the prostitute, Judah tells him, “Let her keep them, lest we become a laughingstock” (Gen. 38:23). Fear of being the object of ridicule in relation to sexual matters emerges also in the Song of Songs: the young woman wishes that her lover were her brother so that she would be able to meet him outside without fear: “I would find you in the street, would kiss you, and no one would despise me” (Song 8:1). Another verse touches

20. Not every woman who covers herself with a scarf behaves like a prostitute; see Gen. 24:65. 21. The erotic context is distinct, although the crimson cord, here, which leads to Rahab and her household being saved, is a rationalization of the miraculous motif of Israel’s being saved through the blood of the firstborn (Exod. 12:7ff.); see Y. Zakovitch, The Concept of Miracle in the Bible (Tel Aviv: MOD Books, 1990), 142–43. 22. ‫“—השני‬the crimson [cord]”—is an etymology of the name Zerah, as Rashi has observed, “for the shining [‫ ]זריחת‬appearance of the crimson [thread],” while simultaneously echoing the story told of the birth of Jacob and Esau, according to which Jacob deceives EsauEdom already in their mother’s womb (see Hos. 12:4). According to that story, the arm of Esau-Edom emerges first from their mother’s womb, and the midwife ties a crimson thread to it; see A. Shinan and Y. Zakovitch, From Gods to God. How the Bible Debunked, Suppressed, or Changed Ancient Myths and Legends (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012), 149–56.

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even more on our topic: “If a man offered all his wealth for love, he would be ridiculed to scorn” (8:7). One who tries to purchase love with money awakens scorn: Judah’s hesitance is because he does not want his having turned to a prostitute to become known. Thus, for example, in Midrash Lekach Tov to the verse, “[Judah to Hirah:] If you keep looking for her, we’ll be ridiculed, because people will say, ‘Judah is in the habit of going to prostitutes, and paying them.’” 9. When Sisera appears in Yael’s tent, she covers him with a ‫( שמיכה‬Judg. 4:18), and after she gives him milk to quench his thirst, she again covers him (v. 19). In another place I have written about the erotic nature of this scene (see particularly in the poetic retelling in Judg. 5:27), which was purposefully blunted by the storyteller.23 The noun ‫ שמיכה‬is a hapax legomenon and apparently refers to something to lean on, like a cushion. It is from the root ‫שמ״כ‬, which is the same as ‫ סמ״כ‬and is synonymous with ‫מרבד‬, from the root ‫( רב״ד‬see Prov. 7:16). Thus, the young woman in Song asks her female friends, the “daughters of Jerusalem”: “Cushion me [‫ ;סמכוני‬i.e. sustain me] with raisin cakes, cushion me [‫ ]רפדוני‬with apples, for sick in love am I” (2:5). She seeks support both from the cushions and from the foods, and combines them in her request.24 Elements from love poetry can be found also in the Samson narrative. The story of Samson’s life, in Judg. 13–16, which speaks at length of Samson’s love for Philistine women, contains many details from love poetry. 10. The motif of a fox damaging vineyards appears only in Song 2:15 and in the story of Samson taking revenge on his father-in-law for giving his wife to another man: “He lit the torches and turned [the foxes] loose among the standing grain of the Philistines, setting fire to stacked grain, standing grain, the vineyards and the olive trees”25 (Judg. 15:5).26 It seems that foxes were a common motif in love poetry, and this motif was used by the storyteller when he looked for an original way for Samson to take revenge. 11. The role of the sixty warriors that surround Solomon’s bed (Song 3:7-8) may be elucidated by Samson’s life story: “. . . and Samson made there a feast, for

23. See Shinan and Zakovitch, From Gods to God, 242–49. 24. An example of the interchange between sin and samekh can be seen for example in ‫( פרשׂ לחם‬Lam. 4:4) and ‫( פרס לחם‬Isa. 58:7). 25. Thus reads the Targum, Septuagint and Vulgate. At the end of the verse, the Masoretic Text reads, “. . . and olive vineyards,” which seems to be a corruption, since in all other occurrences of the word “vineyard” in the Bible, the meaning is grape vines. We notice, then, that foxes damage (grape) vineyards in both verses. 26. A fox that ruins a vineyard appears in a parable in Ecclesiastes Rabbah 5:2. On the idea of setting a fire from a torch that has been tied to a fox’s tail, see Aesop’s Fable 58, “The Man and the Fox,” see Aesop, The Complete Fables (trans. O. and R. Temple; London: Penguin Books, 1995), 47. In the rest of the Bible, foxes are always found in the ruins of buildings or cities; see, for example, Ezek. 13:8; Lam. 5:14.

18

The Song of Songs

so used the young men to do. And it came to pass, when they saw him, that they brought thirty companions to be with him” (14:10-11). Since Samson is a stranger in Timnath, he neither invites the guests nor choose the best men. Usually, the groom’s companions are there to amuse him and are his guards of honor. In Samson’s case, his companions have been appointed by the Philistines to keep tabs on him so that he will not cause them harm. The Septuagint reads, “Because they feared him” (‫ )ביראתם אותו‬instead of “when they saw him” (‫)כראותם אותו‬. It seems that both the Samson narrative and the poem in Song borrow a well-known motif from the treasures of love poetry and fashion it, each for their own needs: in the narrative, the groom’s companions become the Philistines’ watchdogs, and in the poem, Solomon, the famous coward, is depicted as one who needs twice the traditional number of companion-guards. 12. Only in Samson’s prayer, “. . . that I may be avenged of the Philistines for one of my eyes” (Judg. 16:28), and in the lover’s words, “You have captured my heart, my sister, bride, you have captured my heart with one of your eyes, . . .” (Song 4:9), are “one” of the eyes mentioned where it would seem more natural to have referred to both. In both verses the reference to the one eye is used as an a fortiori argument: the poet stresses that one eye of the beloved is enough to entrance the man, so that we can only imagine how enormous the effect of two eyes would be. A similar idea is found in the story: if the death of so many Philistines represents the revenge of only one eye, how many would be needed to pacify Samson for losing both? 13. At the end of the Garden Song (Song 4:12–5:1), after the young man tells his beloved that he eats, drinks, and enjoys the pleasures of love, he addresses his comrades and invites them to a feast: “I have come to my garden, my sister, my bride. I have gathered my myrrh with my spice. I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk. Eat, friends, and drink, be drunk, O lovers!” (5:1). In the Samson story, we have a similar juxtaposition of the eating of honey, “. . . and behold, there was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcass of the lion. And he scraped it out in his hands and went on eating . . .” (14:8-9) immediately followed by a wedding feast (vv. 10ff.). There’s something more: the poem uses the verb ‫“ אריתי‬I have gathered” (5:1), in which one hears the same sounds as ‫“ אריה‬lion” that appears in the story, and indeed Samson’s riddle of eating honey from a lion’s carcass is based on the two-meanings of the word ‫ארי‬, “lion” and “honey.” (This has not been preserved in Hebrew, where the noun ‫ארי‬, honey, disappeared long ago, though the verb form of the root still exists for collecting honey. Arabic has preserved the noun.)27 Moreover, the “friends” in Song 5:1 correspond to the “companions” in the Samson narrative (Judg. 14:11). 14. We find a description of the woman’s captivating hair—and the king’s being “caught” by it—in Song 7:6, “Your head is like Carmel, and the

27. See H. Bauer, “Zu Samsons Rätsel in Richter Kapitel 14,” ZDMG 66 (1912): 473–74.

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warp and woof of your head are purple; the king is held in the [loom’s] beams.” Here we see the poet using a well-known poetic metaphor for describing a woman’s beauty that reminds us of the Samson story when Delilah weaves Samson’s locks with the loom: “And he said to her, ‘If you weave . . . the seven locks of my head with the web of the loom. . . .’ And [he] went away with the pin of the loom and with the web” (Judg. 16:13-14). Samson’s being tied to the loom is a wordplay on the name Delilah, which the biblical writer has interpreted as related to the word ‫( דלה‬warp and woof; see Isa. 38:12). Again, it looks like the storyteller was influenced by a common metaphor from love poetry, and Delilah received her name from that metaphor. 15. In the short poem I have already mentioned, “Catch the foxes, the little foxes that ruin vineyards, and our vineyards are in bloom” (Song 2:15), the women are the speakers, whether they call for help against the young suitors (foxes) that come to “ruin their vineyards” or whether they are in fact encouraging those suitors in their pursuits, and whether the vineyards in the poem are real vineyards or a metaphor for the women’s sex (for a discussion of this poem, see Chapter 3 “Song of Songs—Riddle of Riddles”). The poem seems to have left its mark on the story of the Benjaminites’ capture of the women of Shiloh who come out to dance in the vineyards (Judg. 21:19-23). While stories of abducted women are known from classical literature,28 the abduction of women from a vineyard testifies to the connection with love poetry.29 16. The characterization of Saul, “an excellent young man; no one among the Israelites was handsomer than he; he was a head taller than any of the people” (1 Sam. 9:2; see also 10:23-24 and the description of David’s eldest brother who is described similarly in 16:7), is similar to the young woman’s description of her lover when the daughters of Jerusalem ask her, “How is your lover better than any other, O most beautiful of women? How is your lover different than any other, that we must swear to you?” (5:9). In her answer, she explains, “My beloved is dazzling white and ruddy, towering

28. The story of the abduction of the Sabine women in Rome during the celebration of the Neptune Equester (Livy, Ab Urbe Condita Book 1 Ch. 9); see A. Soggin, Judges (OTL; London: SCM Press, 1981), 304. 29. The addition of a story about the abduction of the Shiloh daughters during a holiday (Judg. 21:19-23) after the story of how brides were taken for Benjamin from the women left by the Israelites in Jabesh-Gilead (vv. 1–18) was meant to connect the end of the Book of Judges with the beginning of the Book of Samuel, which also deals with the observance of an annual family festival in Shiloh (1:3); see Y. Zakovitch, “The Associative Arrangement of the Book of Judges and Its Use for the Recognition of Stages in the Formation of the Book,” in Isac Leo Seeligmann Volume (ed. A. Rofé and Y. Zakovitch; Jerusalem: E. Rubinstein, 1983), 1:161–83.

20

The Song of Songs

above ten thousand,” that is, he stands taller and can be seen from afar.30 Later in her reply, she adds, “His appearance [=height] is like the Lebanon, a man like a cedar” (v. 15). Like the daughters of Jerusalem who are excited by the prospect of glimpsing the lover and thus offer to help the young woman find him (“Where has your beloved gone, O most beautiful of women? Where has your beloved turned? We will seek him with you” [6:1]), so are the girls who come to draw water excited to help Saul look for Samuel, causing their answer to his simple question, “Is the seer in town?” (v. 11) to be somewhat confusing (vv. 12–13).31 17. The description of David in his first appearance in the Bible, “ruddy, bright-eyed, and handsome” (1 Sam. 16:12; cf. 17:42) is reminiscent of the description of the lover in the Song of Songs: “My beloved is dazzling white and ruddy . . . his eyes are like doves by streams of water . . .” (5:10, 12). Indeed, the descriptions of both Saul and David seem to have been drawn from the way the lover was commonly described in love poetry. 18. In Absalom’s first appearance on the biblical stage, we find an abridged descriptive poem (wasf32) that is found a number of times in the Song: “In all Israel there was none to be so much praised as Absalom for his beauty: from the sob of his foot even to the crown of his head there was no blemish in him. And when he shaves his head . . .” (2 Sam. 14:25-26). This quick description must be compared to Song 4:1-7, where female beauty is praised. The poem begins with the words, “Behold, you are beautiful my love” (4:1) and ends with, “You are all beautiful, my love, there is no blemish in you” (v. 7), while the five verses in between describe the woman’s various characteristics one by one, as required in the wasf form. While the Song proceeds from her head down, the story’s abridged wasf begins with Absalom’s feet and finishes with his head, in order to elaborate on the most important part in that story—his hair—which plays a key role later, in his death (2 Sam. 18:9). 19. There are many similarities between the unfortunate love story between Amnon and Tamar (2 Samuel 13) and the Song of Songs. I will limit myself to the more significant ones. The story opens by introducing Tamar, “Absalom the son of David had a beautiful sister whose name was Tamar” (v. 1), a name that may have been given to her because of its significance in love poetry: “Thus your stature is like to a palm tree [‫( ”]תמר‬Song 7:8). Absalom has also a beautiful daughter named Tamar (2 Sam. 14:27). Amnon feigns sick in order to bring Tamar to his chambers: love-sickness is a well-known motif in biblical love poetry. The girl in the Song admits,

30. Compare ‫ דגול‬to the verb dagālu in Akkadian, “to see.” ‫ דגל‬is a pole, an object that can be seen from afar. 31. Their answer is simultaneous and, therefore, somewhat repetitious; see a similar example in Neh. 5:1-5. 32. For a discussion of the wasf genre, see Chapter 5, “A Poetic Portrait.”

1. On Love and Beauty

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“. . . for I am sick from love” (2:5) and asks to be comforted by food, just as Amnon asks to eat from Tamar’s hand (2 Sam. 13:10, and compare also Song 5:8). In his efforts to acquire her, Amnon consults his friend (v. 3), just as the friends, the groom’s companions, are mentioned in the poem (5:1). Amnon feigns sickness on his bed (‫ משכב‬13.5), while we find the word ‫משכבי‬, “my bed,” in Song 3:1. Amnon asks his father, “Let Tamar my sister come and make me a couple of cakes in my sight (v. 6). Being Tamar’s brother makes it easier for Amnon to make these requests, just as the girl in the Song wishes that her lover would be as her brother so that she might bring him to her mother’s house (8:1-2). It seems that Amnon asks for two cakes, ‫לביבות‬, to be prepared in his sight, ‫לעיני‬, under the influence of a love poem: “You have captured my heart (‫ )לבבתני‬my sister, bride, you have captured my heart [‫ ]לבבתיני‬with one of your eyes (‫( ”)מעיניך‬Song 4:9). Amnon asks Tamar to “Bring the food into the chamber,” and she obeys: “And Tamar . . . brought it into the chamber to her brother” (v. 10), and compare: “The king has brought me into his chambers” (Song 1:4; in 3:4 it is the girl who brings her lover to her mother’s chamber). Amnon asks to eat (v. 6), but when Tamar serves him the food, he asks her to lie with him, and we know from the Song that food is a euphemism for the act of love (see Song 4:16–5:1). When Amnon is about to carry out his evil plan, Tamar tells him to “speak unto the king, for he will not withhold me from you” (v. 13), and compare “What shall we do for our sister on the day when she shall be spoken for?” (Song 8:8). Amnon, angry with Tamar, drives her out, saying, “Arise, be gone” (v. 15), the same formula used by the man in the Song to invite his beloved one: “Arise, my love . . . and go away . . .” (2:10, 13). Amnon locks the door behind Tamar (v. 17), while in the Song the garden is locked (4:12) and the girl opens it for her lover. The locked door appears also in the poem about the girl who gets up to open it for her beloved (5:5). From these examples, it becomes clear that motifs known from biblical love poetry assume a negative form in the Amnon-Tamar narrative. Absalom’s concern for his sister’s dignity and the revenge he takes on Amnon correspond to the brothers’ role as their sister’s protectors in the poems (1:6; 8:8-9). 20. The term Naomi uses when she tries to persuade her daughters-in-law to leave her and return to their homeland to find new husbands, “. . . that you find peace [‫ ]מנוחה‬in the house of a husband” (1:9), finds its synonym in the Song, when the young woman responds to her brothers’ provocations, who pretend to fear lest they will not find a groom for her: “. . . so I became in his eyes as one who finds peace [‫( ”]שלום‬Song 8:10). The opposite is true: she has already found a man to marry and she no longer has need for the help or protection of her brothers. See also what is said about Solomon in the etymology of his name that is in 1 Chronicles: “But you will have a son who will be a man at rest [‫]מנוחה‬, for I will give him rest from all his enemies on all sides; Solomon will be his name and I shall confer peace [‫ ]שלום‬and quiet on Israel in his time” (22:9).

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21. The final example comes from Esther. Here, Vashti resents Ahasuerus because he wants to bring her “before the king . . . to show the people and the princes her beauty for she was fair to look on” (Est. 1:11). Vashti refuses to appear (v. 12). A similar element is found in the final poem in the Song of Songs, when the young man wants his friends to hear the voice of his beloved, “You who sit in the garden, friends listen to your voice” (Song 8:13). Like Vashti, the young woman refuses his request, and answers him with what sounds like annoyance, “Flee, my beloved . . .” (v. 14). * It is clear that many biblical stories reflect a familiarity with love poetry, whether with the poems that are in the Song of Songs, specifically, or with poems like them. In either case, such poems served as building materials for the writers of these stories. An awareness of the popularity of love poetry among the biblical writers helps us appreciate how, despite the chasm between the Bible’s secular love poetry and its religious, didactic narratives, much is shared between them.

Chapter 2 “KEEP YOUR THOUSAND, SOLOMON!” (SONG 8:12): A HISTORY OF THE TRADITION OF SOLOMON’S THOUSAND WIVES1

The tradition about Solomon’s marriage to a thousand women is explicitly mentioned in only one verse in the Bible: “And he had seven hundred royal wives and three hundred concubines” (1 Kgs 11:3a). It appears within the context of a literary unit that credits Solomon with marrying foreign women and being led to worship their gods (vv. 1–13)—a sin that justified the subsequently decreed collapse of the unified kingdom. An allusion to Solomon’s harem of a thousand women is found in the Song of Songs, a book traditionally attributed to Solomon, in a short poem in Song 8:11-12 in which the poet expresses satisfaction with his marriage to only one woman, and even mocks Solomon who has a thousand: “My vineyard is all my own. Keep your thousand, Solomon” (v. 12). In this chapter, I will explore origins and developments of the tradition that tells of Solomon’s thousand wives within the Hebrew Bible. The literary unit in 1 Kgs 11:1-13 is not of one piece. Already in its first verse the secondary nature of “and Pharaoh’s daughter” stands out. Since the list of nations from which Solomon took his wives does not include Egypt, yet references to the king’s marriage to Pharaoh’s daughter have appeared in previous verses (3:1; 7:8; 9:24), one early reader sought to complete the missing information.2 But this mention of Pharaoh’s daughter seems to be an addition to an addition, since the earliest tradition about the king’s marriages said nothing about foreign women at all. The beginning of the same chapter in the Septuagint reads, “And King Solomon (was) a lover of women (v. 1a) and he had seven hundred royal

1. An earlier version of this chapter appeared as “‘Keep your thousand Solomon!’ (Song 8:12) A History of the Tradition of Solomon’s Thousand Wives,” which was published in “Canterò in eterno le misericordie del Signore” (Sal 89:2). Studi in onore del prof. Gianni Barbiero in occasione del suo settantesimo compleanno,  359–70 (ed. S. M. Attard and M. Pavan; Rome, 2015). Reprinted by permission. 2. See, for example, J. A. Montgomery, Kings (ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1951), 245.

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wives and three hundred concubines” (v. 3aα).3 It seems apparent that this opening preserves the original core of 1 Kings 11. The end of v. 3, “and his wives led his heart astray,” is now duplicated in v. 4, “And it happened in Solomon’s old age that his wives led his heart astray after other gods,” and it seems, therefore, that v. 4 was written to interpret and even replace the end of v. 3, which originally had nothing to do with the worship of foreign gods. The Masoretic text was left with both the original end to v. 3 and its replacement in v. 4, whereas the Septuagint reflects the version that dropped the end of v. 3. The language of the replacement in v. 4 corresponds to the language that was added between 1aα and v. 3, “from the nations of which the Lord had said to the Israelites, ‘You shall not come among them and they shall not come among you, for they will surely lead your heart astray after their gods’” (v. 2; see also v. 9). Therefore, in the original tradition in the Book of Kings, Solomon was accused of loving many women and of thereby being distracted from his duties as king, like the rebuke-warning voiced by the mother of Lemuel, king of Massa, to her son: “Do not give your vigor to women, nor your ways to destroyers of kings” (Prov. 31:3).4 Ben Sira, in “In Praise of the Fathers,” turns to Solomon and reminds him of his transgression, “But you gave your loins to women and let them rule over your body” (47:19)5—an accusation that does not include marriage to foreign women or of being led to follow their gods. The focus of the original tradition on the size of Solomon’s harem and not on its ethnic composition is consistent with the Kingship Law in Deut. 17:14-20, whose connection with traditions about Solomon was noticed already by the Rabbis (who naturally assumed that the Pentateuch’s laws preceded the king). For example: Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai taught, the book of Deuteronomy came and bowed down before the Holy One, blessed be He, and said: “Master of the Universe, Solomon has annulled me and has made me a fraud! You have written in me, And let him not get himself many wives and only let him not get himself many horses, and let him not get himself too much silver and gold, and (yet) it is written (in 1 Kings), ‘And Solomon had forty-thousand horse stalls for his chariots and twelve-thousand horsemen’ (1 Kgs 5:6), and many wives, ‘and he had seven hundred royal wives and three hundred concubines’ (11:3), and he amassed silver and gold, as it is written, ‘And the king made silver in Jerusalem as abundant as stones’ (10:27).” The Holy One, Blessed be He, said

3. On the character of the literary unit in the Septuagint, see C. F. Burney, Notes on the Hebrew Text of the Books of Kings (2nd ed.; New York: Ktav, 1970), 153. 4. The Midrash indeed identifies Solomon with Lemuel, and his mother with Bathsheba who rebukes him; see Leviticus Rabbah 12:5 (M. Margaliot [Jerusalem 1993] 1:265-66). 5. The influence of the words of Lemuel’s mother to her son are noticeable here. Can we conjecture that the tradition of identifying Lemuel with Solomon, and Bathsheba with King Massa’s mother, was known already to Ben Sira?

2. “Keep Your Thousand, Solomon!”

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[to  Deuteronomy], “Solomon and a thousand like him die; but not even one letter of yours will ever be annulled.” (Tanhuma, Va’er’e 5)6

Neither is the Kingship Law in Deuteronomy a unified composition. The law’s beginning, “And you say, ‘Let me put a king over me like all the nations that are around me’” (v. 14), which is based on the people’s request to Samuel in 1 Samuel 8 that he appoint them a king, “So now, put over us a king to rule us, like all the nations” (v. 5),7 makes necessary the warning: “You shall surely put over you a king whom the Lord your God chooses, from the midst of your brothers you shall put a king over you, you shall not be able to set over you a foreign man who is not your brother” (v. 15). In light of the Israelites’ desire to be like other nations, the Pentateuch warns them not to install a foreigner as king. It seems therefore apparent that the original law included only vv. 14–15. The second stage in the law’s development was in the prohibition against the king’s excessive acquisition of horses, silver, and gold: “Only let him not get himself many horses” (v. 16aα) and “let him not get himself too much silver and gold” (v. 17b). These prohibitions were created under the influence of the tradition about Solomon’s amassed wealth of silver, gold, and horses (1 Kings 10). Horses, silver, and gold (and not women, who appear between them in the law) indicate excessive property and wealth. The direct continuation of v. 17 was v. 20: “so that his heart be not haughty over his brothers”; compare Deut. 8:11-14: “Watch yourself, lest you forget the Lord your God. . . . And your cattle and sheep multiply, and silver and gold multiply for you, and all that you have multiply. And your heart become haughty and you forget the Lord your God.” In place of the cattle and sheep that are in Deuteronomy 8, in Deuteronomy 17 there are horses, corresponding to what is told about King Solomon. Zechariah 9:9-10’s prophecy about the ideal, future king of Jerusalem is based both on traditions about Solomon the “king of peace,” as expressed in the name etymology found in Chronicles, “Solomon [‫ ]שלמה‬will be his name and I shall confer peace [‫ ]שלום‬and quiet on Israel in his time” (1 Chr. 22:9), and on the description of his vast kingdom in Psalm 72, a psalm “of Solomon”: “And may he hold sway from sea to sea, from the River to the ends of the earth” (Ps. 72:8; compare with

6. Similarly, see JT Sanhedrin 2:4; Leviticus Rabbah 19:2; Aggadat Bereshit, chap. 76. See also the tradition in BT Sanhedrin 21b: “Thus it is written, ‘He shall not multiply wives to himself,’ whereon Solomon said, ‘I will multiply wives yet not let my heart be perverted.’ Yet we read, ‘When Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart.’ Again it is written: ‘He shall not multiply to himself horses,’ concerning which Solomon said, ‘I will multiply them, but will not cause [Israel] to return [to Egypt].’” In the Temple Scroll from Qumran the law is formulated to correspond with what is written about Solomon in Kings, so the king is forbidden to marry foreign women: “He shall not marry as wife any daughter of the nations” (col. LVII lines 15-16); Y. Yadin, The Temple Scroll, vol. 2 (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1977). 7. See K. Budde, Die Bücher Richter und Samuel, ihre Quellen und ihre Aufbau (Giesen: Walter De Gruyter, 1890), 184.

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v. 10 in the prophecy). It also draws from the Kingship Law in Deuteronomy: the king has a donkey and not even one horse, and he is ‫עני‬, a word that signifies both his being poor, from which we conclude he has no gold or silver, as well as humble,8 as is stated by the law: “so that his heart be not haughty over his brothers” (Deut. 17:20). Zechariah’s prophecy knows nothing of any prohibition against an excess of women precisely because it reflects an earlier stage in the law that does not yet include them.9 Extravagant holdings of silver, gold, and horses (without women) are found also in the prophecy of Isaiah 2: “His land is full of silver and gold, There is no limit to his treasures; His land is full of horses, There is no limit to his chariots” (v. 7). The addition of women to the law in Deuteronomy, “and let him not get himself many wives” (17aα), was triggered by the verses in 1 Kgs 11:1aα, 3 about the profusion of wives, after these were written and adjoined to the tradition detailing Solomon’s amassed wealth in chapter 10, in order to attribute Solomon’s downfall to all of these, together—silver and gold, horses and women. The women fit into their context in 1 Kings also due to that chapter being adjacent to the story of the Queen of Sheba’s visit with its extensive descriptions of the king’s wealth; the queen, as we know, contributed to his wealth (10:2, 10). The insertion of the women into Deuteronomy’s list between the horses and silver and gold seems to have been made precisely because they don’t belong, as a way to ensure their permanent place in the verse.10 After this were added justifications for the prohibition against accumulating too many horses and women: “Only let him not get himself many horses, that he not turn the people back to Egypt in order to get many horses, when the Lord has said to you, ‘You shall not turn back again on this way’” (v. 16aβ-b); this was based on Deut. 28:68, “And the Lord will bring you back to Egypt in ships, on the way that I said to you, ‘You shall not see it again’” (compare also Exod. 13:17; 14:13; Num. 14:3-4; Hos. 9:3; 11:5); and, regarding women: “that his heart not swerve” (v. 17aβ; compare Jer. 17:5: “Cursed is he who trusts in man . . . and turns his heart from the Lord”). The next—and final—stage in the development of the law was the addition of vv. 18–19, which speak about the copying of the laws of the Torah and the king’s constant learning of the laws in order to keep them. Let us return to the Book of Kings. The writer who inserted the many wives after the gold and the silver took care to preserve the tone and style of the original

8. There are many exchanges between ‫ עני‬and ‫ ענו‬in the comments of the Masoretes; for a comprehensive list, see L. Delekat, “Zum hebräischen Wörterbuch,” VT 14 (1964): 35–49. 9. On the prophecy in Zech. 9:9-10, see Y. Zakovitch, “Who proclaims peace, who brings good Tidings.” Seven Visions of Jerusalem’s Peace (Haifa: Haifa University Press, 2004), 129–44 [Hebrew]. 10. The phenomenon of embedding additions into the middle of a literary unit and not at its end, in order to ensure its permanence, is well known. See, for example, the incorporation of vv. 7–12 into Proverbs 9, in which they disturb the symmetric comparison that is made between “wisdom” (vv. 1–6) and “the foolish woman who bustles about” (vv. 13–18).

2. “Keep Your Thousand, Solomon!”

27

text: compare “and he had wives [‫(̣ ”]ויהי לו נשים‬11:3) with “and he had [‫]ויהי לו‬ a thousand four hundred chariots” (10:26). Even the desire to present exact numbers—“seven hundred royal wives and three hundred concubines” (11:3)—fits with the profusion of numbers in chapter 10 that substantiate the king’s enormous wealth (vv. 14, 16, 17, 26). The change of Solomon’s many wives into foreigners (1 Kgs 11:1aβ-b; 2:3b; 4ff.; cf. also Neh. 13:26) had two triggers. It was likely inspired, first, by the general prohibition against marriage with foreign women: “You shall not intermarry with them. You shall not give your daughter to his son, nor shall you take his daughter for your son. For he will make your son swerve from following Me, and they will worship other gods, and the Lord’s wrath will flare against you and He will swiftly destroy you” (Deut. 7:3-4); and second, though not unrelated, by the overall Deuteronomistic program to regard polytheism, which had been pervasive among the Israelites from the days of the Judges (Judg. 2:11ff.) until the monarchic period, as the primary cause for the destruction of the Kingdoms of Israel (2 Kgs 17:7-18) and Judah (ibid. v. 19; and also 2 Kgs 21:1-15; 22:15-20; 23:26-27; 24:3-4). The explanation of the united kingdom’s division as a punishment for polytheism (see also 1 Kgs 11:33) is therefore a retroactive projection of the catastrophic destruction of the Temple and expulsion onto a disaster that had previously befallen the nation.11 We leave now the tradition about the multitudes of Solomon’s women in Kings in order to examine an allusion to this tradition in Song of Songs 8:11-12: King Solomon had a vineyard in Baal-hamon. He gave that vineyard to watchmen [‫]נטרים‬, a man would bring for its fruit one thousand pieces of silver. My vineyard is all my own. Keep your thousand, Solomon! And pay two hundred to the watchmen of the fruit.

This short poem can be divided into two parts, each comprising three pronouncements with a number of words being repeated in both stanzas: vineyard, Solomon, watchmen, fruit, and thousand. In the first stanza, objective information is given, while in the second the poet conveys his point of view and judgment. At the beginning of the first stanza we are told that Solomon’s vineyard is located in ‫בעל המון‬. While place-names beginning with the word ‫בעל‬

11. The prophecy in Isaiah 2 (cited above), which combines silver, gold, and horses (v. 7), adds to them also idols: “And their land is full of idols; they bow down to the work of their hands, to what their own fingers have wrought” (v. 8). As I’ve already mentioned, women do not appear in this prophecy, but the appearance of idol-worship alongside the other elements both in 1 Kings 10 and in the law that is found in Deuteronomy may also have contributed to the impulse to turn Solomon’s thousand wives into foreigners.

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were common in biblical geography (e.g., Baal Gad, Baal Hermon, Baal Tsafon), the poem seems to add a symbolic dimension: Solomon is the husband (‫ )בעל‬of many (‫ )המון‬women. Indeed, one reader who understood Baal-hamon in this way was the Chronicler, who wrote about Solomon’s son Rehoboam: “And he sought many wives [‫( ”]המון נשים‬2 Chr. 11:23).12 Solomon was unable to cultivate and work his large vineyard—his many wives— and so he has given his vineyard to watchmen, whose responsibilities, however, are not limited to guarding (see also 1:5-6). “Guard” and “work” may sometimes be a hendiadys, where two words linked by a conjunction really express one idea. This can be seen in Gen. 2:15: “And the Lord God took the human and set him down in the garden of Eden to work it and guard it”; and also in Hos. 12:13, “There Israel worked for a wife, for a wife he guarded [his sheep].” For another verse in which “to guard” means to cultivate plants, see Prov. 27:18, “The one who guards a fig tree will eat its fruit,” where the meaning of “guard” is both to cultivate and to watch over. In this last verse we find the verb ‫נצ״ר‬, “guard,” the Hebrew equivalent to the Aramaic ‫נט״ר‬, which is found in late Biblical Hebrew and in our verse. Suddenly we realize that the guards, the ‫נטרים‬, who were appointed by Solomon to guard and cultivate his vineyard, are liable to also eat from its fruit. Solomon’s vineyard is so enormous that “a man would bring for its fruit one thousand pieces of silver,” an allusion to the number of women in the king’s harem. In the first words of the poem’s second stanza, the poet declares that “My vineyard is all my own” (lit., “before me”; v. 12), that is, my small vineyard, my one wife, is all mine13 while ‫האלף לך שלמה‬. The words convey a dual meaning. On the one hand, ‫ האלף לך‬refers to the thousand women, that is, “the thousand wives belong to you.” But it can also refer to the payment, the “thousand pieces of silver” that are being paid for the fruit, that is, the thousand pieces of silver that men are willing to pay to enjoy Solomon’s thousand wives. Moreover, the poem’s final line, its punch line, “And pay two hundred to the watchmen of the fruit,” reveals how the guards are themselves being paid for their work! Solomon, it turns out, pays them for pleasuring his own harem. The thousand pieces of silver that are paid to Solomon are hush money. We infer this from the words of King Abimelech of Gerar to Sarah, after he has restored her to her husband: “Look, I have given a thousand pieces of silver to your brother. Let it hereby be a covering for your eyes” (Gen. 20:16); “a covering for eyes” prevents the person’s eyes from seeing what is before them, like hush money, about which it is said: “for a bribe blinds the sighted” (Exod. 23:8; and also Deut. 16:19).14

12. The placename Βααλαμων appears in Jdt. 8:3. 13. Cf. Gen. 34:10: “and the land is before you,” that is for your use. 14. We cannot exclude the possibility that Gen. 20:16 was a secondary addition, since Abimelech gives gifts (compensation) to Abraham in v. 14, “And Abimelech took sheep and cattle and male and female slaves and gave them to Abraham, and he sent back to him Sarah his wife,” though silver is not mentioned. Is it possible that v. 16, with its “thousand pieces of silver,” was added under the influence of Song 8:11?

2. “Keep Your Thousand, Solomon!”

