Song of Songs
Shir HaShirim
Erotic love between two named human lovers can stand in scripture entirely on its own terms, without God ever being mentioned or the poem being forced to argue for anything beyond desire itself.
- love poetry with no mention of God or covenant
- likely an anthology of originally separate songs
- later linguistic layer against an early monarchic setting
- allegorical reading as the price of canonical inclusion
A collection of sensuous love poems exchanged between two lovers, remarkable within the Hebrew Bible for containing no reference to God, law, or covenant at all. Modern critical scholarship generally reads it as an anthology of originally independent love songs rather than a single unified composition, and its Hebrew vocabulary, including loanwords, has led most scholars to place its final form well after the Solomonic era the superscription evokes. Its unembarrassed physical description of the lovers' bodies made its place in the canon a matter of rabbinic debate, resolved by reading it allegorically as the love between God and Israel, an interpretive move that later Christian tradition adapted to Christ and the church.
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