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Cedars of Lebanon: Commentary on The Song of Songs
- Abstract
IN THE spring a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of love. Even the Rabbis understood this and they prescribed the Song of Songs for public reading on Passover. Breathing the spirit of spring when “the voice of the turtle is heard in our land,” the Song of Songs was felt to be especially appropriate to the mood of a festival which not only celebrates the spring season of each year but also reenacts Israel’s historic springtime, the end of the winter of Egyptian bondage and the beginning of the new life that was to culminate on Sinai. The interweaving of motifs that such a view involves, juxtaposing lyrics of a most personal intimacy with issues of national significance, is typical of the Agadic method of understanding. And it is probably in the Song of Songs that this method reaches its most radical, and most controversial, application.
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