Steamy Love in the Bible

The Bible makes a surprising source for erotic poetry.  Be surprised when you read the Song of Songs, also known as the Song of Solomon

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Transcript

Sermons from Mission Hills UCC

San Diego, California

Rev. Dr. David Bahr

david.bahr@missionhillsucc.org

September 15, 2024

“Steamy Love in the Bible”

Song of Songs – various verses below – New Revised Standard Version

Most sexuality in the Bible has to do with prohibitions – don’t do this, don’t do that – or things like stoning a woman caught in adultery or killing a man for spilling his “seed” on the ground or a death sentence for laying with another man.  It seems like, if it’s not promising death, then it’s promoting shame.  In Genesis, when Adam and Eve saw each other naked the first time, they became ashamed.  But the Song of Songs takes pleasure in the body and is full of desire; it’s passionate and steamy.  You heard a very small, very tame, portion of Song of Songs assigned in the lectionary – a PG rated selection.  Most of it’s PG 13, with a sizable portion in the middle I would be too embarrassed to read until after the kids go to Sunday School.  By the way, the book is also known as the Song of Solomon, though it’s highly unlikely he had anything to do with writing it, but he is spoken of in the text.

It starts out:  “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.”  Right away, is this scripture or a Harlequin romance?   Notably, it’s the only book in the Bible written in the voice of a woman.  “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.  For your love is better than wine, your anointing oils are fragrant, your name is perfume poured out; therefore, the maidens love you.”  

There are three voices:  the woman, her suitor, and a crowd known as the “Daughters of Jerusalem,” who reply to her:  “We will exult and rejoice in you; we will extol your love more than wine.”  And then she speaks of the maidens directly to her lover: “Rightly do they love you.”

But then she becomes defensive about their right to love each other.  She said, “I am black and beautiful.”  Yes, not just a phrase from the 1970s but scripture.  “I am black and beautiful.”  She explains to the Daughters of Jerusalem that her darker skin tone was because she was made to work outside.  In her words of defense, African Americans may immediately hear colorism,[1] a prejudice and preference related to the shades of lighter and darker skin that has existed for thousands of years – not just between races but among them.  Color prejudice tries to determine acceptable standards of beauty and assigns people their class.  She pushes back and demands – I am black and beautiful and she insists upon their right to love each other.  It is important to know this story is not just sensual but social commentary.

That’s when the object of her love breaks in with his first words:  “I compare you, my love, to a mare among Pharaoh’s chariots.  Your cheeks are comely with ornaments, your neck with strings of jewels.  Ah, you are beautiful, my love; your eyes are doves.”   She replies, “Ah, you are beautiful, my beloved, truly lovely.”  They continue this dance back and forth.  

In the next chapter, she says:  “He brought me to the banqueting house, and his intention toward me was love.”  “My beloved is mine and I am his.”  These are two subtle and important statements.  It says nothing of marriage or possessing her.  Her lover’s intention is love.  Further, she claims him first.  She asserts that “my beloved is mine.”  He is mine and I am his.  It’s unusual in scripture, and yet, here it is in print:  a biblical power dynamic in which she is not of subservient but interdependent; it’s a mutual and equal love.

In chapter 3, the woman speaks:  “Upon my bed at night, I sought him whom my soul loves…”  but he was not there.  So, she frantically looks for him around the city.  She panics and twice tells the Daughters of Jerusalem to stay out of her way.  And when she finally finds him, “I held him and would not let him go until I brought him into my mother’s house, and into the chamber of her that conceived me.”  

The sexual overtones are not subtle and the heat increases.  He says, “How beautiful you are, my love, how very beautiful!  Your eyes are doves.  Your hair is like a flock of goats, moving down the slopes of Gilead.”  Yes, he first compared her to one of Pharaoh’s horses, now her hair is like goats and her teeth are like clean sheep.  Clearly, references from a different time, but the passion is clear and the details are only getting steamier.  

“Your lips are like a crimson thread, and your mouth is lovely.  Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate behind your veil. Your neck is like the tower of David.  Your breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle that feed among the lilies.”  “You have ravished my heart… with a [simple] glance of your eyes.”  How’s that for romance?  

By the way, I was curious.  The first Harlequin romance was published in 1949.  The Song of Songs was written 2,500 years earlier.  As I said, most of it is PG 13.  But some of chapter 5 is truly too explicit for me to read here.  Psst, by the way, it’s page 622 in your pew Bible!

But then the Daughters of Jerusalem reappear.  They question, “What is your beloved more than another beloved,” that you make such an urgent appeal.  They seem to go back and forth between being skeptical of their love and supportive.  

