Psalm 104: For God So Loves the World

The universe is, itself, the offspring of God's love. It was not created simply because he had the wisdom and power to do it. The element of love entered into the intention, characterized the execution, and approved the completion of his labors. – Alexander

Campbell

The Psalter has always been viewed as the Spirit inspired temple of the Bible, a literary “holy of holies.”  For three thousand years, and then some, the Psalms have been at the heart of worship, corporate and private, in Israel, the synagogue, and the church.[1] Entering this literary sanctuary is a full sensory experience for the worshiper. Like all the Hebrew Bible it is laced with the grittiness of life and the grandeur of God.  Stepping into the pages of this holy place we are confronted with the smell of incense, hands raised in boisterous praise from the congregation, and the cry of lament from the suffering. In the Psalms the same Spirit that brought forth life from the mud of the earth inspires holistic worship that embodies the great commandment to love the Lord with our minds, souls, and bodies (Deut 6.4f; Mt 22.34f). Among the truths in God’s literary sanctuary is that humanity’s worship is truly cosmic encompassing all creation. All creation sings praise to the Lord of Creation. This vision is awe-inspiring.

The Psalms pull God’s people into a fuller, truer, vision of reality. Entering into the literary sanctuary to worship through praise and prayer, individually and corporately, the world in which God reigns is invoked.[2] In the Psalms, through worship, God enabled Israel to have eyes to see and ears to hear to embrace a new “construal of the God-world relationship.”[3] Through imbibing the worldview constructed in God-centered worship we are invited to embrace God’s purpose for creation, to embrace the beauty of creation as reflecting his own glory, and to find our own place within creation to lead all in heaven and earth to worship the Creator.

Creation the Realm of God’s Steadfast Love

The world envisioned in worship enables God’s people to interpret the world encountered “outside” in light of God’s claims, purpose, and mission. It re-frames pain and injustice and draws attention to love, beauty, and ultimate justice. If you should ask an Israelite fresh from pilgrimage to the temple “how do you know God loves you?” She would probably respond using the language shaped in worship: “I know he loves me because he created the world and redeemed Israel.”  Lifting her hands to heaven, the Israelite would burst into song,

O give thanks the LORD, for he is good,

for his steadfast love endures forever

What evidence for this radical claim by Israel?

[W]ho alone does great wonders,

for his steadfast love endures forever;

who by understanding made the heavens,

for his steadfast love endures forever;

who spread out the earth on the waters,

for his steadfast love endures forever;

who made the great lights,

for his steadfast love endures forever;

the sun to rule over the day,

for his steadfast love endures forever;

the moon and the stars to rule over the night,

for his steadfast love endures forever …

(Psalm 136. 4-9)

The first act of love by God according to the Bible is not the cross of Jesus, nor even the grace of the Exodus from Egypt.  The first act of love by God toward the world is that he became its Creator.  Inhabiting the sanctuary of worship Israel sees “nature” around her not through the eyes of utilitarianism but the eyes of wonder. Nature is in fact transformed into creation.  The physical universe reflects the warmth and love of the Father of Jesus. 

            Psalm 33 elaborates on the character and work of the Lord of Israel while singing a new song. God is described in vivid attributes

For the word of the LORD is upright,

and all his work is done in faithfulness.

He loves righteousness and justice;

the earth is full of the steadfast love

of the LORD. (33.4-5)

What is this word and work that is faithful, righteous, just and loving? Perhaps we might expect such a word and work to be saving people from sin or delivering the poor. But that is not the word and work in Psalm 33.[4]The word and work of the Lord here is the creation of the universe itself.

By the word of the LORD the heavens were made,

and all their host by the breath of his mouth. (33.6)

The beginning of the steadfast love of the Lord, according to this radical psalm is not an act of deliverance from sin or oppression but the creation of cosmos. Indeed it is an act of “justice.”  No wonder the psalm will declare “the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord” (33.5; cf Ps 119.64).

