I slept, but my heart was awake. Listen! My lover is knocking. I arose to open for my lover, but my lover had left; he was gone. My heart sank at his departure. I looked for him but did not find him. I called him, but he did not answer. (Song of Songs 5:2, 5, 6, NIV)
The Song of Songs sounds like the ocean, which gives and takes, which comes and goes. Love is like the wind that blows here and there. No one knows where it’s headed. There are two songs in this book. One, which says yes, and the other which says no. There is no final say. Words call for more words. What can we learn from those words? We think we have understood, then we realize we have not. If we are certain, then we aren’t so sure anymore. He loves only her; he goes off to the gardens (2:2, 16). He knocks, and she hesitates. She gets up; he has left (5:2-6). They almost met. They could have met. The ways of love are impenetrable.
What can we learn here about love between a man and a woman? Of love between man and his God? This text can also be read as a song of love for God. It is read in the evening that opens the Sabbath in Jewish liturgy. But it is a song that is heard only in silence. The silence of the Sabbath, where everything is interrupted, is where God Himself rests. There is a desert that carves itself into our actions, in the midst of our works. The Sabbath—desert where the ancient love song can be heard. Desert of love, where the vineyards and lilies grow. There are two images of love: between man and woman and between man and God.
The Vineyard
My own vineyard I have not kept (1:6). My own vineyard is mine to give (8:12). The Song of Songs, it must be said, is a song about sexuality, per se, outside any reference to procreation, outside any legal or marital structure, and especially outside any reference to “spirituality.” One loves with the body and not with the mind. It is a relationship that goes against established ways. Love between a king and a maiden. Love between a son of Israel and a woman from a strange land. Does not the law forbid mixed marriages? A love that is lived in the dark: Come, my lover, let us go to the countryside; let us spend the night in the villages (7:11). It is a forbidden love. It is a love that may call for despising. If only you were to me like a brother... then, if I found you outside, I would kiss you, and no one would despise me (8:1). This love can only be lived outside the walls of the city. It is love outside of any formal contract. It is love with no obligations. Everything is possible. Erotism. One gives without expecting anything in return. My own vineyard I have not kept (1:6).
Yet another voice can also be heard. The beloved speaks this time to her friends: Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you by the gazelles and by the does of the field: Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires (2:7). Like some ancient and lost wisdom. These words can be heard over and over again in the song, like a refrain. One gives, but one also withdraws. Pleasure, but also patience. Togetherness, but also distance. You are a spring enclosed in a sealed fountain (4:12). You are a garden fountain, a well of flowing water (4:15).
Only she who knows herself can come to know others. Only he who has can give. Only she can let the other be. Come away, my lover, and be like a gazelle (8:14).
Love implies giving of oneself but also withholding of oneself. Between those who love, there is a desert. Desert of doubt, of questions, where we do not always understand the other because of his difference. But also a desert of respect, where we accept the other’s distance and the other’s difference. Love is not a quest for another self. It does not fill a void. Love is desire for the other, in his difference, in his distance. Love is an exile. It takes us to the unknown. It changes us. We do not think the same anymore. We do not see things the same way anymore. We are elsewhere.
Yet, the person we love remains a land that we can never fully explore. He cannot be conquered. Between those who love, there is a desert. Who is this coming up from the desert, leaning on her lover? (8:5)
But the text also depicts the love between God and His people.
Illicit love? Indeed, it is in the desert, outside the walls of the city, that God calls us. To follow God is to walk outside of the set ways. It is to go where no one has yet gone.
Giving and withholding? Indeed, God speaks, but sometimes He remains silent. In these moments, it is better for us to keep silent and not give in to despair, as did the Israelites, who were lost in the desert. It is a moment of doubt. Distance from the beloved. Darkness. Emptiness. We seek and do not find. Is He still around? Do we still count on Him?
The Lily
Once, lily among the thorns, we are now forsaken. Our beloved has gone to the lilies. He browses among the lilies.
Like a lily among thorns is my darling among the maidens (2:2). My lover has gone down to his garden . . . to browse in the gardens and gather lilies (6:2).
Our beloved is no longer ours. God does not let Himself be grasped. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:8, 9).
And yet we trust. My lover is mine, and I am his (Song of Songs 6:3). We have been forsaken, we doubt, and we are anguished. And yet, there in the darkness, we remember our love.
In our relationship with God and with others, there are moments of silence and uncertainty. Even when God speaks, we sometimes do not hear. He who has an ear, let him hear (Revelation 2:7). Is it His voice? We are never sure. So God speaks. A lover makes a move, but the seductive gesture has not interrupted the decency of words and attitudes. He withdraws as lightly as He came. A God revealed Himself on a mountain, in a fiery bush, or was attested in books. What if it was just a storm? And what if the books came from dreamers? Let us do away with the illusory call. The insinuation itself invites us to do so. We can never be sure. And yet, we believe. Faith, or love, is loving because, but also and especially in spite of. In spite of the uncertainties, the problems, the desert, and the shadow of death we find there. Only then can our love become as strong as death (Song of Songs 8:6). It is love that is able to emerge from the ashes. It is love that doubt and problems cannot destroy.
The Sabbath
It is on the Sabbath that we sing the Song of Songs. It is on this background of silence, where there are no works or deeds that love is sung. The Sabbath is this distance that we take from our work, from our deeds, and from our attempts to control our destinies. On the Sabbath, we do not seek anymore to control; we free ourselves from our holds on space to submit to the escape of time. The Sabbath celebrates our absence from the world. The fact that our lives come from elsewhere. The Sabbath celebrates our creation. On the Sabbath, we remember that we are creatures. That life is a gift. That is not suspended by our efforts or our control. Our lives come from elsewhere. We are from elsewhere.
We are more than builders of cities. We are also the children of the desert. A desert where nothing depends on us. Where everything is a gift.
Why is love sung on that day?
Because love, too, is a gift. It is not suspended from our efforts. We cannot master love.
Love implies giving of oneself but also withdrawing from others, like the vineyard that is kept for the chosen. Love is the separation between the lover and the beloved. But also respect for the other in his irrecuperable distance.
There is a desert between God and His people. A desert between a God who, like the beloved, cannot be possessed, and a people who, in silence, keep the sacred flame alive. In the desert, nothing is in our hands. Everything is a gift. Like life. Like love. Like a melody, love is sung—like a melody that cannot be grasped nor possessed except in the heart of the lover.
