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and Theology
Biblical Theology Bulletin: A Journal of Bible
DOI: 10.1177/014610799902800402
1999; 28; 129 Biblical Theology Bulletin: A Journal of Bible and Theology
Carey Ellen Walsh
A Startling Voice: Woman's Desire in the Song of Songs
http://btb.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/28/4/129
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129
A
Startling
Voice: Womans Desire
in the
Song
of
Songs
Carey
Ellen Walsh
Carey
Ellen
Walsh,
Th.D
(Harvard University),
is an assistant
professor
of Hebrew Bible at Rhodes
College, Memphis,
TN
(e-mail
walsh@rhodes.edu).
She is
currently working
on a book on the
language
of desire in the
Song
of
Songs.
All biblical translations
are
by
the author.
Abstract
The current article examines the use of horticultural
metaphor
in
detailing
lust between the two lovers in
the
Song
of
Songs.
It
suggests
that the
metaphors vehicle,
that is, the
image used, has to be
grasped
before the
possibilities
of its tenor, i.e.,
what that
image
can
represent,
become
apparent.
Once the
metaphors
vehicle is
properly understood, its
aptness
for
conveying
female
bodily
arousal is
readily,
even
shockingly apparent.
The
benefits of this
metaphoric study
are
essentially
twofold: one an
interpretive gain
and one feminist.
They yield
a
deeper appreciation
of the
poetry
of this biblical
songbook
and
give
a
long
overdue
hearing
for a
startlingly bold,
female voice in the Bible.
Te
Song
of
Songs
has taxed and excited the
interpretive
skills of biblical scholars over the centuries. The
canonicity
of this biblical book was
early
on
disputed by
the rabbis
(Mishnah
Yadaim
3:5),
since it was unclear what
specifically
religious, legal,
or wisdom material it contained. For there is
in its
eight chapters
no mention of
God,
no clear moral in-
struction,
and
nothing
about the nationhood of Israel. The
book
lacked,
in other words,
much of what was
identifiably
&dquo;biblical&dquo; about the other
writings already
collected in the
canon. And it contained much that was not in the other bib-
lical books as well:
specifically,
the
language
of sexual de-
sire. For,
in its
plain sense,
the book describes
longing,
ancient lust.
For most of its
post-biblical history, however,
the
Song
of
Songs
was
read,
not as a book of erotica-which it is-but
as an
allegory
of Israels love for God
or,
for
Christians,
of
Christs love for the Church
(Pope: 189-232).
Yet such
allegorization
does not
really
tame or domesticate the book
all that much,
or reduce its
impact
to be a
generalized
un-
derstanding
of devotion
(total indeed!)
to God. For the
metaphors
of desire still
provoke
and excite
response
from
the reader, who then has to remind himself or herself that
this is
really
about God and us. The
passion expressed
in this
song
is
definitely all-consuming, erotic,
on the brink at least
of
bodily orgasm.
But for a
pious allegory
to even work-of
an Israel
ready
and
willing
for its God-the
plain
sense of
the text, lust, particularly female lust,
must first be under-
stood. The
metaphors vehicle,
that
is,
the
image used,
has
to be
grasped
before the
possibilities
of its
tenor, i.e.,
what
idea that
image
can
represent,
become
apparent.
This arti-
cle, then,
focuses on the
description
of female lust in the
Song
of
Songs.
I
suggest
that the
energy
described for female
arousal is
aptly conveyed
in this
song through
horticultural
metaphor
and that it infuses biblical
theologies
with
strong,
embodied
images
of woman. The
benefits,
I
hope,
are two-
fold : a
deeper appreciation
of the
poetry
of this biblical
songbook
and a
long
overdue
hearing
for a
brave,
un-
clipped,
female voice in the Bible.
It
is,
first of
all, shocking
that an entire biblical book is
devoted to a womans desire. Tikva
Frymer-Kensky (197)
believes there is a vacuum in the First Testament about sex-
ual attraction
and, by viewing
the
Song
as an
idyll
on ro-
mantic
love,
she overlooks its
potency
as erotic literature.
The
Song
offers no
peaceful,
rustic
musings
on love.
Rather,
it writhes for
eight enjoyable, unnerving chapters
on a
womans
yearning
and lust. It
offers, minimally,
a counter-
balance to the
other,
terse biblical
descriptions
of sex
and,
maximally,
a dissonant voice of the canon: that of a woman
in command of and in
pleasure
of her own
sexuality.
