Readings
5
My Beloved Speaks
My basement chapel is cold and dark, despite the small light of the candle flickering behind red glass on the window ledge. Yet there are other flames here; the thin pages of my Bible crackle as I turn them, as though fire is trapped under the ink. I am reminded of the haunting words of the prophet Jeremiah:
If I say, “I will not mention him,
or speak any more in his name,”
then within me there is something like a burning fire
shut up in my bones;
I am weary with holding it in,
and I cannot. (Jer 20:9)
It seems as though somehow this book cages the same flames—but barely. Just under the surface of the words a great conflagration seethes, yearning to break out. Jesus warned us: “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” (Lk 12:49). So perhaps we, who are the kindling, should be wary. Scripture is not safe. It should only be approached with the greatest caution, since every time this text is opened it has the potential to spark off the page, spread, burn and consume. The two disciples who walked with Jesus on the road to Emmaus discovered this; as they later reflected on their experience, one asked the other: “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” (Lk 24:32). Every time I read, then, I know I am in danger of catching fire.
The Question of Truth
This is where I must begin learning to read anew. Not with specific books or passages, nor with study guides and commentaries. What I need first is an entirely fresh perspective on the unique nature of Scripture itself.
The Bible is different from every other book, because the Bible alone is inspired—a word which means a great deal more here than we might expect. The authors of other books may have experienced some kind of inspiration, from God or from nature, from their circumstances or the depths of their own souls. Their readers, likewise, may find themselves inspired to love or rage or laughter. But the inspiration of Scripture is something greater, something wholly other: a life and presence has been breathed into Scripture, some power, some flash of the divine fire. Other books contain ideas, thoughts, concepts, dreams and visions, which may be expressed with extraordinary force or beauty. The Bible contains—or, more accurately, fails to contain, to hold back—the divine Author himself. Here the voice of God is heard; but God not only speaks, he makes himself fully present—gentle as the still small whisper on the mountain, terrible as an army with banners—breaking through the pages into our hearts, our lives, our world.
That, at least, is the theory. In practice, however, the contemporary church has managed to turn the idea of the inspiration of Scripture into a fertile war zone. The trainers have stepped out of the ring, and two contending parties are nose to nose in a “battle for the Bible” (sadly, it usually seems to be the Bible that emerges as the prime casualty). On the one hand, liberal scholars and thinkers assert that the Bible is a collection of fallible texts that bear witness to extraordinary experiences of God, texts whose accuracy and relevance today can be questioned, tested and even fearlessly denied. But if they are right, in what sense is the Bible authoritative? At what point does it pass from being “the word of the Lord” to simply words about the Lord, which we are free to lay aside whenever they prove inconvenient?
On the other hand, conservatives affirm the divine origin of Scripture as a guarantee of its reliability and accuracy. But just how far does that accuracy extend? Is the Bible entirely utterly dependable within the realm of theology and ethics, making Scripture infallible? Or is it perhaps without error in absolutely every respect, including those times when it addresses history or science; is it, in fact, inerrant? And, in the end, does it matter? Is the divine origin and life-changing character of Scripture irredeemably compromised if, say, a man did not live in the belly of a giant fish for three days (Jon 1:17) or if Christians do not have a unique immunity to snake bites (Mk 16:18)?
Behind the conflict between these two views lies one simple assumption: that the fundamental issue at stake is whether the Bible speaks the truth. In fact, under the surface of every heated argument in today’s church—including the wrangles over creation and evolution, women in leadership, homosexuality, and Christianity and politics, to mention just a few—we usually find the same three basic questions:
1. What does the Bible say? How does the Bible address the question at hand? What teachings, concepts and principles can we extract from the text? How are they to be interpreted? Who has authority to interpret them?
2. Is the Bible right? Are the principles laid out in Scripture and the assumptions on which they are built still valid today? How much of the Bible is culturally conditioned? What (if anything) in the Hebrew Bible is superseded by the New Testament or even by later developments in our theology and understanding?
3. Is the Bible authoritative? Even if the Bible is right, can this ancient text (and the principles extracted from it) claim our obedience? Are we called to follow the dictates of our consciences, informed by the Bible? Or are we to submit unquestioningly to this book as the word of God?
These questions are important, and I have no intention of brushing them aside. Truth, after all, is vital. Despite the philosophical and moral claims of some relativists, it is clear to most of us that we live in a structured universe that embodies absolute truths—both physical truths (the speed of light is always constant) and ethical truths (torturing children is always wrong). There are not always clear, obvious and simple answers to every issue we face—but there are often solid, knowable principles and realities that can help guide our way. Truth matters.
