Gender Imagery in the Song of Songs

In no other book of the Hebrew Bible does the imagery figure so prominently as it does in the Song of Songs. The rich and extravagant array of figurative language boldly draws the reader into the world so joyously inhabited by the ancient lovers. The poetic craft of the unknown author or authors succeeds at a descriptive level in conveying the lushness of the natural settings and also the beauty that the female and male characters each find in the physical appearance of the other. At the same time, the sensual language of the Song creates its own erotic tension, drawing the audience into the heightened emotions of the lovers themselves. Small wonder, then, that this extraordinary poetry of love has been the object of so much attention. In past ages, concern with the presence of frequent and explicit attention to the human body and also to freely expressed passion led to the development of extensive allegorical treatments of the Song. The outpouring of such interpretations over the centuries probably attests to the ongoing attractions of the language of love on a physical level as much as it does to the spirituality of those who engaged in allegorical explanation. The interpreter must willy-nilly absorb the words at their primary level ot 1H\:::!l1ing before proceeding to comprehend the higher and hidden levels that constitute the object of the allegorist's task. The rise of critical biblical scholarship 1 rescued the Song from the fanciful twists and turns of spiritualized interpretation. Yet modern