It is
shocking, especially
in contrast to the other biblical texts
about women and sex.
Biblical sex elsewhere tends to revolve around four
types
of
description,
none of which offers much on the fe-
male
perspective. Instead,
certain verbs are used, generally
with the male as the active
subject
and the woman as the
grammatical object
of the actions. In the first
type
of de-
scription
of
sex, then,
men are the
agents
of these
primary
Carey
Ellen
Walsh,
Th.D
(Harvard University),
is an assistant
professor
of Hebrew Bible at Rhodes
College, Memphis,
TN
(e-mail
walshCrhodes.edu).
She is
currently working
on a book on the
language
of desire in the
Song
of
Songs.
All biblical translations
are
by
the author.
by RONALD ROJAS on April 5, 2009 http://btb.sagepub.com Downloaded from
130
verbs for sex: shacab, &dquo;sleep
with&dquo;
(e.g.,
Gen 30:15;
Exod
22:15;
2 Sam
11:4), yada,
&dquo;know&dquo;
(e.g.,
Gen
4:1;1
Sam
1:19),
and
bo, &dquo;enter, come in
to,&dquo; the same verb
used,
for
example,
for
entering
a
city gate (e.g.,
Gen
23:10) . So, for
instance,
with the verb
(shacab),
&dquo;lie with&dquo;: David sees
Bathsheba from his
rooftop,
has the
messengers get her,
and
then &dquo;lies with&dquo; her
(2
Sam
11:4). Or,
with the verb
bo, &dquo;go
in to&dquo;: Samson wants first to
&dquo;go
in to&dquo; his wife
(Judg 15:1),
and then later a
city
woman
(Judg 16:1);
Abram
dutifully
&dquo;goes
in to&dquo;
Hagar (Gen 16:2);
and the Levirate
duty
re-
quires
the brother of the deceased man to
&dquo;go
in to&dquo; the lat-
ters widow in order to secure an heir for the dead man
(Deut 25:5).
With these verbs for
sex, the men receive what atten-
tion there
is,
while the women remain the
grammatical-and
ideological-objects. Exceptions
do occur in biblical tradi-
tion,
such as in the
story
of Lots
daughters,
who take the
initiative and lie with their father
(Gen 19:33, 35),
and in
descriptions
of
virgins
who have not
yet
&dquo;known&dquo; or &dquo;lain
with&dquo; a man
(e.g.,
Gen 19:8;
Num 31:17; Judg 11:39).
Sex
scenes
occurring
with the use of a
single verb, obviously,
can
give
no narrative flourish about desire or the
pleasures
of lovemaking,
or even hint at the emotional
registers
of the
participants.
Sexual union, here,
is
primarily
for the
(pre-
sumed) pleasure
or
duty
of the male
agent
of the verbs.
Second, sex is
implied
as the functional
necessity
of
procreation,
a
prominent
biblical theme. The use of sexual
relations for
procreation
is
evident,
of
course,
in the well-known
biblical
imperative
to &dquo;be fruitful and
multiply&dquo; (e.g.,
Gen
1:28; 9:1; 35:11), yet
in
only
one instance is the
woman,
whose
participation
is
required,
even
present
to hear the
command
(Gen 1:28).
The functional
necessity
of sex for
procreation
is also manifest in the stories of the barren
wives:
Sarah, Rebekkah, Rachel, and Hannah. Indeed, their
barrenness is the
only
narrative clue we are
given
that these
women have been
having
sex at
all,
and often
enough
at
least to wonder
why they
are not
yet pregnant. Infertility,
it
should be
noted,
was assumed
by
the biblical authors to be
located with the female alone.
They
viewed life to be within
the male seed and so, for
example,
Onan was killed for wast-
ing
seed on the
ground,
instead of
spilling
it within the
womb
(Gen 38:9-10) .
His act was
really
an act of birth con-
trol
(coitus interruptus), yet
onanism later came to mean
masturbation.
Procreation is the valued
goal
in these biblical
passages,
and so no
attempt
is made to describe sex from the
perspec-
tive of either
participant.
In
fact,
human
participation
is de-
cidedly underplayed
so that the
power
and
agency (virility?)
of Yahweh is accented. He is the true action hero in
procre-
ation, by commanding
it and
by relieving
barrenness. It
should be noted that barrenness is seen as a
problem
of the
woman,
whose solution lies with the male
partner,
Yahweh.