But the Bible is not only a book of truth—nor, for that matter, is it the only book of truth. Many books are dependable and (mostly) accurate: phone books, dictionaries, encyclopedias, to name just a few. Perhaps somewhere out in the world there is some other text which is, by good fortune, infallibly and inerrantly correct in every respect—a physics textbook, say, with no mistakes at all. What of it? Think of the ferocity of a bolt of lightning flashing across the heavens from one end to the other. No matter how reliably and authoritatively the textbook outlines Maxwell’s equations for electromagnetism, reading that book is not the same as being struck by the lightning bolt. In the same way, I would suggest that when we say the Bible is inspired, we are not merely saying that it is true; we are implying so much more. What, then, do we really mean by inspiration?
Inspired by God
God began inspiring before a single word of Scripture was ever written. The second chapter of the book of Genesis tells the story of creation and the shaping of the first human being: “In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, . . . the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being” (Gen 2:4, 7).
Here is the very first act of in-spiration, in-breathing. God takes a handful of earth and shapes a clay mannequin, human in appearance but lacking the divine spark, and into this being he breathes his own life. Thus the man becomes a “living being”; not just biologically animated, like the animals, but filled with the vibrant spiritual life of God himself. Inspired in this way, human beings have the “image” and “likeness” of God (Gen 1:26); in some way, the life and presence of God are made incarnate in the physical universe through these “in-breathed” creations.
It is almost certainly this passage of Scripture that Paul had in mind when he reminded Timothy that “all scripture is inspired by God” (2 Tim 3:16). Paul’s language is particularly rich and vivid here; he coins a new Greek word, theopneustos, which literally means “God-breathed.” The picture this word paints is striking. Imagine God taking ink and molding it, shaping it into line after line of elegant, mysterious symbols, ribbons of Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. He traces these lines across papyrus scrolls and parchment sheets, ordering and aligning them, drawing them together into tales from long ago, tearful laments, joyful cries, deep pools of wisdom and philosophy, and so much more. Then he binds together the whole into a single huge, meandering, delightful tome: the Bible.
It is an astounding book, a book of marvels. The poetry soars, the stories sing, the prophecies rattle the soul. This book has a breadth and depth any other author could only dream about. And yet . . . and yet, it is still just a book, a collection of words pinned to paper and stitched into a cover of black leather. It is wonderful, but it is not enough. God is not simply an author of texts—he is the Author of life. And this book is not to be theographos, God-written; it is to be theopneustos, God-breathed.
So God does more than bind truth, insight and wisdom into the words. He breathes the words out from within and somehow binds his own Spirit into the book. And just as the man became a living being, so this book becomes “living and active” (Heb 4:12), the “living and enduring word of God” (1 Pet 1:23). This is why Moses implored the Israelites to “take to heart all the words that I am giving . . . the words of this law,” because they are “no trifling matter for you, but rather your very life” (Deut 32:46-47). Jesus likewise impressed on his disciples that “it is the spirit [or “breath”; the Greek word is the same] that gives life. . . . The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life” (Jn 6:63).
This is inspiration. Life breathed in. An expression in this material creation of the essence and presence of God. A space where the image and likeness of God can be found, experienced and encountered. A place where the boundary between heaven and earth has been worn through. When we open the Bible, the key question is not whether this book is able to give us reliable, authoritative truth. The more fundamental issue is whether we are able to endure and embrace God, who will meet us face to face on the holy ground of these pages. When we open the Bible, it does not say to us, “Listen: God is there!” Instead, the voice of the Spirit whispers through each line, “Look: I am here!”
How the Heart Sings
We struggle to read the Bible as an inspired book, though, because many of us have been taught to come to Scripture in a very particular way: the way of the theorist.
As theorists, we have learned to treat the text as an object of study, something to be decoded, analyzed and understood. Paul wrote to Timothy that he should be “rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Tim 2:15 kjv); many of us in the contemporary Western church have perfected the art of clinically dissecting it. In studies and classes, books and sermons, we have discovered how to lay Scripture on the laboratory table and slice texts into tiny constituent atoms, teasing out layer upon layer of meaning as we work.
For theorists, the Bible represents an enormous intellectual challenge, a complex equation of almost limitless terms. Once we begin to study in earnest, we realize that so many variables come into play: the original languages; the cultural context; the process of composing, editing and transmitting the writings; the interplay between various texts and their authors; the process of communication and interpretation involving author, text and reader; historical uses of the texts—the fields of study are endless. As a result, lengthy papers can be (and are) written about a single word in a single verse. Page after page can be consumed exploring, for example, how a certain Greek word was understood in antiquity, in the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, in the New Testament, in Paul’s theology, in the writing of the early church—and all this before anyone even begins to consider what the word might mean in the context of a particular verse or paragraph or book of the Bible.