29

The expression “a thousand pieces of silver” is extremely rare in the Bible. In another place it appears spoken by the soldier who is prevented from killing Absalom, David’s son. The soldier addresses Joab, “Even were I to heft in my palms a thousand pieces of silver, I would not reach out my hand against the king’s son, for within our hearing the king charged you . . . saying, ‘Watch for me over the lad Absalom’” (2 Sam. 18:12). Also here, “a thousand pieces of silver” is the amount used for bribery: even were he to be bribed with a thousand pieces of silver, the soldier would not be tempted. It is left for us to elucidate which is the earlier appearance of the tradition of a thousand women, the verse in Kings or in Song of Songs. Since the verse in Song of Songs does not speak explicitly about Solomon’s marriage to a thousand women, but uses only allusions and assumes that its readers understand the subtext, I conclude that when this poem was written, the tradition was already well established and widespread. It does not necessarily follow, however, that the poem alludes to the Book of Kings and the tradition there. A “thousand” is a large, round number (e.g., the thousand that Samson kills with the ass’s jaw [Judg. 15:15-16], the thousand burnt offerings offered by Solomon on the high altar in Gibeon [1 Kgs 3:4], the thousand “bucklers” [Song 4:4] and many others), and the appearance of the number as a whole number is more natural than its division into two numbers whose sum reaches a thousand: “seven hundred” and “three hundred.” Also the writer of Kings was familiar with the “thousand wives” tradition and sought to lend it a more historical and authentic character, a goal he thought to achieve by dividing the thousand into two types of wives, “royal” wives and concubines. Since 1 Kings 10, to which the verses telling of the multitudes of Solomon’s wives (1 Kgs 11:1aα, 3) were juxtaposed, is full of numbers, and not round numbers (see vv. 14, 16–17, 26, 29), the reference to the number of women blends in quite well. Might the writer of Kings have taken the tradition of Solomon’s thousand wives from the Song of Songs? Not necessarily; we’ve already concluded that the verses in the Song rested on a tradition that was widely known. However, I am inclined to believe that the version of the tradition in Kings derives from love poems, and probably poems that are similar—or even exactly like—those that were eventually included in the collection of poems that is Song of Songs. The possibility of dividing the wives appears in another poem in the collection: “There are sixty queens and eighty concubines, and maidens without number. Just one is my dove, my perfect one, the only one of her mother, the delight to the one who bore her” (6:8-9). ‫שרות‬, “royal wives,” in Kings, correspond to the ‫מלכות‬, “queens,” here; see Isa. 49:23: “Kings shall tend your children, Their royal wives [‫ ]שרותיהם‬shall serve you as nurses.”15 The opposition to the large number of wives in Kings corresponds with Song 8:11-12’s ridicule of the king’s vast harem, and also with another poem that mocks Solomon and the type of love he represents: Song 3:7-11. That poem

15. Also the words ‫ מלך‬and ‫ שר‬are occasionally synonymous, for example Prov.8:15-16; see also the covert name etymologies of Sarah, “Kings of people shall issue from her” (Gen. 17:16) and Israel: “And kings shall come forth from your loins.”

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emphasizes the lack of intimacy in Solomon’s bedroom, implying that, filled as it is with so many women, there is barely any room to stand, “Within, it was paved with the love of the daughters of Jerusalem” (v. 10); the women, furthermore, are there in order to gaze at the grandeur and the “crown with which his mother crowned him on his wedding day, on the day of his heart’s rejoicing” (v. 11). Whether or not Song 8:11-12 was the only source from which the writer in Kings knew the thousand wives tradition, it is clear that the poem was widely known and beloved already in the First Temple period, as attested by the reference to it in the prophecy by Isaiah: “For in that day, every spot where there could stand a thousand vines worth a thousand shekels of silver shall become a wilderness of thornbush and thistle” (7:23).16 The prophet has, I think, correctly understood the Vineyard Poem in Song of Songs and its allusion to the thousand wives—a thousand pieces of silver are the price for a thousand grape vines: Solomon’s wives. The prophet Isaiah makes one more use of our love poem in his own vineyard poem in Isa. 5:1-7, which begins with the words, “Let me sing for my beloved [‫ ]ידידי‬a song of my lover about his vineyard: A vineyard belonged to my beloved [‫]לידידי‬.” The prophet has transferred the Song of Songs poem to the allegorical sphere and interprets it as referring to the relations between the lover, God, and his vineyard, the congregation of Israel. With ‫ידידי‬, he alludes to Solomon, whose other name is ‫( ידידיה‬2 Sam. 12:25).17 This popular love poem left its mark also on the opening of the story about Naboth’s vineyard (1 Kings 21): “Naboth the Jezreelite had a vineyard that was in Jezreel” (v. 1). In that story, the king’s inability to acknowledge the unbreakable relationship between Naboth and his vineyard corresponds to the Song’s depiction of Solomon as being unable to understand a man having intimate relations with only one woman.18 I have already mentioned how the Chronicler, too, knew our poem when he wrote about Rehoboam, “and he sought many wives [‫( ”]המון נשים‬2 Chr. 11:23), after he had already written, “for he took eighteen wives and sixty concubines” (ibid. v. 21). It may even be that the Chronicler’s division into two types of wives is borrowed from Song of Songs 6:8-9, though he could also have followed the division of the thousand wives in Kings. We cannot omit the possibility that echoes of the Song’s Vineyard Song are heard also in another book attributed to Solomon, Ecclesiastes,19 where antagonism

16. See N. H. Tur-Sinai, “Song of Songs that Is to Solomon,” in HaLashon Ve-Hasefer, vol. 2 (Hasefer; Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1959), 374 [Hebrew]. 17. For more on this, see below, Chapter 8, “Allegorical Interpretation.” 18. For more on 1 Kings 21 and its relationship with the Vineyard Song, see below, Chapter 8, “The Allegorical Interpretation.” 19. The superscription to that book reads, “The words of Qohelet son of David, king in Jerusalem” (1:1). The attribution of Ecclesiastes to Solomon is somewhat strange, since if this were so, why would Solomon be given the sobriquet “Qohelet”? In the continuation of chapter 1 it is written, “I, Qohelet, have been king over Israel in Jerusalem” (v. 12). The

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toward women is expressed: “Further I sought and did not find—one man in a thousand20 I found, and a woman among all these21 I did not find” (7:28). Although this verse speaks about a thousand people and not a thousand women, the link made between “woman” and “thousand” and the opposition established between the one and the thousand, like that between the poet’s one wife and the thousand wives of Solomon, supports a consideration of the direct influence between the verses in Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes. * In conclusion, the tradition about Solomon’s thousand wives apparently originated in oral traditions that preceded both Song of Songs and Kings. The writer of the Vineyard Song (Song 8:11-12) knew this tradition, and so did his audience, who easily understood his allusion. Clearly, anyone who was not familiar with the tradition would not have understood the poem. The writer who introduced the tradition into the Book of Kings did not himself create it, but knew it and gave it expression. His division of the thousand into seven hundred royal wives and three hundred concubines (1 Kgs 11:3) testifies to this being a secondary use of the tradition, which was now being fit to a new historiographic context. It may be that the writer of the verses in Kings knew the thousand-wives tradition from the Vineyard Song and, along with it, other love poems that had found their way into the Song of Songs, including the other poem that mocks Solomon (3:7-11) and the poem that divides the women into different groups (6:410). In its time, the Vineyard Song in Song of Songs was extremely popular and left its mark on the prophecies of Isaiah (7:23; 5:1-7) and on the story of Naboth’s vineyard (1 Kgs 21), perhaps even in Eccles. 7:28 about the character of women. It is clear that the tradition about the thousand wives was written in the Book of Kings in order to explain Solomon’s waning power and the division of his kingdom. It is for this reason that it was attached to the verses in chapter 10 that speak about the king’s massive wealth, his excess of horses and gold. In the tradition’s original appearance in Kings, there was no mention that the wives were foreign or that Solomon was led astray by their gods, as we see

original superscription of the book may have read, “I am Qohelet king in Jerusalem,” without the words “son of David” (which do not appear in 1:12), and which were possibly added in order to identify the king with Solomon. The words in 1:12, “over Israel,” do not appear in the superscription in 1:1 and we cannot exclude the possibility that they were added after the king was already identified as Solomon. It seems that, originally, the term ‫ מלך‬denoted a man of immense wealth who was not dependent on others, and whose prosperity allowed him to do whatever he wished. 20. To the expression “one man in a thousand,” compare Job 9:3 and 33:23. 21. To the expression “among all these,” see also Lev. 18:24, Ezek. 16:43, Hag. 2:13, Job 12:9.

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from a comparison of the tradition in Kings with the Kingship Law that is in Deuteronomy (17:14-20) and with the prophecy of Zechariah (9:9-10). Only in its final development did the thousand wives turn into foreign wives, in order to create a correlation between Solomon’s punishment—the division of the united kingdom—and the destruction of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, both occurrences becoming attributed to the sin of idol-worship. The attribution of both catastrophes to this transgression accords with the general outlook in the Deuteronomistic historiography in which idol-worship was practiced in Israel from the very first days of the Period of the Judges and lasted until the destruction of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

Chapter 3 SONG OF SONGS—RIDDLE OF RIDDLES1

When reading the Bible, we tend to want to find one clear meaning of the text. It is not my intention here to jump into the vexed controversy of whether there indeed exists one single and correct meaning to the exclusion of all others. However, the biblical text is frequently ambiguous, with a single passage supporting simultaneous interpretations. The literary technique of ambiguity is a common feature in poetry, as has been described by D. Yellin, “Double meaning is used by the poet to surprise the reader, by employing one word to mean two different things, and the reader is drawn to discover what those two meanings might be.”2 I will cite but one of Yellin’s copious examples, “Ah, those who chase liquor from early in the morning, and till late in the evening are inflamed by wine!” (Isa. 5:11), where the word ‫ידליקם‬, “inflamed,” describes the enthusing effects of the wine (see Hos. 7:5), but the root ‫ דל״ק‬denotes also a sense of pursuit, thereby signifying that wine causes drinkers to pursue it day and night.3 Another example of the purposeful use of ambiguity in the Bible, also from Isaiah, is cited by M. Paran,4 “Your men shall fall by the sword, your fighting manhood in battle” (3:25), where the vocalization of the word ‫מתיך‬, with a schwa under the mem, indicates reading “your men,” but the verse goes on to speak of those slain in battle, adding the second sense of the same word, though vocalized with a tzeire under the mem, “your dead.”5

1. An earlier version of this chapter, translated from the Hebrew by Dr. Sara Friedman, was published as “Song of Songs—Riddle of Riddles,” in The Art of Love Lyrics: In Memory of Bernard Courier, OP, and Hans Jacob Polotsky (Cahiers de la Revue Biblique 49; Paris: J. and Gabalda Company, 2000), 11–23. Reprinted by permission. 2. D. Yellin, Collected Works, Vol. 6: Biblical Studies (ed. E. Z. Melamed; Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 1983), 254 [Hebrew]. 3. Yellin, Collected Works, 258–59. 4. M. Paran, “On Ambiguity in the Bible,” Beer-Sheva 1 (1973): 150–61 [Hebrew]. 5. For this example, see ibid., 154–55.

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S. Paul has published two articles with a wealth of examples on the use of paronomasia and other wordplay devices,6 more than enough to convince us that the biblical author was fond of enigmatic and equivocal language that invited alert readers to unravel the double meanings enfolded within it.7 The Song of Songs wields this ambiguity to attain unmatched elegance in its collection of erotic love poems. These poems are often equivocal: some are dreams (e.g., 3:1-5; 5:2–6:3), while others evoke a sense of fantasy (e.g., 1:2-4; 2:4-7),8 leaving us uncertain as to what has transpired in reality and what belongs in the realm of the imagination. At times, the line between vehicles and tenors becomes blurred, with the same word bearing two distinct meanings—the actual and the signified—in the same poem. This occasional ambiguity is compounded by the playfulness of the two speakers: the lover and her beloved tease one another, as lovers do, and the reader, like the lovers themselves, must reread the words two or three times in order to reveal the multilayered meanings. The poems of the Song of Songs are riddles, and a riddle may have more than one answer. Readers that content themselves with only one facet of meaning will miss the point and fail to reveal the humor that permeates the entire composition. Let the willing reader join me in a quest for solutions to riddles: we are invited to relax and enjoy, but to keep our linguistic sensibilities sharp and to be prepared to smile along with the lovers. As we cannot read all the poems, let us sample several, to whet the appetite. * I begin with the collection’s shortest poem, consisting of only nine words in Hebrew: Catch us the foxes, The little foxes that ruin vineyards— and our vineyards are in bloom. (2:15)

6. S. M. Paul, “Polysensuous Polyvalency in Poetic Parallelism,” in Sha’arei Talmon, Studies in the Bible, Qumran and the Ancient Near East, presented to Shemaryahu Talmon (ed. M. Fishbane and E. Tov; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1992), 147–63; “Polysemous Pivotal Punctuation: On More Janus Double Entendres,” in Texts, Temples and Traditions: A Tribute to Menahem Haran (ed. M. V. Fox, V. A. Hurowitz, A. Hurvitz, M. L. Klein, B. J. Shwartz and N. Schupak; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1996), 369–74. Both articles contain extensive bibliography. 7. On the devices of ambiguity and its influence on the unfolding of events, see Y.  Zakovitch, “Ambiguous Expressions in Biblical Narrative,” in “I will utter riddles from ancient times”: Riddles and Dream-riddles in Biblical Narrative (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2005), 88–172 [Hebrew]. 8. See Y. Zakovitch, Das Hohelied (HThKAT; Freiburg, 2004), 85–86.

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But for its inclusion in the Song of Songs, nothing would indicate the poem’s erotic nature: out of context, one might suppose it to be a ditty chanted by children who play a game of tag. The symmetry achieved through the repetition of the final word of the colon as initial word of the next colon, as well as by the use of rhyme, impart a mischievous and lighthearted tone.9 The context implies that the speaking voice is that of the young maidens: in the Song of Songs, the vineyard is a metaphor for a maiden (8:11-12) and for female genitalia (1:6). An initial reading yields the impression that the women wish the foxes/men, who threaten their innocence, to be caught. While it is true that the eager foxes raid vineyards “in bloom” (see also 2:13)—a delicate perfume wafts from the vine-blossoms, especially in the early morning10—the imperative is attenuated, conveying even amusement, for the threat is not grave: they are but “little” foxes, after all!11 A second reading gives rise to a distinct, contradictory understanding: no warning of lurking danger is raised here but an invitation to the foxes to have their way with the women. The verb ‫ אח״ז‬is used in Song both for describing the beloved embracing her lover (“I held him fast, I would not let him go” 3:4) and for the lover holding the palm tree, a metaphor for the beloved (7:9). ‫לנו‬, usually “for us,” can also be the direct object “us” (see Lev. 19:18; 2 Sam. 3:30),12 making this a command by the women to the men to catch them. This reading of the poem, as encouragement to the men, is supported by the use of ‫“ חב״ל‬to ruin,” which can also mean “to conceive”—see Song 8:5 and especially Ps. 7:15, “He conceives evil, is pregnant with mischief, and gives birth to fraud.” The mention of a fragrance wafting from the vine-blossoms is the climax of the maidens’ seduction of the men, and in due course the flowers will become fruit, following the fox’s visit to the vineyard and after the love-act. The ambiguity of this riddle-poem may give recourse to a woman against whom accusations of being a seductress are leveled: she can always claim that she intended the other, innocent meaning—a plea for help and protection from the men! *

9. On rhyme in biblical poetry, see W. G. E. Watson, Classical Hebrew Poetry (JSOT Supplement Series 26; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1984), 229–34. 10. I. Löw, Die Flora der Juden 1 (Vienna: Kohut Foundation, 1924): 72–3, 122. 11. On the fox-cub as image of a lustful youth in ancient Egyptian poetry, see Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs, 114. “Little” may also be an allusion to the male genitalia: see “My little one is thicker than my father’s loins” (1 Kgs 12:10) and “that little organ a man has: starve it, it is satisfied; feed it, it starves” (BT Sukkah 2b). 12. See GKC, section 117n.

36

The Song of Songs

The next poem is also a female’s monologue: the maiden is telling the daughters of Jerusalem about herself, apparently apologizing for being different and inferior. I am black but comely, O daughters of Jerusalem— Like the tents of Kedar, Like the pavilions of Solomon. Don’t stare at me because I am swarthy, Because the sun has gazed upon me. My mother’s sons quarreled with me, they made me guard the vineyard; My own vineyard I did not guard. (1:5-6)

The poem’s disapproval of dark skin owes to its dryness, “My skin, blackened, is peeling off me; my bones are charred by the heat” (Job 30:30); “Now their faces are blacker than soot. . . . Their skin has shriveled on their bones, It has become dry as wood” (Lam. 4:8). Still, she is not unattractive, says the maiden, she is ‫נאוה‬, “comely.” The root ‫ קד״ר‬in “the tents of Kedar” conveys blackness, see especially Ben Sira 25:17, “Evil in a woman will darken a man’s face and make it somber,” though our maiden is as beautiful as the pavilions of Solomon. By comparing herself first to the tents and then extending the metaphor to the synonym “pavilions” (Isa. 54:2; Jer. 4:20), the speaker places herself on a par with the renowned wealth and sumptuousness of Solomon’s possessions13: let them not be deceived by her dry, dark skin, says the maiden to the daughters of Jerusalem. She is well aware of her allure. In the next verse, the young woman implores her listeners to pay no attention to her swarthiness: not to criticize (see Jer. 12:3) or mock her, nor to be harsh in their judgment for “the sun has gazed upon me” (Job 20:9; 28:7). The maiden seems to say to her companions, “Don’t look at me like that, for the sun has already gazed upon me.” Several of the ancient translations interpreted ‫ שׁז״פ‬here to mean ‫שׂר״פ‬, “burn,” perhaps linking it to ‫שׁד״פ‬, “scorch” (Gen. 41:6).14 The maiden recounts how she acquired her desiccated look: her watchful brothers, ever intent on preserving her honor, have “quarreled” with her; by choosing the root ‫ חר״ה‬for “quarreled,” the poet constructs a clever wordplay between the fiery anger of the brothers and the sun’s heat. For the link between ‫ חר״ה‬and blackness, see the above-mentioned verse from Job: “My skin, blackened [‫]שחר‬, is peeling . . . my bones are charred [‫ ]חרה‬from the heat” (Job 30:30). The woman’s brothers have instructed her to guard the vineyards, where her skin darkened, but the reason for their anger remains unclear. The chiastic structure (“they made me guard the vineyards/My own vineyards I did not guard”) hints at the connection between an act and its consequence: has she failed to guard her

13. Solomon’s wealth and sumptuous palaces are referred to in another poem, 3:7-11; and see also 8:11-12. 14. See the Greek translations by Aquila, Theodotion.

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37

own vineyard because she had to guard theirs? Perhaps she was forced to guard their vineyards as punishment for neglecting her own? “Vineyard” has different meanings in its two uses here: in the word’s first occurrence, the vineyards that the maiden was told to guard, it is used in the literal sense; but the second use is figurative—it is her innocence that she has not guarded (2:15). The sister who brought shame and dishonor upon her family was then sent by her brothers to guard their vineyards, where the sun browned her skin. Do the maiden’s words really convey a heartfelt apology for her inferior status to the daughters of Jerusalem whose fair skin has been protected by the shade of the city walls? Another reading of the poem reveals that the words of this riddle hide a second, humorous interpretation in which a country girl speaks with haughty arrogance. In this reading, the waw in ‫ ונאוה‬is now the conjunctive waw meaning “and”: “black and comely.” Here, instead of signaling inferiority, black indicates youth and vigor, “For youth and black hair are fleeting” (Eccl. 11:10).15 By comparing her own beauty to the tents of Kedar, the young woman affords the city dwellers a glimpse of the exotic world that lies beyond its walls, a world of nomadic tribes unhindered by physical boundaries. She, the maiden, is as free as the wandering Kedarites, free to do as she pleases with only the sun to see her. Her angry brothers may have banished her from home, but it is precisely her solitude that makes her liberty sweeter and allows her to be lax in guarding her own vineyard.16 This young beauty from the countryside, exotic and dark-skinned, arouses the envy of the daughters of Jerusalem, who are confined to the city and by the strict social conventions that prevail within its walls. * Let me now examine two dialogue-poems between the beloved and her lover, beginning with the final poem in the Song of Songs (8:13-14), an appeal by the lover to his beloved and her response. You who sit in the garden, friends listen to your voice. Let me hear it. Flee, my beloved! Be like the gazelle or a young stag on the hills of spice!

An initial reading might lead us to reason that it is the young man’s invitation that has aroused the woman’s fury and has spurred her to send him away, in which case the book would unexpectedly conclude with the abrupt separation of the lovers.

15. See C. L. Seow, Ecclesiastes (AB; New York: Doubleday, 1997), 350–51. 16. Another poem in the Song of Songs also expresses tension between the young woman and her brothers who are bent on preserving her honor and innocence; see 8:8-10.

38

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The lover addresses his beloved, “You who sit in the garden,” making it clear that the woman is inside the garden while her lover remains outside it (see 4:12).17 We understand that he wishes to show off his unseen beloved. He wants his companions to hear her voice, his sophomoric pride reminding us somewhat of Ahasuerus who commands Queen Vashti to appear before his guests in order to impress them with her great beauty (Est. 1:10-11). In Song, the lover is more tactful: he refers to his entourage not as “my friends” but as “friends”—if she likes, they can also be her friends, though when he says “let me hear it,” and not “let us here it,” he seems to ignore these others and to ask that she devote her song to him alone. Like Vashti who denies the king his wish, this woman, too, refuses her lover. She can understand his words differently: “friends listen to your voice” can mean that they are obeying, are willing to do your bidding, and like them he, too, so that ‫השמיעיני‬, “Let me hear it,” becomes Command me and I will do your bidding. For the meaning of ‫ שמע לקול‬in the sense of obeying, see, for example, Gen. 3:17; 16:2. Command him she does: she humiliates him before his companions, telling him to “Flee, my beloved!” Her anger is fierce (though we must not take her admonishment too seriously: were she truly angered, she would not have addressed him as “my beloved”18). Notwithstanding her affectionate address, the consequences for the young man will certainly be dire should his infuriated lover catch him and so he must depart quickly, like a gazelle (see, e.g., Prov. 6:5) or a young stag. The seriousness of her command, however, is also made questionable by the specified destination, the “hills of spice,” which hardly sound like a particularly harsh sort of punishment. The lighthearted threat thus encourages readers to find a completely different interpretation of the beloved’s words. Perhaps “stag” and “gazelle” do not refer only to swift animals but are to be understood also figuratively, as referring to the two lovers of our poem? If so, then the maiden does not command her lover to flee from her, but to flee with her to a safe haven (see 1 Sam. 27:4), away from his companions. Where might this haven be? In another verse, whose second half is similar to the verse in our poem, the beloved commands her lover, “Before day breathes, before the shadows of night are gone, run away, my beloved! Be like a gazelle or stag on the hills of bater” (‫ בתר‬2:17). ‫ בתר‬is related to ‫בתרון‬, a valley lying between two hills (see 2 Sam. 2:29).19 Still, how does this verse help us, since the meaning of the expression “hills of bater” does not seem to help us understand what “hills of spices” in our verse connotes. Happily, a third verse can help: at the end of the wasf that describes the woman’s body in Song 4:1-7, the lover’s gaze comes to rest on the woman’s breasts, “your two breasts are like two fawns [‫]עפרים‬, twins of a gazelle, grazing among the lilies” (4:5), and the next verse, whose opening is identical to

17. Similarly to “vineyard,” which has two meanings in Song—the literal and the figurative, of the woman’s sexual organ (see above, on 1:6)—“garden,” too, can be the garden in which the woman sits, as in our verse, but can also signify the woman, herself (4:12). 18. This reminds us of the warning against the foxes, which was playful rather than threatening, as they are but “little” foxes. 19. See BDB, 166.

3. Song of Songs—Riddle of Riddles

39

that in Song 2:17, then explains: “Before day breathes, before the shadows of night are gone, I will go to the mount of myrrh, to the hill of frankincense” (v. 6). The “hills of spices,” the “hills of bater,” that is hills that are divided by a valley, are thus none other than the woman’s own breasts. The woman is inviting her lover to leave his companions and his boasting in order to savor the pleasures of love with her. This reading fits the poem’s position at the end of the book: the conclusion is a happy one and the union of the lovers takes place far from even our prying eyes.20 * In the next dialogue-poem it is again the beloved who has the final word, but the structure differs from that in the previous poem. Here the beloved speaks first, her lover responds, and then she concludes the exchange. I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys. Like a lily among thorns so is my darling among the maidens. Like an apple tree among trees of the forest, so is my love among the young men. In his shade I delighted to sit, his fruit is sweet in my mouth. (Song 2:1-3)

The maiden begins by comparing herself to flowers from the Sharon region and “the valleys.” The flowers are not of any rare species; in any case, their exact identification is not of primary importance.21 Her words perplex the lover: what is her purpose in calling herself a rose and a lily? Does she expect her lover to object and to praise her beauty? That is how he understands her words, and he elaborates, praising her beauty: if she is a rose, other women are thorns, lacking beauty and able to inflict damage. But no, that is not what the maiden yearns to hear: her lover has failed to solve the riddle. A woman comparing herself to a flower, especially to a rose, expects

20. The joyful conclusion of the book with the union of the lovers invites readers to begin reading it anew from the beginning. What’s more, while the final poem has the beloved sending her lover to “the hills of spices,” the scent of spices is invoked in the opening poem: “Your ointments yield a sweet fragrance, your name is like finest oil” (1:3). At the end of the book the woman bids her lover to flee, and at the beginning, “Draw me after you, let us run!” (1:4). In the final poem, the lover mentions his companions and their interest in her, “Friends listen to your voice” (8:13), while in the opening poem she speaks of the maidens’ interest in him, “Therefore do maidens love you” (1:3). 21. For a possible classification of the flowers in the Song, see J. Feliks, Plant World of the Bible (Ramat Gan: Massada, 1966), 234, 242–3 [Hebrew].

40

The Song of Songs

to be plucked: “My love has gone down to his garden, to the beds of spices, to graze in the gardens and to gather lilies. My beloved is mine and I am his. He feasts in a field of lilies” (6:2-3). Has the man, too timid to take the initiative and not as bold as the woman, failed to unravel her secret? How can she achieve her purpose without embarrassing him? She begins by returning his compliment: “Like an apple tree among forest trees, so is my love among the young men.” The apple tree is mentioned frequently in the Song of Songs (2:5; 7:9);22 “forest trees” bear no fruit (Ezek. 15:2; Eccl. 2:5-6). Her compliment is therefore more generous than his, for although the forest trees are not without value—they provide shade and wood—the lover surpasses them. Not only does the apple tree possess the superior qualities of the trees of the forest, such as shade, “I delighted to sit in his shade,” it also bears fruit: “and his fruit is sweet to my mouth.” By elaborating upon his original compliment, the maiden alludes, in her mention of eating his sweet fruit, to the act of love; cf. the woman’s words to her lover elsewhere in Song, “His mouth is delicious and all of him is delightful” (5:16). The woman is so intent on joining her lover that she speaks in the past tense (2:4), as though they have already been intimate.23 * My last example is a dialogue-poem in which the brothers tease their “little” sister with ambiguous phrases, while she answers adroitly, solving their riddles to her advantage. We have a little sister, Whose breasts are not yet formed. What shall we do for our sister When she is spoken for? If she be a wall, We will build upon it a silver battlement; If she be a door, We will panel it in cedar. I am a wall, My breasts are like towers. So I became in his eyes As one who finds peace. (Song 8:8-10)

The poem has three couplets: in the first, the brothers paint an apparently objective picture (v. 8a) and ask how they will deal with a future scenario (v. 8b). In the second couplet they introduce two alternative scenarios and their own reactions (v. 9). On first reading, it is unclear whether both possibilities

22. On the classification of the apple tree, see ibid., 60–63. 23. For this form of the past (perfectum confidential), see GKC, section 106n.

3. Song of Songs—Riddle of Riddles

41

are one and the same or whether they are opposites. The third couplet is the sister’s response to her brothers, in which she picks up their metaphors and expands them: her “I am a wall” responds to the first part of the second couplet (“If she be a wall”), after which she reacts to their observation that “her breasts have not yet formed” with the retort, “My breasts are like towers.” We notice the discrepancy between the brother’s perception of their sister and the young woman’s perception of herself. In the first couplet, the brothers discuss their sister among themselves. They ignore her but speak deliberately, knowing that she listens. They seem to express concern for their little sister. Is she very young or merely younger than they? Or perhaps “little” is not a reference to age at all but to a lack of sexual development, “whose breasts are not yet formed”?24 The brothers worry about the absence of those badges of femininity so prized in erotic poetry (see, e.g., 4:5; 7:9). If this is indeed their meaning, then the question, “what shall we do with her when she is spoken for,” that is in marriage (1 Sam. 25:39), may be an expression of genuine concern and embarrassment: should a man wish to marry her, her shame will be made public. However, again, they may be referring to her age, without any criticism of her physical development. Let us now address the hypothetical situations the brothers raise in the second couplet, and consider their ambiguity. “If she is a wall” may refer to their sister’s flat chest, but should she accuse them of insulting her honor they can claim that they have spoken of her chastity, the hope that she will stand as stalwart as a fortress that no man can scale. The brothers’ own response to their proposed scenario also lends itself to two interpretations: “we will build upon it a silver battlement” (see Ezek. 46:23) may refer to a jeweled ornament shaped like a fortified city, similar to the City of Gold that Rabbi Akiba made for his wife (BT Shabbat 59a).25 Such a piece of jewelry would hide the humiliating absence of breasts (if we accept the first interpretation of “wall”), but we may also contend that such a costly trinket would be a fitting reward for a maiden’s modesty. When we turn to the brothers’ second proposition, “If she be a door,” we see that it, too, like the wall image, can refer to the sister’s flat chest. The brothers’ solution is also similar, “We will panel it in cedar,” that is they will form or tie26 a panel of cedar, the finest of wood, in order to hide what is missing underneath. But if it is her chastity they speak of, we have yet another ambiguity: “door” may be a synecdoche for “wall”: a gate within a wall, “a tranquil people living secure, all of them living in unwalled towns and lacking bars and gates” (Ezek. 38:11).

24. See “When is a girl ‘little’? From when she is eleven years old and a day until she is twelve years old and a day” (BT Yebamoth 100b); E. Ben Yehuda, A Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew, vol. 12 (Tel Aviv: La’am, 1951), 5881 [Hebrew]. 25. On jewelry of this type, see S. M. Paul, “Jerusalem—A City of Gold,” IEJ 17 (1967): 259–63. 26. For the stem ‫ צו״ר‬with the sense of “to form, to shape,” see BDB, 849; for the root’s sense “to tie,” see ibid., 848.

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The  gates are fortifications, “I will shatter doors of bronze, and cut down iron bars” (Isa. 45:2). The brothers’ concern to cover their sister with costly panels of cedar now expresses approval and approbation. On the other hand, the door image might be the reverse of a wall, with the door that opens symbolizing wantonness that can be checked by unyielding cedar keeping the door sealed to strangers. The little sister hears out her brothers and solves their riddles, cleverly choosing between the various possible interpretations: “I am a wall,” she replies, choosing the meaning of wall as an emblem of chastity. In her answer, “wall” is thus a metaphor for chastity and does not describe her chest since, she states explicitly, she has breasts. The brothers apparently know nothing of their sister. They haven’t taken the trouble to look at her for quite some time: had they looked, they would have seen her breasts, firm like towers. She picks up the thread of their bellicose imagery and to the revelation of her well-developed breasts adds another surprising disclosure: she has a lover, whose very existence the brothers have hitherto been ignorant of, “So I became, in his eyes, as one who finds peace [‫]שלום‬.” In Ruth we find a similar phrase, though there it is with the noun ‫ מנוחה‬instead of ‫שלום‬, when Naomi speaks to her widowed daughters-in-law, adjuring them to marry again, “May . . . each of you find repose in the house of a husband” (Ruth 1:9) and “Daughter, I must seek a home for you, where you may find repose” (3:1). Our poem prefers “peace” instead of “repose” since the sister wants to teach her brothers that their bellicose imagery—wall, siege, towers—has been unnecessary: she has found peace and security with her lover. In this state of peace, the young woman opens her door, beckoning her lover inside, reminding us of the laws of war in Deuteronomy where, in speaking of a besieged city, we read “If it responds peaceably and lets you in . . .” (Deut. 20:11). * The riddle-poems in the Song of Songs seem to describe tensions between lovers, between a young woman and her brothers, between a maiden and her friends, the “daughters of Jerusalem.” But the speakers in the poems all have smiles on their lips, and we come to realize that these are only mock crises, disguised in the poems’ multilayered meanings. Readers smile, too, when they discover the error in their initial, more obvious readings of the poems, which have ignored the more playful meanings hiding within. Laughter and a general optimism are a fitting accompaniment to love: eroticism can be a daunting subject, and the playful ambiguity and mischievous wordplays in the Song of Songs set the lovers at ease, as they do ourselves, lovers of erotic poetry and its riddles.

Chapter 4 THRICE ASKED “WHO IS SHE” IN SONG OF SONGS1

The twenty-seven poems that comprise the Song of Songs2 are joined by five poetic fragments (3:6; 6:10; 8:5a; 8:5b; 8:6a). The first three of these, which are the focus of our discussion here, are question-riddles concerning the identity of an unknown woman. Each one opens with the words “who is she [‫ ”]מי זאת‬and proceeds with a participle that begins to characterize the mysterious woman and makes it possible, one believes, to identify her. The three fragments are:

Song 3:6 “Who is she that rises from the desert like columns of smoke, in clouds of myrrh and frankincense, of all the powders of the merchant?” Song 6:10 “Who is she that looks out like the dawn, beautiful as the moon, radiant as the sun, awesome as bannered hosts?” Song 8:5a “Who is she that rises from the desert, leaning upon her beloved?” The first question is quite similar to the third, both of them sharing the first five words, ‫מי זאת עלה מן המדבר‬, “Who is she that rises from the desert.” These two are also left without answers, while the answer to the second question is, surprisingly, placed just before it (6:4-9). That peculiar arrangement of response followed by query might be evidence that the two were not created together as one unit, and that the answer was created later (more on this below). In this chapter, we will consider the literary genre of question-riddles, riddles that concern themselves with identifying a woman or man and their Sitz im Leben. We will look for appearances of the literary genre outside the Song of Songs and examine the relationship between the queries and answers in the genre’s different appearances. But first, let us deal with the placement of the three riddles in the

1. An earlier version of this article was published in Hebrew in Mirkamim: Tarbut, sifrut, folklor le-Galit Hazan Rokem (Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Folklore 28; Jerusalem Studies in Hebrew Literature 25; ed. H. Salomon and A. Shinan; Jerusalem 2013), 1: 33-40. Published by permission of the Institute of Jewish Studies of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 2. For a full explanation of my division of the poems, see Zakovitch, Das Hohelied, 31–33.