Sex for
procreation
is
thus,
in this
understanding,
a mere
means to an end and so needs no
description.
It
merely
serves
the
pronatalist ideology
characteristic of, but not restricted to
the
Priestly
writer
(e.g.,
Gen
47:27; Jer 3:16;
Ezek
36:11).
A third
type
of biblical
description
of sex lies in the le-
gal
materials where taboos are listed for the male about who
or what he shouldnt
&dquo;go
in
to,&dquo; namely:
animals
(Lev
18:23), virgin
women whom he has no intention of
marry-
ing (Exod 22:15),
and other men
(Lev 18:22).
These
too,
with the
exception
of Exod
22:15,
are from the
Priestly
writer who is
writing
in the
post-exilic period,
when the
people
Israel had been
drastically
downsized
by
the
tragedy.
Hence, this writers
pronatalist agenda
is in
part
demo-
graphic.
He wishes to increase the numbers of an Israel re-
stored after the Exile, by legislating
where male seed should
and should not
go.
A fourth
type
of
description refers,
not
explicitly
to sex-
ual union,
but to the desire for
it, and here, in one case at
least, a womans stance is noted, though
circumscribed. In
Gen
3:16,
a womans desire is
yoked
to her hushand as
part
of her curse in Eden: &dquo;to
your
husband is
your desire, and he
shall rule over
you.&dquo;
Male desire is circumscribed too in the
tenth
commandment,
which warns
against &dquo;desiring/covet-
ing&dquo; (hamad)
a
neighbors things.
The
neighbors
wife is sec-
ond on a list of
possessions
which includes also the
house,
slaves,
and his animals
(Exod 20:14) .
It is
impossible
to wrest much about the woman and
her desires from all these biblical
passages involving
sex.
She is either
ignored
or defined as
property
for the male. It is
clear-and
nothing
new-that the woman often was viewed
as
property
in ancient Israel.
Marriage
in a
patriarchal
soci-
ety was,
for the most
part,
a matter of
political
and eco-
nomic
arrangement,
with room at times for love
(e.g., Jacob
of Rachel; Michal of
David;
Elkanah of
Hannah). So,
we
cannot
really expect
much
insight
into ancient womans de-
sire in the First Testament. It is
perhaps
even anachronistic
to look for its evidence in the Bible.
However, the
Song
of
Songs
is much different from these other biblical
descrip-
tions of sex. This book is
basically
a
dialogue
between lov-
ers, talking
back and forth of their desire-an extended
flirtation, requiring
two voices.
Hence,
a womans voice is
evident,
even dominant in the book.
Desire in the
Song
of
Songs
The
speeches
of the two lovers use
metaphors
drawn
by RONALD ROJAS on April 5, 2009 http://btb.sagepub.com Downloaded from
131
from three sources:
(1)
the natural
world, e.g., gazelles, hills,
doves, goats, (2) architecture, e.g., towers, columns, walls,
and
(3) horticulture,
the cultivation of
grapes,
its
product
wine,
and other
fruits,
such as
figs
and
apples.
Both the male
and female voices draw on these various
metaphoric
fields
for their
description
of the desired other. Both lovers list
features
they
like in the
other,
such as
eyes
like doves
(4:1 ),
teeth like a flock of
sheep (4:2), lips
like lilies
(5:13).
These
parts
of the book,
which list the
bodily
features of the other,
the desired one, resemble the so-called
wa~f poems
of
praise
for the lover in Arabic love
songs (Pope: ~56-57).
The lists
detail not lust or sensual
yearning,
but rather aesthetic
ap-
preciation.
Desire is
undoubtedly implied
in such
poetic apprecia-
tion, but it is not
explicit.
When aesthetic
appreciation
of
the beloved
gives way
to
bodily
arousal in the
text,
the met-
aphors shift; they
become almost
exclusively
horticultural.
Comparison
with architecture and with various animals
stops,
and attention zeroes in on fruit cultivation. With sen-
sual arousal, gardens, wine, and
vineyards
become the dom-
inant
metaphors
for
description,
and these more often than
not involve the woman.
