The Wisdom of Love in the Song of Songs. By Stefan Gillow Reynolds

Abstract

This book seeks to demonstrate that in order to understand the Song, one must begin with the literal meaning of the text as the foundation upon which spiritual meanings are built. Reynolds argues that the dualism of splitting the Song’s literal and symbolic meanings has impoverished the poem on both fronts, and that they must be understood in unison, as the Song expresses both human and divine love. The book is divided into three parts or long chapters. The first contains twelve subsections and discusses the Song’s literal story line, which Reynolds understands as a narrative about Solomon and one of his concubines in the harem. He sees the Song as historical fiction, but thinks that it also may have been handed down by oral tradition from the time of Solomon. He speaks of a number of ‘keys’ for interpreting the Song, but the foremost seem to be that the male lover is Solomon and that 6:8–9 is a description of his harem, including the female lover, who is a concubine of low social status. He ‘fills in the gaps’ of the narrative with imaginative details and information from other biblical books (pp. 78, 153, 5), explaining that the female lover has been sold into the harem by jealous brothers who are after her inheritance, the women of Jerusalem are servants to the harem, and spiritual wisdom is found in the female lover/concubine.