“Rated R”

It’s part of Scripture Jews regularly read it during Passover Have you noticed any serious omissions from the book? What’s it about? What is it doing in the Bible?

 A suite of poems or idyls  We hear at least 3 “voices”: the beloved, the lover, and a chorus of friends  Its occasion seems to be a royal wedding  But there are also scenes and imagery that relate to the countryside. In fact, there are references to places all over Israel.  And is that all there is to the book?  If so, why have prominent rabbi’s and Christian expositors supported its inclusion in the canon?

Literal A simple celebration of God-ordained romantic love. It guards us against an ascetic and prudish approach to love and its sexual expression. Allegorical While the book appears to be talking about one thing, it is actually talking about another. The interpreter’s imagination becomes the sole arbiter of meaning. Typological It accepts that the poems do, in fact, refer to two human lovers but that it also points to a greater reality, namely, the relationship between God and Israel or Christ and the Church.

Should we read the poems as a sequential story in poetic form? Or Should we see the poems as a celebration of love, moving between the past and the present, less concerned about chronology, and more intent on spontaneous, and sometimes incoherent, expressions of love

Noble King Solomon and his bride Or Lecherous King Solomon, the peasant girl he has seized and over-awed with his opulence and splendour and a humble shepherd whom she really loves and longs for.