Hence,
the use of horticulture-the
cultivation of
gardens
and
vineyards-symbolize promi-
nently
the womans desire. In this
regard,
the
song
differs
markedly from, say, Mesopotamian
sacred
marriage songs
which describe sex with
images
of fields and
plowing, i.e.,
intercourse
(cf. Judg 14:18) (Kramer).
Here in this
Song,
the
agricultural
task is of fruit
cultivation, ripening, juice,
not
plowing
a field. The economies of
Mesopotamia
and Is-
rael
obviously differed,
with
Mesopotamias being largely
grain-based
and Israels
being
a combination of
grain,
horti-
culture,
and
stockbreeding,
characteristic of the Mediterra-
nean lands. Still, this economic difference does not
fully
account for the difference in
detailing
sexual
longing:
one
where intercourse is
explicitly
awaited
(i.e.,
a field for
plant-
ing) ;
the other, where
bodily
female arousal is described
(engorged,
darkened
fruit).
Because
part
of the
power
of sexual desire lies in its
go-
ing unsatisfied, love can remain a
yearning throughout
the
Song
of
Songs
and is never consummated.
Hence, the
separation
of the two lovers is essential to
the books
design.
It also serves an
important,
if covert theo-
logical purpose.
For as Ilana Pardes
notes(126),
the
Song
shares with the rest of the First Testament a focus on
desire,
but desire unfulfilled.
Julia
Kristeva
(89) pushes
this a
step
further and
argues
that the lovers are
really
&dquo;in love with the
others absence.&dquo; The absence is
necessary
to
provide
a
space
for this discourse of love she calls
&dquo;incantation,&dquo;
full of
loves tension and
joy.
The
language
in the
Song,
in other
words, contains the
power
and emotions of love and lust. It
is not
merely
communication &dquo;about&dquo; love,
but contains its
liveliness.
The
point
of the lovers
separation
is to enable the
Song
to remain focused on the nature of desire itself,
rather
than on sex as its satisfaction. This
separation
is not evi-
dence,
as Renita Weems claims
(159-60),
of a
polemical
tone to the
Song,
a contrivance used to
argue
that these two
lovers
really
do
belong together.
For
Weems,
the
Song
is ar-
guing
for a
coupling
that would not have been sanctioned in
ancient Israel. I maintain that the
Song
has a broader aim
than this
polemical
one. It is not
primarily
concerned with
thwarting
social customs
specific
to ancient Israel, but is in-
stead a
poetic
and
sapiential exploration
into human want.
The
Song
is not
merely
communication &dquo;about&dquo;
love,
but
contains its liveliness.
The mans
separation
is achieved
by
his
viewing
the
woman as inaccessible. For
example,
he describes her neck
as a
tower,
with a necklace of a thousand shields
hanging
off
it
(4:4).
The use of such
military metaphors,
for Carol
Meyers (215),
demonstrates a reversal of
stereotypical gen-
der construction. As towers were
part
of the fortification
systems
of Israelite cities, used for lookout and defense, so a
necklace of a thousand shields
suggests
a
fairly strong
de-
fense
strategy,
or the mans
insecurity
over her
many
other
suitors. For
Meyers (221),
the
images convey
the
strong
and
authoritative
position
of the woman in the Israelite house-
hold. But the
Songs
desire is not in a domestic realm, nor is
there
any
indication that the two lovers share a household.
Instead, I
suggest
that the
imagery conveys
the males un-
certainty,
rather than
any quality
of the woman. The
man,
in other words, sees the woman as a
military target,
and a
daunting
one at that. She is, to him, heavily armed, forti-
fied, perhaps
indeed
impenetrable.
The man nevertheless makes a
pass
at
her, but does so
in
language
that continues to reflect his belief in her inac-
cessibility (4:8-16).
His
odds,
in his own
mind,
are not
very
good.
He asks her to come from
Lebanon, from Mount
Hermon-lands outside of Israel--and to come from the
dens of lions and
leopards-wild
animals
(v 8).
It is clear
from his invitation to sex that
foreign
lands and nondomes-
ticated animals render her inaccessible to him. For he sim-
by RONALD ROJAS on April 5, 2009 http://btb.sagepub.com Downloaded from
132
ply
cannot
get
to her if she is so far
away
and
guarded by
packs
of wild animals.
A little further on
(v 12),
he describes the woman as a
locked
garden-a garden
full of
scents,
with water
flowing,
yet
locked. Since
gardens
were outdoors in ancient
Israel,
at
most
protected
from animals
by
a stone wall or
hedge, they
were
unlikely
to have had a lock. His
description
of one,
then,
reflects more the frustration of his
pleasure
than a fea-
ture of Israelite
farming.
