Megillot II. Class 8. Song of Songs 3

1. Welcome, Check-in, & Opening Question

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Can there be "Judaism" without Jews?

Reflection on Song of Songs as a whole

• J. Cheryl Exum, New Oxford Annotated Bible, The Song of Solomon, Introduction (Exum is Professor Emeritus, University of Sheffield) - "The Song is a lyric poem, not a record of events in the lives of two lovers. This means that unusual events or sudden transitions do not require explanation to make them seem more realistic or more intelligible. When we read lyric poetry, which is essentially a discontinuous form, we should not expect to find the kind of linear unfolding of events that produces a plot. The Song meanders, repeating themes, images, phrases, and sometimes whole sections. As we read the poem, we may feel that we get to know the lovers, for each have their own distinctive way of talking about their love and its effect on them." (pp. 961-2)

2. Plan for this class

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• 3 Things to consider as we read chapters 4 and 5
• 4 Text of Chapter 4
• 5 a. Responses b. Commentaries
• 6 Text of Chapter 5
• 7 a. Responses b. Commentaries
• 8 Summary and Upcoming Class

3 About Chapters 4 and 5

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Chapter 4 (including 5:1) (16+1=17 verses)

• Who are the speakers in this passage? Whom do they address?
• Consider the complex similes in this chapter.
• Consider references to place names, animals, and plants (flowers, fruits, herbs, spices, etc.)
• Consider references to places in nature, water, and gatherings of water

Chapter 5 (verses 2-16) (15 verses)

• Who are the speakers in this passage? Whom do they address?
• Consider the setting in this passage
• Recall the dream/dreamlike passage in Chapter 3

Both Chapters

• Do the maiden/bride/sister and the beloved speak in similar ways? Are their speeches distinct? How?

4. Text of Chapter 4

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5 a. Responses and b. Commentaries for Chapter 4 (incl. 5:1)

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5a. Our initial responses to Chapter 4 (incl. 5:1) and to the questions to consider.

5b. Commentaries for Chapter 4

Chapter 4 as a whole "The man's first long speech" (J. Cheryl Exum)

4:5. Your breasts are like two fawns

• A Derash commentary. "The matriarch Sarah is the exemplar of the intimacy of religious education. Through the milk of her breasts, we are told, many foreigners were transformed: some were were infused with reverence for God..." - Michael Fishbane, Derash comment to 4:5
  • Genesis 21:7. And she [=Sarah] added, / “Who would have said to Abraham

    That Sarah would suckle children! /Yet I have borne a son in his old age.”

  • Bereshit Rabbah 53:9. “Sarah would nurse children” – ... Noblewomen were coming and having their children nurse from her. They were saying: ‘We are not worthy of having our children nurse from this righteous woman.’ ... Anyone who came [to Sarah] for the sake of Heaven became God-fearing.

4:8 Amana, Senir, Hermon

• From Lebanon come with me; / From Lebanon, my bride, with me! /
  Trip down from Amana’s peak, /From the peak of Senir and Hermon,
  From the dens of lions, /From the hills of leopards.

• Note: Deuteronomy 3:9 "Sidonians called Hermon Sirion, and the Amorites call it Senir"
• J. Cheryl Exum: "Amana, Senir, and Hermon... create a contrast to the accessible mountains of verse 6 and symbolize the woman's inaccessibility and the awe she inspires in him."
• Elsie Stern, Jewish Study Bible. "In the midrash, this verse is used as a prooftext for the idea that God goes into exile with Israel and will return to the land of Israel with the people."

4:9. My own, my bride [literally my sister, bride]

• Hebrew: אחותי כלה
• Contrast: Lamentations 2:11
• נִשְׁפַּךְ לָאָרֶץ כְּבֵדִי עַל־שֶׁבֶר בַּת־עַמִּי בֵּעָטֵף עוֹלֵל וְיוֹנֵק בִּרְחֹבוֹת קִרְיָה׃
• My being melts away /Over the ruin of my poor people [literally the daughter of my people], As babes and sucklings languish / In the squares of the city.