            The Bible claims more than creation displays God’s amazing love.  Rather the Scriptures proclaim that God is like an artist who actively cares for, tends to, protects and actually loves his world.  Psalm 104 reveals the chasm between Marcionism, deism and biblical faith.[5]Not only is the wonder of creation celebrated but the deep involvement of the Creator God with the object of his love. God did not simply create “in the beginning” to see how it all turns out.  Rather, as Jesus said, the Father continues to work in creation (Jn. 5.17).  Psalm 104 is formally linked to 103 with its breathtaking vistas of God’s steadfast love which is said to be higher than the heavens for his people (103.11).[6]This love, manifested in God’s “works” (103.22), ushers us into the magnificent meditation upon God’s continuing shower of love toward all he has made.

            Revealing in the diversity of creation, Psalm 104[7]helps place a check on the arrogant human assumption that the world exists primarily for our use and purposes.[8] Rather this psalm reminds us that God has “other concerns”[9]besides human and places us as one among the many inhabitants of the Earth receiving the gift of life from the Creator. The psalm opens in 1-4 picturing Yahweh clothed in majesty, building his cosmic temple to dwell (cf. Ps 78.69; Isa. 40.22).[10] The psalm moves into a very egalitarian geocentric view of earth which is mentioned seven times (vv 5, 9, 13, 14, 24, 32, 35) centering on rich diversity of life filling it. The psalmist revels in the loving, even tender, care of God for his world. 

You make springs gush forth in the valleys;

they flow between the hills (v.10)

Who is this water for? The “drink is to every wild animal” (v. 11).  Those who benefit from are also the birds who “sing among the branches” and finally the earth itself is “satisfied with the fruit of your work” (v.13).  Humans are not even listed among the beneficiaries of divine hydration. 

            The Lord’s hands on approach to tending his creation means he also feeds the life he has created. Humans finally enter the picture as God has previously satisfied the earth with water he now gives grass for animals to eat and viniculture for humans to have wine.  As water blesses the animals, and wine refreshed humans, so now the “trees of the Lord” are abundantly cared for by the Creator (vv.14-16). 

            The psalmist again confesses the marvelous manner of divine provision for the non-human world. The “trees of the Lord” are not simply for human use.  Rather the trees were created literally for the birds (vv. 16-17).[11]  The majestic mountains are actually “for the wild goats” (v.18).

One of the most startling claims, for moderns, of the inspired poet is that humans are not the only ones who have work hours and punch the clock. In this section (vv 19-23) both animals and humans share the world but are separated by temporal domains. The sun and moon are creation’s clock (Gen 1.14-18). The animals in the forests and on the mountains work for a living under the cover of the darkness while humans seek the same livelihood under the sun. Lions carry on the midnight shift but, like their fellow human creature, they get their earnings from God (v.21; cf. Job 38.39-41).  After binding all creatures together the congregation in worship bursts in awe

O LORD, how manifold are your works!

In wisdom you have made them all;

the earth is full of your creatures.

Humans, lions, birds, goats and trees are all objects of the Creators steadfast love. But some of the most amazing creatures have never been seen by the human eye at all. One creature, called Leviathan, lives in God’s aquarium, the vast sea.  Leviathan was created by God for no other reason than to frolic and play in the deep! It has no purpose but to be alive and be carefree (v.26).[12]

            The psalmist concludes his cosmic panorama with all creation, small and great, non-human and human, brought together as contingent creatures utterly dependent upon the grace of God (vv. 27-30).

These all look to you to give them their food in due season;

when you give to them, they gather it up;

when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.

When you hide your face, they are dismayed;

when you take away their breath they die and return to dust.

When you send for the your Spirit, they are created;

and you renew the face of the ground.

Here is the death nail to deism in the Bible.  God’s hands on approach to creation is described in these verses using the Hebrew imperfect indicating continuous action on the part of deity.[13] It is from a text like this the Hebrew Preacher can say that universe is “sustained” by divine grace (Heb 1.3). Here, as in the initial creation itself (Gen 2.7), it is God’s Spirit who is the giver of all life.[14]When life appears, human, animal or trees, a profound miracle has taken place.[15]No wonder the psalmist was in awe.

            But the last five verses of Psalm 104 show that Israel did not imagine that humans alone would delight in creation.  As the psalmist sees the world bathed in gracious “glory” the Lord himself is called to rejoice, to take pleasure, in his works (v.31).   "May the glory of the LORD endure forever; may the LORD rejoice in his works." The purpose of this call is that God continue to his unbounded “labor of love.”  Genesis has the Creator seeing the goodness of his creation, Psalm 104’s vision is that he actually rejoice when he sees it.[16]  The image of God finding delight in what he has created in this universe is, perhaps, an image we need to ruminate on more frequently. 