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Song of Songs, with the assumption that the juxtapositions between the book’s different poems were intentional and express an exegetical viewpoint.3 A. “Who is she that rises from the desert like columns of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, of all the powders of the merchant?” (3:6) The question interrupts the continuity between the poem of the young woman’s dream (3:1-5) and the description of Solomon’s bed (vv. 7–11). The poem about the young woman speaks of what she experiences while she dreams at night, ‫( בלילות‬v. 1), and the poem about the king tells of Solomon’s bed ‫( בלילות‬v. 8). How different is the young woman from the king: she displays no fear as she sets out at night from her house in order to find her lover, despite the danger of perhaps meeting with watchmen who “patrol the town” (v. 3). Solomon’s bed, on the other hand, is guarded by “sixty warriors around it . . . because of terror by night” (vv. 7–8), and the king dares not leave his bedroom, which is “decked with love by the maidens of Jerusalem” (v. 10). The young woman, who seeks the one she loves, asks those around her, “Have you seen the one I love?” (v. 3), while the maidens of Zion are invited to see Solomon’s grandeur: “O maidens of Zion, go forth and gaze upon King Solomon” (v. 11). Our maiden is active: she takes hold of her lover and leads him to her mother’s house (v. 4); the king, on the other hand, is passive and in need of guards who are themselves girded with swords (v. 8) while his mother is the active one, and it is she who has placed the crown on his head (v. 11). The juxtaposition of these two poems highlights the superiority of the dynamic and fearless young woman, in contrast to the acquiescent and cowardly king. The riddle-question conspicuously disturbs this meaningful contrast. What, then, were the considerations of the redactor who interrupted the original juxtaposition? The description of the maiden in the riddle focuses on the sense of smell, on the fragrances that float from the girl “like columns of smoke,” a mist of scents that swirls and ascends from her.4 She is “perfumed with myrrh and frankincense from all the merchant’s powders,” substances that were crushed into powders and brought from afar by the merchant (cf. e.g., “the trade of merchants” [1 Kgs 10:15], and consider the perfume-yielding plants that grow in the young woman’s garden in Song 4:13-14, and particularly those named in the description

3. The Rabbis continually asked questions like “Why is . . . juxtaposed to . . .?” (e.g., BT Sukkah 2a) or “What has the matter of . . . to do with . . .?” (e.g., BT Berakhot 15b). It is clear that the Bible’s redactors were already aware of the interpretative function of juxtaposition; see A. Shinan and Y. Zakovitch, “Why Is ‘A’ Placed Next to ‘B’: Juxtaposition in the Bible and Beyond,” in Tradition, Transmission and Transformation from Second Temple Literature Through Judaism and Christianity in Late Antiquity (ed. M. Kister et al.; Leiden: Brill, 2015), 322–42. 4. The expression ‫תמרות עשן‬, “columns of smoke,” appears also in Joel 3:3; cf. ‫“ עמוד עשן‬pillar of smoke” in Judg. 20:40. In rabbinic Hebrew we have, “The smell of the incense after its column [‫ ]תמרותו‬has risen” (BT Pesahim 26a), and also the verb from the root ‫תמ״ר‬: “(The incense) of Beit Avtinas would form a column [‫ ]מיתמרת‬and rise till the walls” (BT Yoma 38a). The noun and verb may be connected to the name of the date palm, ‫תמר‬, which grows to great heights.

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45

of the groom’s garments in the wedding psalm, Psalm 45: “All your robes [are fragrant] with myrrh and aloes and cassia” [v. 9]). The person who planted the riddle-question in its place wanted it to immediately precede the poem about Solomon’s bed: the riddle’s spices and their scents reminded him of the visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon’s court (1 Kgs 10:1-13). The queen, as we know, brought perfumes for the king: “Never again did such a vast quantity of spices arrive as that which the Queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon” (v. 10). The tale of the queen’s visit that is in the Book of Kings conceals a tradition according to which the relations between the king and queen were not limited to riddles and their solutions and the exchange of gifts, but grew to include also sexual intimacy. A hint of this can be uncovered in the verse that concludes the visit: “King Solomon, in turn, gave the Queen of Sheba everything she desired [‫ ]חפצה‬and asked for, in addition to what King Solomon gave her out of his royal bounty” (1 Kgs 10:13). The root ‫חפ״צ‬, “desire,” is often used in contexts of love; see, for example, Gen. 34:19; Deut. 21:14; Song 2:7; 3:5; 8:4. The queen has come to King Solomon to ask him riddles (1 Kgs 10:1), and indeed riddles are also associated with the world of love and marriage, as we see from the riddle posed by Samson to his Philistine chaperones at his wedding celebration (Judg. 14:12-18).5 What’s more, the Queen of Sheba, we recall, brought with her “a vast quantity of perfumes” (1 Kgs 10:10), while perfumes often appear in erotic contexts such as Prov. 7:17-18; Song 5:1; Est. 2:12. To this we must add the placement of the story of the queen’s visit just before chapter 11, which recounts Solomon’s downfall due to his many marriages to foreign women: “King Solomon loved many foreign women” (1 Kgs 11:1). Later Jewish tradition made these allusions to the king’s intimate acquaintance with the foreign queen explicit (see, e.g., Targum Sheni to Esther 1:3).6 Other sources in rabbinic literature sought to quash entirely such a possibility: “Anyone who says that the Queen of Sheba was a woman is wrong. What is ‘the Queen of Sheba’? [It should be read] the kingdom of Sheba” (BT Baba Bathra 15b). The Ethiopian epic Kebra Nagast, “The Book of the Glory of Kings,”7 tells of the relations between Solomon and Sheba, which resulted in the birth of Menelik the First, king of Ethiopia. Though repressed and concealed by the writer of 1 Kings 10, this story of Solomon and Sheba’s relationship was not erased from oral tradition and was

5. Rabbinic literature, which often expanded on topics that the Bible sought to curtail, provides the riddles that the queen posed to Solomon, many of which are of an erotic nature. See Midrash Mishlei section 1; Midrash Hahefetz (vol. 1, 406–07), and also D. Stein, “The Queen of Sheba vs. Solomon—Riddles and Interpretation in Midrash Mishlei 1,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Folklore 15 (2003): 7–35 [Hebrew]. 6. See E. Yasif, “Solomon and the Queen of Sheba,” in The Tales of Ben Sira in the Middle Ages (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1985), 50–59 [Hebrew]. 7. Budge, E. A. W., The Queen of Sheba and Her Only Son Meneyelek: A Complete Translation of the Kebra Nagast (London: Medici Society, 1922).

46

The Song of Songs

known to the person who eventually planted the riddle-question into its present position, reflecting his belief that it was she who ascended to the king’s bed.8 B. “Who is she that looks out like the dawn, beautiful as the moon, radiant as the sun, awesome as bannered hosts?” (6:10) The riddle (6:10) and its solution (which precedes it in vv. 4–9) interrupt the meaningful juxtaposition between the woman’s lengthy poem about a night-dream (5:2–6:3; for a discussion of that poem, see chapter 6, “Dream of Woman”) and her daydream (6:11-12). At the night-dream’s end, the lover says that her “beloved has gone down to his garden . . . to graze” (6:2), while in the daydream she says, “To the walnut garden I went down, to see” (6:11). The man descends to the garden “to graze,” from the root ‫רע״ה‬, and she “to see,” from the root ‫רא״ה‬, an example of sound-play. The expected union of the lovers, expressed in the night-dream, “I am my beloved and my beloved is mine, He [who] grazes among the lilies” (6:3), is realized in the daydream: “Before I knew it, My desire set me in the chariot of one of the nobles of the people” (6:12). The fragment, however, is only connected to the poem of the night-dream that precedes it. In the night-dream, the woman describes her lover: “My beloved is . . . towering [‫ ]דגול‬above ten thousand” (5:10), and the riddle mouthed by the man voices his admiration for her: “Who is she . . . awesome as bannered hosts [‫( ”?]כנדגלות‬6:10). A resemblance between the man and the woman is created also by the choice of colors: the man’s hair is black, “His locks are curled, black as a raven” (5:11), while the woman “looks out like the [black] dawn” (6:10), using the term ‫שחר‬, “dawn,” that is closely related to ‫שחור‬, “black.”9 The woman describes her lover as being ‫כלבנון‬, “like Lebanon”10 (5:15) while the woman is described as being ‫כלבנה‬, “beautiful as the [white] moon” (6:10), words that sound almost identical. In the night-dream, the daughters of Jerusalem call the woman “the most beautiful of women” (5:9; 6:1), and in the riddle the male lover confirms her beauty: “beautiful as the moon” (6:10). Verses 4–9 are undoubtedly meant to be the answer to the riddle that is in v. 10. Both the question and its answer (v. 10 and 4, respectively) contain three descriptions, where the first and third are shared: “Beautiful as the moon, radiant as the sun, awesome as bannered hosts” (v. 10). “Beautiful . . . , comely as Jerusalem, awesome as bannered hosts” (v. 4).11

It is clear that the solution to the riddle, vv. 4–9, was penned in the margins of a manuscript and when a later scribe copied the scroll, the addition found its way

8. For a possible reconstruction of the prebiblical tradition about the meeting between the king and the queen, see Shinan and Zakovitch, From Gods to God, 259–66. 9. See Chapter 5, “A Poetic Portrait,” in this volume. 10. “Lebanon” is perhaps a reference to the cedar tree, mentioned in the verse’s next words; see also Hos. 14:6-7; Ps. 72:16. Did Lebanon (the mountain and stretch of land) acquire its name due to the white (‫ )לבן‬snow that covers its peaks in winter? 11. For further signs of the unity of the riddle with its answer, see Chapter 5, “A Poetic Portrait,” in this volume.

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47

to the wrong place, inserted before the question. Many comments and additions that were added by reader-interpreters ultimately found themselves inserted incorrectly, whether because of a copyist’s incomprehension or carelessness.12 In the case before us, the copyist simply thought that the similarity between v. 9 (the end of the answer) and v. 10 (the question) required their being placed adjacent to one another. The writer of the answer knew the question already in its context within the collection, and he accordingly aimed to liken his inserted solution to its literary surroundings. I have already mentioned how the riddle connects itself to the previous poem (the night-dream), for example, through its allusions to the colors black and white. The solution adds a further color-related link: in the description of the male lover it is said, “My beloved is dazzling white and ruddy” (5:10), and in the description of the woman in the solution, “like a piece of pomegranate” (6:7) that is red. The solution strengthens the link even more between the man’s black hair (5:11) and hers, which is “like a flock of goats” (i.e., black; Song 6:5).13 In both poems, the lover addresses his beloved similarly: in 5:2, he calls her “my friend, my dove, my perfection,” and in 6:9, “my dove, my perfect one”—while in v. 4 he’s already called her, “my friend.” Both poems refer to the woman’s beauty: in the first, the daughters of Jerusalem crown her “most beautiful of women” (5:9; 6:1), and in the second the lover adds, “Beautiful as Tirzah” (6:4). In chapter 5, the woman describes her lover to her companions; in chapter 6, he describes her. C. “Who is she that rises from the desert, leaning upon her beloved?” (8:5a) The question is placed at the beginning of the book’s appendix, the first of three fragments (8:5a; 5b; 6a). Following these fragments appears an abstract wisdom poem on the essence of love whose source can be found in Prov. 6:20-35, a literary unit that warns against the love of foreign, married women. Compare: “A thief is not held in contempt for stealing to appease his hunger; Yet if caught he must pay sevenfold, he must give all the wealth of his house” (Prov. 6:30-31) and “If a man offered all the wealth of his house for love, he would be sorely scorned” (Song 8:7b). The combination of the two words ‫הון בית‬, lit. “house wealth,” appears in the Bible only in these two verses.14 Two more terms that link these two literary units are fire: “Can a man rake fire into his bosom” (Prov. 6:27) and “Its darts are darts of fire” (Song 8:6); and jealousy: “The fury of the husband will be jealousy” (Prov. 6:34) and “As fierce as Sheol is jealousy” (Song 8:6).15

12. On the topic of glosses and comments inserted into the wrong place, see Y. Zakovitch, An Introduction to Inner-biblical Interpretation (Even Yehuda: Reches, 1992), 20–21 [Hebrew]. 13. This entire poem, including the riddle and its solution in 6:4-10, is the topic of Chapter 5 in this volume. 14. On the distinctiveness of the term ‫ הון‬to Wisdom literature, see A. Hurvitz, Wisdom Language in Biblical Psalmody (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1991), 42–44 [Hebrew]. 15. On the direction of this connection, the borrowing of the poem from Proverbs by Song of Songs, see Zakovitch, Das Hohelied, 271.

48

The Song of Songs

Following the appendix,16 there appear three poems that seal the entire collection, each poem connecting itself with the book’s beginning. The poem “We have a little sister” (8:8-10) relates to the poem “I am black and comely” (1:5-6), which also contains tensions between brothers and their sister for whose honor they are responsible. The next poem, which mocks Solomon and the type of love that he represents, “Solomon had a vineyard” (8:11-12), is connected, too, to the poem in 1:5-6.17 The young woman likens her beauty to “the pavilions of Solomon” (1:5) and admits that “my own vineyard I did not guard” (v. 6), while the male lover, ridiculing Solomon, claims that “I have my very own vineyard: You may have the thousand, Solomon, and the guards of the fruit two hundred!” (8:12). She has not guarded her innocence, while he takes great care to guard his vineyard. The poem “I am black,” in 1:5-6, was thus the reason for the juxtaposition of the two poems that are in a dialogue with it (8:8-10; 11-12). As we saw in the previous chapter, the third poem—the last in Song of Songs (8:13-14)—surprises us when, to all appearances, it separates the two lovers one from the other. But the maiden, who cries “Flee, my beloved!” does not truly send her young lover away. As I’ve already shown, her words are a cleverly disguised suggestion that he flee his friends in order to join her, alone. If this is so, then the reader, who comes to the end of the book, is thus invited to start again from the beginning, and the many expressions that are shared by the two poems link them together. Having considered the placement of the book’s appendix and that of the fragments within it, let us now return our focus to the first fragment, the questionriddle in 8:5a. It seems apparent that it was added to the other two at a secondary stage and consequently disrupted the continuity that had been established between the poem “If only it could be as with a brother” (8:1-4) and the fragment “Under the apple tree I roused you; It was there your mother conceived you, there she who bore you conceived you” (v. 5b). We can understand the rationale of the redactor who placed the fragment “under the apple tree” next to “if only.” In v. 2, the beloved calls the place to which she will bring her lover in order to enjoy their love, “my mother’s house.” In v. 5b, the place in which she has become enthralled by love is the spot in which her lover’s mother had once been enthralled. In both literary units, therefore, reference is made to the girl’s and boy’s mothers in order to allude to the sexual act without being explicit. With the incorporation of the question “Who is it” in the book’s appendix, the second fragment (“Under the apple tree”) seems to connect to it as the answer that the maiden gives to her querying lover. The connection between the third

16. For another example of an appendix inserted before the end of a literary unit, see the appendix to the David biography (2 Sam. 21–24), which has been placed before the final chapters of David’s life (1 Kgs 1:1–2:12). Placing an appendix before the unit’s end promises its being preserved as an organic part of the whole. 17. This poem has been discussed in Chapter 2, “Keep Your Thousands.”

4. Thrice Asked “Who Is She” in Song of Songs

49

fragment in 8:6a, “Let me be a seal,” to the second, in 5b, “Under the apple tree”, is that in both, the speaker is a young woman who longs for the closeness of her lover. Recognizing how the questions “Who is she . . .” in the Song of Songs were initially discrete elements, and that the answer to one of them was in fact added only secondarily, leads us to the realization that such questions comprised a popular literary genre. We can imagine how the question was posed by one member of a group of friends, and the rest would compete among themselves to produce a clever answer according to the particular characteristics that were included by the questioner. Perhaps the Sitz im Leben of these riddle-questions was wedding feasts, and the questioner and his respondents—including the groom, himself— used the game to best praise the beauty of the bride. Outside of Song of Songs (the almost exclusive home of love poems in the Bible) we find similar questions, but only in the masculine gender: “Who is it/he (‫ )זה‬that . . .,” apparently representing a later development that grew out of the genre whose origin was in love poetry. Also in the case of ‫מי זה‬, the question may appear without a direct answer next to it. Thus is the case with God’s question to Job, “Who is this who darkens counsel, speaking without knowledge? Gird your loins like a man; I will ask and you will inform Me” (Job 38:2-3, and see the question’s repetition in an unexpected place in 42:3a, 4).18 In other instances, only a very slight connection is sensed between the question and answer:

1. The prophet Jeremiah includes the question, “Who is it/this” in his prophecy about Egypt: “Who is this that rises like the Nile, like streams whose waters surge?” (46:7). The natural continuation of the prophecy is God’s words, “I will rise, I will cover the earth, I will wipe out towns and those who dwell in them” (v. 8b), so that it is clear that the answer is that God is the one who will rise like the Nile. But one reader who was aware of the literary genre decided to offer his solution to the riddle, and he adjoined his incorrect solution directly to the riddle’s end: “It is Egypt that rises like the Nile, like streams whose waters surge” (v. 8a). Interestingly, the Septuagint version is missing the second part of the answer, “like streams whose waters surge.” 2. A psalm that was given to Moses to voice in the Book of Deuteronomy begins with the words, “The Lord came from Sinai; He shone upon them from Seir” (33:2).19 The verse seems to have been the solution to a riddle such as the one that opens the prophecy of vengeance on Edom: “Who is this coming from Edom in crimson garments from Bozrah” (Isa. 63:1). In both Deuteronomy 33 and Isaiah 63, God is the one around whom the riddle revolves, just as in the question in Jer. 46:7.

18. The repetition, which includes light changes, was mistakenly inserted here from the margins. See, for example, E. Dhorme, A Commentary on the Book of Job (trans. W. Knight; Leiden: T. Nelson, 1967), 645–46. 19. On the correct reading ‫לעמו‬, “upon his people,” instead of ‫למו‬, “upon them,” see the BHS.

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The Song of Songs

A number of the Bible’s masculine versions of “Who is it [‫ ”]זה‬are similar in both content and form to the feminine counterparts that we found in Song of Songs:

1. A question that has to do with male-female relations: When Rebekah first sees her soon-to-be groom, Isaac, she asks Abraham’s servant, “Who is this man walking in the field toward us?” (Gen. 24:65), and she is answered, “He is my master” (ibid.). 2. Like the question in Song 3:6, “Who is she that rises from the desert like columns of smoke, in clouds of myrrh and frankincense, of all the powders of the merchant?” (3:6), the question in Isa. 63:1 also relates to the scent of the one who appears, though in this case it is a bad odor: “Who is this coming from Edom in crimson [‫ ]חמוץ‬garments from Bozrah” (Isa. 63:1). The word ‫ חמוץ‬means also “sour-smelling,” like vinegar (‫)חומץ‬.20 3. In two of the questions in Song of Songs, the subject of the question is actively moving: “Who is this that rises from the desert” (3:6; 8:5a). Similarly, see “Who is this that rises like the Nile” (Jer. 46:7) and “Who will ascend [‫]יעלה‬ the mountain of the Lord? Who may stand in His holy place?” (Ps. 24:3).21 (We mustn’t exclude the possibility that the question, “Who is this who obscures counsel without knowledge?” in Job 42:3a, another version of “Who is this who darkens counsel, speaking without knowledge” in Job 38:2, has exchanged the more common root ‫“[ על״ה‬rise, ascend”] with the similarsounding ‫“[ על״מ‬obscure”]). In other cases, too, the questioner uses a verb that expresses movement: “Who is this that comes from Edom” (Isa. 63:1), and the answer that lacks its question, in Deuteronomy 33:2: “the Lord from Sinai comes”; see also Ps. 24:7-8. In Jer. 30:21, motion is signified by the root ‫נג״ש‬: “Who is he22 that dares to approach me,” and in Isaiah 60:8 the root ‫עו״פ‬ fills the same function: “Who are these that float like a cloud, like doves to their cotes?” 4. In one of the “Who is she” questions, there appears the participle ‫ברה‬, “radiant/pure as the sun” (Song 6:10). See the answer to the question in Ps. 24:4: “He who has clean hands and a pure [‫ ]בר‬heart.”23 5. Song of Songs 6:10 speaks of a woman in the act of looking: “Who is she that looks out like the dawn,” and compare Gen. 24:64-65: “And Rebekah lifted her eyes and she saw Isaac and said to the servant, ‘Who is this man.’”

20. See, for example, Song of Songs Rabbah to 5:1: “The waters stink and turn sour in the jug.” The garment’s fetid state is expressed explicitly in the next words of the prophecy: “and all my clothing was foul-smelling” (Isa. 63:3). 21. There are still other ‫ מי זה‬questions in this psalm: “Who is the king of glory?” (v. 8); “Who is the King of glory?” (v. 10). 22. For another question that opens with the formula ‫מי הוא זה‬, “Who is this,” see Est. 7:5. 23. For this meaning of the root ‫בר״ר‬, see BDB, 140–41.

4. Thrice Asked “Who Is She” in Song of Songs

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6. Song of Songs 6:10 emphasizes the radiance of the figure, “beautiful as the moon, radiant as the sun.” See also the answer to the unasked question in Deut. 33:2: “He shone upon them from Seir.” In Job 38:2, on the other hand, darkness appears in place of the light: “Who is this that darkens counsel” 7. In two of the questions in Song of Songs, the questioner uses similes: “like columns of smoke” (3:6); “that looks out like the dawn, beautiful as the moon, radiant as the sun, Awesome as bannered hosts” (6:10). See also Isaiah 60:8: “Who are these that float like a cloud, like doves to their cotes?” and Jer. 46:7: “Who is this that rises like the Nile, like streams whose waters surge?” * In conclusion I note how, in the course of the redaction of Song of Songs, an effort was made to make room for the “Who is she” genre. The insertion of these questions, though interfering with the deliberate juxtapositions of poems, was not random. Various considerations led to each fragment’s placement: it was a midrashlike consideration that led to the placement of 3:6 because of the identification of the one rising from the desert with the Queen of Sheba; it was the description of the beloved in 5:2–6:3 that led to a question being appended at its end—thought this proximity was later disrupted by the question’s answer that was added in the wrong place (vv. 4–9); the question in 8:5a was included in the appendix to Song of Songs that contained other fragments, too (8:5b; 6a), as well as a wisdom poem (vv. 6b–7); this appendix was, in its entirety, placed before the concluding poems of Song of Songs (vv. 8–14) that connect back to the book’s beginning. The absence of answers to certain questions or the appearance of a solution in the wrong place demonstrates how the connections between questions and answers was secondary. It is possible for question-riddles to receive a number of different solutions. Support for the secondary relationship between questions and solutions emerges from the appearance of an answer without a question in Deut. 33:2 and from the appearance of an answer that doesn’t fit the question—and even disturbs the continuity of the unit in which it was placed—in Jer. 46:8. Questions that are found outside the Song of Songs have masculine subjects, and yet they still resemble the questions that are in Song, both formally—the use of similes—and with regard to content: their focus on male-female relations and their inclusion of scents, a subject’s movement, a subject who sees and a figure that is somehow radiant. Finally, our discussion here has enabled a rather profound insight. The questions that we have found that are not within love poems often focus on God and His appearances. These include the answer in Deut. 33:2, the question that compliments it in Isa. 63:1, and also Jer. 46:7 and Ps. 24:8. All of these make clear that a strong connection exists between the Bible’s secular love poetry and its sacred poetry. This relationship will be discussed at length in the final chapter of this book, “When Did the Allegorical Interpretation of the Song Begin?”

Chapter 5 A POETIC PORTRAIT: A STUDY OF SONG OF SONGS 6:4–10

The short poem in Song 6:4-10 not only describes a beautiful woman’s face, but also the impact such a face has on its beholder. The poet seeks to convey a powerful visual experience, to communicate something that lies beyond words and, through words, to create a portrait of a living, breathing woman. The poet’s aim is like that achieved in Leonardo da Vinci's masterful Mona Lisa as described by the artist and historian G.Vasari, “She seems to be real flesh rather than paint.”1 The poem belongs to a genre that is usually referred to as wasf, an Arabic term for descriptive poems in which lovers praise one another’s physical beauty in great detail, usually by referring to imagery from the natural world. Wasfs are a type of wedding poem that is familiar also from contemporary Arabic folk poetry,2 though the origins of the genre can be traced to Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt.3 Whereas the wasf of Mesopotamia usually described the body of a goddess, however, in Egypt (as in the Song of Songs) it was used for love poems.4 In the Bible outside of Song, these poems are found in Daniel, in the description of the statue in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream (2:31-33) and in that of the man/angel dressed in linen (10:5-6). In the retelling of Genesis 12 in the Genesis Apocryphon from Qumran (1QapGen), the genre is invoked as Pharaoh’s ministers voice their detailed praises of Sarah to the ruler in the wasf style (col. 20, ll. 2-8).5 Most descriptions in the wasf style (including the statue in Daniel and Sarah in the Genesis Apocryphon) proceed downward from the top. The description of the dancing Shulammite in Song 7:1-7, on the other hand, begins with the woman’s feet and rises to her head—a logical order, since the dancer’s feet are what first

1. G. Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects (trans. W. Gaunt; London: Dent, 1963), 2:164. 2. See G. Wetzstein, “Die syrische Dreschafel,” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 5 (1873): 270– 302; G. H. Dalman, Palästinischer Diwan (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs, 1901). 3. W. Hermann, “Gedanken zur Geschichte des altorientalischen Beschreibungsliedes,” Zeitschrift für Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 75(1963): 176–96. 4. M. Roslar, “Song of Songs in Light of Erotic Hellenistic Poetry,” Eshkolot 1 (1954): 33–48 [Hebrew]. 5. J. A. Fitzmyer, The Genesis Apocryphon of Qumran Cave I (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1971), 62–63.

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attracts our eyes; see also the depiction of the woman in Ezek. 16:1-12 and the mention of Absalom’s beauty in a kind of abbreviated wasf poem in 2 Sam. 14:25. In each of these, the subject’s entire body is described. In Song 4:1-7, however, only a partial picture, of head and bust, is shown. In the poem that I will discuss here, Song 6:4-10, which repeats nearly verbatim some of the imagery from chapter 4, even less of the subject’s figure is visible. Depictions of men and women in the Bible’s wasf poems differ from one another. In the poem describing the man’s body in Song 5:10-16, we find a wealth of figurative imagery drawing from precious metals, rocks, and trees: sturdy substances indicative of the lover’s strength.6 The same is true of “the man dressed in linen” in Dan. 10:5-6. These descriptions seem to have been influenced by statues and, indeed, an affinity is apparent between the wasf genre and the description of the statue in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Dan. 2:31-33. Even so, in the Song of Songs, the imagery used to describe the male lover—especially his face—draws also from the natural world of flora and fauna, lending him spirit and warmth. The descriptions of the female body draw primarily upon imagery from the natural world. In our poem, the description of the woman is limited to her head as viewed through a window, “Who is she that looks out [‫ ]הנשקפה‬like the dawn” (6:10). The window is not mentioned explicitly, but the root ‫ שק״פ‬was regularly employed to describe looking through a window; see “Abimelech king of the Philistines, looking out of the window, saw” (Gen. 26:8); “Through the window she looked and saw7 Sisera’s mother behind the lattice” (Judg. 5:28); “Michal daughter of Saul looked out the window and saw” (2 Sam. 6:16); “Jehu went on to Jezreel. When Jezebel heard of it, she painted her eyes with kohl and dressed her hair, and she looked out of the window” (2 Kgs 9:30; see also v. 32). The literary motif of a woman standing at the window is common in the Bible; in addition to the examples cited above, there is also Rahab when she lowers Joshua’s spies through the window so that they might evade capture by the king’s officials (Josh. 2:15) and Michal lowering David through the window to save him from her father, Saul (1 Sam. 19:12). Our poem’s delineation of the woman’s head alone (without even her neck) and, similarly, the story of Jezebel’s death that I’ve just mentioned, which makes room only to note how she colors her eyes and combs her hair, were both influenced by a motif that was common in Phoenician art of the woman in the window. Such images are found in ivory reliefs from the ninth to eighth centuries BCE that were found at Arslan Tash in Syria, in the Nebo sanctuary of Khorsabad in the palace of Ashurbanipal the Second at Nimrud (Calah), and in Samaria,8 Ahab’s capital.9

6. See Chapter 6 in this volume, “A Dream of Woman.” 7. ‫ ותיבב‬is derived from the noun ‫ ;בבת עין‬see Zech. 2:12, “the pupil of his own eye.” 8. See R. B. Barnett, “Ancient Ivories in the Middle East and Adjacent Countries,” Qedem 14 (Jerusalem, 1982): 43–55. 9. The find in Samaria evokes Amos 6:4: “They lie on ivory beds” (see, too, 3:15) and 1 Kgs 22:39: “The other events of Ahab’s reign, and all his actions—the ivory palace that he built.”

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55

Another Phoenician representation of a woman at the window, this time a clay model of a sanctuary with a woman at the window, was found in Cyprus at the necropolis of Idalion.10 It is of interest that in his Metamorphoses (book 14 lines 696–761), Ovid recounts the story—which, he adds, was well known throughout Cyprus—of Anaxarete, a princess who was indifferent to the love of an enamored youth. Filled with despair, the young man committed suicide and, as the princess watched his funeral procession pass below her window, her entire body was turned to stone.11 A statue of the princess, adds Ovid, stands in Salamis. A. Caubert12 has located the first appearances of the woman-at-the-window motif in Minoan frescoes13 from the second millennium BCE, along with representations of Hathor, the Egyptian goddess of both the night and day skies (the disc of the sun balances between the cow’s horns on her head),14 goddess of love and goddess of the dead.15 The image of the woman at the window was linked in Phoenician art to prostitution and the underworld.16 What is it about the woman in the window that provoked such persistent interest? The woman espied through the window is within the confines of her home, the home that ostensibly protects her and her purity and keeps her from strange men. Note Ben Sira’s advice to fathers on guarding their daughters’ honor: “See that there is no lattice in her room, no spot that overlooks the approaches to the house” (42:11). From the woman’s perspective, of course, the home restricts her freedom; its walls define her world. Either way, the window occupies a liminal point

10. See N. Serwint, “Aphrodite and her Near Eastern Sisters, Spheres and Influence,” in Engendering Aphrodite, Women and Society in Ancient Cyprus (ed. D. Bolger and N. Serwint; AARI Monograph Series 3; Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR), 2002), 331. 11. Ovid, Metamorphoses (trans. F. J. Miller, LCL 43; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958), 349–55. 12. A. Caubert, “Heraclès ou Hathor: orfèvrerie chiprute,” La Revue du Louvre 23 (1973): 1–6; idem, “Les maquettes architecturales d’Idalion,” Studies Presented in Memory of P. Dikaios (ed. V. Karageorghis et al.; Nicosia: Lions Club of Nicosia, 1979), 94–118; idem and M. Pic, “Un Culte hathorique à Kition-Bamboula,” Archéologie au Levant: Recueil à la mémoire du R. Saidah (CMO 12, Arch. 9, Lyon, 1982), 237–49. 13. On Minoan frescoes, see R. Higgins, Minoan and Mycenaean Art (New York and Washington: Oxford University Press, 1967), 94–102. 14. Perhaps an echo of the Hathor image can be found in the connection between the dawn sky, the disc of the sun, and the woman at the window in the poem under discussion. 15. On Hathor, see C. J. Bleeker, Hathor and Thoth: Two Key Figures of the Ancient Egyptian Religion (Studies in the History of Religions [Supplements to Numen] 26; Leiden: Brill, 1973). 16. See E. Ferris Beach, “The Samaria Ivories, Marzeah and Biblical Texts,” Biblical Archaeologist 55 (1992): 130–39; M. H. Pope, “A Divine Banquet at Ugarit,” The Use of the Old Testament in the New and Other Essays; Studies in Honor of W. Franklin Stinespring (ed. J. M. Efrid; Durham: Duke University Press, 1972), 170–203; ibid, Song of Songs (AB; Garden City: Doubleday, 1977), 210–29.

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The Song of Songs

between the external world and the woman’s world. Just as a woman can gaze out and see the men passing by her home, so can they glimpse her through the window. The literary-artistic motif that delimits the picture to the face alone focuses our attention there, to the exclusion of all else. The excitement of crossing forbidden borders—the glimpse of a woman in the window—combined with the inability to view anything below her neck provokes curiosity and arouses the men, whose imagination naturally roves to the unseen parts of her body. It is not surprising, therefore, that the image of the woman at the window became associated with male-female relations, as we see in a number of stories in the Bible—the story of King Abimelech, who gazes inward through a window and sees Isaac fondling “his” wife, Rebekah (Gen. 26:8), the story of the prostitute Rahab (Josh. 2:15), the depiction of Michal helping her lover David escape the fury of her father, the jealous King Saul; 1 Sam. 19:12), and the death scene of Jezebel (2 Kgs 9:30-37). Even when the wise man looks out his own window and sees a woman wandering the city streets, he glimpses a “forbidden” woman who is out to seduce young men (Prov. 7:6-27). Another artistic convention, which also demarcates permitted and forbidden zones, was the image of a woman’s partially veiled face. That motif, too, has traces in our poem, which we will soon see.

The Poem’s Structure and Literary Features The poem includes seven verses but their order has been somewhat corrupted, and the poem’s first verse now appears as its last, v. 10. I have already explained the reasons for this corruption above, in Chapter 4. For the purpose of my discussion here, I present the poem as it should have appeared, as a question (v. 10) followed by its answer (vv. 4–9). v. 10 Who is she that looks out like the dawn, Beautiful as the moon, Radiant as the sun Awesome as bannered hosts? v. 4

You are beautiful, my friend, as Tirzah, Comely as Jerusalem, Awesome as bannered hosts.

v. 5

Turn your eyes away from me, For they overwhelm me! Your hair is like a flock of goats Streaming down from Gilead.

v. 6

Your teeth are like a flock of ewes Climbing up from the washing pool; All of them alike, And none has lost her young.

5. A Poetic Portrait v. 7

Like a piece of pomegranate, Your cheek behind your veil

v. 8

There are sixty queens, And eighty concubines, And maidens without number.

v. 9

One and only is my dove, My perfect one, The one and only of her mother, The delight to the one who bore her. Maidens see her and acclaim her; Queens and concubines, and praise her.

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Let us turn first to the structure of the poem.

