Song of Songs (4): The gambit
Love or Death
The storyline of the Song of Songs, if it’s accurate to the book that we have, presents a kind of love-triangle in which the Woman is betrothed (by her brothers) to Solomon, who is presented as a conqueror of men in battle and women in marriage, but she is in love with the Man, to whom every fibre of the poem and narrative momentum urges us that they ought to be together. And if the poem, from about 7:12 onwards, describes the Woman running off to a sexual rendezvous with the Man, then we are left with a dilemma: why does this piece of wisdom literature seem to endorse a relationship that violates the moral norms of Israelite sexual practice and marriage?
Athas argument is that it’s a form of retrieval ethic, of retrieving the best outcome from a situation with no good outcomes, and that in so doing, a morally dubious action aims towards upholding ‘the spirit of the Law’. Before we consider that, he (very helpfully, I would say) points to four passages that contextualise the drama and its critical action here.
Exodus 22:16-17 commits a man, if he has sex with an unengaged woman, to (a) marry her, (b) provide the bridal endowment, (c) gives the father of the woman the right to veto the marriage. We should note three important factors (at least): (i) the bridal endowment is not a price for the woman, it’s money that ensures her financial wellbeing; (ii) the scenario here is not rape, it’s ‘seduction’ (very broadly understood), (iii) relevant for us is that the father is absent in Song of Songs.
Deuteronomy 22:23-24 occurs in the midst of a number of laws that regulate marriage and marriage violations, and stipulates death for a man who has sex with an engaged woman; either death for both of them (23-24) if it occurred in the city and it was consensual, death for the man alone if it occurred in the countryside, on the presumption that it is rape (25-26).1
Then, Athas brings up the examples of Tamar and Ruth, both women who engage in, at the least, sexually compromising behaviour (Ruth), at the most prostitution (Tamar), but emerge ‘righteous’. These are seen as ‘outflanking’ the social situation.
Put together, this becomes a way of reading the situation that understands the reasoning of the Man and even moreso the Woman in Song of Songs - it’s a wager and a ploy where they undertake something highly risky, because the price of not playing to win is not worth it.
The gamble is that their consummation of the marriage will push the brothers to abandon the plan to sell her to Solomon (we are unclear exactly what her legal status is, vis-à-is Solomon), and instead permit her to marry the Man; if not, and the liaison is considered (i) consensual (ii) adultery as a violation of the (pre)-contract with Solomon, then death is the outcome. 8:6 suddenly takes on new meaning in this context. They are willing to risk it all in order to be together.
What’s the alternative to this move? Of course, we can conjure up a thousand possible other choices, but her choices at the time are limited. The primary alternative that the poem presents is that Solomon ‘marries’ her into a marriage that is equivalent to a form of sexual slavery where she will suffer marital rape and never know the true love of her spouse. That, the poem tells us, is a fate worse than death.
Which ought to leave us wondering, because the ultimate ‘choice’ is always death. What if the Woman both (i) did not consummate her relationship with the Man, and (ii) refused to marry Solomon? That is not a real, live option in her context, but it also kind of is - what if she chose death rather than sinning in any way?
And yet, we ought to keep in mind that’s it’s very easy to sit from afar on a literary text, even a historical one, and judge what the best and right course and outcome would be. Moral judgment rarely affords us such privilege.
Song of Songs doesn’t, in my view, endorse this course of action as normative or common; it does depict an ‘edge’ case, but one that is all too real in antiquity. It suggest the Solomonic pattern of marriage is an awful travesty, a misshapen distortion of the ‘real thing’. That ‘real thing’ is celebrated, in the poem, and becomes the means of sustaining love in the face of death.
Which, also, is how the poem speaks in a theological key. More on that next time.
Some of the best explanations of this I have heard are from Dr. Sandra Richter. Probably a discussion for another time.