Concluding thought

            Psalm 104 is gentle, but firm, check on human arrogance.  Through a misreading of other texts, we sometimes assume that whole world was placed here for us. But Genesis reminds us the world was “good” even when inhabited only by fish, birds and trees before a single human appeared.  God himself is the caretaker in his lush garden and humans are just one of his creatures in this Psalm. Animals, who have the same life as humans, are not simply food for humans.  Indeed both animals and humans get sustenance from the same divine source. Psalm 104 also shows that God made things simply to be beautiful and not just to be useful.  The creation of Leviathan is perhaps a reminder to humans that life is such a gift of grace that we should just “let loose” from time to time. Above all Psalm 104 reveals the truth that creation itself, animate and inanimate, is the object of divine love. If God, like an artist, dotes so tenderly over his works then should not those created in his image reflect that same divine delight, divine love and divine care for creation. As we shall see this is part of what biblical dominion means.

---

[1] William L. Holladay, The Psalms through Three Thousand Years: Prayerbook of a Cloud of Witnesses (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,  1996); James H. Houston and Bruce K. Waltke, The Psalms as Christian Worship (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009).

[2] Walter Brueggemann, Israel’s Praise: Doxology Against Idolatry and Ideology, (Philadelphia, Fortress, 1988), 1-28; John Mark Hicks, Johnny Melton & Bobby Valentine, A Gathered People: Revisioning The Assembly as Transforming Encounter(Abilene, TX: Leafwood, 2007), 50-59.

[3] James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009), 193.

[4] See John Goldingay Old Testament Theology, vol 2 (Downers Grove, IVP, 200?), ??-??; Patrick D. Miller, Jr, Interpreting the Psalms(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), 75-76.

[5] John Goldingay, Old Testament Theology, Vol 2: Israel’s Faith, p. 655.

[6] James Limburg argues for the formal linkage of Psalm 103 and 104 in “Down-To-Earth Theology: Psalm 104 and the Environment,” Currents in Theology and Mission 21 (1994), 341.

[7] Psalm 104 is frequently classified as a wisdom psalm largely borrowed from the Egyptian “Hymn to Aton.”  See Bernard W. Anderson, Out of the Depths: The Psalms Speak for Us Today, Revised and Expanded Edition (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983), 156f. For our purposes it this claim does not effect our argument because if the psalm is borrowed it has been placed within the canonical faith.  However it is important to note that many critical scholars do not see a genetic connection between Psalm 104 and the Hymn to Aton.  Peter C. Craigie reviews the history of scholarship on the psalm, looks at the Egyptian evidence and produces Ugaritic evidence suggesting the best that can be argued is general agreement in limited verses.  He suggests the original function of the psalm was probably a dedication ceremony for the temple. “The Comparison of Hebrew Poetry: Psalm 104 in the Light of Egyptian and Ugaritic Poetry,” Semitics4 (1974): 10-21.

[8]Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative (Downers Grove: IVP, 2006), 399-400.

[9] John Goldingay, Old Testament Theology, Vol 2: Israel’s Faith, p. 681

[10] See the discussion on temples and cosmic geography in John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 113-134, 165-178 and Othmar Keel, The Symbolism of the Biblical World: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Book of Psalms (New York: Crossroad, 1985), 113-176

[11] William P. Brown, Seeing the Psalms: A Theology of Metaphor (Louisville: WJK, 2002), 160.  See Bernhard W. Anderson, From Creation to New Creation (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock ??), 217-219.

[12] James Limburg, “Down-To-Earth Theology: Psalm 104 and the Environment,” Currents in Theology and Mission21 (1994), 343.

[13] Bernhard W. Anderson, From Creation to New Creation, pp. 116-118.

[14] Wilf Hildebrandt, An Old Testament Theology of the Spirit of God (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995), 55-56.

[15] John Goldingay, Psalms, Volume 3: Psalms 90-150 (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 194.

[16] William P. Brown, “The Lion, the Wicked, and the Wonder of It All: Palm 104 and the Playful God,” Journal for Preachers29 (2006): 14-19.