I. The Question, in the form of a query-riddle (v. 10) II. The Answer a. A description of the woman’s face; these verses are addressed to her (vv. 4–7). b. A statement of the woman’s particular uniqueness and a comparison to other women; these verses are addressed to an audience (vv. 8–9). In the first part of the answer, we encounter the effect of the woman’s beauty on her lover; in the second, on other women. The chiastic structure of the reply further tightens the symmetry of its parts:

v. 4: A comparison of the beloved’s beauty to that of the royal cities Tirzah and Jerusalem. v. 5a: The lover does not want to see the eyes of his beloved. v. 5b: Her (black) hair is compared to a flock of goats streaming down Mt. Gilead. v. 6: Her (white) teeth are compared to a flock of ewes ascending from the washing pool. v. 7: The lover only partially glimpses the beloved’s face through her veil. vv. 8–9: A comparison of the beloved to the women in the royal harem. What’s more, vv. 4–9, the answer, firmly connect themselves to the question in v. 10. Verse 4 repeats the participle “beautiful” from the question, and concludes with its final image, “awesome as bannered hosts.”17 The participle ‫“( ברה‬clear, pure” but also “bright, luminescent”) in v. 10 recurs at the poem’s conclusion, in v. 9. The frame of the poem features sight-related devices: first (v. 10) she “looks out”

17. Is it possible that the participle ‫ ברה‬was originally in v. 4, too, ‫( ברה כירושלים‬and not ‫ ?)נאוה‬In that case the three participles in the question ‫ אימה‬. . . ‫ ברה‬. . . ‫( יפה‬v. 10) were identical to those in the reply!

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through the window where she is standing, and in the conclusion (v. 9) the women “see” her. Verse 10 contains allusions to three colors, each implied within epithets for the dawn, moon, and sun: black (‫)שחר‬, white (‫)לבנה‬, and red (‫ ;)חמה‬these same colors, in the same order, are alluded to in vv. 5–7: “Your hair is [black] like a flock of goats,” “your teeth are [white] like a flock of ewes,” “like a piece of pomegranate [red], your cheek . . .” At the beginning of his reply, the lover employs the form of address “my friend” (v. 4), and at the end he calls her “my dove, my perfect one” (v. 9). It would seem that in creating the frame, the poet purposefully pulled apart the tripartite collocation “friend-dove-perfect one” (see further, below). It makes sense that observation plays a central role in the wasf. The woman gazes outward, “Who is she that looks out like the dawn” (v. 10); she is “awesome as bannered hosts” (vv. 10, 4; see below for the relation between the image “bannered hosts” and vision). The beloved’s eyes are the first feature the speaker notes in her face. The words “turn your eyes away from me” allude to their effect on him (v. 5a). The poem concludes with the reaction of other women to the one described in the poem: “Maidens see her and acclaim her” (v. 9). The woman gazes out at her lover, but the poem is structured around his point of view, not hers, so it is in fact he who looks at her: she gazes out the window as he gazes in at her, through it. The picture of a man looking inward through a window at his beloved can be found also in another poem in Song of Songs, this time from the woman’s point of view: “There he stands behind our wall/ Gazing through the window/ Peering through the lattice” (Song 2:9). Although we are dealing with visual perception, the beauty that is observed is recounted verbally, and the speaker therefore needs a wealth of figurative language in order to convey as precise a picture as possible. Four similes appear in the question that is in v. 10: “Who is she that looks out like the dawn, Beautiful as the moon, Radiant as the sun, Awesome as bannered hosts?” Three more similes appear in the reply, in verse 4 that gives a general description of the woman’s beauty, “You are beautiful, my darling, as Tirzah, Comely as Jerusalem, Awesome as bannered hosts,” and three more images describe her hair and face: “Your hair is like a flock of goats” (v. 5), “Your teeth are like a flock of ewes” (v. 6), and “Like a pomegranate split open, your cheekbone behind your veil” (v. 7)—ten similes all together. All these comparisons fail to create a likeness that would help us identify the woman in a crowd of people. Instead, we receive the equivalent of a pack of picture postcards—views of the city and the village, of the sky and the landscape— that demonstrate the woman’s impact on her lover-observer and the emotional upheaval he experiences from looking at her. It may even be said that the myriad metaphors the speaker employs serve to distance us—listeners and readers alike— from the woman’s face,18 a consequence perhaps of the lover’s desire to keep the sight for himself alone, to have his cake and eat it, too.

18. J. C. Exum, Song of Songs (Old Testament Library; Louisville, 2005), 217.

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Since we are prevented from actually envisioning the woman, we are somewhat compensated by the poet’s intensive use of assonance and consonance. The poem abounds with repeating sounds that further help to create a feeling of continuity and cohesion:19 v. 5

‫כע ד ר העז י ם‬ ‫ש ג ל ש ו מ ן ה ג לע ד‬

v. 6

‫ה ר ח ל י ם שע ל ו מ ן ה ר ח צ ה‬ ‫ ו ש כ לה‬. . . ‫ש כ ל ם‬

vv. 6, 9

‫ תמתי‬,‫מתאימות‬

v. 9

‫ ו יה ל ל וה‬. . . ‫ו י א ש ר וה‬

A similar effect is achieved by the rhyming pronominal suffixes. A further contributor to the poem’s harmonious feel is the multiple use of tripartite structures: the three similes in v. 4; three parts of the face and the accompanying similes in vv. 5b–7; and the three classes of women in the harem in vv. 8–9.

Relationship between the Song 6:4-10 and 4:1-7 Our poem, specifically the first part of the answer (vv. 4–7), makes use of and repeats20 the first part of the wasf poem in Song 4:1-7: You are fair, my friend, you are fair (4: 1) Your hair is like a flock of goats streaming down Mount Gilead (4:1) Your teeth are like a flock of shorn ones climbing up from the washing pool; all of them alike, and none has lost her young (4:2) Like a piece of pomegranate, your cheek behind your veil (4:3b)

You are fair, my friend (6:4) Your hair is like a flock of goats streaming down from Gilead (6:5) Your teeth are like a flock of ewes climbing up from the washing pool; all of them alike, and none has lost her young (6:6) Like a piece pomegranate, your cheek behind your veil (6:7)

We mustn’t let these correspondences distract us, however, from how the two poems differ:

a. Our poem elaborates on the young woman’s beauty in general, comparing it to the cities of the kingdom, thus tightening the connection between the riddle and the beginning of the reply. b. In chapter 4, the eyes are the first physical feature to be described metaphorically: “Your eyes are like doves” (v. 1).21 In our poem, too, the eyes

19. For implicit wordplay that does not rely on sounds, see later in this chapter. 20. On repetition within the Song of Songs, see Zakovitch, Hohelied, 70–73. 21. On mentioning eyes before hair, see, too, the description of Sarah’s beauty in the Genesis Apocryphon; see Fitzmyer, The Genesis Apocryphon, 62–63.

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The Song of Songs

are the first feature to be mentioned, but the lover entreats the woman not to let him see them, not even through her veil: “Turn your eyes away from me, for they overwhelm me!” (5a); he consequently does not employ any accompanying metaphor. c. The poem in chapter 6 does not mention that the Gilead is a mountain (cf. 4:1), nor does it explicitly say that Tirzah and Jerusalem (6:4) are located in the mountains (see below). d. In chapter 4, ‫( קצובות‬v. 2 “those that are shorn”) is set opposite the word “goats” in v. 1, whereas in our poem (v. 6) it is “ewes,” ‫רחלים‬. The epithet ‫קצובות‬, however, means also “those that are similar in size, that have the same form” and thus emphasizes the uniform appearance of the woman’s teeth (cf. the use of the same root in 1 Kgs 6:25 “the two cherubim were of the same measurements and form”; see also 7:37), that is, they were cut to the same size, as becomes apparent from the next words in Song 4:2, “that all are alike.” In chapter 6, the poet preferred to use the term ‫ רחלים‬in order to move the emphasis to the white color of the sheep, the opposite of the goats’ black color. e. Between chapter 4’s references to the woman’s teeth and cheek are mentioned those parts having to do with speech: “Your lips are like a crimson thread, your tongue is lovely” (4:3).22 The Septuagint, in an apparent attempt to harmonize the two poems even more, added this piece also to chapter 6. The writer of our poem, however, preferred not to mention the woman’s tongue, lips, or mouth since, here, she does not speak. Moreover, mention of her “crimson” lips would detract from the perfectly constructed colorcorrelations he has set up between his riddle-question (v. 10) and its solution. It is also an explicit mention of a color while, otherwise, chapter 6’s color references are all implicit. A reference to the woman’s lips and mouth would also have undermined the chiastic structure of the poem. We therefore conclude that the poet of our poem has purposefully omitted allusions to those parts of the body.23 Also omitted are all the other parts of the body that are mentioned in chapter 4’s poem; this was done in order to confine our poem only to what is glimpsed through the window, to the woman’s face, and thus to adapt the description to conventions from another sphere, from the world of visual arts.

22. “Your tongue”: Saadiah Gaon and later scholars understood ‫ מדבר‬to be an organ of speech, namely, the mouth; but since two of the parts of the mouth have already been mentioned (teeth and lips), I understand it to refer specifically to the tongue. Juxtaposition of lips and tongue recurs elsewhere in the Bible: “Sweetness drips from your lips, O bride, honey and milk are under your tongue” (Song 4:11); “His lips full of fury, his tongue like devouring fire” (Isa. 30:27). The tongue is fittingly called ‫“–מדבר‬that which speaks”—since many verses attribute the power of speech to the tongue itself: “the tongues of mumblers shall speak with fluent eloquence” (Isa. 32:4 and elsewhere). 23. There are therefore no grounds for the claim that the description of lips and tongue were deleted due to textual error (e.g., Exum, Song of Songs, 217).

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These divergences between the wasf in 4:1-7 and our poem demonstrate how the latter should not be faulted as being a mechanical reproduction of the former, nor does the exact repetition of words and verses from the earlier poem detract from the artistry of the second—our poet chose to take from the first poem only such elements that served his objective, and even these were adjusted so as to better express his particular intent.

A Detailed Analysis of the Poem Section I: The Question, in the Form of a Question-riddle (v. 10) v. 10: Who is she that looks out like the dawn, Beautiful as the moon, Radiant as the sun, Awesome as bannered hosts? The question expresses adoration for the subject of the poem. The speaker’s identity is unknown and unimportant. I have already mentioned that the figure is looking out through a window, thus allowing us to see only her face. The window is not mentioned so as not to interfere with the picture of the sky that is given by the verse’s similes. The verb ‫ נשקפה‬conveys the sense of gazing down from above, whether from the heavens24 or through a window; compare verses that describe God looking down to earth from on high, such as Lam. 3:50: “Until the Lord looks down and beholds from heaven” (see also Exod. 14:24; Ps. 14:2 = 53:3; 102:20), and verses that speak of looking down from an elevated window, such as 2 Sam. 6:16, “Michal daughter of Saul looked out of the window and saw King David leaping and whirling before the Lord.” The passive nif ‘al form is sometimes used in the sense of the hif ‘il; another example of an active sense of the verb, despite its conjugation in the nif ‘al, is found, for example, also in Prov. 7:6; for such use of the hif ‘il see Gen. 26:8; 2 Kgs 9:30, 32. The nif ‘al form is particularly apt in our verse: the woman is the one looking out, but at the same time she is being seen by the speaker, and the poem’s subject is what he sees. It is by way of the speaker’s similes that we get a glimpse of the sky. A more natural description would have been from the perspective of the person who is inside, peering out the window to the sky. Our verse paints the reverse: the observer is outside the house looking up at the window, and from within the house there appears to him a vision that is like the sky (we might think of surrealistic images by René Magritte). The first simile compares the woman peering out her window to the dawn. The dawn has eyes, as we see from Job 3:9—“May it not see the eyelids of the dawn” and 41:10 “and his eyes are like the eyelids of dawn’s,” and he must be awakened from his sleep, “I will wake the dawn” (Ps. 57:9; 108:3). The noun ‫שחר‬, “dawn,” evokes the color black (‫)שחור‬, the darkness that precedes morning, “A day of darkness and gloom, a day of densest cloud spread like dawn over the hills” (Joel 2:2). Expressions such as “breaking of the dawn” (‫ ;בק״ע‬Isa 58:8) and “rising

24. See, for example, R. E. Murphy, Song of Songs (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990), 176.

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of the dawn” (‫ ;על״ה‬e.g., Gen. 19:15; 32:25; Judg. 19:25), convey the notion of the arrival of light that drives away night’s darkness. The observer first perceives a dark and blurred picture until gradually the light increases. As dawn emerges one is able to see both the moon, which has not yet set, and the rising sun; this is the picture painted by our verse. The second image, therefore, “beautiful as the (white) moon,”25 reveals the gradually lightening picture. The woman’s face is now illuminated and the viewer can perceive her beauty. Her face is likened to the full moon that fills the window frame. The poet has chosen a feminine name for the moon, ‫( לבנה‬and, in a moment, also for the sun, ‫ ;חמה‬see Isa. 24:23; 30:26), as is apt for describing a woman. If ‫ שחר‬evokes the color black, the term chosen for “moon” evokes the whiteness and radiance of light. White also symbolizes purity (see Exod. 24:10 “like the whiteness/radiance of sapphire, like the very sky for purity”; also Isa. 1:18; Ps. 51:9), that is, unblemished beauty. Moonlight yields to the sun’s strong rays, ‫ברה כחמה‬. The meaning of ‫ ברה‬is “clean, pure” (e.g., Ps. 73:1; Job 11:4), but also “shining”; see the comparison Psalm 19 makes between the Torah and the sun: “The instruction of the Lord is pure, lighting up the eyes” (Ps. 19:9).26 The sun, like the dawn, can “gaze”: “Do not look at me, for I am black, as the sun has gazed upon me” (Song 1:6) and “before the sun’s eyes” (2 Sam. 12:11). The sun’s brightening light makes it increasingly difficult to look at, also because of the mounting heat. The color white is now replaced by red,27 the color of the blinding sun, “the sun was shining over the water, and from the distance the water appeared to the Moabites as red as blood” (2 Kgs 3:22). The blinding sun leads to the next, somewhat puzzling simile, which concludes the question: “awesome as bannered hosts.” The observed woman is intimidating (see Exod. 23:27), awakening dread (e.g., Ps. 55:5), and compare the phrase used to describe the Chaldean army: “They are terrible, dreadful” (Hab. 1:7). The word ‫ נדגלות‬derives from the root ‫דג״ל‬. In Akkadian, dagālu means “to look,”28 which makes sense in the Hebrew root’s occurrences, for example, the noun ‫ דגל‬in Song 2:4: “His look [‫ ]דגלו‬of love was over me.” In the poem preceding ours, which describes the man’s appearance, we read that “My beloved is dazzling white and ruddy, towering over [‫ ]דגול‬ten thousand” (5:10), an allusion to his height which allows him to be spotted in a large crowd. Note how, also in this verse, the colors white and red are mentioned (and also, as in our poem, the color black appears afterward, “his locks are curled, black as a raven” [v. 11]). Thus, where the previous poem has the man who “towers” and can be seen from afar, in our poem it is the woman that looks out from the window and is compared to the moon and sun that look down from the sky; she is exalted, able to be seen from a distance, like a banner.

25. The first simile is introduced by ‫ כמו‬and the next by ‫ –כ‬see, for example, Hos. 13:7; Zech. 9:15. 26. See also the next verse (Ps. 19:10): “The fear of the Lord is pure, abiding forever.” 27. On the opposition white/red, see Isa. 1:18. 28. See R. Gordis, “The Root ‫ דגל‬in the Song of Songs,” JBL 88 (1966): 203–04.

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The term ‫ כנדגלות‬may also allude to armies that march with their banners29 (see, e.g., Num. 1:52, 2:3); this is how the term ‫ דגל‬was translated by the Septuagint and the Vulgate. The sight of the woman inspires dread, as though the viewer were facing an army that threatens his life.30 Support for the possibility that the word conveys a military sense is found in the collocation “heavenly host” for referring to the heavenly spheres, “bowing down to them, to the sun or the moon or any of the heavenly host” (Deut. 17:3); “the sun, the moon, and all the host of heaven” (Jer. 8:2). The observer is awed by the woman and admires her and her beauty. This combination of adoration of the woman’s beauty and a feeling approaching dread accords with mythical attitudes. In the ancient world the goddesses of beauty were also the goddesses of war—see, for example. Anat, the Canaanite goddess who was renowned both for her beauty and violence, Inana and Ishtar of Babylon, and Athena of Greece.31 Likening female beauty to the sun, moon, and stars is found also in ancient Egyptian love poetry. At the beginning of one such poem, a wasf that describes a woman’s beauty from her head to her toes, we find the words “Behold her, like Sothis [Sirius] rising at the beginning of a good year . . . shining, precious, white of skin.”32 Ben Sira, too, compares a woman’s beauty to that of the sun: “Like the sun rising in the Lord’s heavens, the beauty of the virtuous wife is the radiance of home” (26:12). He also likens the appearance of Simeon, the high priest in Ben Sira’s day, to the heavenly bodies and their growing light: “How splendid he was as he looked forth from the tent, as he came from the house of the veil! Like a star shining among the clouds, like the full moon at the holy-day season; like the sun shining on the temple of the Lord” (50:5-7). Section IIa: A Description of the Woman’s Face, Addressed to Her (vv. 4–7) v. 4: You are beautiful, my friend, as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, awesome as bannered hosts. The lover responds to the riddle by speaking to the woman, “You are beautiful, my friend,” with the poet returning to the participle that compares her appearance with that of the moon: “beautiful as the moon.” The beauty of the moon is indeed like that of his beloved, yet he does not compare her beauty to the heavenly spheres since that would inspire dread and would preclude him from gazing at her.

29. See, for example, BDB, 186. 30. See O. Keel, Hohelied (Zürcher Bibelkommentare 18; Zurich: TVZ Theologischer Verlag, 1986), 206; see also Song 4:4. 31. See Pope, Song of Songs, 560–63. 32. Fox, Song of Songs and Ancient Egyptian Love Songs, 52 (Poem 31).

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The reply begins with a general statement regarding the woman’s beauty (a feature shared with the wasf in Song 4:1-7),33 which the lover compares to the beauty of the cities Tirzah and Jerusalem. We should not be surprised by a comparison of a woman’s beauty to that of a city. Just as the prophets liken cities to women (see, e.g., the phrases “daughter of Jerusalem” [2 Kgs 19:21]; “daughter of Zion” [Isa. 1:8]), and personify cities (e.g., Ezekiel 16; 23), so can the comparison be employed also in the reverse direction, where a woman is likened to a city.34 The wasfs in Song of Songs use quite a few urban metaphors for describing parts of the female body: “Your neck is like the Tower of David” (4:4); “your eyes like pools in Heshbon . . . your nose like the Lebanon tower that faces toward Damascus” (7:5).35 Tirzah (Tel a-Far’a in the Manasseh hills)36 and Jerusalem are both situated on mountaintops; the lover, who cannot stare directly at the sun, lowers his eyes but his gaze is still turned upward. Tirzah might seem an odd choice. In juxtaposition to Jerusalem, capital of the Kingdom of Judah, one would expect to find Samaria, the capital of the Kingdom of Israel from the time of King Omri (1 Kgs 16:24) until the destruction of the kingdom. But Samaria awakened bitter memories among the Judeans. The poet consequently chose to compare the beloved and her beauty to the capital city of the kingdom that predated Samaria.37 But the choice of Tirzah has also a more important aspect: it would seem that the epithet ‫רעיה‬, which we have translated as “friend,” was interpreted by the poet as something like ‫רצויה‬, “desirable, wanted,” like the Aramaic ‫( רעות‬see Ezra 5:17; 7:18), ‫ רצ״ה‬is synonymous with ‫ אה״ב‬, as we see in Prov. 3:12. We have, then, an implicit name derivation of Tirzah as being “the friend,” “beloved,” “the desired one.”38 The Targum to Song of Songs (which is in fact a midrash on the book) does not transliterate the name but explains it as deriving from the root ‫רצ״ה‬, “while that you desire to do my will.”39 Also other ancient versions did not transliterate the city’s name but explained and translated it: the Septuagint has “desirable thing”; the Vulgate explains it as “pleasant, agreeable”; the Peshitta: “as a thing of delight.”40

33. See Exum, Song of Songs, 216. 34. See, for example, M. Goulder, The Song of Fourteen Songs (Sheffield: Almond, 1986), 49. 35. Note the image of the city walls and towers in 8:8-10. 36. On the identification of Tirzah and its excavations, see W. F. Albright, “The Site of Tirzah and the Topography of Western Manasseh,” JPOS 11 (1931): 241–51; D. M. Manor, “Tirzah,” in ABD (New York, 1942), vol. 6, 573–77. 37. See 1 Kgs 14:17; 15:21, 33; 16:8, 23. 38. On implicit name derivations, see Y. Zakovitch, Inner-biblical and Extra-biblical Midrash and the Relationship Between Them (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2009), 198–228 [Hebrew]. 39. See Rashi’s commentary on this verse. 40. It has been proposed that the translators chose not to regard Tirzah as the name of a city because the Song is attributed to Solomon and in his time neither the kingdom of Israel nor Tirzah, its capital, had yet come into existence. See D. C. Ginsburg, The Song of Songs and Coheleth (New York: Ktav, 1970), 172.

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Like in the riddle where we saw a progressive intensification of light, so here do we also have a progression in the cities from the lesser Tirzah to the more important and—for the poet—more cherished Jerusalem. Jerusalem’s beauty is also renowned: “fair-crested, joy of all the earth, Mount Zion” (Ps. 48:3); “Is this the city that was called Perfect in Beauty, Joy of All the Earth?” (Lam. 2:15); “Fair Zion, the comely and delicate” (Jer. 6:2; notice that Jeremiah uses ‫נאוה‬, the same participle as in our verse). In comparing his beloved to the capital cities of the kingdom, the poet might perhaps also hint at the beauty of the women in those cities (see below). At the end of the verse, the speaker repeats the riddle’s conclusion, “awesome as bannered hosts,” showing us that, though he has lowered his eyes and does not stare directly at the sun but looks at the kingdom’s mountainous cities, still he is unable to look directly at the face of his beloved. v. 5a: Turn your eyes away from me for they overwhelm me! The lover’s entreaty that she not look at him imparts new meaning to the ‫ נדגלות‬at the end of the previous verse. It is possible that ‫ נדגלות‬are eyes that “see” (as I’ve already mentioned, the nif ‘al can function also as an active; see Eccl. 12:3, “and [those that] peer through windows [i.e. through their eyes’ lenses] are dimmed”). The woman is all eyes; her eyes inspire fear and therefore her lover entreats her to turn them away from him. Unlike other facial features that are described through similes (vv. 5b–7), and in contrast to the wasf in Song of Song 4 that likened the eyes to “doves,” here we have no accompanying metaphor for the woman’s eyes due to the lover’s desire not to linger over them; indeed, he would rather not see them at all.41 It is possible that the eyes also stand for the entire face (pars pro toto), and the poet prefers, seemingly, to not gaze on her face. For the parallelism of “eyes” and “face” see Job 24:15 “No eye will glimpse me and he masks his face”; regarding the phrase “turn your eyes,” compare the construction “turn [one’s] face” in 2 Chr. 29:16: “they . . . turned their faces away.” The lover explains his request, “for they overwhelm me [‫]הרהיבני‬,” that is, they inspire fear (like the meaning of ‫ רה״ב‬in Arabic): they are “stronger than me” (so Ibn Ezra); compare Isa. 3:5; Ps. 138:3. The lover’s dread of looking directly into the woman’s eyes can be compared with the effect of her eyes on him in Song 4:9: “You have captured my heart with one of your eyes.” If one of her eyes is all it takes to capture his heart, the reader can only imagine the combined power of both! It may be that in his juxtaposition of “bannered hosts” (‫ )אימה כנדגלות‬at the end of verse 4 with “for they overwhelm me” (‫ )שהם הרהיבני‬in v. 5, the poet plays with the description of the lover in the preceding poem, “towering above ten thousand” (‫) דגול מרבבה‬.

41. See T. Longman III, Song of Songs (NICOT; Grand Rapids and Cambridge: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2001), 186.

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The Song of Songs

v. 5b: Your hair is like a flock of goats streaming down from Gilead Despite everything, the lover cannot pull his eyes from his beloved. He will now gaze upon her face, beginning with her hair, which frames it. The hair is compared to a flock of she-goats (she-goats and ewes, which are mentioned in the next verse, are the females of the flock, a continuation of the choice of nouns in the feminine gender; see above on v. 10). From the urban scene, the poet now turns to a pastoral setting to soothe his turbulent soul. The black goats (matching the“[black] dawn,” v. 4) are chosen as a metaphor for hair whose movement, when blown by the wind, is likened to the flock streaming down the mountain. Hair is a symbol of beauty as we see in the description of Absalom’s beauty in 2 Sam. 14:26, where his hair receives emphasis. The word ‫גלשו‬, “streaming,” is intended to evoke the flowing of water down the mountain; in rabbinic Hebrew, ‫מי גלשים‬, “water [that] flows” refers to water that boils over and flows down the side of a pot (BT Pesaḥim 37b).42 The poet’s gaze thus continues to move downward, from the sky to the cities on the mountaintop, from the Gilead down, all in order to lessen the woman’s sublimity, to make her seem more human so that he might gaze upon her without fear. Having mentioned the cities Jerusalem and Tirzah, he continues his tour of the land with the Gilead. The Gilead is a mountainous region east of the Jordan River with lush meadows, “And they saw that the lands of Jazer and Gilead were regions suitable for cattle” (Num. 32:1), making the poet’s metaphor apt.43 v. 6a: Your teeth are like a flock of ewes ascending from the washing pool The poet has constructed a contrastive parallelism between black hair and white teeth, with white after black evoking the moon following the darkness of dawn in v. 10. The repetition of the word “flock,” the contrast of “goats” with “ewes,” and the opposition between the verbs “ascending” and “streaming down” underscore this dichotomy. The fact that her teeth are visible means that the beloved has not hidden her entire face from him, and yet he has managed to calm his fear. Has the beloved revealed her white teeth in a smile to her lover? Was it her smile that reassured him? The words “ascending from the washing pool” suggest that the ewes are now washed and clean as they emerge from the water, like the sparkle of clean teeth. The mention of washing also suggests purity, substantiating what has already been alluded to by the words ‫ לבנה‬and ‫ ברה‬in v. 10.

42. As in Ugaritic: see J. C. Greenfield, “Ammurite, Ugaritic and Canaanite,” Proceedings of the International Conference on Semitic Studies 1965 (Jerusalem, 1969), 99, note 36. 43. In Song of Songs, the Land of Israel and its environs plays an important role in describing the physical attributes of the female body and as a backdrop for the lovers’ trysts. The beloved frequently addresses the “daughters of Jerusalem” (1:5; 2:7; 3:5; 5:8, 16; 8:4; see also 3:10), who are also called “daughters of Zion” (3:11). Also mentioned are the “Tower of David” (4:4); the “vineyards of Ein Gedi” (1:14); “the Carmel” (7:6); “Heshbon” (7:5); “Damascus” (7:5); “the Lebanon” (4:8, 11, 15; 5:15; 7:5); “Amana, Senir and Hermon” (4:8). See Zakovitch, Hohelied, 87–88.

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In v. 6, the descent has been replaced with an ascent: the gaze does not venture further downward but will remain on the woman’s face. v. 6b: All of them alike, and none has lost her young The reader’s attention is attracted not only by the color of the teeth but by their perfection. A verb derived from the root ‫ תא״מ‬appears only in the context of the building of the Tabernacle, “they shall match at the bottom” (Exod. 26:24; see also 36:29).44 In an anonymous commentary on the Song of Songs45 it is explained that “the row on top became a twin with the row on the bottom.” Rashi explained the word as deriving from the root ‫תו״מ‬, “unblemished” (as in Ps. 38:4: “There is no imperfection in my flesh”), based on the verse’s continuation; see also ‫תמתי‬, “my perfect one” in v. 9. The end of the verse continues the goat metaphor: “none has lost her young,” meaning that all her teeth are there, no gaps are visible. v. 7: Like a piece of pomegranate, your cheek behind your veil In describing the third and final feature of the woman’s face, and as a concluding flourish, the poet reverses the usual order of the metaphors, this time beginning with the vehicle, “like a piece of pomegranate.”46 He also abandons the animal kingdom and turns instead to the world of plants. The pomegranate (a favorite fruit in love poetry, see Song 4:13; 6:11; 8:2; 7:13) has been split open, producing a rounded half (cf. e.g., “a piece of fig cake,” 1 Sam. 30:12), the same curved shape as the sun and moon in the riddle. The “cheek,” ‫( רקה‬see Judg. 4:21-22; 5:26) is thus the rounded upper part of the cheek, what we would call her cheekbone. The cheeks are red like the pomegranate, thus supplying the last of the three colors alluded to in the riddle-verse. The comparison with a split pomegranate, revealing the inside of the fruit, evokes, too, its mouthwatering juiciness (cf. the beloved’s words in 8:2: “I would let you drink of my spiced wine, of my pomegranate juice”). The metaphors of goats streaming down the mountain and ewes climbing up from the washing pool highlight the movement of the woman’s body. The piece of the pomegranate alludes to the pomegranate having been split open in a rather violent human act (e.g., 2 Kgs 4:39; Ps. 141:7; Prov. 7:23). Is the lover so brazen as to compare himself to one who tears open the fruit of love and tastes its juices? If indeed this last image reveals something of the speaker’s hidden desires, a bit of boldness on his part, the end of the verse shows that bold words are allowed since his vision is hampered: he can see his beloved’s cheek only through her

44. The verb ‫מתאימות‬, ”alike,” is aptly applied to the picture of the ewes—the ‫—קצובות‬in 4:2, since they all look identical with “the same measurements and proportions” (1 Kgs 6:25; see also 1 Kgs 7:37). 45. K. J. Matthaeus, “Kommentar zu das Hohe Lied, eines Anonymus aufgrunds einigen Handschrift,” in Tehilla le-Moshe, Festschrift M. Steinschneider (Leipzig: O. Harrasowitz, 1896), 164–85. 46. On word inversion in the final part of a sentence, see A. Mirsky, The Punctuation of Hebrew Style (Jerusalem, 1978), 11–35 [Hebrew].

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veil; cf. Isa. 47: 2: “Remove your veil, strip off your train, bare your leg.” Ibn Ezra explains ‫ צמה‬as something that covers, and Pseudo-Jonathan translates Gen. 24:65 as ‫ואצטמצמת‬, “and she covered herself.”47 In Gen. 38:15, “for she had covered her face,” Targum Pseudo-Jonathan has ‫צמצמת אפיה‬. And indeed, in both of these stories in Genesis—the first about Rebekah covering her face with a veil in anticipation of her first encounter with her intended husband, Isaac, and the second about Tamar who uses a veil to conceal her identity from her father-in-law in order to seduce him—the erotic tension is strongly present. I have written that the window is the point of liminality between the home and the outside world, between the world that protects the woman and the world in which she is revealed to strangers and arouses them. The veil plays a similar, twofold role. On the one hand the veil covers the woman’s head and protects her; on the other, it is precisely what arouses curiosity and heightens sexual tension. It is worth noting that one of the terms for veil in Greek is tegeos, a veil that covers only the face and was common in the late classical and Hellenistic periods;48 the word is linked to tegos, “roof.” Just as the house protects the woman, so, too, does her veil. The combination of window and veil can be seen in a fourth-century Greek depiction of a young woman partially covering her face with a veil while looking out a window whose shutters have been opened.49 Dealing as we are with the partial covering of the woman’s face, it seems that therein lies the solution to the question of why only one of the woman’s cheeks is mentioned, “like a piece of pomegranate your cheek.” Here, we see further influence of the convention of the visual arts. In some figurines of women known to us from the Hellenistic world, we see that only half of the woman’s face is covered with a diaphanous veil. One cheek is covered, the other exposed. The folds of the veil and their position show that the wind has blown the fabric, leaving only part of the face concealed.50 The lover in our poem is fearful of looking at the revealed half of her face, preferring to focus on the concealed half. (Perhaps it is precisely this artistic convention that provides the basis of Song 4:9 “You have captured my heart with one of your eyes”: only one of her eyes, not both, can be seen, since the other is covered by the veil.)