But at some point such scholarship becomes not merely exhaustive; it is simply exhausting. The life and soul of the book being studied is crushed under the weight of commentary. Even the most ardent scholar, walking through the aisles of a theological library and perusing mile after mile of such detailed study entombed in dusty journals and voluminous tomes, might perhaps be tempted to recall the advice of the Teacher in the book of Ecclesiastes: “Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh” (Eccles 12:12).
The theorist aims for mastery of the text. But such mastery is elusive. There is always more to study, always more to learn. Every answered question raises a dozen more, and as quickly as solutions are grasped, just so quickly do they run through the fingers. In the meantime, theorists discover that the end result of aiming to master the Bible is always the same: it dies in our hands.
There is, however, another way: the way of the lover. A lover does not seek to master the Bible but rather to be seduced by it. True lovers do not despise academic study of Scripture; after all, who would not want to discover secrets that help them know their beloved more intimately? No, good scholarship is precious to the lover. But for the lover, study can never be an end in itself; rather than rejecting study, a lover seeks to go beyond it. When we read the Bible as lovers, we are not aiming simply to understand Scripture, to interpret it, to draw from it a coherent framework of teachings and truths that help make God, life and creation comprehensible. We do not come primarily seeking moral and ethical principles, theological insights, or even practical life applications. We come to be kissed by Christ.
The young woman in the Song of Songs cries out: “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!” (Song 1:2), and this is also the cry of the lover of God who opens the pages of Scripture. Speak, Lord! Come, Lord Jesus! Make this place, this book, “the house of God” and “the gate of heaven” (Gen 28:17). Let my reading of these words become a tryst between us, an intimate encounter, an embrace. Again, does this mean we despise scholarship and study of the text? Not at all. May we be allowed, as Paul expresses it, to “understand all mysteries and all knowledge” (1 Cor 13:2). But not without love, not without fire, not without being brought into his presence. Oh, let him kiss me!
The Voice of My Beloved
It might help to illustrate the distinction between these two approaches by looking at a specific passage of Scripture. A little later in the Song of Songs we find the following passage:
The voice of my beloved!
Look, he comes,
leaping upon the mountains,
bounding over the hills.
My beloved is like a gazelle
or a young stag.
Look, there he stands
behind our wall,
gazing in at the windows,
looking through the lattice.
My beloved speaks and says to me:
“Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away.” (Song 2:8-10)
If we come to this text as theorists, we find we have many lines of approach. We might begin by examining the text as a whole. Although Jewish and Christian piety has traditionally taken this song as an exchange between God and his people, the lack of any direct reference to God together with the frankly erotic imagery used throughout might suggest to us that it was probably composed simply as a series of poems expressing love between a man and woman. Was Solomon that man? Although the poem calls itself “the Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s” (Song 1:1), it is not clear what that implies—whether it was written by Solomon or for Solomon or just in the style of Solomon. At any rate, it seems unlikely that this great king would have been wandering around the hill country peering into latticed windows in the hope of catching sight of an agricultural laboring girl. Perhaps, then, we should conclude that this exchange of verse takes place between an anonymous Hebrew couple, some few centuries before Christ.
With that knowledge in hand, we can begin to look at this specific passage. There is a picturesque image in a few lines which could catch our attention, comparing the young man to a gazelle and a stag. Is there more to these words than meet the eye? Some scholars have noted that, a few lines before, the young woman uses the curious phrase “by the gazelles or the wild does” (Song 2:7). The words are phrased like an oath, but an oath that avoids using the divine name—as though the poet were seeking to allude to God without actually mentioning him, a dramatic device to show respect for the divine in an essentially secular piece. Interestingly, Shakespeare frequently has his characters draw on mythological gods and heroes for the same reason, to avoid mentioning God directly. Others have observed that gazelles and deer were themselves divine symbols, emblems of the Canaanite goddess of love. So comparing the man to a gazelle or a stag might be a way of suggesting he is some kind of “love god”—rather like calling a man an “Adonis” today.
Is this knowledge interesting and illuminating? Of course. Does it take us a little further and deeper into the world of the text and enhance our understanding? Undoubtedly. This is the gift good scholarship offers us.
But where does it end? We could continue analyzing these words almost indefinitely. We could make comparisons with other ancient Near Eastern poetry. We could examine the tradition of translation into Greek, Latin, Coptic, Syriac, English. Countless other areas of study begin to open up: ancient courting customs, Hebrew architecture (to better understand “looking through the lattice”), textual variations, the interpretation of the Song through the ages, the use of the text in Jewish and Christian liturgies—the list goes on. And if we only ask these questions and never move beyond them, we will be excellent theorists, but nothing more.
