PREAMBLE TO WRITINGS
We now turn to four books headed in the Hebrews as “Writings” We have cheated somewhat here because Ruth, Esther, Ezra, Chronicles, Daniel and Nehemiah (with Lamentations), were studied in their time sequence rather than strictly in the order of Hebrews scrolls. That leaves us with Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes and Job. We might call them “Poetry” Books but that would not describe them fully. Proverbs, Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes are attributed to Solomon who wrote some parts and compiled others. Psalms is a collection of five “Hymn books” gathered together in sections more like the Church of England Prayer book. Job? My personal description is: “A bunch of ex-theological friends, re-evaluating what they had been taught as students to meet a real mid-life crisis”. It is remarkable how modern their theological arguments are considering it took place in Abraham’s day.
Here is a good place to introduce another quirk of the Hebrew language we will meet in this section. What a strange language Hebrew it is, it had no vowels – or at least ancient Hebrew did not have. Modern Hebrew inserts symbols as accents over or under letters to help the reader. But Hebrew does not have adjectives either. For that reason we have the title “Song of songs” for example, it is a Hebrew Idiom for “The best of songs”. The very best of songs would be “Song, Song, Song”. You will be familiar with this already in phrases like “King of Kings” and “Holy, Holy, Holy”. Some translations avoid the phrase by altering the title to “Songs of Solomon” but The songs are not penned by him. One other quirk of Hebrew we need to mention before we move on. You will already know from when we looked at Genesis, that ‘El’ is the base word for God which has the suffix ‘Elohim’ added to describe the three God of three persons Christians call the ‘Trinity’. The Psalms are human reactions and response to a life trying to live by God’s laws and prophetic pronouncements. Some are writers expressing frustration with God’s character. Some are expressions of jubilation or triumph. Psalms are not Prophesy or History. But it certainly contains both. In modern bibles prophesy, laws, narrative and history are distinguished with a justified font, whereas prose or passages spoken from the heart rather than the head are marked with left justified fonts, (or ‘untidy right edge)’. Because it is an expression of God’s love or because his people are responding from the heart, noticeably, (but not always), narrative passages use the singular term Yahweh – especially when instructions are involved. Prose or heart passages on the other hand, tend to use the plural term Elohim to describe God. Why? I do not know. One doctrinal suggestion is that a singular God cannot ‘be’ love because love requires an object. I leave you to fathom that one out doctrinally, it is above my pay grade to fathom that out.
Enough of the Hebrew grammar, what of the genre. Writings is good but too general.
Song of Songs is a headache for pious Christians. The Puritans got over their embarrassment by suggesting it should not be in the Cannon at all. But why then did Ezra and his team of one-and-twenty scribes decide it belonged in the cannon of the Old Testament? By the end of his life, Solomon had written three-thousand proverbs and one-thousand-and-five songs302. But despite the obstacle that Solomon had sixty wives by the time the book was written, it appears to have been written by or for the one true love of his life, the Shunammite shepherdess303.
Nineteenth-century commentators treated the book as allegory, which it most certainly is not. Allegory is a fictional story with a hidden meaning. If you fancy a good belly laugh, you might read some allegoric commentary conclusions of that era. It most certainly can be treated as analogy however, we will draw out some lessons ourselves later. An allegory is one fact that is like another fact. Jesus often used analogies. “The kingdom of God is like…”. “He told them a parable saying…”.
The discussion of the Song of Songs becomes more intense when we get to Greek influence on Biblical thinking. Hebrews and Greeks can never see eye to eye on life because Greek thinking always divides the spiritual and the secular. It must be one or the other. The very foundation of Greek life is based on a battle between mortals and the gods of spirit. The very foundation of Hebrew thinking is—One God made the spiritual and the physical and bound them together in mankind. If you want the first metaphor here, God made them male and female and said they should become one in spirit and flesh. Oh that we would revisit Marriage with that firmly in mind. Marriage is not partnership in God’s book. We get the legitimate analogy because God uses Marriage as a fundamental description of His relationship with His people. The book song-of-Songs is not allegorical. Pomegranates means Pomegranates, breasts means breasts.
302 1 Kings 4: 32
303 Shulamite—these seem to interchangeable