47. The word ‫ צמה‬should therefore not be read as our modern “plait” of hair, especially since the hair was already mentioned in v. 5, counter to the opinion of A. Bloch and H. Block, The Song of Songs (New York, 1995), 166–67. 48. See L. Llewellyn-Jones, Aphrodite’s Tortoise, The Veiled Woman of Ancient Greece (Swansea, Wales: Classical Press of Wales, 2003), 194. 49. Llewellyn-Jones, Aphrodite’s Tortoise, 196, illus. 141, detail from Appulian bellkrater, fourth cent. BCE, British Museum, F. 142. 50. Ibid., 2, illus. 1. A half-veiled head from Cyrene, North Africa, fourth cent. BCE; ibid., 318, illus. 173, from Musées de sculptures, Cyrene. The provenance of the fourthcentury BCE sculpture is unknown; today it is at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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In v. 5a, the man expressed his wish that the woman avert her eyes. Here we see that his wish to not see her entire visage has been answered, though in a different way. Section IIb: A Statement of the Woman’s Particular Uniqueness and a Comparison to other Women, Verses Addressed to an Audience (vv. 8–9) v. 8: There are sixty queens and eighty concubines and maidens without number The section opens with a dramatic transition: having particularized the features of his beloved’s visage, the lover now ceases to speak to her, turns to an unseen audience, and voices his praise. Has he become so enthralled by her beauty that he feels a need to share it with others? Is it her veiled face that has bolstered his confidence, or perhaps her continued silence has spurred him to seek another audience? Our verse doesn’t even explain why he now enumerates the many women in the king’s harem; the explanation will appear only in the next verse. Turning our attention to the palace takes us back to the first part of the riddle’s solution, the comparison of the beloved’s beauty to the cities of the kingdom. Both the riddle (v. 10) and the opening of the lover’s response to it (v. 4) involve a gradual ascent from the darkness of dawn to full sunlight and from Tirzah to Jerusalem. This hierarchy appears to continue in this part, too, with the numbers “sixty” to “eighty” to “innumerable,” though in fact it is a graduated descent from “queens” to “concubines” to mere “maidens.” The relation between the number of queens to the number of concubines is 3:4.51 This large number of women does not equal the number of Solomon’s wives, but the division of the women of the harem into two classes appears in the enumeration of Solomon’s wives that we find in Kings: “He had seven hundred royal wives [corresponding to ‘queens’], and three hundred concubines” (1 Kgs 11:3). “Maidens” (‫ )עלמות‬are mentioned in the Song of Songs also in 1:3: “Therefore do maidens love you.” It is unclear, here, whether the term refers to young women, in general, or whether it specifies another category in the harem, women of unclear status. In any case, there is no point to attempt to count them (for the collocation “without number” see, e.g., Gen. 41:49; Judg. 7:12). v. 9a: One and only is my dove, my perfect one, the one and only of her mother, the delight to the one who bore her Now it becomes evident that the speaker’s reference to the women was in order to compare them to his one and only. In the poem’s previous section, he employed simile and metaphor to demonstrate the beauty of his beloved; now he engages in a different sort of comparison, to establish her superiority over other women: corresponding to the “maidens without number” at the end of v. 8 he now names the “one.” The speaker is proud to point out that he loves but one woman; compare

51. For the literary numerical pattern of three—four, see my For Three and For Four (Jerusalem: Makor, 1979) [Hebrew].

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the poem that mocks Solomon, the lord of a harem that counts a thousand women: “Solomon had a vineyard in Baal-hamon [lit. husband/owner of multitudes]. He gave that vineyard to watchmen: A man would bring for its fruit one thousand pieces of silver. My vineyard is all my own. You may keep your thousand, Solomon. And pay two hundred to the watchmen of the fruit” (Song 8:11-12; see Chapter 2, “Keep Your Thousands”). The lover calls his beloved by two terms of endearment, both of which express his devotion: “my dove, my perfect one.” At the beginning of the answer to the riddle, he calls her “my friend” (v. 4). As I’ve already mentioned, these three epithets appear together in the preceding poem when the lover addressed his beloved, “Let me in, my sister, my friend, my dove, my perfect one.” The nickname “my dove” in our verse (see 2:14) compensates for the absence of a metaphor for the woman’s eyes back in v. 5: “Turn your eyes away from me.” Doves are a recurring vehicle in the Song to which the beloved’s eyes are compared (1:15; 4:1) as well as the lover’s eyes (5:12). The second endearment, ‫תמתי‬, means “perfect one,” that is, without flaw or blemish; compare “You are all beautiful, my beloved, and there is no flaw in you” (cf. 4:7). It also reminds us of what the lover has already said about the woman’s teeth, “all of them match” (v. 6). The woman’s perfection brings to mind also the comparison of her beauty to that of Jerusalem’s, “comely as Jerusalem” (v. 4), since we hear in the word ‫ ירשלים‬the root ‫של״מ‬, “whole, complete.” Tirzah, we recall, was interpreted—if only covertly—in v. 4, the same verse that mentioned the name, but the interpretative etymology of Jerusalem has been delayed till now, the end of the poem. For the appearance of the root ‫ תו״מ‬in close proximity to ‫של״מ‬, see the many references to the well-being sacrifice (‫—)שלמים‬for example, “And if his offering for a sacrifice of well-being to the Lord is from the flock, whether a male or a female, he shall offer one without blemish (‫( ”)תמים‬Lev. 3:6).52 The first half of the verse is an expanded colon.53 Having made clear who “the one” is and what she means to him, the speaker repeats the words “one and only” ‫אחת היא‬, this time mentioning also her significance to her mother: “The one and only of her mother.” “One” is in contrast to “without number.” For the use of this opposition of “one” and “many,” see Ezek. 33:24: “Abraham was but one man. . . . We are many.” In our verse, “one” signifies the chosen one, the preferred one; see 2 Sam. 7:23 “And who is like Your people Israel, a unique [lit. ‘one’] nation on earth, whom God went and redeemed as His people.”

52. For a name etymology that makes use of a root synonymous to the one in the name, see Y. Zakovitch, “The Synonymous Word and Synonymous Name in Name-Midrashim,” Shnaton: An Annual for Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies 2 (1977): 101–15 [Hebrew]. 53. On the expanded colon, see S. E. Loewenstam, “The Expanded Colon in Ugaritic and Biblical Verse” and “The Expanded Colon Reconsidered,” in Comparative Studies in Biblical and Ancient Oriental Literatures (Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1980), 294–309 and 496–502; for occurrences of the expanded colon in Song, see 1:15; 4:1, 8, 9, 12; 5:9; 6:1; 7:1.

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Similar to the meaning of “one” is that of ‫ברה‬, “chosen” (from the root ‫)בו״ר‬, “preferred” (cf. 1 Chr. 7:40; 9:22; 16:41). In v. 10, the participle ‫ ברה‬was used to mean “pure, innocent, shining.” By repeating the word here, in a different sense, the poet secures the frame for the poem’s structure. As a parallel to “to her mother,” he now uses “who bore her” in the second stich of the verse. For the pairing “mother” and “who bore her,” see, for example, Jer. 50:12 “So your mother will be utterly shamed, she who bore you will be disgraced.” We wonder: Why does the speaker feel a need to mention the special place the young woman has in her mother’s heart? The answer is found in the word ‫יולדתה‬, “who bore her.” In two other poems in the Song of Songs anthology, the young woman mentions her mother when speaking about or to her lover: “When I found the one I love… till I brought him to my mother’s house, to the chamber of her who bore me” (3:4); “Under the apple tree I roused you; it was there that your mother conceived you, there she who bore you conceived you” (8:5). In both poems the girl hints at her desire for her lover by means of an allusions to conception and child-bearing. Likewise, then, does the lover now hint at his desire to be intimate with his beloved. The mention of the mother serves another purpose: the entire verse tells of the women’s esteem for the girl. Should anyone think that the maiden’s mother’s preference for her is not objective evidence of her unique perfection, the other women’s recognition of her uniqueness will do the trick. v. 9b: Maidens see her and acclaim her, queens and concubines, and praise her We may yet ask: why do only women praise the beloved? Why have men not joined the admiring chorus? First, it may be that the lover is unwilling for other men to see her charms; moreover, just as he has found it difficult to look into her eyes, other men will, presumably, find it similarly difficult to countenance her beauty with equanimity. Women, on the other hand, will not lose their composure when encountering female beauty. Women will also be able to regard her without her veil, since it is only the presence of strange men that requires a woman to cover herself.54 Coming from women, the reader-listener can certainly believe the praises her beauty has inspired. The riddle opened with the gaze of the woman at the window, “Who is she that looks out like the dawn” (v. 10), and the entire poem now concludes with the spectacle of her beauty as seen by other women: “Maidens see her and acclaim her.” The meaning of ‫ ויאשרוה‬is “and they congratulated and acclaimed her.” Thus we find in Gen. 30:13 when Leah cries out after the birth of Asher, “for women have acclaimed me.”

54. See Llewellyn-Jones, Aphrodite’s Tortoise, 3, 6. This was the custom in ancient Greece and Near Eastern cultures: the Sumerians, Hittites, Assyrians, and Persians; see Gen. 24:65; see also the Middle Assyrian Code (thirteenth cent. BCE), article 40; Llewellyn-Jones, Aphrodite’s Tortoise, 124.

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Verse 8 mentions maidens at the end of its list, following the queens and concubines. In our verse, on the other hand, ‫ בנות‬precedes the queens and concubines of the harem, once again creating an ascending hierarchy: even the women of the harem—and the most prestigious among them—acknowledge the girl’s superiority. One needs no better proof of the excellent judgment on the part of the enamored speaker, and hearing the exact words of the women’s praises is unnecessary: the young man has already told us. * In this chapter, we have seen how a riddle-fragment meets its solution (which was mistakenly placed before the riddle). The descriptive poem follows both the contemporary literary convention of the wasf form and visual arts conventions— of the woman in the window and of the image of a woman’s partially veiled face, both of which help to express the tensions between inside and outside, between concealing and revealing, and between minimizing the erotic tension and escalating it. The literary convention led even to an intra-textual quotation from another wasf poem in the Song (4:1-7). But this was not a mechanical borrowing. On the contrary, it involved selection and adaptation that fit the spirit and intent of the new poem. All of this intertextual playfulness—between literary and visual texts that were familiar to early readers—imparts further dimension to the work. As we have seen, shared language and images tie the riddle and its solution together into a single unit. But the riddle’s solution, in fact, also speaks in riddles: it does not mention the window, and the girl’s face remains partially concealed by her veil. Though the colors are strong—white, black, and red—they are not referred to explicitly, so that the metaphors that seem to help us visualize the images in fact create distance. But even if the image that is described is not like a photograph, it certainly approaches a painting, something like an Impressionist work that conveys atmosphere and the state of mind of the woman’s observer. The woman is perfect, and the young man seeks ways to soothe his turbulent emotions by moving downward, from comparisons of the sun, moon and stars on to the more earthly imagery taken from village life and nature. The poem begins with comprehensive praise for the woman’s beauty, and it concludes in the same fashion. The speaker, the single observer who poses the riddle, is now joined by a chorus of women who have also viewed the young woman and have been deeply affected by the sight. Their testimony is more objective than was that of the young man in love, but we no longer need to hear it after having heard his description. Our wasf omits more than it describes—as is the nature of poetry and art that necessarily leaves many questions unanswered. Viewers of the image of the veiled woman at the window, as well as readers of our poem, finds both what there is to see as well what they wish to see, a mirror of their own fantasies.

Chapter 6 REAL OR IMAGINED? A WOMAN’S DREAM IN SONG OF SONGS 5:2–6:31

As we’ve already seen, many of the poems in Song of Songs are riddle-poems to which there exist multiple solutions.2 These poems convey messages with double meanings: the young man and woman flirt with one another, teasing as lovers often do, and readers, like the lovers in the poem, must turn their words over and over again in order to sift through the many layers of meaning. This ambiguity is particularly apt to the dream character of two of the collection’s poems, Song 3:1-5 and Song 5:2–6:3, the second of which will be the subject of this chapter.3 Dreamers and their dreams are not foreign to the Hebrew Bible, but all of these dreamers are men—for example, Jacob, Joseph, Solomon, Nebuchadnezzar—and all of their dreams are prophetic in nature, providing the dreamers with a glimpse of the future.4 This is true until we reach the Song of Songs. Many of the poems in the Song are day dreams (1:2-4; 2:4-7, 8-13; 6:11-12; 8:1-4), two explicitly describe night

1. An earlier version of this chapter was published in Kachalom ya-uf uchedibuk ye-akhez (ed. R. Elior, Y. Bilu, Y. Zakovitch, and A. Shinan; Jerusalem: Magnes, 2013), 18–32. Published with permission by Magnes Press. 2. See above, Chapter 3. 3. Already in 1813, the Catholic priest J. L. von Hug made the argument that the entire Book of Song of Songs speaks of a dream (Das Hohe Lied in einer noch unversuchten Deutung [Freiburg-Constanz]). He cites Song 5:2 “I sleep but my heart is wakeful” as his starting point. His point was taken up by B. Freehof (“The Song of Songs, A General Suggestion,” JQR 39 [1948–49]: 397–402), who viewed the entire book as the dream of a woman who seeks her beloved. These claims contain much exaggeration. 4. See the important book of R. Fidler, “Dreams Speak Falsely?” Dream Theophanies in the Bible: Their Place in Ancient Israelite Faith and Traditions (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2005), and also S. Bar, A Letter that Has Not Been Read: Dreams in the Hebrew Bible (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2001). An exception is the dream mentioned by Isaiah: “Like one who is hungry and dreams he is eating, but wakes to find himself empty and like one who is thirsty and dreams he is drinking, but wakes to find himself faint and utterly parched (29:8).” On such dreams as being “dreams of convenience,” dreams whose purpose is to fulfill a wish, see S. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (trans. J. Strachey; London: Fontana, 1991), 521; see also 202–4.

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dreams (3:1-5; 5:2–6:3), and all are the dreams of the woman. These dreams have no interest in the future but express the real feelings and desires of the dreamer, and they lend themselves—like all dreams—to interpretation and analysis of all kinds, each interpreter according to the theories he or she prefers, from Freud onward. Song 5:2–6:3 is full of tensions—between the young maiden and her beloved, between the maiden and the guards patrolling the city walls, and between her and the daughters of Jerusalem. Let me pose a number of questions that will guide my reading of this poem, though I do not promise complete answers to all of them.

1. Many words repeat themselves in the poem; for what reason and to what effect? 2. Is there symbolism in the dream? That is, do the different words signify anything more than their literal meanings? 3. Many similarities can be drawn between this dream and the other nightdream in Song 3:1-5, but what is different about this poem? (Whenever similarities are found between two literary units in the Bible, we must always look for the differences and ask the meaning behind them.) 4. Can we determine where the dream ends within the poem? 5. Finally, the most significant question (which is dependent on all the others): does the female dreamer have a real lover or is he only fantasy? The poem has three parts: ● ●

●

Part One: The failed meeting (5:2-8); Part Two: The daughters of Jerusalem ask about the lover, and the woman responds with a description of his body (5:9-16); Part Three: The daughters of Jerusalem question where her beloved has gone, and the woman answers (6:1-3).

Parts One and Two conclude with the woman addressing her friends, “the daughters of Jerusalem” (5:16; 6:3). Parts Two and Three open with the formula, “O most beautiful of women,” spoken by the daughters of Jerusalem to the young maiden in verses constructed on the pattern of the expanded colon (5:9; 6:1). The central section, therefore, shares something with the first and third sections.

Part I: The Failed Meeting (5:2-8) v. 2a: I sleep but my heart is wakeful This is the poet’s way of creating a dream-state. The heart, where our desires and yearnings reside, does not rest during sleep.5

5. And compare: “A man is shown [in his dream] only what is suggested by his own heart” (BT Berachot 55b).

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v. 2b: A sound! My lover knocks. “Open for me, my sister, my friend, my dove, my perfect one, for my head is drenched with dew, my locks with the night’s drops” The woman lies in her bed at home while, in her dream, the lover is outside. At first she hears a noise; afterward she understands that it is her lover knocking, though she has yet to hear his voice. He is behind the door and knocks (in the Septuagint the words “on the door” have been added). Knocking on a door is necessary for one who wants to enter, as seen in Judg. 19:22: “The men of the town, a depraved lot, had gathered about the house and were knocking on the door.” (Note that the men’s interest is a sexual one: they want to have relations with the houseguest!) In a poem we have already studied in Chapter 3, we saw how a door is used as a symbol for a woman who has been remiss in guarding her purity so that measures must be taken to prevent young men from taking advantage of her, “and if she be a door we will panel it in cedar” (8:9). Beyond its primary meaning of “to knock,” the root ‫דפ״ק‬, can also convey the sense of “to urge,” as in Gen. 33:13 “and the nursing sheep and cattle are my burden, and if they are urged onward a single day, all the flocks will die.” Also this meaning fits our verse. The young lover longs for the door to open so that he might enter, like the picture of the garden in Song 4:12–5:1, in which the young man, who has been locked outside, is finally allowed in. The young lover showers his beloved with four endearments, all with the possessive suffix. The four can be grouped into two pairs. The first, “my sister, my friend,” expresses the intimacy between the lovers, and the second, “my dove, my perfect one,” his admiration for the woman’s beauty.6 If the man’s endearments suggest that his desire to enter springs from his love for the woman and her beauty that has triggered his attraction, the verse’s continuation uncovers his egoism: dew, the night’s drops,7 weighs heavily on his hair and he needs a roof over his head. But he does seem to be teasing her, wanting to awaken her desire by mentioning his hair.8 As I mentioned in the previous chapter, hair is an emblem of a person’s beauty, especially a man’s, as is apparent from the description of Absalom son of David: “No one in all Israel was so admired for his beauty as Absalom; from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head he was without blemish. When he cut his hair—he had to have it cut every year, for it grew

6. ‫—תמתי‬that is “my [beloved] who is without blemish”; cf. “Every part of you is fair, my darling, there is no blemish in you” (4:7). 7. ‫“( רסיס‬drop”) is derived from the root ‫רס״ס‬, and is synonymous with ‫ ;זל״פ‬cf. Ezek. 46:14: “oil to moisten the fine flour,” to sprinkle over. ‫ רסיסא‬translates ‫ רביבים‬in Deut. 32:2; Jer. 3:3; 14:22. 8. ‫ קווצות‬appears in the Bible only here and in v. 11. In rabbinic Hebrew, it appears in BT Nedarim 9b. In Genesis Rabbah 65:11, ‫ קוץ‬is the antonym of ‫קרח‬, “bald.”

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too heavy for him—the hair of his head weighed two hundred shekels by the royal weight” (2 Sam. 14:25-26).9 v. 3: I have taken off my robe—How will I dress myself again? I have bathed my feet— How will I soil them again? The woman toys with her lover, answering the boy’s teasing with her own. Her response comprises two rhetorical questions with similar structures. The interrogative ‫איככה‬, “how,” which appears twice, expresses lament, as in Est. 8:6, “For how can I bear to see the disaster which will befall my people! And how can I bear to see the destruction of my kindred!” Clearly, however, the lament in our poem is feigned and mischievous. The man has sought to arouse the maiden by mentioning his hair; she is more daring, alluding to the fact that she stands only a few feet from him, naked. The woman’s second excuse for not walking to the door to open it for her lover is that she has already washed her feet.10 This excuse, too, is full of sexual innuendo, as it can be used euphemistically for having had sexual relations—see David’s command to Uriah the Hittite, “Go down to your house and wash your feet” (2 Sam. 11:8), where Uriah, understanding David’s meaning, replies, “How can I go home and eat and drink and sleep with my wife” (v. 11).11 Is our young woman suggesting that she has already had relations with another? Of course, she can also mean the opposite: that she is clean and pure, ready for the young man’s visit. v. 4: My beloved stretched his hand through the hole and my insides were stirred for him Having failed to persuade the woman with words, the young lover now tries actions, though his luck here, too, seems questionable. To understand the scene we must understand doors and locks in the biblical period. The lover appears to pass his hand through a hole in the door, his fingers gripping the key that opens the latch that is fastened to the door’s interior. The hole is large enough for a hand to pass through, “A hole in the door must be the size of a fist” (Mishnah Ohalot 13:3).12 The metaphoric significance of his act is clear: Hebrew ‫נקבה‬, “female” (see

9. A reference to hair as a symbol of beauty may be found in Psalm 151 from the Psalm Scroll at Qumran, where David refers to his brothers as ‫“( הגבהים בקומתם היפים בשערם‬They were tall of stature and handsome by their hair”); see J. A. Sanders, The Dead Sea Psalms Scroll (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), 96. 10. The root ‫ טנ״פ‬is a hapax legomenon in the Bible though used frequently in rabbinic literature, common in Aramaic and found also in the Aramaic Targums where, for example, ‫( נגאלו בדם‬Lam. 4:14) is translated by the Aramaic ‫אטנפו בדם‬. 11. “Feet” (‫ )רגלים‬is sometimes used euphemistically for the male sexual organ, for example: “With two he covered his legs” (Isa. 6:2), and see Pope, Song of Songs, 515. 12. D. Sperber, “Keys, Locks, and the Hole in the Door,” in Material Culture in Eretz Israel during the Talmudic Period, Vol 1 (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2003), 49–57 [Hebrew].

6. Real or Imagined?

77

Gen. 1:27), is derived from ‫נקב‬, “hole”; “hand” can be an epithet for the male sexual organ; see Isa. 57:8-10.13 The woman’s pity is aroused (e.g., “My insides stirred for him” Jer. 31:20). But ‫“ מעים‬insides” can refer also to the woman’s womb, as in the words of Naomi, “Are there yet more sons in my insides?” (Ruth 1:11). Along with feelings of pity, then, we understand that the young woman has also become sexually aroused by the nearness of her lover14 (see further, below). v. 5: I rose to open to my love and my hands dripped myrrh, my fingers liquid myrrh over the handles of the bolt Until this point the male lover has been the initiator in our poem, and now the young woman moves to fulfill his request to “open for me.” She mentions her hands, corresponding to his hand that has already reached through the door-hole. The root ‫נט״פ‬, here translated as “dripped,” replaces her previous use of the root ‫( טנ״פ‬the same letters rearranged), “soiled,” when she refused to open the door. The exchange of verbs conveys her change in mood: previously, she hesitated to dirty herself, but now she drips the fragrant myrrh, her smell filling the air as she walks forward to open the door to her lover. The verb “dripped” extends also to her next words, “my fingers liquid myrrh,” that refer to myrrh resin dissolved in oil, which is mentioned as “oil of myrrh” in Esther 2:12. She has perfumed herself—and perhaps also her bed15—with myrrh oil. Because the root ‫ עב״ר‬indicates a liquid’s flow,16 the young woman again seems to be hinting at her sexual arousal and mounting desire. The flowing reaches as far as the bolt, the door’s handle—close to the man’s hand. v. 6: I opened to my love. But my love had slipped away and left; How my soul went forth when he spoke. I sought him but could not find him. I called him but he did not answer The previous verse took its time to describe the woman’s intention to open the door, and we no longer know whether her lover still waits behind it. She now finally opens the door, but the initiative has returned to his hands and we are surprised: her lingering has been costly, for he has disappeared. The contrast between the woman’s expectations and the man’s behavior is manifested in the quick repetition of the word ‫דודי‬, “my love,” as the indirect object at the end of the first sentence and as the subject at the start of the second. The woman has taken so long in trying to outsmart her lover that he has lost patience and left. He slipped away, ‫חמק‬, lit.

13. 14. 15. 16.

See Exum, Song of Songs, 195. Ibid. Ibid. See, for example, Hab. 3:10; Job 6:15.

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“he turned around,”17 and ‫עבר‬, “left.” The two verbs one after the other, ‫חמק עבר‬, convey a sense of finality. But the poet’s use of the root ‫ עב״ר‬is another repetition, this time of its other appearance as ‫עבר‬, “liquid,” in the previous verse. This, again, highlights the momentary dissonance between the lovers: he has left, and so her hands’ fragrant liquid myrrh will not touch him. The woman’s lament, how her “soul left [her] when he spoke,” is an expression of regret. She defends and rationalizes her actions, explaining the effect of his voice on her which, she now explains, is what caused her to behave as she did. A soul’s going forth is an expression also of yearning, of desire, as in the expression ‫כלות הנפש‬, “the ends of one’s soul.”18 The poem again plays with language, using the verb ‫ יצאה‬to describe both the young woman’s soul that figuratively goes out longingly after her lover’s voice, and her actual setting out to search for him and not finding him, as in the first dream poem, “I must rise and go about the city, the narrow streets and squares, till I find my only love. I sought him everywhere but I did not find him” (3:2). Our poem takes for granted that the woman has set out for the city, since the next verse describes the response of the city’s watchmen. v. 7: The watchmen found me, who go about the town, they struck me, they bruised me, they took my shawl from me, the watchmen of the walls The beginning of the verse resembles v. 3:3a from the first dream. The meaning of ‫מצאני‬, “they found me,” is also “they found out my transgressions,” as in “if found out [the thief] must pay sevenfold” (Prov. 6:31). Among other duties, the watchmen who patrol the city function as a morality patrol that catches immodest women—since only an immodest woman would be wandering the city’s streets at night, as we see from the verse about Tyre in Isa. 23:16: “Take a lyre, go about the town, a harlot long forgotten.” In the dream in Chapter 3 the watchmen did not harm the woman, but here they beat her and hurt her; in this we see her feelings of guilt for not immediately opening the door for her lover. The watchmen do not make due with physically beating the woman; in order to shame her, they also remove her shawl.19 Compare Hosea’s words to his children about his harlot wife: “Rebuke your mother, rebuke her. . . . Let her put away her harlotry from her face and her adultery from between her breasts lest I will strip her naked and leave her as she was on the day she was born” (2:4-5). In this, too, we sense the young woman’s feelings of guilt: she has teased and aroused her lover by telling him how she has taken off her robe, and now the guards indeed strip her. In the second reference to the watchmen, they are called “watchmen of the walls,”

17. See also ‫חמוקי ירכיך‬, that is, your round thighs (Song 7:2). 18. See Ps. 84:3: ‫נכספה וגם כלתה נפשי‬, “I long, I yearn.” 19. “Shawl” (‫ )רדיד‬is mentioned again only in the list of garments in Isa. 3:23, but it is common in rabbinic Hebrew and Aramaic. In the Targums it takes the place of Hebrew ‫צעיף‬ (e.g. Gen., 38:14, 19). The removal of the shawl may reflect a ban on the covering of faces by prostitutes, as we find in the Middle Assyrian Laws, paragraph 40 (see ANET, 183).

6. Real or Imagined?

79

a patent allusion to their role as safeguards against immoral women: as we’ve already seen, the modest woman is likened to a wall in the Song, the antithesis of a door (8:9-10). v. 8: Swear to me, O daughters of Jerusalem, If you find my love, what will you tell him? that I am sick with love The woman’s efforts to find her lover have been abruptly halted by the watchmen. The scene with the watchmen ends without showing us its conclusion, and we have no way of knowing how the young woman managed to free herself. The sharp transition to her exchange with her maiden-friends keeps with the poem’s dreamquality. The young woman suddenly calls to her companions, as if she needs them to find her lover for her. She has not found her lover, the guards found her, and now she turns to her friends for help in finding him. In saying ‫אם תמצאו את דודי‬, she expresses her wish that they, as a group, will succeed where she has failed. But does the interrogative ‫ מה‬in fact function here interrogatively, or negatively, as in 1 Kgs 12:16, “We have no [‫ ]מה לנו‬portion in Jesse, no [‫ ]ולא‬share in Jesse’s son.” Does she or does she not want them to tell her beloved that she is sick with love? Being “sick in love” comes from her love being yet unfulfilled and conveys a sense of languishing (see also 2:5), but the term can also allude to her having been injured at the hands of the guards, a consequence of her love.20 Verse 8 concludes the poem’s first section; when we reach it we do not know with any certainty whether the woman’s interaction with the daughters of Jerusalem is part of the dream or whether it takes place upon her waking. Nor do we have any way of knowing whether the lover about whom she speaks exists or is merely a figment of her imagination.

Part II: The Daughters of Jerusalem Ask about the Lover, and the Woman Responds with a Description of His Body (5:9-16) v. 9: How is your lover different than any other, O most beautiful of women? How is your lover different than any other, that we must swear to you? The young woman’s words to her companions spark wonder: Who is this young man that he merits such intense love? Her appeal thus engenders a conversation about the lover’s beauty. Their question conveys a sense of superiority: How is your lover better than any other? The daughters of Jerusalem pay compliments, too, to the woman, deeming her the “most beautiful of women.” The most beautiful woman deserves the most beautiful man, as he soon will be described. The verse’s

20. Being sick in love appears also in ancient Egyptian love poetry; see Fox, Song of Songs and Egyptian Love Songs, 13, 55.

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construction as an expanded colon21 enables a repetition of the question, conveying the immensity of their astonishment. The woman’s companions conclude where she began, with “that we must swear to you,” corresponding to her demand that they “swear to me.” v. 10: My beloved is dazzling white and ruddy, towering above ten thousand The woman’s answer (vv. 10–16) is a wasf,22 a detailed description of her lover’s physical appearance, which serves a double function: it might help the companions to find him, but it also might awaken their jealousy. The description of the lover, which proceeds downward from his head to his feet, both opens and closes with generalities about his unrivaled beauty. She begins with the word ‫דודי‬, “my beloved,” corresponding to the previously asked, “How is your lover different than any other.” The young woman begins by stating that he is ‫צח‬, that is dazzling, white, radiant,23 and ‫אדום‬, “ruddy,” like in the description of David’s beauty, “And he was ruddy with bright eyes and handsome” (1 Sam. 16:12) and “ruddy and handsome” (17:42; cf. also Lam. 4:7, “Their limbs were ruddier than coral”). The young man “towers above ten thousand”: he is taller than everyone else and can be identified from a distance.24 From ten thousand—the largest number in the Bible. Also at the end of the description will his height be referred to: “a young man like a cedar” (v. 15). The beloved’s appearance is as impressive as that of Saul’s, who was “a head taller than any other of the people” (1 Sam. 9:2). His height should ostensibly help the woman’s friends find him. v. 11: His head is the finest gold, his locks are curled, black as a raven By beginning the detailed description with the young man’s head, the poet reminds us of his previous request to enter the woman’s house: “For my head is drenched with dew, my locks with the night’s drops” (v. 2). The young woman remembers his words and is filled with regret for not having received him immediately into her home. The man’s face is ‫כתם פז‬. Both words, ‫ כתם‬and ‫פז‬, mean “gold”;25 a construct form comprising consecutive synonyms denotes an intensification of meaning. His black hair makes for a handsome contrast to the fairness of his face.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

See Loewenstam, “The Expanded Colon in Ugaritic and Biblical Verse.” I have already discussed the wasf form—see Chapter 5, “Poetic Portrait.” See Lam. 4:7: “Her elected ones were purer than snow, whiter [‫ ]צחו‬than milk.” For a discussion of ‫דגול‬, see Chapter 5, “Poetic Portrait.” See Lam. 4:1: “Alas! The gold is dulled, debased the finest gold [‫”!]הכתם הטוב‬

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v. 12: His eyes are like doves by streams of water,26 bathed in milk set alongside a pool In the first image, the woman describes her lover’s eyes metaphorically, the pupil and iris against their white background. The whites of his eyes are first compared to a stream of water, then to milk. When she describes her lover’s eyes as “bathed, washed” in milk, she is reminded of the terrible words with which she sent him away, “I have washed my feet” (v. 3), a further expression of her regret. With the verse’s final words, “set alongside a pool [‫]מלאת‬,” the whites of his eyes are again likened to water. ‫ מלאת‬evidently refers to a pool from which water is drawn,27 cf. also 7:5: “Your eyes are pools in Heshbon.” But this term carries an additional meaning, referring to precious inlaid stones.28 v. 13: His cheeks are like perfume beds, growing spices; his lips are lilies dripping with liquid myrrh Following metaphors that liken the lover’s eyes to fauna (doves), his cheeks are now compared to flora: they are like garden beds, well-watered.29 The simile aims to describe the pleasing scent of his beard. His cheeks—the garden beds—‫מגדלות‬ “grow” (thus in the ancient translations)30 spices, the aromatic spices from which perfumes were made. Even the scent of the lover’s lips are as pleasing as lilies, and the woman’s insistence on their being wet, “dripping with liquid myrrh,” returns us to the excitement she felt when anticipating her reunion, “my hands dripped myrrh, my fingers liquid myrrh” (v. 5). v. 14: His arms are rods of gold studded with beryl; his loins ivory inlaid with sapphires The exposed parts of his body—his face (v. 11), arms (v. 14) and legs (v. 15)—are made of gold because of their radiance, but the woman’s description maintains lexical variety. With her mention of his arms, she is certainly recalling how his

26. ‫ אפיקי מים‬can refer both to the channels through which a stream flows as well as to the water itself; see Ps. 42:2 “Like a hind crying for streams of water [‫]אפיקי מים‬.” 27. Compare ‫ הזל למליתה‬in Genesis Rabbah 95 (ms. 6; J. Theodor and C. Albeck [Jerusalem, 1965], 1232). 28. See Ibn Ezra on our verse, “this is like (Exod. 28:17) And you shall set in it a stone inset [‫]ומלאת בו מלאת אבן‬.” 29. For ‫ערגות‬, “garden beds,” see also Ezek. 17:7. It does seem that, in Biblical Hebrew, the root ‫ ער״ג‬was connected with the need for water; cf. Joel 1:20: “Also the beasts of the field cry out to you [‫]תערוג אליך‬, for the watercourses have dried up”; Ps. 42:2 “Like a hind crying for water.” 30. Although G. Gerleman (Ruth, Das Hohelied [BKAT 18; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1965], 175) prefers the Masoretic vocalization and interprets the word as ‫מגדלים‬, perfume bottles with tower-like shapes.

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hand slipped from the hole in her door. (We recall that, in Hebrew, the same word can be used for both arm and hand.) His arms are like cylindrical rods studded with precious stones (cf. the comment on ‫מלאת‬, above [v. 12]). The ‫תרשיש‬, “beryl,”31 that is set into the gold appears to refer to his fingernails. The ornamentation with stones here and in the continuation calls to mind a description of a statue and not of a living person, as though her lover were as beautiful as the statue of a god in a temple.32 The man’s torso, ‫( מעיו‬bringing to mind the use of the same term in v. 4 to describe the young woman’s “insides”), is like a slab of ivory,33 a solid slab that is covered with sapphires,34 again calling up the vision of a statue. v. 15: His legs are marble pillars set upon pedestals of gold. His appearance is like the Lebanon, a man like a cedar His arms have been compared to rods and his legs to something thicker, pillars. His legs are compared to “marble pillars,” that is to pale marble35 (like his torso, which was likened to ivory). His legs are “set upon pedestals”: they are firmly set36 on pedestals37 of gold. The description of his body parts began with the color gold, “His head is the finest gold” (v. 11), and ends with it. After speaking about his legs, the young woman returns to speak about her beloved’s whole appearance: from enumerating the parts of the statue, she now makes a statement about the general impression that he makes. The use of the word ‫ בחור‬to describe the lover conveys his young age and also his having been chosen. Once again we are reminded of the description of Saul as being ‫בחור וטוב‬, a “young/chosen handsome man; no one among the Israelites was handsomer than he; he was a head taller than any others” (1 Sam. 9:2). The lover’s stature, his “appearance38 like . . . cedars,” the tallest of trees, is a variant of what was said at the beginning of the description: “towering above ten thousand” (v. 10).

31. The precise identity of ‫ תרשיש‬is unknown. The Septuagint transliterates the word as Tharsis but in Exod. 28:20 and 39:13 it is translated as χρυσόλιθος, a stone with a golden color (so also the Vulgate and Peshitta). In Ezek. 10:9 the Septuagint translates ἄνθρακος. 32. Pope (Song of Songs, 535) rightly compares the description of the man to that of the statue that Nebuchadnezzar sees in a dream (Dan. 2:31-33) and to the description of the man dressed in linen (Dan. 10:5-6). 33. ‫ עשת‬is a plaque or panel; see HALOT, vol. 1, 898. 34. The ‫ספיר‬, one of the stones on the priest’s breastplate (Exod. 28:18), is identified with lapis lazuli (BDB, 705). 35. See “marble columns” (Est. 1:6). 36. Cf. 1 Kgs 7:10. 37. For “pedestals,” see, for example, Exod. 26:19. 38. For the meaning of “appearance” as referring to height, see 1 Sam. 16:7: “Do not look at his appearance or his height.”

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v. 16: His mouth is sweet, he is all delight; This is my beloved and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem! By returning to her beloved’s head, to his mouth, the young woman finishes her words with a reminder that the object she describes is no statue but something living, her lover. She now describes his mouth, lit. his palette [‫]חך‬, the organ for speech and taste.39 The verse is like the earlier description that his “lips are lilies dripping with liquid myrrh” (v. 13). The taste of his wet mouth is like that of a sweet drink;40 the root ‫ מת״ק‬connotes pleasing, tempting things like ‫מתק שפתים‬, “pleasing/tempting words,” literally, “[the] sweetness of [one’s] lips” (Prov. 16:21), making it clear that the dreamer speaks also of his words that are pleasurable to those who hear them. The woman finishes her description by summarizing, “he is all delight.” The word for delight, ‫מחמדים‬, rhymes with and balances ‫ממתקים‬, “sweet,” in the first hemistich. It refers to precious objects coveted by those who see them; see “delight of your eye” (Lam. 2:4) or “delight of your eyes” (Ezek. 24:16, 21). Having accounted for all the lover’s parts and returned to the whole, the time has come to answer the question that was initially posed by the women, “How is your lover different than any other” (v. 9). With the words “This is my beloved and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem,” the young woman makes clear that his beauty is comparable to that of the “most beautiful of women” (v. 9). At the beginning of her poem, the man called his lover ‫רעיתי‬, “my friend,” and now, recalling him and her longing for him, she refers to him as ‫רעי‬, “my friend.”

