SEXIS WRONG

than two total speakers, but that truly is a debate outside
our scope), one called Solomon (not necessarily the famous
King who appears elsewhere in the Old Testament), the other
his unnamed lover, who, by some accounts, may have written
the piece. Orthodox Christian interpretations attempt to
downplay the hot and heavy eroticism in the Song by saying
that the female lover is the Church, Solomon is Christ, and
their love is the spiritual union of the material Christian apparatus
with the higher spiritual forces.
Yeah, right. The Song begins: “The song of songs, which is
Solomon’s. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for
thy love is better than wine.” If the point here was supposed
to be that the Church wants to merge itself with the love of
Christ the Savior, there would have been considerably less
distracting ways of saying it. No—the Song of Solomon is a
fruits.” Heart be stilled!
Even amid the glories of these and similar passages, the author
of the Song does strike an odd chord or two. Such compliments
as “thy neck is like the tower David builded for an
armory” or “thy hair is as a flock of goats, that appear from
mount Gilead” have perhaps lost some of their charm in the
last few thousand years (a modern adaptation might be: thy
hair is like Cornell freshmen plunging into the gorges of Ithaca).
Furthermore, the line that precedes the one about the
myrrh-drenched hands always struck me as a bit overdone:
“My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my
bowels were moved for him.” Yes, well, I’m all for psychosomatic
response, but that’s a bit much.
“Blow on my garden, that the spices
thereof may flow out.”
love poem, and the love is a very corporeal one. That it made
it into the foundational book of Christianity is a mystery beyond
my comprehension. But, like the Psalms, here is a part
of the Bible that can be read purely for the love of its poetry.
There is no need for an exegesis of all the evocative imagery
in the Song; most of it speaks for itself. There are, however, a
few highlights, such as when the lover says that her beloved
“feeds among the lilies” and that her hands, when she rises
up to him, “dropped with myrrh.” And Solomon, meanwhile,
says to her, “Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as honeycomb:
honey and milk are under thy tongue.” And she back to him:
“Blow on my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out.
Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat the pleasant
Fan though I am, I hadn’t read much of the Bible
until I went to graduate school and, on a rather
prolonged lark, decided to become a medievalist.
As a result, I found myself a late twentysomething
pagan having to read the whole of the Good Book.
I did it straight through—not quickly, mind you, but steadily.
What I discovered between the now worn-off covers of my
Red Letter edition corresponded so minimally to what I had
anticipated, I wondered if I had the right religion. The sex and
sexual oddities were only some of the Bible’s unforeseen
pleasures (others include the almost James Bond–like coolness
of Christ, the beauty of Paul’s prose, the phenomenal
stories of Job and Ruth, the bombast of Ezekiel, etc.).
Having now read the entire Bible, multiple times over, I am
still a pagan, but I’m all for placing copies in every hotel room.
It’s the most influential book in Western culture, and it’s a lot
better than dial-up porn.
326 EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT SEX IS WRONG