The woman is a
garden,
an aroused
woman, teaming
with all kinds of scents
(vv 10, 14), plenty
of fruits
(v 13),
and &dquo;waters of life&dquo;
(v 15),
but he cannot
gain entry.
His
yearning is, then, forged-strengthened
and
frustrated-by
the
inaccessibility
of his lover. The womans
yearning,
on the other
hand,
is born of
something
else: his
absence. She
simply
cannot find her lover. Twice she looks
for him in the streets
(3:2-4; 5:6-7);
once he teases her to
find him
by following
the herds
(2:8);
and once,
in a dream
sequence,
he vanishes before
they
can unite
(5:6).
Her
yearning, then,
is sustained
by
the mans absence. Her
dream describes that
yearning
in vivid terms:
I
slept,
but
my
heart was awake.
Listen
my
lover is
knocking, &dquo;Open
to me,
my
sister
my love, for
my
head is wet with dew ...&dquo;
my
lover thrust his hand into the hole,

.
and
my
insides
yearned
for him,
I arose to
open
to
my lover,
and
my
hands
dripped
with
myrrh,
my fingers
with
liquid myrrh, upon
the handles of the lock. I
opened
to
my lover,
but he was
gone.
Cant 5:2-6
There is almost no need for
metaphor here;
the lan-
guage
is
palpably
erotic. A lock
figures
here as well in the
description
of a
desired/desiring woman,
as it had for the
man in 4:12. From her
viewpoint
in this
dream, however,
the lock is not so much a
barrier,
since the man has
already
thrust his hand into the
hole,
but
signals
a next
stage
of
opening
in arousal. Her lock is
wet, dripping,
with a
strong
scent of
myrrh,
and she
opens
as soon as she can
get
to it
(vv
5-6).
She has not barred him at
all;
rather he left too soon.
This
passage,
in
essence,
is a biblical wet dream of a
woman,
and an illusion to autoeroticism with her hands and
fingers involved,
and the man
vanishing.
The
moistness,
her moistness, her
opening (patah)
occurs 3 times in vv
2-6;
4or,
&dquo;hole&dquo; occurs
once,
v
4),
is her
desire,
and
climax;
a not
very
cloaked
description
of a womans
orgasm, fingers
wet
on an
opening
lock. The
images
are so
intimately
feminine
in this and other
passages (e.g., 1:2-6; 3:1-4),
that
Athalya
Brenner maintains female
authorship
had a hand in the
Song. Indeed,
the boldness of the womans voice is stun-
ning,
and is elsewhere evident in the
Song.
For her state-
ments of desire are more direct, less in need of
metaphor
than are the mans: &dquo;Let me
give my
love to
you&dquo; (7:14);
&dquo;I
am sick with love&dquo;
(2:5; 5:8);
&dquo;Oh that he were
embracing
me&dquo;
(2:6; 8:3);
&dquo;Let him kiss me with the kisses of his
mouth&dquo;
( 1:2) .
Her desire is
voiced, repeated,
and vivid.
The mans
description
of the desired
woman,
of what
he felt locked out
of,
is of a
garden
of scents and
plenty
of
water: a
spring,
a well, and &dquo;waters of life&dquo;
(mayim hayyim-
4 :15).
Since
Israel, geographically,
is a semiarid
region,
the
surplus
of water here is not natural but has been
generated
by
human means:
irrigation, namely
female arousal. While the
male lover is
delayed
in his love
by
his view that the woman
is
fortified, locked, inaccessible,
the womans desire is
pro-
longed by
the mans absence. She
actively
tries to
satisfy
her
desire
by searching
for him and
dreaming
of him, but when
that cannot
happen,
she takes some
pleasure anyway
in his
absence.
Phyllis
Trible
argues
that the location of a woman as a
garden
is
key
to
understanding
the entire
Song.
For here the
sensual
joy
and
presence
of both male and female
perspec-
tives offers a counterbalance to the
garden
of Eden
story
in
Genesis 3. Trible
argues
that the
Song
of
Songs
is
egalitar-
ian,
that is, that the male and female voices are offered
equally,
in contrast to the androcentric slant of Genesis 3.