Part III: The Daughters of Jerusalem Question Where Her Beloved Has Gone, and the Woman Answers (6:1-3) v. 1: Where has your beloved gone, O most beautiful of women? Where has your beloved turned? We will seek him with you The third section, like the second, comprises a question posed by the daughters of Jerusalem (v. 1) and the woman’s answer (vv. 2–3). She has managed, in her wonderful description of her lover, to pique her companions’ curiosity and they are willing to help her find him. Though perhaps “help her” isn’t precisely their intention: she has roused their interest, whetted their appetite to see him, and their willingness to join her is meant to satisfy their own curiosity. It may even be that they don’t believe their friend; such a perfect lover—or, really, divine statue of a man—cannot truly exist, so the women’s willingness to help represents their intention to accompany her until she is ready to admit that he lives only in her dream, in her fantasies.

39. See Job 34:3: “as the palate tastes food.” The woman’s palate is twice referred to in the Song (2:3; 7:10). 40. See Neh. 8:10: “and drink sweet drinks.”

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And indeed, where are the borders of the dream in our poem? Is the dream confined to the first section? Or perhaps both first sections, and maybe even the third, too? To her companions’ question, which is again constructed as an expanded hemistich in order to express the friends’ exuberant eagerness to receive an answer, the woman cannot respond since, when she finally goes to open the door for him, her lover has already “slipped away” (5:6) without telling her his destination (ibid., v. 6). v. 2: My love has gone down to his garden to the beds of spices, to graze in the gardens and to gather lilies The woman, sensing that her time is limited, tries to shake off her friends. Suddenly, she realizes where her lover is. This abrupt transition from ignorance to knowingness is consistent with dreams and not with the logic of reality. The lover has gone down to his garden, the garden which, in Song of Songs, is also a metaphor for the woman, “A locked garden is my sister, my bride” (4:12): he, it seems, is with her. The lover has gone down to “the beds of spices,” one more expression of her longing for him, since his face is “like a beds of spices” (5:13) so that her image of him has become mixed with her own. The lover has gone down to his garden in order “to graze,” that is to feed41 on love’s pleasurable provisions in the company of his partner, who is likened to a lily (see also in 2:1-2). v. 3: I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine, He [who] grazes among the lilies The woman firmly concludes her answer, wanting to get rid of her somewhat pestering companions. Her words solve the riddle she posed to them in the previous verse: her beloved, he who grazes among lilies, is with her, enjoying the pleasures of love that she offers him, and she has no need for her friends’ help. Her and her beloved’s love is all each needs: she is her beloved’s and he is hers (see also 2:16). We are left to wonder at her friends: Do they envy her? Do they believe her that her beloved is with her or do they still think he is but a figment of her imagination? * Let me return to the questions posed at the beginning of this chapter, in the same order.

1. Lexical repetition: I focus on words that are used in the second section of the poem, in the description of the man’s body (vv. 10–16) and which have appeared already in the first section. “His head” and “his locks” (5:11) remind

41. See Song 2:16 “who grazes among the lilies,” and below, in the next verse. The verb is intransitive (see also 4:5).

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85

the woman of her lover’s words, “my head is drenched with dew, my locks with the night’s drops” (5:2), and perhaps she is angry with herself for not opening the door to him. When she describes his eyes “like a dove . . . bathed” (v. 12), she recalls, with longing, his epithet for her, “my dove” (v. 2), and regrets having tried to outwit him with her reply, “I have bathed my feet” (v. 3). The lover’s lips “drip with liquid myrrh” (v. 13), like the woman’s hands (v. 5), and bring to mind both her hands and his, which passed through the door’s opening (v. 4); the mention of his torso (v. 14) recalls her “insides” that stirred for him (v. 4). In the poem’s third section, too, when the woman answers the daughters of Jerusalem that her lover has gone down to his garden, “to the beds of spices to graze in the gardens and to gather lilies” (6:2), she thinks of her lover’s beauty: of his cheeks “like beds of spices” (5:13) and “his lips like lilies” (ibid.), and she is, indeed, like him, a bed of perfume and lilies—conveying the notion that they have finally united and become one. 2. Some of the words used in the dream are patently metaphorical, and all of these are concentrated in the first section of the dream: the lover’s request to “Open for me” (5:2) has an erotic meaning,42 and her answer—her coy refusal since “I have bathed my feet” (v. 3)—also carries sexual connotations. The lover extends his hand (an allusion to his sexual organ) through “the hole” (v. 4; an allusion to her sex), and her “insides” that stir with his coming (ibid.) are not only a reference to her womb, but to its yearning for him. The opening through which the lover sends his hand is in a door, a metaphor for the woman who does not guard her modesty, and those who punish the woman are the watchmen, the “guardians of the walls” (v. 7), a “wall” being a woman who is assiduous in her chasteness. To the symbolism in the poem’s first section, we must add the riddle and its solution that is in the third section, where we find a gentle allusion to the erotic activities at the unification of the two lovers—when the lover goes down to his garden to gather lilies. 3. Regarding the similitude (both lexical and content-related) with the dream poem in Song 3:1-5, let me first list the similarities: 3:1 On my bed at night I sought him but could not find him 3:3 The watchmen found me, who go about the town 3:5 Swear to me, O daughters of Jerusalem

5:2 I sleep 5:6 I sought him but could not find him 5:7 The watchmen found me, who go about the town 5:8 Swear to me, O daughters of Jerusalem

Both poems begin with the lovers’ separation and conclude with their reunion.

42. Freud (Dreams, 521) comments that “anyone, however, who has had a little experience in translating dreams will at once reflect that penetrating into narrow spaces and opening closed doors are among the commonest sexual symbols.”

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And yet, despite the use of similar materials, the difference between the two poems is marked: in Chapter 3, apart from the young woman, the additional characters that appear serve only as an audience; although it is said that the watchmen find her, they do not answer her question (v. 3), she seems to almost float by them, and the daughters of Jerusalem say nothing. Like the watchmen, both the woman’s companions and her lover are utterly passive. The young woman finds her lover and holds onto him, leading him to her mother’s house. This is not the case in the dream that we have now read, in the course of which there occur a series of confrontations: between the young woman and her lover, between her and the watchmen, and between her and the daughters of Jerusalem. The confrontation with the watchmen is a violent one, but the other two are full of teasing and humor. In our poem, the lover and the woman’s companions speak to her. Furthermore, the poem in Chapter 3 is more subdued while the sensuality in our poem is more explicit—the girl undresses in her bed, the watchmen remove her clothes, there is a detailed description of the lover’s attributes and of his having descended to his garden—though these elements are still expressed with delicacy. 4. The extent of the dream is a question that requires consideration. Ostensibly, one might claim that the initial interchange between the girl and the daughters of Jerusalem takes place after she has risen from sleep, but it is clear that in the parallel poem (3:1-5) the girl’s address to the daughters of Jerusalem (v. 5) is part of the dream. Also in the poem that is a daydream (2:4-7), the girl’s words to the daughters of Jerusalem—some appearing in the middle of the dream (v. 5) and some at its end (v. 7)—are part of the dream itself. It is therefore possible that our entire poem, from beginning to end, represents the woman’s report of a dream. 5. Also the final—fundamental—question is beyond our ability to answer with certainty: Does she or does she not have a lover? Does he exist, or is he only a fantasy? Does she have a lover and dream about him, or is she without such an admirer and has created one for herself, in her dreams? Perhaps he does exist, and only his wildly perfect figure is the figment of her imagination, his exquisitely beautiful figure with which she means to goad her companions’ jealousy? One thing only is certain: the figure of the lover in her dream is a surrealistic creation that combines elements drawn from various realms: the statues of divine beings (“His head is the finest gold” [v. 11], “His arms are rods of gold embedded with beryl; his loins ivory inlaid with sapphires; His legs are marble pillars on pedestals of gold” [vv. 14–15]); the natural world, both fauna (“his locks are curled, black as a raven; His eyes are like doves . . .” [vv. 11–12]) and flora (“His cheeks are like perfume beds, growing spices; his lips are lilies dripping with liquid myrrh” [v. 13]; “His appearance is like the Lebanon, a man like a cedar” [v. 15]), the surrealism befitting a dream. Our lack of success—our failure, really—to unequivocally answer the last two questions may lead readers to wonder at the apparent long-windedness of my commentary: is such verbosity justified?

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To this I offer two thoughts: the poem is a dream poem, and dreams—whether our own or those of others—inevitably leave us with unsolvable riddles. Second, the purpose of this reading of the dream was in the reading, itself, not to mention that it has enabled us to discover the detailed and sophisticated beauty of the literary work. It has also helped reveal elements of humor in the poem, an essential tool for all of us when we come to deal with a topic as dear, difficult, and delicate as sexual intimacy.

Chapter 7 “A WOMAN OF VALOR (‫ ”)אשת חיל‬PROV. 31:10-31— A CONSERVATIVE’S RESPONSE TO SONG OF SONGS1

The alphabetical acrostic poem “A Woman of Valor” (Prov. 31:10-31) praises the ideal woman, who is both intelligent and industrious, and enumerates, one by one, her manifold deeds that free her husband from mundane worries and the need to provide for his family. The poem, with which the Book of Proverbs ends, connects both with the unit that precedes it, “the words of Lemuel, king of Massa” (31:1-9)— to which we will return—and with the Book of Proverb’s introductory cycle (chaps. 1–9). The similarity between Wisdom, as described in Proverb’s introductory cycle, and the characterization of the valiant woman has already been recognized. The literary unit consisting of Prov. 3:13-20 opens with, “Happy is the man who finds wisdom” (v. 13), to which we compare, “A woman of valor, who will find?” (31:10; on finding a woman see also Prov. 18:22 and the pessimistic Eccl. 7:26-28); Wisdom, it is written, is “more precious than rubies” (Prov. 3:15, see also 8:11; Job 28:18), while the ideal woman’s “worth is far beyond that of rubies” (Prov. 31:10). About Wisdom we read, “In her right hand is length of days, in her left, riches and honor” (3:16), while the valorous woman makes ample use of her hands for the welfare of her home (31:13, 16, 19, 20), for which she is commended: “Extol her for the fruit of her hand” (31:31).2 Wisdom commands and bestows respect (3:16), and the ideal woman earns respect and praise (31:28-31). One more of Wisdom’s characteristics in one of the final units in the introductory cycle, in Prov. 9:1-6, is paralleled in our poem: Wisdom builds her home (9:1), while caring for home and family comprises a central motif in the Woman of Valor poem (vv. 15, 21 [twice], 27); Wisdom offers food to her guests (9:2-6), to which we compare the woman who “supplies provisions for her household, the daily fare for her maidens” (31:15); and, as the ideal wife has “maidens,” so, too, has Wisdom “sent out her maidens

1. An earlier version of this chapter was published in A Critical Engagement: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honor of J. Cheryl Exum (ed. D. J. A. Clines and E. van Wolde, Hebrew Bible Monograph Series; Sheffield, 2011), 401–13, and is reprinted with permission. 2. R. J. Clifford, Proverbs (OTL; Louisville, 1999), 274.

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to announce on the heights of the town” (9:3).3 It is not surprising, therefore, that our poem mentions explicitly that the woman of valor’s “mouth is full of wisdom” (v. 26). The Septuagint to v. 30 in the Woman of Valor poem, reads, γυνή γὰρ συνειὴ εὐλιογεῖται ψόβον δὲ κυρίου αὔτη αἰνείτω, “For a woman of understanding will be blessed and the fear of the Lord, she herself will praise.” A. Rofé4 has rightly concluded that the Septuagint represents a conflation of two versions: “A Godfearing woman will be praised” and “for a woman of understanding will be praised.” The original version referred to the woman’s wisdom. The second, which speaks of her fearing the Lord—and which is in the Masoretic text—was created in accordance with the statement at the beginning of Proverbs: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (1:7; and see Ps. 111:10; Job 28:28).5 Replacing “understanding” with “fear of the Lord” introduced God into the secular poem and imbued it with theological overtones. The valiant woman is also presented as the reverse of the “foreign” (lit. “strange”) woman whose proximity bodes death and against whom we are repeatedly cautioned in Proverbs’ introductory cluster (Prov. 2:16-19; 6:20-35; 7:1-27; see also 22:14; 23:27). Like the foreign, seductive woman who lures men with her wellpracticed voice and blandishments (5:3; 6:24; 7:13-21) so, too, does the Woman of Valor wield impressive rhetorical skills (v. 26), but hers are used quite differently: the forbidden woman outwits her husband (7:19-20) while the valiant woman has the implicit trust of hers (31:11); the forbidden woman leaves her home to stalk her innocent prey (7:11 ff ) while the valiant wife conducts her assorted business affairs from within the home and it is her husband who sits at the gates of the city (31:23). The forbidden woman is beautiful, and therein lies the danger (6:25), while our poem holds that “grace is deceptive, beauty illusory” (v. 30).6 In this chapter, I hope to reveal the underlying, programmatic intent of the poem “A Woman of Valor” as a polemic against a different female figure that is depicted in poems from another book within the corpus of Wisdom Literature, a book which, like Proverbs, was also attributed to King Solomon: the Song of Songs. That book, as we have seen in each of this book’s chapters, exalts beauty

3. C. V. Camp, Wisdom and the Feminine in the Book of Proverbs (Sheffield: Almond, 1985), 90–93; M. V. Fox, Proverbs 10-31 (AB; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009), 908–09. 4. A. Rofé, “‘A Virtuous Wife’ [‫]אשת חיל‬, γυνή συνετή, and the Redaction of the Book of Proverbs” [in Hebrew], in Z. Talshir et al., Homage to Samuel: Studies in the World of the Bible (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2001), 386. 5. The resemblance between the Woman of Valor and the personified Wisdom does not mean that the Woman of Valor is, herself, a personification of wisdom as has been claimed by A. Wolters, “Sôpiyyă as Hymnic Participle and Play on Sophia,” JBL 104 (1985), 577–87. There are no grounds for his claim that ‫ צופיה‬is a play on the Greek “Sophia.” 6. Fox, Proverbs, 911.

7. “A Woman of Valor (‫”) א ש ת ח י ל‬

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and love, and is happy to give dominance to the woman.7 Moreover, I will identify a source from which the writer of “Woman of Valor” likely drew his inspiration for his ideal woman. * In Proverbs’ poem we find little appreciation for beauty—“grace is deceptive, beauty illusory” (31:30)—and a husband’s love for his wife is not to be demonstrated by declarations of praise whispered into her ears (v. 28 ff ). Instead of equality between the lover and the beloved, like that in Song of Songs, in this poem the woman is assessed by her usefulness to her husband and his satisfaction with her. Thus, we find at the beginning of the poem (vv. 11–12), at its conclusion (v. 29 ff ), and also in between (v. 23).8 Of course, the conservative ideology of “A Woman of Valor” is not, in itself, sufficient proof that it was written specifically against the depiction of the female in Song of Songs. What, then, underlies my claim that it was Song of Songs that provoked the writing of the poem ‫אשת חיל‬, “A Woman of Valor”? In “A Woman of Valor” we discern clear connections to the passage in Song of Songs that characterizes female beauty in Song 6:4-10. There, the maidens celebrate the young woman, “Maidens see her and acclaim her [‫]ראוה בנות ויאשרוה‬, queens and concubines, and praise her [‫( ”]ויהללוה‬v. 6:9b), to which we compare Leah’s words upon the birth of Asher: “What good fortune [‫ !]באשרי‬For I was acclaimed by women [‫( ”]אשרוני בנות‬Gen. 30:13). In our poem, with its male orientation, the husband and sons praise the woman: “Her sons acclaim her [‫]בניה ויאשרוה‬, her husband praises her [‫( ”]ויהללה‬Prov. 31:28). The women, on the other hand, are mentioned in the very next verse, one more element in the men’s approval of the wife and mother: “Many women [‫ ]בנות‬have succeeded [‫]עשו חיל‬, but you surpass them all” (v. 29). Whereas the maidens in Song of Songs praise the woman’s beauty, “Who is she that looks out like the dawn, beautiful as the moon, radiant as the sun, awesome as bannered hosts?” (Song 6:10), in our poem, the men emphasize that “Grace is deceptive; beauty illusory” (v. 30).9 As we saw in Chapter 5, Song of Songs 6:4-10 paints a portrait of a woman’s face. Other wasfs extend our vision beyond the face to include the full bust,

7. For Song of Songs’ connection to Wisdom Literature, see Zakovitch, Das Hohelied, 46–47. 8. The same standard is used to compare wife to husband in Prov. 12:4; see, too, Sir. 26:1-2. 9. Although in Chapter 5, “A Poetic Portrait,” I demonstrated how v. 10 was meant to precede vv. 4–9 in Song of Songs 6. However, the author of Proverbs was familiar with the present order of the verses in Song whereby v. 10 is understood as the praise sung by other women and, as a result, following the verse that reads “Her sons acclaim her, her husband praises her” (Prov. 31:28), Proverbs brings the words of praise of the wife and mother: “Many women have succeeded, but you surpass them all” (Prov. 31:29).

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including hair and breasts (4:1-7), or the whole body—for example the body of the Shulammite, from the soles of her feet to her head and hair (7:1-6). Our poem, interested as it is with industriousness and not beauty or eroticism, focuses mainly on the woman’s busy hands: “With the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard” (v. 16); she “girds her loins with strength and is vigorous with her arms” (v. 17; also the man’s hand [lit. “arm”] is mentioned in the Song when the woman says to him: “Let me be as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your hand” [8:6]); “She stretches her hand to the distaff, and her palms work the spindle” (Prov. 31:19; in Song, it is the man who stretches out his hand—“My beloved stretched his hand through the [door]-hole and my insides were stirred for him” [5:4]); “Her palm is open to the poor, her hands stretched to the needy” (v. 20; note the chiasmus in vv. 19–20); “Extol her for the fruit of her hand [i.e. for her labors]” (v. 31; cf. the first verse mentioning her hand, v. 16: “She plants a vineyard with the fruit of her hands”). Along with references to body parts in order to illustrate the woman’s industriousness and strength, the poet includes also a facial feature: “Her mouth is full of wisdom, her tongue with kindly teaching” (v. 26). Again, the mention of mouth and tongue are employed to underscore the wife’s industriousness and not her beauty or eroticism, in contrast to the verse in Song of Songs, “Your lips are like a crimson thread, your tongue is lovely” (Song 4:3). In Song, the woman speaks erotically of her clothing in order to arouse her lover (5:3). And, as the Shulammite dances, the poet notes her shoes, “How lovely are your feet in sandals” (7:2), from which we observe the erotic quality of women’s shoes (cf. the effect of Judith’s shoes on Holofernes in Jdt. 16:9). In our poem clothing is also mentioned, although, again, it characterizes the woman’s industriousness. She herself buys wool and flax (v. 13), spins and weaves the cloth (vv. 19; 24), dresses the members of her household (v. 21), and she, herself, is impeccably dressed (v. 22). The colors of the clothes, “crimson”10 (v. 20) and “purple” (v. 22), appear also in Song of Songs, though there it is not only as fabric color (see 3:10) but as shades of the beloved’s face, which arouse desire: “Your lips are like a crimson thread”(4:3); “the warp and woof of your head are purple [cloth]” (7:6). Our toiling woman also makes “coverlets” (from the root ‫;רב״ד‬ v. 22), to which we compare the erotic context in which appears the related root ‫“( רפ״ד‬spread, spread out, support”; the exchange of bet and pe is common) in Song of Songs: “Sustain me with raisin-cakes, support me [lit. cushion me] with apples for sick in love am I” (2:5).11

10. As in Isa. 1:18: “Be your sins like crimson, they can turn snow-white.” 11. The roots ‫ רפ״ד‬and ‫ רב״ד‬are closely affiliated. See, too, the eroticism associated with the “covers” (‫ )מרבדים‬on the bed of the forbidden woman, which she uses to lure the “lad” (Prov. 7:16-18): “I have spread my bed with coverlets [‫ ]מרבדים רבדתי‬of dyed Egyptian linen; I have sprinkled my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon. Let us drink our fill of love till morning; let us delight in amorous embrace.”

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I have mentioned how the beloved in Song is proactive in her relations with her lover. In contrast to the poem in Proverbs, where the woman is found by the man who actively seeks her out (“a woman of valor, who will find?” v. 10), in the dream poem in Song, it is the woman who embarks on a quest to find her lover and succeeds, “When I found the one I love I held him fast, I would not let him go” (3:4). As we saw in the previous chapter, the second dream poem (5:2–6:3) describes how the woman also sets out to find her lover (5:6), as, too, in one more poem, “I will find you outside and will kiss you” (8:1). In Proverbs the wife’s energies are channeled elsewhere: she is ‫אשת חיל‬, which, in this context, means “an industrious woman”; cf. Prov. 12:4: “An industrious woman is a crown for her husband, like rot in his bones is the lazy [‫ ]מבישה‬one” (this meaning of ‫ מבישה‬is clear, e.g., from Prov. 10:5: “He who lays in stores during the summer is a capable son, but he who sleeps during the harvest is a lazy son”; see also 17:2). The woman of valor, ‫אשת חיל‬, also makes ‫חיל‬, that is to say, she increases wealth (v. 29), which is the unambiguous meaning of the word ‫ חיל‬in Prov. 13:22: “the wealth (‫ )חיל‬of sinners.” Though this meaning is clear from the context, nonetheless, the term’s use inevitably prompts associations of masculine qualities: the corresponding “man of valor” (‫ )איש חיל‬is often used of warriors (e.g., 2 Sam. 24:9; Jer. 48:14), while ‫ עשה חיל‬often denotes military prowess (e.g., 1 Sam. 14:48; Ps. 60:14).12 Support for recognizing the military connotation of the term in our poem emerges from the next verse, “Her husband’s heart trusts her and benefits (‫שלל‬, lit. ‘spoils’) are not lacking” (v. 11), the noun ‫ שלל‬always occurring in the context of war (e.g., Exod. 15:9; Judg. 5:30. Isa. 9:2; 10:6). Moreover, in v. 15 we find the term ‫טרף‬, which, though sometimes conveying the sense of “food” (Mal. 3:10; Ps. 111:5; Job 24:5; and see also Prov. 30:8, “provide me [‫ ]הטריפני‬with bread,” and compare Prov. 31:15 “and supplies provisions for her household”), usually has to do with carnivorous animals (e.g., Gen. 37:33; 49:9; Deut. 33:20) and thus also connotes a masculine sort of strength: “She rises while it is still night, and supplies provisions [‫ ]טרף‬for her household” (31:15). Masculinity is evoked once again by the expression “girds her loins” (v. 17; cf. 2 Kgs 4:29) and in the woman’s being “clothed with strength” (v. 25; cf. Ps. 93:1; Job 29:14).13 The determination to expunge any trace of eroticism from the depiction of the ideal woman apparently led to this adoption of masculine terminology, which obviously blunts the woman’s femininity. The beloved of Song spends much of her time outdoors, in nature and away from home, an expression of her liberty and of her disdain for society’s conventions and the limitations it imposes on her (see 1:5-6, 7-8, 17; 2:10-13, 14, 15; 3:2-4, 6; 4:6-8; 5:5-7; 7:12-14; 8:1-4, 5, 13-14). In Proverbs’ “Woman of Valor,” on the other hand, the woman is active within the confines of her home. Although she is described as “bringing her food from afar” (v. 14; i.e., from distant lands, similar to Jer. 6:20;

12. See Clifford, Proverbs, 277. 13. This masculine, heroic quality led A. Wolters to conclude that “Woman of Valor” is a paean to bravery; see A. Wolters, “Proverbs 31:10-31 as Heroic Hymn: A Form-Critical Analysis,” VT 38 (1988): 446–57.

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Prov. 25:25), she herself does not travel there but, rather, controls distant routes of commerce from her home. She “brings” (the hif ’il form of the root ‫ )בו״א‬her food, whereas, in Song, the beloved comes (the qal form of the same verb) from afar: “With me, from Lebanon, my bride, with me, from Lebanon, come” (4:8). In Proverbs the woman rises [‫ ]ותקם‬before dawn to begin her daily labor (v. 16), whereas in Song she rises in order to wander outdoors and be in nature (2:10, 13). In our poem, the vineyard is no more than the plot of land the housewife purchases (31:16), while in Song it is the place for romantic trysts, the place where the woman is free to act on her desires (1:6, 14; 7:13), a metaphor for “woman” herself (8:11-12) or perhaps even for female genitalia (2:15). In Song, both beloved and lover experience the world beyond the confines of their home, but in Proverbs’ poem only the husband enjoys a place of honor at the gates of the city (v. 23), and the praise that is sung there for the wife speaks precisely about her remaining at home (v. 31). The removal of any underlying eroticism from the poem in Proverbs becomes apparent from the use of other words and expressions: “Her husband’s heart trusts her” (v. 11), versus Song’s “I sleep but my heart is wakeful” (5:2), “You have captured my heart, my sister, bride, you have captured my heart with one of your eyes, one bead of your necklace” (4:9), “Let me be a seal upon your heart” (8:6). In Proverbs we find that the woman’s hard work has produced “spoils [that] are not lacking [‫( ”]אל יחסר‬31:11) versus Song 7:3: “Let mixed wine not be lacking” (in the woman’s naval, which is likened to a vessel); the root ‫ חפ״ץ‬is used in Proverbs, “And works with eager hands” (31:13), whereas Song of Songs uses the same verb for quite another purpose, “Do not wake and do not rouse love until it is eager [i.e. wants to be awakened]” (2:7 and also 3:5). And, finally, in Proverb’s “the bread of idleness she does not eat” (31:27) the poet speaks of simple, straightforward eating, while in Song of Songs the beloved arrives to the gates of the garden singing, “I have come to my garden, my sister, bride . . . eaten my honeycomb with my honey” (5:1). The placement of “Woman of Valor,” too, I suggest, attests to efforts to eliminate eroticism from the image of the ideal woman. I have already mentioned at the beginning of this chapter that the poem relates to the preceding unit in Proverbs, “The words of Lemuel, king of Massa, with which his mother admonished him” (31:19). Lemuel’s wise mother admonishes and counsels her son, and the capable wife opens her mouth in order to speak words of wisdom (31: 26). Lemuel’s mother warns him, “Do not give your strength (‫ ;חילך‬the same word as in the title of our poem) to women” (v. 3), while the woman “of valor” does not steal a man’s strength or potency with her seductions but, on the contrary, bears the entire burden of providing for the home. Lemuel’s mother commands him to judge the poor fairly: “Open your mouth, judge righteously, champion the poor and the needy” (v. 9), while the Woman of Valor “opens her mouth with wisdom and the laws of kindness are on her tongue” (v. 26) and “gives generously to the poor; her hands are stretched out to the needy” (v. 20). We turn now to a somewhat bold conjecture, it, too, relating to placement and juxtaposition.14 It cannot be ruled out that, at an early stage in the redaction of the

14. See Shinan and Zakovitch, “Why Is A Next to B.”

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kethuvim (Writings), Song of Songs was placed immediately following Proverbs. When the baraita (a tradition of oral law that was not included in the Mishnah) that is in Talmud Baba Bathra 14b–15a, which attests to the order of the books in the Writings, places the three compositions attributed to Solomon one after the other, it locates Ecclesiastes before Song: “Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs.” This arrangement reflects the view that the Song was the last book that Solomon composed, after he had completed Ecclesiastes. As Rashi explains, “It seems to me that they said [it was written] in his old age.” The same order of the three books appears in the Septuagint and is reflected in the order of the Scriptures listed by some of the Church Fathers, including Melito Bishop of Sardis and Origen. Needless to say, the view that Song is the last of King Solomon’s writings presumes that it should be understood as an allegory, that it was only in his old age that Solomon attained the clarity and religious sublimity that are expressed in the allegorical interpretation. Admitting the plain meaning—the peshat—of Song of Songs, on the other hand, requires a placement before Ecclesiastes, the same order of Scripture that we find in Sephardic manuscripts such as Leningrad Codex, an order of the books that reflects a chronological approach. We submit, then, that Sages who read the Song of Songs according to its literal, straightforward sense—the peshat—as love poetry between a man and a woman, placed it following Proverbs but preceding Ecclesiastes, while others, who supported the allegorical reading, placed it after Ecclesiastes.15 The author of “Woman of Valor,” who wrote his composition as a polemical retort to the poems in Song of Songs—as an antidote, of sorts, to be taken before reading the book of love poetry—positioned it as the connecting link—the cement—between the two books, between the conclusion of Proverbs (“the words of Lemuel”) and the beginning of Song of Songs. * “Woman of Valor” displays a close affinity to the Book of Ruth. Outside of Proverbs, only Ruth, in the Book of Ruth, is described by the term ‫אשת חיל‬, when Boaz tells her, “for all [those at the] gate [i.e. the elders] know you are a woman of valor” (3:11; it is possible that the writer of Ruth borrowed this designation from Prov. 12:4). In that same verse, Boaz tells Ruth that he has heard her praises sung at the gates of the city, exactly as is written in the concluding verse of “Woman of Valor”: “Let her works praise her at the gates” (v. 31). In his words, Boaz praises Ruth, “Your last act of graciousness [‫ ]חסד‬is even greater than the first, when you did not go after young men, whether poor or rich” (3:10), to which we compare the verse from “Woman of Valor”: “graciousness [‫ ]חסד‬is on her tongue” (31:26). When Boaz sets out to arrange to redeem Ruth, which will lead to his marrying her, he sits at the gate of the city with the other dignitaries and elders of the city, “Meanwhile, Boaz had gone to the gate and sat down there. . . . Then [Boaz] took ten elders of

15. For a discussion of the relationship between the literal and the allegorical interpretation of the Song, see Chapter 8, “Allegorical Interpretation.”

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the town and said ‘Sit here,’ and they sat” (4:1-2), and compare our poem: “Her husband is known at the gates, as he sits among the elders of the land” (v. 23). The term “known” in this verse refers to someone with authority (cf. Ps. 48:4; 76:2) and suits the status and actions of Boaz at the gate, where his orders are carried out by all. The root ‫אה״ב‬, “love,” appears only once in the Book of Ruth, where it does not describe the relations between Ruth and Boaz but those between Ruth and her mother-in-law Naomi: “for your daughter-in-law who loves you has given birth.” Note, too, that not the slightest hint of Ruth’s physical appearance is provided anywhere in the entire book. Ruth is industrious, hard-working, and takes the initiative; her deeds lead to a solution to the desperate straits in which she and her mother-in-law find themselves: gathering sheaves in Boaz’s field ensures that the two women will not starve (cf. in “A Woman of Valor,” vv. 11, 14, 15). These striking similarities between the Book of Ruth and “A Woman of Valor” lead us to propose that the writer of that poem made use of the story of Ruth, too, from which he took building blocks for characterizing what he regarded as the ideal woman. I have elsewhere16 put forward the argument, based on linguistic, literary, and ideological considerations, that the Book of Ruth—a polemic document written against the demand to expel foreign women, including Moabite and Ammonite women, from Israel—was written in the Second Temple period (mid-fifth century BCE). Song of Songs did not take its final form, in my opinion, until the Hellenistic period (third century BCE),17 a dating based on linguistic grounds. “A Woman of Valor,” too, is to be dated to the Hellenistic period, apparently to the second century BCE.18 These conclusions accord with our assertion that “A Woman of Valor” resonates with borrowings from the Book of Ruth, on the one hand, and criticism of Song of Songs, on the other. To return to the matter of juxtaposition: the author of the Book of Ruth designed his book to be placed between Judges and the Book of Samuel—the position it occupies in the Septuagint, the Vulgate, and in the writings of the Church Fathers. The book’s opening words, “In the days when the judges ruled” (1: 1), hint at this position. The writer of the Book of Ruth furthermore structured his narrative in such a way that it would resemble the two story-appendices at the end of Judges: the story of Micah’s sculptured image and the journey of the Dannites in chapters 17–18, and the story of the concubine at Gibeah, in chapters 19–21. Each of the three stories tells of a character from Bethlehem in Judah: the Levite youth (Judg. 17:7 ff.), the concubine (19:1), and Naomi and her household—including

16. See Y. Zakovitch, Das Buch Rut. Ein jüdischer Kommentar (Stuttgarter Bibelstudien 177; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk GmbH, 1999), 62–64. 17. See Zakovitch, Das Hohelied, 66–67. 18. M. Waegeman, “The Perfect Wife of Proverbs 31:10-31,” in Goldene Äpfel in silbernen Schalen (ed. K. D. Schunck and M. Augustin; Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 1992), 101.