4:13-15

• J. Cheryl Exum: "She is a paradisiacal garden, where exotic spice-bearing plants and trees from such faraway places as Arabia, Africa, and India grow side by side."

6. Text of Chapter 5

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7. a. Reactions to Chapter 5 and b. Commentaries

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7a. Reactions

7b. Commentaries

General: Chapter 5 "The woman's second long speech" (J. Cheryl Exum)

5:2-8 A Dream - Compare to dream of 3:1-5

• Opening of the dream
  • 3:1: Upon my couch at night / I sought the one I love— / I sought, but found him not."
  • 5:2 I was asleep, / But my heart was wakeful.

• The Watchmen

  • 3:3 I met the watchmen / Who patrol the town. / “Have you seen the one I love?”

  • 5:7 I met the watchmen / Who patrol the town; / They struck me, they bruised me. / The guards of the walls / Stripped me of my mantle.

• Elements of the dream: maiden, watchmen, beloved, maidens of Jerusalem

5:2 I am asleep, but my heart is wakeful. / Hark, my beloved knocks! / Kol Dofi Dofek

• A Remez approach:
• Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveichik (1903-93), U-Viqqashtem mi-Sham (And From There You Shall Seek) (drafted in the 1940s) - "From its dark night of despair (sleep), the self is aroused and surprised. Divine revelation calls to the self from beyond: to behold the world and its fulness, the gift of God. The self is called to heed this good within existence and serve it by enhancing life and raising the self (body and mind) to a sacred service. 'Submission' to this task is the true response to the 'Inscrutable Will' of God, which imposes the creation and responsibility for its maintenance upon the human being. This sense of revelation arises out of an 'obscure dimness.' It is wholly beyond reason, compelling the attentive heart to heed its call. 'The clear day--a symbol of rational existence--had disappeared, and the dread-laden night had arrived. The great vision became a mystery, a transfinite secret that cannot be fathomed.'" - as summarized by Michael Fishbane, Commentary, pp. 289-290.

5:8 faint with love / love-sick

• From the poem Yedid Nefesh, Elazar Azikri (1533-1600), often sung to introduce the Kabbalat Shabbat service on Friday evening.

  • Resplendent, beautiful, radiance of the world, /My soul is sick for your amore, / Please, O God, heal her now, / By showing her the beauty of your radiance, / Then she will be strong, she will be healed, / And she will be your handmaiden forever more.

5:14-15

• His hands are rods of gold,/ Studded with beryl; // His belly a tablet of ivory, /
  Adorned with sapphires. ///His legs are like marble pillars / Set in sockets of fine gold. // He is majestic as Lebanon, /Stately as the cedars.

• These verses are part of "the only extended description of the male body in the Song" (Elsie Stern, referring to 5:1-16).

• Robert Alter "In contrast to his celebration of her beauty (4:1-7), in which animal imagery and landscape imagery predominate, with one architectural metaphor, the second half of this poem is a cluster of images of jewels and precious substances, appropriate male in their hardness. The lover becomes a kind of state so resplendent that it seems virtually the statue of a god. As Ron Hendel has suggested to me, this is one of the poetic features of the Song that encourages allegorical readings in which the lover is in fact God."

  • Compare to Daniel 2:31-33 - “O king, as you looked on, there appeared a great statue. This statue, which was huge and its brightness surpassing, stood before you, and its appearance was awesome. / The head of that statue was of fine gold; its breast and arms were of silver; its belly and thighs, of bronze; / its legs were of iron, and its feet part iron and part clay."

8. Summary and Next Class

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• Monday, December 4 - Class 9, Song of Songs session #4 - chapters 6 and 7
• Monday, December 11 - Class 10, Song of Songs session #5 - chapter 8 - Review of Song of Songs