Song of Solomon
Set me as a seal on your heart
The Song of Solomon is a poem containing the love dialogues between a woman and her «beloved». Why can we find an erotic poem in the Bible? Those who support a literal interpretation of the text see here a confirmation that the love relationship between man and woman is good: God wanted and created it since the beginning of the world (see Gen 2,18). In this relationship, man and woman are not alone but the Lord himself is present: «Set me as a seal on your heart, as a seal on your arm; for love is strong as death. Jealousy is as cruel as Sheol. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a very flame of the LORD. Many waters can’t quench love, neither can floods drown it. If a man would give all the wealth of his house for love, he would be utterly scorned» (Song 8,6-7).
The text was alsointerpreted allegorically: by Hebrews as a metaphor of the Covenant between God (the bridegroom) and His people (the bride), taking up a theme dear to the Prophets; by Christians considering the groom as the Christ and the bride as the Church, the single faithful soul or, more rarely, Mary. The best-known example of allegorical interpretation of the Song is by Origen of Alexandria. He recognizes a sort of educational initiation in the order of Hebrew books attributed to King Solomon (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon). «Therefore, in facts, this book holds the last position, so that the reader can come to it after a moral purification [with the Proverbs] and after he will know and learn to distinguish between perishable and imperishable things [with the Ecclesiastes], in order not to be scandalized by the images of the bride’s love for the heavenly bridegroom, namely the perfect soul’s love for the Word of God» (Commento al Cantico dei Cantici, Prefazione, Origene, Città Nuova Editrice, 1976).
Literal and allegorical interpretation are not mutually exclusive, but confirm the infinite richness of the biblical text, readable in several levels of depth.