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David, with whose birth the story of Ruth ends. The formulas that frame the two appendices to Judges—“In those days there was no king in Israel” (17:6; 18:1; 19:1, 21, 25)—prepare the reader for the monarchy and for the birth of David. A special affinity can be discerned between the Book of Ruth and the story of the concubine at Gibeah, intended as its closest neighbor, though this relationship is mostly oppositional in nature:

1. The concubine leaves her husband’s house, “leaving him for her father’s house in Bethlehem” (19:2), and her husband must persuade her to return to him and “win her back” (v. 3); Naomi tries to dissuade Ruth, her daughter-in-law, from accompanying her to Bethlehem, and tries to persuade her to return to Moab, to her mother’s home; see the recurrence of the verbs “to go” (‫ )הל״כ‬and “to return” (‫ )שו״ב‬in the conversation between Naomi and Ruth (vv. 7–19). 2. The concubine’s father tries to persuade his son-in-law to remain in Bethlehem, to no avail, and the man and his concubine leave the city (19:410); Naomi tries to dissuade her daughter-in-law from coming with her to Bethlehem and fails, and they arrive to the city together. 3. Both stories deal unconventionally with the problem of descendants and its solution. Following the statement, “This day one tribe has been cut off from Israel” (Judg. 21: 6), the Israelite men seek a solution for the lack of women available to the men of the tribe of Benjamin, although they had vowed not to give them their own daughters in marriage (v. 7). In the Book of Ruth, too, Naomi and Ruth seem to be facing a desperate situation: no more men in the family are alive to marry and bear children for. While the solutions in the concubine story are violent, in the Book of Ruth everything is resolved peacefully and tenderly. In Judges, the solution is to abduct girls from vineyards, while in Ruth it ensues from a gentle act on the threshing floor, in the field (ch. 3). At the end of the Book of Ruth are links to its intended neighbor on the other side, the beginning of the Book of Samuel. The women say to Naomi, about the newborn infant: “For he is born of your daughter-in-law, who loves you and is better to you than seven sons” (4:15). The words of the women evoke those of Elkanah to the barren Hannah, in Samuel’s first chapter: “Am I not better to you than ten sons?” (1 Sam. 1:8). The elders at the gate congratulate Boaz with the words, “Let your house be like the house of Perez . . . through the offspring which the Lord will give you by this young woman” (4:12), which are reminiscent of Eli’s blessing to Elkanah, “May the Lord grant you offspring by this woman” (1 Sam. 2:20). It is likely that the intention of the author of the Book of Ruth in placing his story after Judges failed due to the gradual finalization of the biblical anthology. The Prophets (at least the early prophets), as a unit, were finalized prior to the decision to include the Book of Ruth in the biblical anthology. And indeed, in manuscripts in which Proverbs follows Psalms and Job, for example Codex Leningrad, a juxtaposition between Proverbs and Ruth was created since, we recall, the Masoretes (and, consequently, many Sephardic manuscripts)

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set Ruth first among the Five Scrolls, which they arranged in chronological order. The redactor of the midrash Lekaḥ Tov appended the following passage to the end of the manuscript, though it does not belong there: For Solomon who spoke in proverbs . . . juxtaposed [Ruth’s] book to his book, and Solomon said at the end of his book, “A woman of valor, who will find?” (Prov. 31:10) and he praised and glorified the woman of valor a great deal, alphabetically until tav [i.e. the last letter], all praises, and he ended his book “grace is deceptive, beauty illusory” (v. 30) and “extol her for the fruit of her hands” (v. 31). Since Naomi was a god-fearing woman and Ruth a woman of valor, for it says of her (Ruth 3:11), “for all the elders at the gate know what a woman of valor you are,” that is why he [i.e. Solomon] mentioned them and juxtaposed them to the Book of Proverbs, teaching us that everything that Solomon said about the woman of valor refers to such as them, as Naomi and her daughter-in-law. (ms Petersburg)

Fate would have it, then, that when the order of the books was established following the tradition described above, the three pieces of writing came to be juxtaposed one to the other: “Woman of Valor,” followed by its inspiration—the Book of Ruth—and, last, Song of Songs, the love poetry against which the author of Woman of Valor wrote his polemic. * In conclusion, let me once more recall that the poet who composed “A Woman of Valor” sought to replace the paragon of femininity in Song of Songs with a different female ideal: instead of the clever, active, and bold woman who is not confined by conventions, the physically beautiful woman who is not afraid to wander outside her home and to arouse her lover’s desire, the author of “A Woman of Valor” put forward a smart, active woman of a different sort: a woman who remains inside her home and supervises the household. Her beauty is not mentioned and the parts of her body which are mentioned are those that contribute to her activities for the prosperity of her home and reveal her wisdom and graciousness. The elimination of all eroticism from the poem has left a somewhat masculine woman, a woman who does not leave her husband much to do in his home so that he is therefore free to devote himself to the public affairs that are dealt with at the gates of the city. Rather than being praised by other women for her beauty, this woman is praised by her husband and sons for her industry. For his model of the ideal woman, a “woman of valor,” our author drew upon Ruth, whom Boaz labels ‫( אשת חיל‬as is called the woman who is worthy of her husband in Prov. 12:4). The poet, I believe, knew the juxtaposition between the end of Proverbs, the passage attributed to Lemuel, king of Massa (31:1-9), and Song of Songs, and he composed his own poem as a link that would join them together.

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The Book of Ruth eventually found its place within the kethuvim, and in Sephardic manuscripts was placed first among the Five Scrolls following Proverbs, which ends with the poem “A Woman of Valor,” and before Song of Songs. These three texts—the poem “A Woman of Valor”; the poem’s inspiration, the Book of Ruth; and the book that spurred the poet to inveigh against it, Song of Songs— have thus come to us one next to the other, bound together like good neighbors.

Chapter 8 WHEN DID THE ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE SONG BEGIN?

In the first century of the common era, the Song of Songs was already recognized as part of the Hebrew Bible: Flavius Josephus, in Against Apion 1:8, counts twentytwo holy books (and not twenty-four, since he counts Ruth as part of Judges and Lamentations as part of Jeremiah), mentioning as the last group, “The remaining four contain hymns to God and precepts for the conduct of human life,”1 a reference to Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes. Much earlier, 4 Ezra, written close to the time of the destruction of the Second Temple, already mentions the number twenty-four for the canonical books, which of course includes the Song of Song.2 Sections from Song of Songs scrolls were discovered at Qumran,3 which also supports the theory of the book’s early sacred status. Melito Bishop of Sardis arrived in the Land of Israel close to the year 170 CE in order to know which books were considered canonical, and he lists the Song of Songs among them. Between 90 and 130 CE, Aquila translated the Song of Songs into Greek, and before the second century ended the book was translated again by both Symmachus and Theodotion. Nonetheless, rabbinic literature testifies to a sharp polemic around the book, a polemic that undoubtedly stemmed from the way the book was interpreted, whether as straightforward love poetry or as poems about the love between God and the community of Israel: “Originally, it is said, Proverbs, Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes were suppressed; for since they were held to be mere parables and not part of the Holy Writings, (the religious authorities) arose and suppressed them; (and so they remained until the men of Hezekiah came and interpreted them)” (Abot de Rabbi Nathan, Version 1, Chapter 1:81).4 The term ‫גניזה‬, “[that which is] put away, stored,” is used exclusively for sacred items; see for example, “In the days

1. H. St. J. Thackeray, Josephus. Against Apion (LCL 186; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 179. 2. 4 Ezra 14:44-46; see Charles, APOT, 624. 3. E. Tov, Indices and Introduction to the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert Series (DJD 34; Oxford: Clarendon, 2002), 200. 4. See J. Goldin, The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955), 5.

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of the Hasmoneans, the stones from the altar that the kings of Greece abominated were hidden away” (Mishnah Middoth 1:6) and “A Torah scroll that has worn out is stored with a learned one [i.e. in the grave of a learned man]” (BT Megillah 26b). Tradition attributes the cancellation of the genizah of Proverbs, Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes to the members of the Great Knesset who, according to the rabbinic conception, were contemporaries of Nehemiah. There were other objections to the book’s sanctity, claims that it “does not render hands unclean” (to render hands unclean is a technical term whose literal meaning is “pollutes one’s hands” but whose actual meaning is the opposite:“[is] sacred”). This argument appears in the Mishnah where Rabbi Akiba vigorously supports the book’s sanctity and is given the final word: All the Holy Scriptures render the hands unclean. The Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes render the hands unclean. R. Judah says: The Song of Songs renders the hands unclean, but about Ecclesiastes there is dissension. . . . R. Simeon b. Azzai said: I have heard a tradition from the seventy-two elders on the day when they made R. Eleazar b. Azariah head of the college [of Sages], that the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes both render the hands unclean. R. Akiba said: God forbid!—no man in Israel ever disputed about the Song of Songs [that he should say] that it does not render the hands unclean, for all the ages are not worth the day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel; for all the Writings are holy, but the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies. And if anything was in dispute the dispute was about Ecclesiastes alone. (Yadaim 3:5)

The conclusion in a similar discussion in the Tosefta reads: “The Song of Songs renders the hands unclean because it was said through the Holy Spirit. Ecclesiastes does not render the hands unclean because it is the wisdom of Solomon” (Yadaim 2:14; see BT Megillah 7a). Rabbi Akiba, who resolutely voiced his opinion on the sanctity of the Song of Songs, spoke passionately against its literal interpretation: “Whoever warbles the Song of Songs at banqueting houses, treating it like an ordinary song, has no portion in the World to Come” (Tosefta Sanhedrin 12:5), and also: “Our Rabbis taught: He who recites a verse of the Song of Songs and treats it as a [secular] song, and one who recites a verse at a banquet unseasonably . . . brings evil upon the world because the Torah girds itself in sackcloth, and stands before the Holy One, blessed be He, and laments before Him, ‘Sovereign of the Universe! The children have made me as a harp upon which they frivolously play’” (BT Sanhedrin 101a). The Rabbis were consistent, and we find that there is almost no verse from the Song of Songs that was interpreted by them according to the peshat (literal meaning). Instead, they chose to interpret the Song as an allegory, an extended metaphor that departs from a text’s literal meaning and whose focus may be very different. The Song of Songs was not originally an allegory. It is a work whose allegorical interpretation was granted it by interpreters, just as the works of Homer came to be interpreted allegorically by Stoic writers who sought to give the Homeric epic philosophical legitimacy, and just as Paul interpreted the characters of Hagar and Sarah allegorically as the Old and New Testaments.

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Evidence that the Song of Songs was interpreted allegorically appears already in the period between the destruction of the Second Temple and the Bar Kokhba Revolt, where it is understood as speaking about the relations between the shekhinah and the people of Israel from the Exodus onwards.5 Early evidence of the allegorical interpretation of the Song of Songs from outside the Bible can be found in a book I have already mentioned, 4 Ezra (2 Esdras): “I said, O sovereign Lord, from every forest of the earth and from all its trees you have chosen one vine, and from all the lands of the world you have chosen for yourself one region, and from all the flowers in the world you have chosen for yourself one lily, . . . and from all the multitude of peoples you have gotten for yourself one people . . .” (5:23-27).6 Also the Mishnah shows evidence of an allegorical interpretation of the Song: “‘on his wedding day, on the day of his heart’s rejoicing’: on his wedding day— this is the giving of the Law; and on the day of this heart’s rejoicing—this is the building of the Temple. May it be built speedily, in our days! Amen” (M. Ta’anith 4:8). Such evidence is scattered throughout Tannaitic and Amoraic literature. All the Midrashim on the Song of Songs interpret it allegorically. The most important of them is Midrash Song of Songs Rabbah, a work from the Land of Israel from the seventh to eighth centuries. For illustration, here are two examples of the allegorical interpretation in that collection: R. Elazar interpreted the verse to speak of Israel when it stood at the sea: “. . . my dove, in the clefts of the rock (2:14), in the covert of the cliff: for they were hidden in the recess of the sea.” “Let me see your face”: “stand still and see the salvation of the Lord (Exod. 14:13).” “Let me hear your voice”: that is, the Song, “Then sang Moses” (Exod. 15:1). “. . . for your voice is sweet”: this refers to the Song. “. . . and your face is comely”: for the Israelites were making a gesture of glorification with their finger and saying, “This is my God and I will glorify him” (Exod. 15:2). (Song of Songs Rabbah 2:14)7 “Your two breasts are like two fawns”: This refers to Moses and Aaron. Just as a woman’s breasts are her glory and her ornament, so Moses and Aaron are the glory and ornament of Israel. Just as a woman’s breasts are her charm, so Moses and Aaron are the charm of Israel.

5. On the allegorical interpretation of the Song of Songs, see E. E. Urbach, “The Homiletical Interpretations of the Sages and the Expositions of Origen on Canticles, and the Jewish-Christian Disputation,” Scripta Hierosolymitana 22 (1971): 247–75; G. D. Cohen, “The Song of Songs and the Jewish Religious Mentality,” in The Samuel Friedland Lectures: 1960–1966 (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1966), 1–21; R. Kimelman, “Rabbi Yohanan and Origen on the Song of Songs: A Third Century Jewish-Christian Disputation,” HThR 23 (1980): 567–95. 6. Trans. T. A. Bergren, in M. D. Coogan (ed.), The New Oxford Annotated Bible, 4th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 686. 7. J. Neusner, Song of Songs Rabbah: An Analytical Translation, vol. 1 (BJS 197; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), 195.

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Just as a woman’s breasts are her honor and her praise, so Moses and Aaron are the honor and praise of Israel. Just as a woman’s breasts are full of milk, so Moses and Aaron are full of Torah. Just as whatever a woman eats, the infant eats and sucks, so all the Torah that our lord Moses learned, he taught to Aaron: “And Moses told Aaron all the words of the Lord” (Exod. 4:28). And rabbis say, “He actually revealed the ineffable Name of God to him.” Just as one breast is not larger than the other, so Moses and Aaron were the same: “These are Moses and Aaron” (Exod. 6:26), so that in knowledge of Torah, Moses was not greater than Aaron, and Aaron was not greater than Moses. (Song of Songs Rabbah 4:5)8

The Aramaic Targum of the Song of Songs is in fact an allegorical exegesis of the book. That Targum describes the history of Israel’s salvation by God, from the Exodus until the future messianic period.9 In Shi’ur Qomah,10 a mystical book from the first century CE, we find an exegetical analysis of Song 5:10-16, the wasf describing the male lover’s body, which it interprets as delineating the measurements of God’s body. A proclivity for the allegorical interpretation of the Song of Songs was widespread in traditional Jewish exegesis. Of all the medieval commentators—except for one anonymous commentator from the twelfth century, whose commentary was published by H. J. Matthaeus11—none dared to stray from the belief that the Song speaks about the relations between Israel and its God.12

8. Neusner, Song of Songs Rabbah, vol. 2, 48. According to Y. Zunz, the different midrashim on the Song of Songs were taken from a single extensive midrash that preceded them but which has been lost; see Y. T. L. Zunz, Die gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden historisch entwickelt: ein Beitrag zur Alterthumskunde u. biblischen Kritik, zur Literatur- u. Religionsgeschichte (Berlin: A. Asher, 1832). 9. The language of the Targum testifies to its origin in the Land of Israel. Support for this supposition comes from the Greek words that are found in it; see P. Churgin, The Targum to Hagiographa (New York: Horeb, 1945), 126–29 [Hebrew]. It is possible that there was once a literal Aramaic Targum on the Song. In Song of Songs Rabbah 5:3 we find evidence of such a Targum’s existence; see M. Goshen-Gottstein, Fragments of Lost Targumim, Part One (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, 1983), 161; Part Two, 90 [Hebrew]. 10. J. D. Eisenstein, ed., Ozar Midrashim: A Library of Two Hundred Minor Midrashim (Israel: n.p., 1969), 2:561–62 [Hebrew]. 11. Matthaues, “Kommentar zu Hohelied eines Anonymus, aufrund einer einzigen Handschrift.” 12. Nevertheless, some commentators (Rashi, Rashbam, Ibn Ezra, and Kimhi) addressed also the literal meaning of the verses. In Rashbam’s commentary, there exists a clear division between the two types of interpretation, literal and allegorical. In Ibn Ezra’s commentary we find three levels: the interpretation of individual words, the literal meaning, and the allegorical meaning.

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With regard to Christian tradition, familiarity with the allegorical interpretation of the Song of Songs is attested already within the New Testament, for example in the Gospel of John: “You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him. He who has the bride is the bridegroom; the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice . . .” (Jn 3:28-29). Among the first Christian exegetes of the Song of Songs, Hippolytus (in c.225 CE) interpreted the book as speaking about the relations between Jesus (the groom) and the Church (his bride). While the Church father Origen (still in the first half of the third century) accepted this view, he nonetheless claimed that the bride represents also, and perhaps most of all, the soul that has been created in the image of God. In his view, the book praises therefore both the unification of the Church with Jesus, as well as the unification of the soul with the Logos (the Word of God). As worship of the Virgin Mary within the Catholic Church strengthened, so grew also the identification of the bride with Mary. Christian allegorization of the Song of Songs followed its Jewish counterpart, though there developed a clear polemic between them.13 The single crack in the Church’s allegorical interpretation was the commentary of Theodore Bishop of Mopsuestia (fourth to fifth centuries), who considered the Song of Songs to be a collection of love poems. In his opinion, the book was written by King Solomon as an answer to those who opposed the king’s marriage to Pharaoh’s daughter and in order to please his bride. The Church viewed his words as heresy, and his commentary was banned by the Fifth Ecumenical Council of Constantinople. Let us now move to the real question that I want to address: was the allegorical interpretation of Song of Songs an astute strategy used to silence those who rejected the inclusion of the Song of Songs within Scripture? The answer to this question is, I think, no. Let me mention a number of factors—some within the Song itself, others within the biblical corpus and its world—that set in motion and even encouraged the allegorization of the book or, at the least, testify to the ripe conditions that existed for such an allegorical interpretation. In another of the biblical books that are attributed to Solomon, the Book of Proverbs, we find the use of allegory in the form of the personified—feminized— images of Wisdom and Folly that entice passersby to follow them (e.g., Prov. 9:1-6; 13-18). Indeed, in general, allegory is not foreign to biblical literature: stories like Jotham’s fable (Judg. 9:8-15), Nathan’s parable of the poor man’s ewe (2 Sam. 12:1-4), and the parable of the thistle and the cedar (2 Kgs 14:9) are each immediately interpreted allegorically in the stories in which they have become embedded. Ezekiel’s prophecies abound with allegorical elements such as the parable of the eagle and the vine (Ezek. 17:1-10); the parable of the lioness and the vine (19:1-14); the parable of the cedar tree (31:3-18); the parable of the shepherds and the flock (34:2-19); or the vision of the dried bones (37:1-14).

13. On this polemic see Urbach, “The Homiletical Interpretation of the Sages” and Kimelman, “Rabbi Yohanan and Origen on the Song of Songs.”

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Prophetic visions also represent opportunities for allegorical expressions, when what is seen is interpreted as symbolizing what is not. This is true, too, of dreams and their interpretations, which are also found in biblical literature. This presence of allegorical thinking in the Bible made it easier, of course, for the allegorization of the Song of Songs and for the readiness of readers for such an interpretation. Some of the Song’s verses make a pretense of alluding to historical events—its references to King Solomon’s wedding (Song 3:7-11), his many wives (8:11-12), to Pharaoh’s chariots (1:9), as well as to the capital cities in Israel and Judah, Tirzah and Jerusalem, respectively (6:4). These “historical” allusions facilitate the midrashic-allegorical reading of the book, as a whole, as referring to the history of Israel both in the past and future. Curiously, it is precisely the absence of any reference to God in the Song that facilitates its being interpreted as a portrayal of God’s relations with His people: were God mentioned alongside the male figures (the groom, shepherd, king), it would have been difficult to identify Him with the central male figure. No such difficulty exists when God is not mentioned at all. Being that, in the Bible, it is common to find poetry about God’s relations with Israel—for example, in the historical psalms in Psalms and in Lamentations—the allegorization of the Song of Songs draws the book closer to that world. Considering that the Bible states that “in the image of God He made humankind” (Gen. 9:6), and that the Bible contains many anthropomorphic descriptions of God, it is not a huge jump to interpret the descriptions of the male lover in the Song as referring, too, to God. The description of the divine creature—the man dressed in linen in Daniel’s vision (Dan. 10:5-6)—reminds us of the description of the lover’s body in Song 5:10-16, which resembles the image of God (compare also Dan. 2:31-33). The Bible likens God to a shepherd (e.g., Gen. 48:15; Ps. 23:1-2; 80:2) and a king (e.g., Ps. 93:1; 98:6), making it possible to identify the men in the Song who are referred to as shepherds and kings with the God of Israel. Likewise, the figurative language that is used to describe Israel in biblical literature makes it easy to identify the female in the Song with the Congregation of Israel; see, for example, the Bible’s portrayal of Israel as a lily and a vine in Hosea’s prophecy (14:6-8), and compare Song 2:1; 6:11. Biblical prophecy uses the sobriquets “daughter of Zion” or “daughter of Jerusalem” to refer to the people of Judah or the inhabitants of Jerusalem (see, e.g., Isa. 1:8; 37:22; Zech. 2:14; 9:9), while the chorus of women in the Song are called “the daughters of Jerusalem” (Song 1:5; 2:7; 3:5, 10; 5:8, 16; 8:4), and “daughters of Zion” (3:11). In the Bible, Israel is commanded to love God (e.g., Deut. 6:5; 10:12), and God loves the people of Israel (e.g., 1 Kgs 10:9; Hos. 3:1). But the most significant support for the allegorical interpretation of the Song of Songs came from the language and images the Bible uses for describing the relations between God and Israel, which are often the same language or images that are used in the Song of Songs to describe the lovers. It is enough to recall the verse from Jer. 2:2, in which God says to His people, “I accounted to your favor the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride—how you followed Me in the

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wilderness, in a land not sown,” or Ezekiel 16, which tells of the stormy relations between God and the (female) waif—the People of Israel. With regard to the cultures that surrounded the Bible, Mesopotamian parallels to Song of Song are found both in Sumerian love poetry (twenty-first to nineteenth centuries BCE) as well as in Akkadian literature from the first millennium BCE. Indeed, most of Mesopotamian love poetry describes the amorous relations between the gods: Dumuzi and Inanna in Sumer, Marduk and Ishtar in Babylon. These poems clearly played a ritualistic role and were closely tied to annual fertility festivals.14 We know of some thirty-five Sumerian love poems15 that include poems of mutual flirtation and pursuit and that describe the nuptial ceremony, as well as love poems that the goddess sings to the god during their wedding ceremony. Structural parallels can be detected between these poems and those in the Song of Songs: surprising shifts between speakers and settings, the sudden intrusion of a chorus—the bride’s consorts—in the middle of a poem, and even common motifs, such as the descent to the garden or vineyard. Indeed, the existence of love poems that were written about the gods in the cultural milieu of ancient Israel encouraged also an allegorical interpretation of the Song of Songs as being about the love between God and His beloved: the Congregation of Israel. This fertile ground for allegorical interpretation strengthens our conjecture that some of the poems in the Song were interpreted allegorically even before they came to be anthologized in the book we know as the Song of Songs. It is noteworthy that, already in the First Temple period, Israel’s prophets granted an allegorical dimension to several poems in the Song. I will make due with a number of examples. I have already mentioned elsewhere how the prophet Isaiah makes allegorical use of the Song’s Vineyard Song: Isaiah’s poem opens just as ours does, with the same words, ‫כרם היה‬, “A vineyard was [belonged to],” though instead of the name “Solomon” that appears in the Song, the prophet has written ‫ידידי‬, “my beloved,” a wordplay with Solomon’s other name, Yedidya (‫ ;ידידיה‬see 2 Sam. 12:25). Isaiah’s Vineyard Song speaks of the special relations between a vineyard owner and his vineyard, this time between God and Israel. It seems that the prophet, trying to capture his audience’s attention, cleverly opened with the words of a well-known love song, and the people who gathered around would have quickly discovered how the popular poem was now being granted a new, allegorical meaning: God is the vineyard owner, and his vineyard, which has disappointed him, is the House of Israel.16

14. S. N. Kramer (“The Biblical Song of Songs and Sumerian Love Songs,” Expedition 5[1924]: 245–52) emphasizes the resemblance between the Song of Songs and Sumerian texts about Dumuzi and Inanna, the goddess of love. In Sumerian poetry, Dumuzi, the male, is both shepherd and king; the female Inanna is referred to as “bride” and “sister.” The two sing love songs as they flirt and pursue one another. 15. See Y. Sefati, Love Songs in Sumerian Literature (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 1998). 16. For an analysis of the Vineyard Poem in the Song of Songs, see Chapter 2, “Keep Your Thousands.”

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The prophet Jeremiah speaks about God’s people—His portion—as an unfaithful woman (2:3) in language borrowed from Isaiah’s Vineyard Song: “. . . On every high hill and under every verdant tree, you recline as a whore. And I planted you with noble vines [‫ ;נטעתיך שרק‬cf. Isa 5:2 ‫“ ויטעהו שרק‬and planted it with noble vines”], all with choicest seed; Alas, I find you changed into a base, and alien vine!” (Jer. 2:20-21). In another of Jeremiah’s prophecies, too, we hear the echo of the Vineyard Song, and there, again, the people, who are referred to as ‫ידידי‬, are God’s beloved: “Why should My beloved be in My House, who does such vile deeds?” (11:15).17 And it continues, “The Lord of Hosts who planted you has decreed disaster for you . . .” (v. 17). And again, in the next chapter: “. . . I have given over my dearly beloved into the hands of her enemies” (12:7); and v. 10: “Many shepherds have destroyed My vineyard . . .” Also Psalm 80 refers to Isaiah’s Vineyard Song. In it, the people of Israel are likened to a grapevine and the poet complains to God that He has deserted Israel and let its enemies destroy her: “Why did you break through its walls so that every passerby plucks its fruit” (v. 13; cf. “break through its wall” Isa. 5:5).18 The Vineyard Song in the Song of Songs provided also the foundations for the story of Naboth’s Vineyard in 1 Kings 21: also that story, which speaks of the special relations between the vineyard-owner Naboth and his vineyard, opens with the words, -‫)כרם היה ל‬. And like in the Song, where two vineyard-owners are compared and one of them is a king (Solomon), so, too, in this story: opposite Naboth the storyteller has placed King Ahab. Ahab, like Solomon, assumes that the value of his vineyard can be measured in silver: for his vineyard Solomon receives “a thousand pieces of silver” (Song 8:11), while Ahab is willing to pay silver for Naboth’s vineyard: “Let me give you silver as its price” (21:2; see also v. 6). Ahab’s wife, Jezebel, is gratified when Naboth’s vineyard comes to be her husband’s property, without his having to pay any price: “Rise, take hold of the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, who refused to give it to you for silver” (v. 15).19 The Song of Songs includes two dream-poems, both of which describe dreams of the young woman (Song 3:1-5; 5:2–6:3). These poems share language as well as storylines—the young lover setting out to look for her beloved and his being found after a long search. The prophet Hosea made use of a version of this poem type in his description of Israel’s betrayal, which he compares to a woman who behaves immodestly and betrays God. In the Song, the lover in her dream frees herself from society’s binding rules and imagines herself as one who leaves her home into the night: “On my bed at night I sought him but could not find him. I must rise and go about the city [compare Isa. 23:16: ‘Take a lyre, go about the city,

17. J. Lundblom, Jeremiah 1–20 (AB; New York, 1999), 277. 18. See, for example, A. Hacham, Psalms Vol. 2 (Da’at Mikra; Jerusalem, 2000), 74 [Hebrew]. 19. On the story of Naboth’s vineyard and its interpretation of and relationship with the Vineyard Song in Song 8:11-12, see further in my article, which was included as an appendix in Meir Weiss’ book: Y. Zakovitch, “The Tale of Naboth’s Vineyard,” in The Bible from Within (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1984), 379–405.

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harlot long forgotten’], the narrow streets and squares, till I find my only love . . .” (3:1-2); see also: “I opened to my love. But my love had slipped away. How my soul went forth when he spoke! I sought him but could not find him. I called him but he did not answer” (5:6). In Hosea the woman has become a “wife of whoredom” (1:2; see also 2:4, 6). The prophet describes the woman’s pursuit of the baalim (manifestations of the god Baal), “Pursue her lovers as she will, she shall not overtake them; And seek them everywhere but will not find them . . .” (2:9). Hosea even speaks about the revenge that he considers taking against the unfaithful wife, “Else will I strip her naked” (2:5). As we saw already in Chapter 6, in the Song’s dream the guards do strip the woman who goes out to the streets to seek her beloved, “The watchmen found me, who go about the town. They struck me, they bruised me, they took my shawl from me, the watchmen of the walls” (5:7).20 The dream, in Song 3 closes with the union of the lover and her beloved: “I had just passed them when I found my only love. I held him, I would not let him go until I brought him to my mother’s house, into my mother’s room” (v. 4). The ending of the other dream poem, too, alludes to the union of the lovers, “My love has gone down to his garden, to the bed of spices to graze in the gardens and to gather lilies. I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine. He grazes among the lilies” (6:2-3). Indeed, also in Hosea we find hope for the reunification of the husband and his wife who has strayed from him (2:16-25).21 In Hosea’s consolatory prophecy to Israel (14:6-8) we find more echoes from poems that found their way into the Song of Songs. At the very beginning of the prophecy, the prophet wishes and expects that Israel will blossom as a lily (v. 6), while the lover in the Song compares herself to a lily, “I am the rose of Sharon, the lily of the valley” (2:1; see also vv. 2 and 16 in the same chapter; 4:5; 5:13; 7:13). In v. 7 the prophet likens Israel to Lebanon, “His scent like that of Lebanon,” and compare what is said about the lover in the Song, “and the scent of your robes like Lebanon’s scent” (4:11). Hosea speaks about people sitting in the shade of a tree (and perhaps “in my shade,” the shade of God [v.8]), and in the Song of Songs the young woman says, “In its/his shade I delighted to sit”—the shade of her lover, who is likened to an apple tree (2:3). The prophet continues with further imagery from the natural world: “They shall blossom like the vine” (v. 8), to which we can compare Song 6:11, “to see if the vine had blossomed” (and cf. also 7:13). At the prophecy’s close we find, “his scent [ ‫ ]זכרו‬shall be like the wine of Lebanon” (v. 8), and compare the words of the young woman to her lover, “We will extol your scent (‫ )נזכירה דדיך‬more than wine” (Song 1:4). (On the meaning of the root ‫ זכ״ר‬in these verses as “scent”

20. On stripping the immodest woman, see also Ezek. 16:39; 23:26. 21. Note the dependence of Jer. 2:24-25, 33 on Hos. 2:7, 9; on the general dependence of Jeremiah on Hosea, see K. Gross, “Hoseas Einfluss auf Jeremias Anschaungen,” NKZ 42 (1931): 241–56.

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cf. Lev.2:2; Isa. 66:3; Ps. 20:4.22) It is hard to imagine that Hosea did not know and make use of a collection of love poetry when he wrote his prophecies, incorporating metaphors and imagery from it. Jeremiah, in his prophecy of the destruction of Zion (Jer. 6:1-8), makes clever use of verses from the Song of Songs, primarily from two adjacent poems 1:5-6 and 1:7-8. When the prophet calls out, “The comely and delicate, I will destroy [but should perhaps be read, instead, I will liken23] the Daughter of Zion” (v. 2), he draws from the treasures of love poetry: “I am dark but comely” (Song 1:5); “To my mare among Pharaoh’s chariots I likened you, my friend” (1:9), “daughters of Zion” (3:11). The prophet continues, “To her come shepherds with their flocks, they pitch tents all around her” (Jer. 6:3), and see Song 1:8 “graze your goats by the shepherd’s tents” and v. 7 “lest I go straying after the flocks of your companions.”24 The shepherds in the prophecy say, “Up! We will attack at noon” (Jer. 6:4), and the woman in the Song asks her lover, “where you pasture your flock at noon” (1:7). The shepherds express their sorrow that the day grows shorter, “Alas for us! For the day is declining, the shadows of evening grown long” (v. 4), so that they will not have much time to carry out their plans, and see similar language in the collection of love poems, “until the day blows and the shadows flee” (Song 2:17 and 4:6; note the wordplay between ‫ ינטו‬in Jeremiah and ‫ונסו‬ in Song). In the Song, the young woman fears to approach the shepherds, friends of her beloved, lest they harm her (1:7), while the shepherds in the prophecy are indeed the enemies of Jerusalem who come to harm and conquer her. The fact that the prophet makes use of two adjacent poems suggests that, as we saw in Hosea, he was not just familiar with the poems but knew them already as part of a collection—even if he only knew a small part of that collection—in which the two poems already existed side by side. In the prophecy that heralds God’s kingdom in Isa. 52:7-10, the prophet avails himself of two poems: Song of Songs 7:1-7 and 2:8-13. The opening of the prophecy, “How lovely on the mountains are the footsteps of the herald” (v. 7), should be compared to the description of the feet of the dancing Shulammite, “How lovely your feet in sandals, O daughter of a nobleman” (Song 7:2; on ‫ פעמים‬as “feet,” see Isa. 26:6; Ps. 58:11). In his description of the glad tidings, the prophet appeals to two senses: our ears, “Announcing peace, heralding good fortune, announcing victory. . . . A sound [‫ !]קול‬Your watchmen raise their voice [‫]קול‬, as one they shout for joy” (52:7-8), and our eyes, “For every eye shall behold [‫ ]יראו‬the Lord’s return

22. For the meaning of ‫ זכ״ר‬as ‫רי״ח‬, see Jonah Ibn Ḡanȃh, Sefer Haschoraschim (trans. from Arabic by Jehuda Ibn Tibbon; Berlin, 1896), 131 [Hebrew]. 23. Thus the Vulgate. It is possible that the prophet plays with the two possible vocalizations of the letters, “destroy” and “liken.” 24. ‫ אהלים‬in Jeremiah and ‫ משכנות‬in Song are synonyms for “tents”; see, for example, Exod. 40:34; Num. 24:5.

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to Zion. . . . The Lord will bare His holy arm in the sight of all the nations, and the very ends of earth shall see [‫ ]וראו‬the victory of our God” (vv. 8–10). In the second love poem that the prophet has availed himself, Song 2:8-13, we find, “Hark [‫!]קול‬ Oh, my lover is coming” (v. 8); “the turtledove’s voice [‫ ]קול‬is heard in our land” (v. 12); and “Buds can be seen [‫ ]נראו‬in the land” (v. 12).25 Allegorical prophecies about the relations between God and the people of Israel were sometimes misunderstood by their listeners who interpreted them as love poems. It is to this, apparently, that the words of God to the prophet Ezekiel allude: “They will come to you in crowds and sit before you in throngs and will hear your words, but they will not obey them. For they produce nothing but lust with their mouths; and their hearts pursue nothing but gain. To them you are just a singer of erotic songs who has a sweet voice and plays skillfully; they hear your words, but will not obey them” (33:31-32). * If, at the beginning of this book, I listed the ways in which the Song of Songs stands apart from the rest of the Hebrew Bible, how it can appear to the novice reader like a foreign element grafted onto a collection of Holy Scripture, I have shown in this chapter another dimension of the Song, its allegorical reading, and how, through it, the chasm that seems to open between the sides is magically bridged. I have shown how the inclusion of the Song of Songs into the canon, in fact, followed its having already become interpreted allegorically, something that was made possible by two factors. First, as we have seen, certain triggers, both within the Song and without it, encouraged the allegorical interpretation of the poems. In addition, Israel’s prophets had already set a precedent by using some of the love poems—and interpreting them allegorically—in order to depict the complicated relations between God and the people of Israel. It is enough to look at the few examples I have brought in this chapter for us to understand that, from a very early stage, Israel’s love poetry was interpreted in two parallel ways, literally and allegorically. Here, I will offer one further conjecture: perhaps it was the allegorical school of interpretation that was responsible for

25. It should be noted that a few words from this prophecy in Isaiah were added— at a secondary stage—to Nahum, “Behold on the mountains are the footsteps of a herald announcing peace” (Nah. 2:1a). This isolated fragment, which the Septuagint has placed as the final verse in chapter 1, connects neither with what precedes it in chapter 1 nor with what comes after, in chapter 2. It represents a comment that was written in the margin of a scroll by a reader, and may have been intended as a comment to the end of chapter 1 or to 2:3, the end of the first prophecy in that chapter. In either case, however, it is clear that these are not the words of Nahum, who preceded Deutero-Isaiah. And indeed, in Deutero-Isaiah the relationship with love poetry is clearer than in its quotation in Nahum, which begins with “behold” instead of “How lovely.”