This
Song,
she
notes, goes
a
long way
toward
righting
the
gender
imbalance cast in the first
garden story,
and it &dquo;re-
deems&dquo; our view of sex too.
Mutuality
and
joy,
rather than
dominance and shame can
emerge
once
again (Trible 161 ) .
By reading
this
Song
in the
light
of Genesis
3, however,
Trible
downplays
the differences between the two voices
and the fact that the woman dominates. The woman of the
Song
does not
simply
correct a
gender
imbalance from Gen-
esis
3,
a
compensation
Trible seems to settle for. She
goes
further, past mutuality.
In feminist
terms, the womans
voice is not
merely
revisionist in its view towards
gender
re-
lations,
but is
actually
radical. The woman takes
pleasure
in
the mans absence and
by
the
Songs end,
as we shall
see,
does not even seem to need the man.
In addition to a
garden,
the
vineyard
is mentioned as
the womans locus for
lovemaking.
And
throughout
the
Song,
both lovers
compare
their love over wine
(1:2; 1:4;
4:10; 5:1; 7:3,10; 8:2).
Wine in this
Song signifies
not
only
the
aphrodisiac likely
to have been
present
at
any
Israelite
by RONALD ROJAS on April 5, 2009 http://btb.sagepub.com Downloaded from
133
banquet.
It is as well the womans
product.
She is the vine-
yard,
and so her state of arousal is the wine offered.
By
the
last
chapter,
she claims
ownership
of the
vineyard
with the
emphatic
Hebrew construction carmi sheli, &dquo;my vineyard,
which is mine&dquo;
(8:12). By doing so, she asserts her autono-
nous
sexuality-one
not defined
by
a man, who,
as it
hap-
pens,
cannot he
found,
and one more valuable than all of
Solomons
royal vineyards (v 12).
The
vineyard,
like the
garden,
is a
metaphor
for the woman
herself,
her
sex,
and it
is all hers,
even a
kings
wealth cannot touch it.
Conclusion
Horticulturally speaking,
the
vineyard
and fruit
gar-
dens are
apt metaphors
to describe
wanting
and/or
being
an
aroused woman on several counts.
First,
a
vineyard pro-
duces
heady liquid
and sweetness. Sexual arousal and wine
are both
powerful, dizzying,
and
destabilizing. Fruits, espe-
cially grapes,
were
likely
treasured values in the semi-arid
land of Israel, the
prized part
of a farm.
They
were sweet and
could be made into wine. This
might
then be a
positive por-
trait of the
woman,
not as
part
of the
property
of a
farm,
but
as a
delight
in
herself,
for herself
(carml
sheli:
&dquo;my vineyard,
which is
mine&dquo;).
Second, the
properties
of the fruit itself
suggest genita-
lia and sexual
pleasure. Grapes
and
grape
clusters are dark
purple, triangular,
surrounded
by foliage, engorged
with
juice
at the
height
of their
ripening,
with
supple, taut, yet
vulnerable skins.
They require
tender care in cultivation
and close, persistent
attention to
gauge exactly
when the
height
of
ripening
occurs.
Hence, they
are
apt
vehicles for
describing
two tenors
metaphorically, namely,
the
physiol-
ogy
of female arousal, and the lovers oral
delight
in
tasting,
drinking,
and
exploring
her.
Third,
the horticultural meta-
phor
here turns on a biblical
pun. Using
fruit and
its juices
for womans desire, the
song plays
off and subverts the
pro-
creative
functionality
of sex
expressed
elsewhere in the Bi-
bles command to &dquo;be fruitful and
multiply.&dquo;
Here in this
Song, breeding,
the
harvesting
of
(if lucky, male) children,
has no
place,
and all the fruitfulness describes
only
the
womans arousal and
pleasure.
The woman in this
Song
is
fruitful indeed,
but in
ways
the
Priestly
writer never could
have dreamed. The voice of a womans desire in this
Song
offers, too, a
corollary
to the other autonomous woman in
the other
garden, Eden, where fruit was
forbidden,
locked
out
by
Yahweh. It offers a return to the scene of that
crime,
not of a womans
disobedience,
but of her
getting blamed,
misogynys origins.
Eves voice was cut short in that
garden;
she was
punished,
her desire
yoked
to her
husband,
tamed.
This
song
recovers a womans voice and entitlement to her
own
sexuality.