She responds back not by describing what a great husband he would be or his sparkling personality.  She describes his hair and eyes and cheeks and lips.  “His arms are rounded gold, set with jewels.  His body is ivory work, encrusted with sapphires.  His legs are alabaster columns, set upon bases of gold.”  He works out!  And she desires him – a desire that is celebrated, not shamed.  By the time she finishes describing him, we’re blushing.  In chapter 6, he begins to describe her beauty again, at length.  Hair, teeth, cheeks.  In chapter 7 he tells her she is delectable and continues to describe her feet, thighs, navel, belly, breasts.  More Fifty Shades of Gray than typical Bible.

But then she insists again, “I am my beloved’s and his desire is for me,”  as though she’s telling her rivals, “Step off.”  But more than jealousy, there is that recurring pressure of prejudice.  If I looked like you, no one would object to me kissing you in public.  “No one would despise me.”   

Anyone who has ever had to defend their choice of a mate, whether of a different race or class or of the same gender, this sounds familiar.  To this day you can hear queer people saying the same thing, wishing to show affection in public – just like everyone else.  Wishing that a kiss would not lead to stares and hatred or worse, harassment and death.  These subtexts are easy to miss but so important to understand.  Related to this, there’s a portion of the Song of Songs you may have heard at wedding ceremonies:  “For love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave.  Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it.”  But now you can understand the reason for words about death and grave and floods are a pledge that their love will endure despite social pressure against it.

It’s both provocative and sensual.  It speaks of taste and touch and smell and sound.[2]  So, you may be thinking, what’s it doing in the Bible?  Or better yet, how did it stay there?  What did the Puritans think?

For centuries, it was justified as an allegory of God’s love for Israel or of Christ’s love for the church.  But how do you explain all the talk of six pack abs, red crimson lips, and breasts like two fawns?  To me, talking that way about God’s love or Christ’s love is super creepy.  And by the way, throughout the entire book, God is never once mentioned or even alluded to.  Instead of trying to rationalize or justify it, I’d rather just say that the Bible makes for a surprising source of erotic poetry.  

Bernard of Clairvaux, a Cistercian monk and mystic in 1200s, famously wrote 86 sermons on the Song of Songs.  Imagine a celibate monk having to sit through 86 sermons on red lips and breasts and chiseled abs.  Bernard had a good point, though.  He described a passionate spirituality and a zealous love, trying to shift spiritual formation away from cool intellectual enlightenment toward warm, earthly affections.  He wanted to inspire desire for God more than intellectual understanding of God.[3]  He talked of the feeling of yearning when one is absent from the other. It’s actually a very good point, but I still think it’s kind of creepy to talk about it in that way – though it certainly gets my attention.

Bottom line, I’m just grateful that this book exists, right there in the middle of God’s Holy Word, a corrective to the dualism of spirit as pure and body as sinful.  In the Song of Songs, the body is good, sexuality is healthy, and not just for the sake of being fruitful and multiplying.  The only shame is a society whose prejudice does not approve of their love.  They claim each other, they praise each other, they need each other, and persist. 

So, what does this say to us today?  I do appreciate Bernard of Clairvaux’s desire for a more passionate spirituality, less oriented to the brain.  In addition, I can also hear my mentor in seminary, Dr. James B. Nelson, describe the marks of healthy and blessed relationships.[4]  Among them:  Blessed are relationships that are body-positive.  This means, do not fear or despise your body because that diminishes intimacy.  If you are negatively obsessed with your body, how can you be intimate?  If your lover says you are beautiful and you respond back, “No, I’m not,” or “Let me lose a few pounds first,” you are telling them that they are wrong to love someone so repulsive.  You do not have a face that only a mother could love.  Like the lovers in the Song of Songs, praise each other’s beauty and accept their compliments.  You are beautiful.  

What do you think?  When someone suggests that discussion of sexuality has no place in church, perhaps you could pick up your Bible and start reading to them from the Song of Songs and watch their face blush.  But that’s not the book’s intent.  It does not intend embarrassment and offers no apology about the goodness and explicit beauty of human love and the right for those who love one another to love one another.  Love is love.  And that’s good news.

[1] https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/fall-2015/whats-colorism
[2] Renita Weems, “Song of Songs,” Women’s Bible Commentary, Westminster/John Knox, 1992
[3] Wm. Lloyd Allen, “Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons on the Song of Song: Why They Matter,” Review and Expositor, 105, Summer 2008.
[4] James B. Nelson, “Relationships: Blessed and Blessing,” Blessing Ceremonies: Resources for Same-Gender Services of Commitment, UCC Coalition for LGBT Concerns, 1998