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Reviewed by:
  • Song of Songs
  • Francis Landy
Song of Songs, by Richard S. Hess. Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic Press, 2005. 285 pp. $29.95.

The Baker Commentary series to which this book belongs is directed primarily to clergy and seminary students, with the object of "expos(ing) God's message [End Page 196] for his people" (p. 8). It is consequently an overtly Christian commentary, each of whose sections concludes with a brief theological reflection on its application to the Christian community, supported throughout by incidental references to the New Testament. Given the theological constraints of the series, Hess has written a remarkably fair, thorough, and interesting commentary. He has a very good grasp of the literature and a fine grasp of semantic detail and is insightful about poetic patterns, cultural background, and the interplay of metaphor and imagination. If the test of a commentary is that one learns from it, one can truly say, dayyenu!

Hess's judiciousness is manifest in his introduction, which carefully presents the evidence for date, traces the history of interpretation, discusses the question of unity, and alludes to various modern and postmodern approaches. He eschews extreme or one-sided views, though he does consider the Song to be a structured whole. In keeping with mainstream scholarship, he rejects traditional allegorical interpretation, but he is sensitive throughout to theological implications. For instance, he notes von Balthasar's emphasis on the aesthetic element in theology (p. 158). Perhaps with his conservative audience in mind, he assumes a context of married love for the Song, while recognizing that this is never made explicit (p. 38): "the erotic love of the couple does not lie outside the bounds of marriage but is integral to it" (p. 237).

Hess is good at tracing wordplays and interconnected motifs throughout the Song. The "locked garden/pool" (gan/gal na'ul) of 4:12 is reflected in the "lock" (man'ul) on which myrrh from the woman's hands drips in 5:5, and in the "sandals" (ne'alim) in which she dances in 7:2 (p. 212). That which has been closed and static opens to the lover's gaze, in fascinating motion. In discussing the dream narrative in 5:2–8, Hess resists direct sexual interpretations, for instance of 5:4–5 as a euphemistic description of intercourse, pointing out that "the whole point of the passage is the failure of the couple to reach and touch each other" (p. 172). At the same time, he shows effectively how it suggests the sexual dimension indirectly, through image and metaphor (p. 171). The male lover's complaint that his locks are wet draws attention to the most attractive part of himself, as does the woman's excuse that she has already gone to bed.

There are a number of issues Hess does not address. He does not regard the imagery of the wasfs, or itemized portraits of the lovers, as problematic, and is dismissive of interpretations of them as parodic (Brenner, Whedbee) or grotesque (Black). This is refreshing, insofar as it avoids the orientalism endemic in previous scholarship; Hess explicates the imagery without embarrassment or fuss. On the other hand, he thereby ignores the strangeness of the imagery as having a communicative function. For example, I have argued that it has a [End Page 197] surreal quality, which both contributes to the dreamlike, fantastic character of the Song, and tends towards apophasis, a suggestion of the inexpressible.

Feminist interpretation of the Song is also rather neglected. Hess duly notes the prominence of the female voice in the Song, discusses the possibility of female authorship, and has some interesting observations, for instance that the term "mother's house" is used exclusively for daughters (p. 106). Nonetheless, Hess pays little or no attention to discussions of the Song as a critique of patriarchy, as suggested by Pardes and Trible among others. In fact, and perhaps with regard to the prospective audience, he tends to harmonize the Song with the rest of the Bible, and in particular with the New Testament.

Inevitably, as with every commentary, Hess has his favorite resources, and there are some...

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