In
fact,
it is now the males desire that is di-
rected towards her:
&dquo;upon
me is his desire&dquo;
(Cant
7:12
[Eng
7:10] ) . Though
the woman of this
Song goes nameless,
her
voice is loud, clear,
and
startling-a
dissonant affront to the
dominant male voices of the canon. While female
sexuality
can be a threat to biblical
(and post-biblical) males-e.g.,
Yahweh before Eve (Gen 3); Joseph
before
Potiphars
wife
(Gen 39);
the entire Persian court before Vashti
(Esther
1)-here,
it is left
remarkably alone, triumphant
as a femi-
nist tour de force.
To conclude, then, the benefits for feminist
appropria-
tion of this text should be
apparent.
A womans
sexuality
is
developed, sustained,
and
celebrated,
not as
object,
but
from a womans
perspective
and that of her male
lover(s).
Throughout
the
book,
in first
person voice,
the woman re-
tains control of her
fate,
of her
pleasure. Hence,
she is never
in
danger
of
being
commodified
by
a male lord or
plowed
as
an inert field. In
fact,
there is a
surprising
lack of
any phallic
referent in the text. The
only
time the males
genitals
are
mentioned is in her
dream,
when he
pleads
that she let him
in as he has
just
washed &dquo;his
feet,&dquo;
a biblical
euphemism
for
genitalia (Cant 5:3).
The woman in the
Song displays
a
self-possession
and celebration of female
sexuality
and
yearn-
ing
that
appeals
to feminist constructions of love, life, and
being
woman. Since the
garden
and
vineyard
locales turn
out to be her own
possession,
the woman retains
autonomy
over her desire and its satisfaction. She is in
complete
con-
trol of her
sexuality,
her voice
offering
it
willingly, wantingly,
to her lover. This notion then lends to the
allegorical
inter-
pretation
a
perhaps
accidental twist. For if Yahweh is to be
understood as the male lover in the
Song (cf.
Hos
2:2),
then
Israel is a woman who controls the
time, the
place,
and
sheer
desirablity
of consummation. She, in other words,
controls
entirely
too much. If Yahweh is to be understood as
the female lover, then, well, She is a she and is in
lust,
a the-
ology
that would increase, rather than obviate traditional
male
anxiety
over female
sexuality.
If we read the
plain
sense of this biblical book, female
arousal and sexual
autonomy
are
celebrated,
valued over
King
Solomon himself
(Cant 8:12),
who with all of his thou-
sand women was ancient Israels most virile
male,
bar none.
The
Song
is a
potent,
visceral reminder of the
multiple
voices in the First Testament. It offers a
powerful,
wel-
comed, energetic,
and erotic
surge
into
theologies
of the
First Testament and our
conceptions
of woman and sexual-
ity-both ancient, in the
pleasure
of the Israelite
woman,
and modern, in our own
pleasure
in
reading
the Bible and
being
a woman.
by RONALD ROJAS on April 5, 2009 http://btb.sagepub.com Downloaded from
134
Works Cited
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JSOT.
duBois, Page.
SOWING THE BODY. 1988.
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IL:
University
of
Chicago
Press.
Falk,
Marcia. 1990. THE SONG OF SONGS. San
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CA:
HarperCollins.
Frymer-Kensky,
Tikva. 1992. IN THE WAKE OF THE GODDESSES:
WOMEN, CULTURE, AND THE BIBLICAL TRANSFORMATION
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York,
NY: Free Press.
Gordis,
Robert. 1974. THE SONG OF SONGS AND LAMENTATIONS.
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NY: KTAV
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Kramer, S. N. 1969. THE SACRED MARRIAGE RITE: ASPECTS OF
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IN: Indiana
University
Press.
Kristeva, Julia.
1987. TALES OF LOVE. Translated
by
Leon S.
Roudiez. New
York,
NY: Columbia
University
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Meyers,
C. 1986. Gender
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in the
Song of Songs,
HEBREW AN-
NUAL REVIEW 10:209-23.
Murphy,
Roland. 1990. THE SONG OF SONGS.
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Pardes, Ilana. 1992. COUNTERTRADITIONS IN THE BIBLE: A FEMI-
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MA: Harvard
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Pope,
Marvin. SONG OF SONGS. Garden
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NY:
Doubleday
&
Co., 1977.
Trible, Phyllis.
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Philadelphia,
PA: Fortress Press.
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