The Song of Songs is about the joys to be found in bodies and bellies and thighs. It's also about trees and gardens and animals and fields. Take all the images together and you have lovers exploring their own private garden.
The Song shares that image with Genesis 2: a naked couple in their garden. In human love, suggests the Song, a great deal of the brokenness in life is transcended. Paradise is restored.
Another feature both texts share: a deity who is discretely absent.God leaves lovers to explore their gardens in privacy.
Early in the poem's history, theologically minded readers went on to make their own metaphors. For them images of human love were already being put to work to represent God's love for his people. The association came readily for them and no doubt helped lubricate the poem's entry into the canon.
Symbols do this. They invite associations.
The Song itself remains erotic love poetry. It doesn't beat around the bush. It speaks of its subject frankly and through a series of sensual metaphors.
It is a ravishing, delicious book. However the Song came to be in the Hebrew canon, its presence there speaks well of the people who included it.
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Edited by Archer Opterix, : html.
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