My Beloved Speaks—to Me
The lover finds this study and knowledge interesting. Helpful. Essential, even. But for the lover, merely studying this text would be to miss the point entirely. It may well be that this passage was originally written simply as a poem celebrating human love, with no theological dimension intended. No matter. Here, in Scripture, it can speak equally well of our yearning for the divine lover and his desire for us. This is not only the “Song of Songs which is Solomon’s,” it is also the song of the soul, our song. As we open the Bible and open ourselves to the presence of God in Scripture, we echo the words of the young woman: “The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes!” Truly our Lover, too, is like the gazelle and stag, for he is the God of love. And in the words of the Song we hear his voice: “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.” These words are addressed to us: to the church, to God’s people, to the soul, to the heart—to me.
The twelfth-century abbot Bernard of Clairvaux knew how to read Scripture as a lover. In his monumental series of sermons on the Song of Songs, he read this same passage in the light of his own passionate longing for intimacy with God. As he considered the image of the young man peering through the latticed window, seeking a glimpse of his beloved, Bernard saw a parallel in his relationship with Christ. “He also stands behind the wall,” he wrote,
as long as this body of ours, which is certainly sinful, hides his face from us and shuts out his presence. For “so long as we are in this body we are exiles of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:6)—not because we are embodied . . . it is not our bodies but our sins that stand in the way. . . . How close he is to the bride who is separated by one wall only! On this account she longs that the dividing wall be broken down.
And so for Bernard this is no mere love poem: it cannot be read simply as an account of a torrid affair between an anonymous Near Eastern couple, now many centuries dead. Bernard is saying: Here I discover a reflection of my life in Christ. And here, listening as a lover, I hear the voice of my Beloved.
He says, “Arise, make haste, my love, my dove, my beautiful one.” Happy the conscience which deserves to hear those words! Who among us, do you think, is so vigilant, so attentive to the time of his visitation and the Bridegroom’s coming that he every moment scans every detail of his approach, so that when [the Bridegroom] comes and knocks, he opens the door to him right away?
For Bernard, the words of the Song are not only contemporary and relevant, they are the words of Christ himself, speaking in the present straight into the life and heart of the reader. The Bible, here at least, does not merely inform faith in God, it mediates an encounter with God.
But is the lover’s reading limited to the more obviously passionate and affective parts of Scripture, like Song of Songs or Psalms? Not at all. The living presence of God runs through the whole of the Bible, a constant thread from start to finish, and a lover is able to be attentive to that presence everywhere—in the laws as much as the lauds, in dry theology as much as fiery theophany.
A theorist approaches Romans. Paul’s grand narrative of salvation is carefully dismantled so that every piece can be examined and analyzed. Subtle nuances are noted; overarching themes are headlined. Finally, the pieces are reconstructed into a framework rather more systematic, more thorough—in fact, the theology we feel Paul himself might have written if he had enjoyed the luxury of working in a university library rather than in the confines of a prison cell. But lovers experience the estrangement from God Paul describes, and the bitter taste of sin in the mouth. And so they read through tears, weeping with Paul: “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” They echo his shout of wonder in the face of grace: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Rom 7:24-25). Lovers linger in Romans because here they can soak in grace—even when they cannot define it.
The theorist comes to Leviticus to determine the book’s authorship and origin, to establish when the book was written, to explore the role of the priesthood in ancient Israel, to reconstruct cultic life in the Jerusalem temple, to elucidate the differences between holy and unholy, clean and unclean. The lover comes to learn what it means to be presented as a “living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (Rom 12:1)—how to express a prayer of longing that goes beyond words, that absorbs our possessions, our livelihood, our very selves. Theorists explain the offerings, but lovers become one.
Both approaches are possible. But in the end the Bible was not written for theorists. It is the book of lovers.
Readings
No book of Scripture expresses more passionately nor more profoundly the love between God and his people than the Song of Songs. If we want to learn to orient our hearts more fully toward him as we read the Bible, spending time praying through this short book will prove an invaluable investment.
As you approach these passages, I advise you to do little more than allow them to sweep you up and carry you along in the intensity of their love. For now, set aside analysis and dissection. Hear the words of the Lover as God’s words to you, to your soul. Turn the responses of the Beloved into prayer, your response to God. Try to resist the temptation to tone down the intensity of this poem. Let this book stimulate you to desire God with all your being.
Day 1
Song of Songs 1:1-8
(Let him kiss me!)
Day 2
Song of Songs 1:9-17
(you are beautiful, my love)
Day 3
Song of Songs 2:1-7
(his fruit was sweet)
Day 4
Song of Songs 2:8-17
(My beloved speaks)
Day 5
Song of Songs 3:1-5
(I sought him)
Day 6
Song of Songs 3:6-11
(inlaid with love)
Day 7
Song of Songs 4:1-8
(How beautiful you are!)