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amassing the different poems in the first place: that it was only thanks to their allegorical interpretation that these love poems were collected, and this in order to include them within the sacred canon. The poems in the Song of Songs were erotic love poems, pure and simple. But if I am correct, the book—from the moment it took shape and was given a ticket into the Holy Scriptures of Israel—invited and expected the allegorical interpretation of its poems.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

AB

Anchor Bible

ABD

Anchor Bible Dictionary. Ed. D. N. Freedman. 6 vols. New York: Doubleday 1992.

ANET

Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. Ed. J. B. Pritchard. 3rd ed. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press 1969.

BDB

R. Brown, S. R. Driver, C. A. Briggs. A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament. 1907. Reprint. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952.

BHS

Biblica Hebraica Stuttgartensia. Ed. K. Elliger and W. Rudolph. 5th ed. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgeselschaft, 1997.

BJS

Brown Judaic Studies. Ed. J. Neusner.

BKAT

Biblischer Kommentar, Altes Testament

DJD

Discoveries in the Judaean Desert. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.

GKC

W. Gesenius. Hebrew Grammar, ed. E. Kautzsch, trans. A. E. Cowley. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1910.

HALOT

L. Koehler, W. Baumgartner, et al. Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. Ed. And trans. M. E. J. Richardson et al. 5 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1994–1999.

HThKAT

Herders Theologischer Kommentar zum Alten Testament

HThR

Harvard Theological Review

ICC

International Critical Commentary

IEJ

Israel Exploration Journal

JBL

Journal of Biblical Literature

JPOS

Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society

JPS

The Jewish Publication Society

JQR

Jewish Quarterly Review

LCL

Loeb Classical Library

NICOT

New International Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

OTL

Old Testament Library

VT

Vetus Testamentum

ZDMG

Zeitschrift der Deutsche Morgenlaendischen Gesellschaft

INDEX OF SUBJECTS Aaron 103–4 Abarbanel 16 abduction of women 19, 97 Abigail 5 Abimelech, King of Gerar 28, 54, 56 Abraham/Abram 5, 13, 28 n.14, 50, 70 Absalom 20, 21, 29, 54, 66, 75–6 acrostic poem, see “A Woman of Valor” Adam 9, 10 Ahab, King 30, 54, 108 Ahasuerus, King of Persia 7, 22, 38 Akiba, Rabbi 41, 102 Akkadian literature 107 allegory 2–3, 95, 101–13 God and Israel 106–11 ambiguity in biblical narrative 33–4 notion of 33 in riddle-poems 2, 34–42, 73 Ammonite women 96 Amnon 6, 20, 21 Anat 63 Anaxarete 55 apple tree 39, 40, 48–9, 71, 109 Aquila 101 arms 81–2, 86, 92 Asher 15, 71, 91 Athena 63 Baal-hamon 12, 27, 28, 70 Balaam 9 baraita 95 Bathsheba 5–6, 24 n.4 Batshua 6, 7 beauty 5–6 see also feminine beauty; masculine beauty Benjaminites/tribe of Benjamin Bethlehem 96, 97 Bible/biblical narrative allegory in 105–6 ambiguity in 33–4

19, 97

dreams in 73–4 and love poetry 1–2 and love poetry connections 8–22 and love poetry distinguished 5–8 order of books 94–5, 96–7, 101–2 Bilhah 6 black 36, 37, 46, 47, 48, 57, 58, 60, 61, 62, 66, 72, 80, 86 Boaz 95–6, 97, 98 boldness of women 8, 13–14, 35, 40, 48, 56, 92–3, 94, 98, 108–9 Book of Esther 7, 22 Book of Kings 7, 29, 31–2, 45 Book of Ruth 7, 95–9 breasts 38–9, 40, 41, 42, 91–2, 103, 104 bribery 28–9 brothers, see sibling(s): brothers and sisters canon 94–5, 96–7, 101–2, 111 cedar 11, 20, 41, 42, 46 n.10, 75, 80, 82, 86, 105 chastity 41, 42, 48, 85 cheeks man’s 81, 85, 86 woman’s 58, 60, 67–8 Church 105 city and feminine beauty 47, 58, 59, 64–5, 69, 70 clothing 92 colors 46, 47, 57–8, 60 of clothing 92 see also black; red; white concubine(s) 23–4, 27, 29, 30, 31, 69, 72, 91 at Gibeah 96, 97 Creation 7 crimson thread 16, 60, 92 Dannites 96 daughter of Zion

12, 64, 106, 110

Index of Subjects daughters of Jerusalem 8, 12, 17, 19–20, 36, 37, 42, 46, 66 n.43, 74, 79–80, 83–4, 86, 106 David 5, 6, 7, 11, 19, 20, 54, 56, 61, 80, 97 dawn 46, 61–2 day dreams 8, 46, 73, 86 Deborah 6 Delilah 6, 19 derisive poetry 11–12, 70 descriptive poetry (wasf) 2, 19–20, 38, 53–4, 72, 80, 91–2, 104 Deuteronomy 24–5, 26, 27 n.11 dialogue-poems 37–42 Dinah 6, 7, 15 door 21, 40, 41–2, 75, 76–7, 79, 84, 85 doves 6, 20, 29, 47, 50, 51, 58, 59, 65, 70, 75, 81, 85, 86 dread 62–3, 65 dreams 2, 8, 12, 44, 73–4, 86–7, 106, 108–9 symbolism in 74, 85 Dumuzi 107 eating 10, 18 Ecclesiastes 1, 11, 30–1, 95, 101–2 Egypt 23, 25 n.6, 26, 49, 53 Egyptian love poetry 13, 35 n.11, 63, 79 n.20 Eli 97 Elimelech 7 Elkanah 6, 97 erotica 6, 14, 16, 17, 35, 38–9, 42, 76–8, 85 eroticism and clothing 92 and ideal woman 92, 93–4, 98–9 Esau-Edom 16 n.22 Esther, Queen of Persia 6 Eve 8, 10 ewes 57, 58, 60, 66–7, 105 eyes 6, 18, 20, 28, 42, 57, 58, 59–60, 61, 64, 65–6, 68, 69, 70, 81, 85, 86 female genitalia 35, 38 n.17, 94 feminine beauty 5–6, 20 adoration/praise of 6, 15, 39, 53, 57, 58, 61–3, 69, 70, 71–2, 91–2 lack of appreciation for 90, 91

115

metaphors for 19, 46, 47, 54, 57–8, 61–70 “perfect one” 29, 47, 57, 58, 67, 70, 72, 75 see also masculine beauty foreign women/wives 6, 23, 25 n.6, 27, 31–2, 45, 47, 90, 96 foxes 17, 19, 34–5, 38 n.18 fruit 10, 27, 28, 40 see also apple tree; pomegranate Garden of Eden story 9–10 gardens 9, 10, 21, 37, 38, 40, 46, 75, 84, 85, 94, 109 Garden Song 9–10, 18 gender equality/inequality 7–8, 91 Gibeah 96, 97 Gilead 60, 66 goats 47, 57, 58, 60, 66, 67 God 2–3, 7, 10, 49, 51, 61 and Israel 104, 106–11 as shepherd 106 gold (color) 81, 82, 86 gold (metal) 11, 12, 24, 25, 26, 27 n.11, 31, 82, 86 guards, see watchmen/guards hair 18–19, 20, 46, 47, 56, 57, 58, 59, 66, 68 n.47, 75–6, 80, 91–2 Hamor 15 hands 81–2 of ideal woman 89, 92 as male sexual organ 76–7, 85 Hannah 6, 97 Hathor 55 Hippolytus 105 Hirah 16 honey 18, 60 n.22, 94 horses 24, 25–6, 27 n.11, 31 Hosea 106, 108, 109–10 Ibn Ezra 65, 68, 104 n.12 ideal/valiant woman characterization of 89–90 and eroticism 93–4, 98–9 industriousness of 92, 93 Ruth as 95–7, 98 idols/idol-worship 23, 24, 27, 32 Inanna 63, 107

116

Index of Subjects

industrious women 2, 89, 92, 93, 96 Isaac 13, 50, 56, 68 Isaiah 107, 108, 111 n.25 Ishtar 63, 107 Israel 11, 16 n.21, 21, 25, 27, 29 n.15, 30, 32, 64, 66 n.43, 70, 96, 97, 101, 102, 103, 104, 106–11 Issachar 14 Jacob 6, 7, 14, 15, 73 Jeptah’s wife 6 Jeremiah 49, 108, 110 Jerusalem 58, 60, 64, 65, 69, 70, 106, 110 Jesus Christ 105 Jezebel 6, 7, 56, 108 Joab 29 Job 49 Joseph 6, 73 Joshua 16, 54 Jotham 105 Judah 7, 16–17 Judah (Kingdom of) 27, 32, 64, 106 juxtaposition 12, 18, 29, 43–4, 46, 48, 51, 60 n.22, 64, 65, 94–5, 96–8 Kebra Nagast 45 Kimhi 104 n.12 kingship 25–6 Kingship Law 24–5, 26, 32 Laban 14 Leah 7, 14–15, 71, 91 Lebanon 9, 12, 20, 46, 64, 66 n.43, 86, 94, 109 Lemuel, King of Massa 89, 94, 98 Lemuel’s mother 24, 94 Leningrad Codex 95, 97 lexical repetition 74, 84–5 lilies 38, 39, 40, 46, 81, 83, 84, 85, 86, 103, 106, 109 lion 18 looking, act of 50 from a window 54–6, 58, 61–2, 71–2 Lot’s wife 6 lovemaking/sex 6, 10, 11–12 see also eroticism; seduction love poetry 107, 111–12 and biblical narrative 1–2

and biblical narrative connections 8–22 and biblical narrative distinguished 5–8 lover being called a sibling 13, 14, 16, 18, 21 bringing to mother’s chambers/house 13–14, 21, 44, 48, 71, 86, 109 real or fantasy 74, 83–4, 86 love-sickness 20–1, 79 male-female relations 7–8, 13, 50, 51, 56, 91 male genitalia 12 n.11, 35 n.11, 76–7, 85 Marduk 107 masculine beauty 6, 19–20, 46, 47, 54, 75–6, 80–3, 86 see also feminine beauty masculinity 93 Masoretes 97–8 Melito of Sardis 95, 101 Menelik the First, King of Ethiopia 45 Mesopotamian love poetry 107 Metamorphoses (Ovid) 55 metaphor(s) for feminine beauty 19, 46, 47, 54, 57–8, 61–70 for lovemaking 10, 11–12 for maiden/female genitalia 35, 94 for masculine beauty 19–20, 46, 47, 54, 75–6, 80–3, 86 pastoral 66 urban 58, 60, 64–5, 69, 70 Micah 96 Michal 54, 56, 61 Moab 97 Moabite women 96 moon 43, 46, 51, 56, 57–8, 62, 63, 66, 72, 91 Mordecai 7 Moses 49, 103–4 mother 48, 71 mouth 39, 40, 60, 83, 92, 94, 111 myrrh 12, 18, 39, 43, 44–5, 50, 77–8, 81, 83, 85, 86, 92 n.11 Naboth 30, 31, 108 Naomi 6, 21, 42, 96, 97 Nathan 105

Index of Subjects Nebuchadnezzar 53, 54, 73 night-dreams 8, 44, 46, 47, 73–87, 93, 108–9 Noah’s wife 6 Omri, King 64 Origen of Alexandria

105

parables 17 n.26, 105 paronomasia 34 Pentateuch 25 perfume, see scent/perfume Philistines 17, 18, 45 Philistine women 6 Phoenician art 54–5 polytheism 1, 12, 26–8, 29–31 pomegranate 13, 47, 58, 67–8 Potiphar’s wife 6 prophecies 105–6, 108, 110 prostitute/prostitution 15, 16, 55, 56, 78 Proverbs 2, 11, 90, 91 n.9, 95, 101–2, 105 and Book of Ruth 97–8, 99 Qohelet 30–1 n.19 question-riddles 43, 51, 56–9, 61–3 placement of 43–9 rabbinic literature 9, 101–2 Rachel 6, 14 Rahab 6, 16, 54, 56 rape 6 Rashbam 16, 104 n.12 Rashi 9, 16 n.22, 67, 95, 104 n.12 Rebekah 13, 50, 56, 68 red 47, 58, 62, 67, 72 Rehoboam 28, 30 Reuben 6 rich woman of Shunem 6 riddle-poems ambiguity in 2, 34–42, 73 Ruth 6, 95–7, 98 Samaria 64 Samson 6, 17–18, 19, 29, 45 Samuel 20, 25 sanctity 102, 105 Sarah/Sarai 5, 13, 28, 29 n.15 Saul 54, 56, 61 description of 19–20, 80

117

scent/perfume 11, 44–5, 50, 77, 81, 109–10 see also myrrh seduction 35, 40, 48, 56, 68, 75–8, 92–3, 94, 108–9 Septuagint 14 n.15, 17 n.25, 18, 23–4, 49, 60, 63, 64, 75, 82 n.31, 90, 95, 96, 111 n.25 sex, see lovemaking/sex shawl 78 n.19, 109 Sheba, Queen of 12, 26, 45–6, 51 Shechem 15 shepherds 106, 108, 110 Shiloh 19 Shimon Bar Yochai, Rabbi (Rashbi) 9, 24 Shulammite 53–4, 92, 110 Shi’ur Qomah 104 sibling(s) brothers and sisters 7, 8, 15, 20–1, 36–7, 40–2, 48 as lover 13, 14, 16, 18, 21 silver 11, 12, 24, 25, 26, 27 n.11, 28 n.30 “thousand pieces of silver” 28–9, 30, 70, 108 Simeon 63 similies 51, 58, 81 Sisera 17 Sisera’s mother 54 sisters, see sibling(s): brothers and sisters sky 61 Solomon 73 foreign wives of/love for foreign women 6, 27, 31–2, 45 kingship of 12 name etymology 21, 25–6 and Queen of Sheba 12, 45–6 Solomon’s bed 11–12, 44–6 “tents of Solomon” 11 thousand wives of 1, 12, 26–8, 29–31, 48, 70 on woman of valor 98 works attributed to 11, 30–1, 105 spices 9, 10, 37, 38, 39, 40, 45, 81, 84, 85, 86, 109 statue 82 Sumerian love poetry 107 sun 36, 37, 43, 46, 50, 51, 55, 56, 57–8, 62, 63, 64, 65, 67, 72, 91 symbolism in dreams 74, 85 Symmachus 101

118

Index of Subjects

Tamar 6, 7, 20–1, 68 Targum 14 n.15, 16, 17 n.25, 64, 68, 76 n.10, 78 n.19, 104 teeth 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 66–7, 70 “tents of Kedar” 11 n.9, 36, 37 Theodore of Mopsuestia 105 Theodotion 101 Tirzah 47, 56, 57, 58, 60, 64, 65, 66, 69, 70, 106 tongue 60, 92, 94, 95 translations 101 Uriah the Hittite

76

valiant woman, see ideal/valiant woman Vashti, Queen of Persia 22, 38 veil 13, 15–16, 56, 68, 69, 71, 72 vineyard 17, 19, 27–8, 30, 34–5, 36–7, 48, 70, 94, 107, 108 Vineyard Song 1, 30–1, 107, 108 Vulgate 14 n.15, 17 n.25, 63, 64, 82 n.31, 96, 110 n.23 wall 40, 41–2, 78–9, 85, 109 wasf, see descriptive poetry watchmen/guards 28, 70, 78–9, 85, 86, 109 water 81 wedding poetry 11–12 white 19, 20, 46, 47, 57–8, 60, 62, 66, 72, 80, 81 “Who is he” 2, 49–51 “Who is she” 2 “Who is she that looks out like the dawn” 43, 46–7, 50, 56–9, 91 “Who is she that rises from the desert, leaning upon her beloved” 43, 47–9

“Who is she that rises from the desert like columns of smoke” 43, 44–6, 50 window as point of liminality 55–6, 68 woman-at-the-window 54–6, 58, 61–72 Wisdom and valiant woman 89–90 wise woman of Beth-Maacah 6 wise woman of Tekoa 6 woman/women birth and death of 7 description of 36, 37, 44–5, 46–7, 50, 56–9 dreams of 8, 12, 44, 74–87 God-fearing 90 and Kingship Law 26 as seducer 8, 13–14, 35, 40, 48, 78, 92–3, 94, 98, 108–9 status of 6–8, 13, 91 veiled/covered face of 13, 15–16, 56, 68, 69, 71, 72 visual depiction of 2, 53, 58, 60, 72 woman-at-the-window 54–60, 61–72 see also feminine beauty; foreign women/wives; ideal/valiant woman “A Woman of Valor” 6 and Book of Ruth 95–7 conservative ideology of 89–91, 93–4, 98–9 women’s poetry 8 Yael 6, 17 Zerah 16 Zilpah 15 Zion, Mount

65

INDEX OF REFERENCES NOTE: Only passages which are discussed and quoted are listed here. References to specific books as a whole are listed in Subject Index, e.g., ‘Book of Ruth’, ‘Deuteronomy,’ etc.

Hebrew Bible Gen. 1:26-28 1:27 2 2:10 2:15 2:16-17 3:6 3:8 3:16 3:17 9:6 12 12:11, 14 12:13 15:19 16:2 17:16 19:15 19:26 20:16 24 24:2 24:64-65 24:65 26:8 29:1-13 29:10-11 29:18, 30 30:13 30:14-18 30:16 30:21 32:25 33:13

7 77 7 9 28 9 10 9, 10 7, 8 38 106 53 5 13 11 n.9 38 29 n.15 62 7 28 13, 14 12 n.11 50 13, 16 n.20, 50, 68, 71 n.54 54, 56, 61 14 14 6 15, 71, 91 14 15 7 61–2 75

34 34:1 34:3 34:10 34:19 35:21-2 37:33 38 38:12 38:14, 19 38:15 38:23 39:6-7 41:6 41:49 48:15 49:9

7 15 6 28 n.13 45 6 93 15–16 7 78 n.19 16, 68 16 6 36 69 106 93

Exod. 1:5 2:15-21 4:28 6:26 12:7 ff. 13:17 14:13 14:24 15:1 15:2 15:9 15:20 23:8 23:27 24:10 26:19 26:24 28:17 28:18

12 n.11 14 104 104 16 n.21 26 26, 103 61 103 103 93 8 28 62 62 82 n.37 67 81 n.28 82 n.34

28:20 36:29 39:13 40:34

82 n.31 67 82 n.31 110 n.24

Lev. 2:2 3:6 19:18

109–10 70 35

Num. 1:52 2:3 5:22 14:3-4 24:5

63 63 12 n.11 26 110 n.24

Deut. 6:5 7:3-4 8 8:11-14 10:12 16:19 17 17:3 17:14-20 17:20 20:11 21:14 24:6 24:21 28:68 32:2 33 33:2 33:20

106 27 25 25 106 28 25 63 24, 32 26 42 45 110 11 n.9 26 75 n.7 49 49, 50, 51 93

120

Index of References

Josh. 2 2:15 2:18

6 54, 56 16

Judg. 2:11 ff. 4-5 4:17 4:18 4:21-22 5 5:26 5:27 5:28 5:30 7:12 8:30 9:8-15 11:34 13-16 14:8-9 14:10-11 14:11 14:12-18 14:16 15:5 15:15-16 16 16:4, 15 16:13-14 16:28 17:6 17:7 ff. 18:1 19:1 19:1, 21, 25 19:2 19:4-10 19:22 19:25 20:40 21:6 21:19-23

27 6 11 n.9 17 67 8 67 17 54 93 69 12 n.11 105 8 17 18 17-18 11 n.10, 18 45 6 17 29 6 6 19 18 97 96 97 96 97 97 97 75 61–2 44 n.4 97 19, 19 n.29

1 Sam. 1:3 1:8 2:20

19 n.29 97 97

8 9:2 10:23-24 13:6 14:48 16:7 16:12 17:42 18:6-7 19:12 25:3 30:12

25 19, 80, 82 19 21 93 19, 82 n.38 20, 80 20, 80 8 54, 56 5 67

2 Sam. 2:29 3:30 6:16 7:23 11:2 11:8 12:1-4 12:11 12:25 13 13:1 13:1, 4, 15 13:10 14 14:25 14:25-26 14:26 14:27 18:9 18:12 20 21-24 23:13 24:9

38 35 54, 61 70 6 76 105 62 30, 107 20 6 6 21 6 54 20, 75–6 66 20 20 29 6 48 n.16 11 93

1 Kgs. 1 1:1-2:12 3:1 3:4 5:12 5:22-24 5:6 6:25 7:2-3

6, 12 48 n.16 23 29 11 11 24 60, 67 n.44 11

7:8 7:37 9-10 9:11 9:24 10

11:3a 11:3b 11:4 ff. 11:33 12:10 12:16 16:24 21 21:2 22:39

23 60, 67 n.44 11 11 23 12, 25, 27 n.11, 29, 45 45 11, 26 11 106 45 45 44 12 11 27 11, 24 1, 24 45 6 23–4 26, 29 27 12 27 11, 24, 27, 31, 69 23 27 27 27 35 n.11 79 64 6, 30, 31, 108 108 54 n.9

2 Kgs. 3:22 4 4:29 4:39 9:30 9:30, 32 9:30-37 14:9 17:7-18

62 6 93 67 54 61 7, 56 105 27

10:1-13 10:2, 10 10:2, 10-11 10:9 10:10 10:13 10:15 10:18-20 10:18, 22 10:26 10:27 11 11:1 11:1-2 11:1-13 11:1aα, 3 11:1aβ-b 11:1 ff. 11:2 11:3

Index of References 19:21 21:1-15 22:15-20 23:26-27 24:3-4

64 27 27 27 27

Isa. 1:8 1:18 2 3:5 3:23 3:25 5:1-7 5:2 5:5 5:11 6:2 7:23 9:2 10:6 23:15-16 23:16 24:23 26:6 29:8 30:26 30:27 32:4 37:22 38:12 45:2 47:2 49:23 52:7-8 52:7-10 54:2 57:8-10 58:7 58:8 60:8 63 63:1 63:3 66:3

64, 106 62, 92 n.10 26, 27 n.11 65 78 n.19 33 30, 31 108 108 33 76 n.11 30, 31 93 93 8 78, 108–9 62 110 73 n.4 62 60 n.22 60 n.22 106 19 42 68 29 110 110 36 77 17 n.24 61 50, 51 49 49, 50, 51 50 n.20 109–10

Jer. 2:2 2:3 2:20-21

106–7 108 108

2:24-25, 33 3:3 4:20 6:1-8 6:2 6:3 6:4 6:20 8:2 9:16-19 11:15 12:3 12:7 14:22 17:5 30:21 31:20 43:12 46:7 46:8 48:14 50:12

109 n.21 75 n.7 36 110 65 110 110 93 63 8 108 36 108 75 n.7 26 50 77 15–16 49, 50, 51 51 93 71

Ezek. 10:5-6 10:9 13:8 15:2 16 16:1-12 16:39 16:43 17:1-10 17:7 19:1-14 23 23:26 24:16, 21 31:3-18 33:24 33:31-32 34:2-19 37:1-14 38:11 46:14 46:23

82 n.32 82 n.31 17 n.26 40 64, 107 54 109 n.20 31 n.21 105 81 n.29 105 64 109 n.20 83 105 70 111 105 105 41 75 n.7 41

Hos. 1:2 2:4-5

109 78

121 2:4, 6 2:5 2:7, 9 2:9 2:16-25 3:1 4:11 7:5 9:3 11:5 12:4 12:13 13:7 14:6-7 14:6-8

109 109 109 n.21 109 109 106 109 33 26 26 16 n.22 28 62 n.25 46 n.10 106, 109

Joel 1:20 2:2 3:3

81 n.29 61 44 n.4

Mic. 3:7

16

Nah. 2:1a

111 n.25

Hab. 1:7

62

Hag. 2:13

31 n.21

Zech. 2:12 2:14 9:9 9:9-10 9:15

54 n.7 106 106 25–6, 32 62 n.25

Mal. 3:10

93

Ps. 7:15 14:2 19:9 19:10 20:4 23:1-2

35 61 62 62 n.26 109–10 106

122 24:3 24:4 24:7-8 24:8 30:8 38:4 42:2 45 48:3 48:4 51:9 55:5 57:9 58:11 60:14 72 72:8 72:16 73:1 76:2 80 80:2 84:3 93:1 98:6 102:20 108:3 111:5 111:10 127 138:3 141:7 Prov. 2:16-19 3:12 3:13-20 3:15 3:16 5:3 6:5 6:20-35 6:24 6:25 6:27 6:30-31 6:31 6:34

Index of References 50 50 50 51 93 67 81 n.26, 81 n.29 11–12, 44–5 65 96 62 62 61 110 93 11, 25 25–6 46 n.10 62 96 108 106 78 n.18 93, 106 106 61 61 93 90 11 65 67

90 64 89 89 89 90 38 47, 90 90 90 47 47 78 47

7:1-27 7:6 7:6-27 7:11 ff. 7:13-21 7:16 7:16-18 7:17-18 7:19-20 7:23 8:11 8:15-16 9 9:1 9:1-6 9:2-6 9:3 10:5 12:4 13-18 13:22 16:21 17:2 18:22 22:14 23:27 25:25 27:18 30:8 30:18-19 31:1-9 31:3 31:10 31:10-31 31:11 31:13 31:13, 16, 19, 20 31:15 31:19 31:23 31:26 31:27 31:28 31:28-31 31:29 31:30 31:31

90 61 56 90 90 17 92 n.11 45 90 67 89 29 n.15 26 n.10 89 89, 105 89 89–90 93 91 n.8, 93, 95, 98 105 93 83 93 89 90 90 93–4 28 93 2 89, 94, 98 24 89, 98 2, 89–99 90, 94 94

Job 3:9 9:3 11:4 12:9 20:9 24:5 24:15 28:7 28:18 28:28 29:14 30:30 33:23 34:3 38:2 38:2-3 41:10 42:3a 42:3a, 4

89 89, 93, 94 92 90 90, 94, 95 94 91 89 91 n.9 6, 91 89

1:6, 14 1:7 1:7-8 1:8 1:9 1:9-14, 15-17 1:11 1:14 1:15 1:17

Song 1:1 1:2 1:2-4 1:3 1:3, 4, 7 1:3, 12-14 1:4 1:5 1:5-6 1:5-6, 7-8, 17 1:6

61 31 n.20 62 31 n.21 36 93 65 36 89 90 93 36 31 n.20 83 n.39 50, 51 49 61 50 49

11 14 n.17 8, 34, 73 11, 39 n.20, 69 6 11 21, 39 n.20, 109 11, 48, 66 n.43, 106, 110 7, 36, 48 93 21, 35, 38 n.17, 62 94 15, 110 7, 8, 110 110 106, 110 8 11 66 n.43 6, 70 n.53 11

Index of References 2:1 2:1-2 2:1-3 2:3 2:4 2:4, 7 2:4-7 2:4-7, 8-13 2:5 2:7 2:8-13 2:9 2:10, 13 2:10-13, 14, 15 2:13 2:15 2:15, 16-17 2:16 2:17 3:1 3:1-2 3:1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 3:1-5

3:2 3:2-4, 6 3:3 3:4 3:5 3:5, 10 3:6 3:7-8 3:7-11

3:9 3:10 3:11 4:1

106, 109 84 8, 39–40 83 n.39, 109 40, 62 6 8, 34, 86 73 17, 20–1, 40, 92 45, 66 n.43, 94, 106 8, 110, 111 58 21, 94 93 35 17, 19, 34–5, 37, 94 8 84 n.41 38, 39, 110 21, 85 108–9 6 2, 7, 8, 12, 34, 44, 73–4, 85, 86, 108 78 93 85 13, 21, 35, 69, 71, 93 45, 66 n.43, 85, 94 106 2, 11, 12, 43, 44, 50, 51 17 11, 12, 29–30, 31, 36 n.13, 106 11, 12 11, 92 15, 66 n.43, 106, 110 20, 59, 60, 70, 70 n.53

4:1-7

4:1, 8, 9, 12 4:2 4:3 4:3b 4:4 4:5 4:6 4:6-8 4:7 4:8 4:8, 11, 15 4:9 4:9-10 4:11 4:12 4:12-5:1 4:12, 15 4:13 4:13-14 4:16 4:16-5:1 5:1 5:1, 5, 13 5:2 5:2-6:3

5:2-8 5:3 5:4 5:5 5:5-7 5:6 5:6-7 5:7 5:8 5:8, 16 5:9 5:9-16 5:10 5:10, 12

5, 20, 38, 54, 59–61, 64, 72, 91–2 70 n.53 59, 60, 67 n.44 13, 16, 60, 92 59 29, 64, 66 n.43 38–9, 41, 84 n.41, 109 110 93 70, 75 n.6 66 n.43, 94 66 n.43 18, 21, 65, 68, 94 13 60 n.22, 109 21, 38, 84 8, 9, 18, 75 9 67 11, 44 10 21 9, 10, 18, 21, 45, 47, 94 11 47, 73 n.3, 85, 94 2, 8, 34, 46, 51, 73–4, 93, 108 74–9 92 92 21 93 84, 85, 93, 109 7 85, 109 6, 21, 85 66 n.43, 106 19, 46, 47, 70 n.53, 74 74, 79–83 46, 47, 62 20

123 5:10-16 5:11 5:12 5:13 5:14 5:14-15 5:15 5:16 6:1 6:1-3 6:2 6:2-3 6:3 6:4 6:4-10 6:5 6:6 6:7 6:8-9 6:9 6:9b 6:10

6:11 6:11-12 7:1 7:1-6 7:1-7 7:2 7:3 7:5 7:6 7:7 7:8 7:8-10 7:9 7:10 7:11-14 7:12-14 7:13 8:1

5, 54, 104, 106 46, 47, 84–5 70 84, 85, 109 11 11 11, 46, 66 n.43 40, 74 20, 46, 47, 70 n.53, 74 74, 83–4 11, 46, 85 40, 109 46, 74 47, 59, 60, 106 2, 5, 31, 53, 54, 56–72, 91 47, 59 59 13, 47, 59 29, 30 15, 47 91 2, 43, 46–7, 50, 51, 54, 91–2 46, 67, 106, 109 8, 46, 73 70 n.53 92 5, 53, 110 78 n.17, 92, 110 94 11, 64, 66 n.43, 81 18–19, 66 n.43, 92 6 20 8 35, 40, 41 83 n.39 8, 14 93 67, 94, 109 16, 93

124 8:1-2 8:1-4 8:1-4, 5, 13-14 8:2 8:4

Index of References 7, 14, 21 8, 14, 48, 73

8:12 8:13 8:13-14 8:14

93 67 45, 66 n.43, 106 6 14 n.15, 35, 71 2, 43, 47, 48, 50, 51 8, 43, 47, 48, 49, 51 47, 92, 94 8, 43, 47, 48–9, 51 17 47 21 21 7, 8, 37 n.16, 40–2, 48, 64 n.35 11, 75 79 21 28 n.14, 108 1, 12, 23, 27, 29, 30, 31, 35, 48, 70, 94, 106, 108 n.19 1, 23, 48 22, 39 n.20 8, 37, 48 11

Ruth 1:1 1:9 1:11 3:1 3:10 3:11 4:1-2 4:12 4:15

96 21, 42 77 42 95 95, 98 95–6 97 97

8:4, 6, 7 8:5 8:5a 8:5b 8:6 8:6a 8:7 8:7b 8:8 8:8-9 8:8-10

8:9 8:9-10 8:10 8:11 8:11-12

Lam. 2:4

83

2:15 3:50 4:1 4:4 4:7 4:8 4:14 5:14 Eccl. 1:1 1:12 2:5-6 7:26-28 7:28 11:10 12:3 Est. 1:3 1:6 1:10-11 1:11 2:12 2:17 7:5 8:6 Dan. 2:31-33 10:5-6

65 61 80 n.25 17 n.24 80 36 76 n.10 17 n.26

11:23 29:6 35:25

30 n.19 31 n.19 40 89 31 37 65

Aramaic Targums

45 82 n.35 38 22 45, 77 6 50 n.22 76

4 Ezra 5:23-27

103

Jdt. 8:3 16:9

28 n.12 92

Ben Sira 25:17 26:12 42:11 44:1 47:19 50:5-7

36 63 55 6 24 63

Jub. 3:27

9

53, 54, 82 n.32, 106 53, 54, 82 n.32, 106

Ez. 5:17 7:18

64 64

Neh. 5:1-5 8:10 13:26

20 n.31 83 n.40 27

1 Chr. 7:40 9:22 16:41 22:9 2 Chr. 11:21

28, 30 65 8

New Testament Jn. 3:28-29

105

Targum Onqelos

11 n.9

Targum Jonathan

11 n.9, 16

Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha

Mishnah

71 71 71 11, 21, 25

6

Ta’anith 4:8

103

Sota 9:14

12

Middoth 1:6

102

Ohalot 13:3

76

Index of References Yadaim 2:14 3:5

102 102

Tosefta Sanhedrin 12:5

102

Babylonian Talmud Berakhot 15b Pesaḥim 26a 37b Yoma 38a Sukkah 2a 2b Megillah 7a 26b

Nedarim 9b

76 n.8

44 n.4

31 n.21 25 n.6

Song of Songs Rabbah 2:14 103 4:5 104 5:1 50 n.20 5:3 104 n.9

Sanhedrin 21b 101a

25 n.6 102

Ecclesiastes Rabbah 5:2 17 n.26

Jerusalem Talmud

Abot de Rabbi Nathan 1:81 101

Shevi’it 6, 5 [36b]

TanḤuma Buber

Sanhedrin 2:4

11 n.9

25 n.6

Midrash 44 n.3 35 n.11

18:24 19:2

Baba Bathra 14b-15a 95 15b 45 56a 11 n.9

44 n.3

44 n.4 66

125

Genesis Rabbah 65:11 75 n.8 95 81 n.27

Vayishlach Naso

7:1 15 19:1 9

TanḤuma Va’er’e

5

Ancient Authors Josephus

102 102

Leviticus Rabbah 12:5 24 n.4

Against Apion 1:8 101

25