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Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Bible & America #1

I hate to admit that in 1990 if some one had mentioned "Uncle Tom's Cabin" to me, the only reference to come to my mind would have been the hair band Warrant.  To be sure it was a different sort of song for a metal band - no drugs and no sex. The song was something of an allegory. To this day I can still sing the lyrics.  The song opens ...

"Just for the record let's get the story straight.
Me and Uncle Tom were fishing it was getting pretty late.
Out on a cypress limb above the "Wishin' Well."
Where they say it got no bottom, say it take you down to hell!

Over in the bushes and off to the right.
Come two men talkin' in the pale moon light.
Sheriff John Brady and Deputy Hedge,
Haulin' two limp bodies down to the water's edge.

I know a secret down at Uncle Tom's Cabin, oh yeah.
I know a secret that I just can't tell."

Three years out of high school, and nearly the same number of college years under my belt, I was stunningly ignorant of not just "American" history but black American history. I knew nothing of the stories of Mickey Schwerner, James Chancey and Andy Goodman, [1] and many more Civil Rights works and Freedom Riders that were murdered either by, or with the help of, law enforcement.  But in 1990 Uncle Tom's Cabin was simply a great rock song to jam to on the way down the highway.  In 1995 I learned there was a book by Harriet Beecher Stowe by this title and read it for the first time in response to a black friend who told me my world was to white. Since then I revisited the book in 2001 and again at the end of 2012.  Being far more mature and knowledgeable in 2012 my reading was considerably richer.

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)

Uncle Tom's Cabin or, Life Among the Lowly is possibly the quintessential American novel and without a doubt the most influential book outside the Bible to ever hit the shelves in America. Historian David Reynolds states baldly in his history of the lives and after lives of UTC, Mightier than the Sword: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Battle for America, "No book in American history molded public opinion more powerfully than Uncle Tom's Cabin" (p.xi). It was by far the runaway best seller of the 19th century but unlike the contemporary Da Vinci Code it changed the world.

When  Abraham Lincoln met Stowe in December 1862 he is quoted as having said "Is this the little woman who made this great war?" [2]. Harriet was born into what became a large, prominent and reforming family in America.  Some one said of Lyman Beecher, Harriet's father, on his seventy-ninth birthday that he was "The father of more brains than any man in America" [3]. Among her famous siblings were Henry Ward Beecher.  Unlike some other famous families the Beechers were not fabulously rich (Harriet lived in poverty until after Uncle Tom was published) rather they were famous because they rocked the American boat. 

Harriet married Calvin Stowe in 1836.  Calvin, whose first wife died of cholera, was Professor of Greek at Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati.  Calvin was fluent in seven languages, had a good sense of humor and encouraged his wife's writing abilities.

Stowe embraced an abolitionist position over time.  Her father, Lyman Beecher, was anti-slavery but considered abolitionism to be extreme.  Before Lyman moved to Cincinnati one of his parishioners was William Loyd Garrison who emerged as a radical abolitionist. Garrison and the elder Beecher had a falling out over what Lyman believed was the former's extremism. The elder preacher focused upon what he thought were the real sins of the day "rum, Sabbath-breaking, Catholicism, and gambling." [4] He exhorted Garrison on slavery, "you can't reason that way! You must take into account what is expedient as well as what is right." For his part the editor of the Liberator became convinced that the Christian church, the American government and the Constitution had been corrupted to the core by the slave interest.  Harriet moved far beyond her father on slavery and the issue of race period.  She met with Garrison, and though reticent about his heretical reputation came to appreciate him greatly as an ally and friend.  She said that no one could "know him and not love him--love him personally, love him for his earnestness and his faithfulness."  But she did ask him "Mr. Garrison, are you a Christian?" [5]

What pushed Stowe beyond her father and into the abolitionist fold? Scholars point to a number of reasons.  The underground railroad passed, almost literally, by her front door step.  She and her husband Calvin were confronted with the reality of fugitive slaves when they learned that a girl in their employ was in fact a runaway slave.  Her husband Calvin, and her brother, Henry Ward Beecher, helped the girl escape via the Underground Railroad through a friend John Van Zandt (who shows up in UTC as John Van Trompe).

Second major source of antipathy for slavery as a system per se in Stowe was the pervasive sexual exploitation of female slaves by white "masters." This exploitation was common in two ways: 1) the sexual gratification of white males and 2) forcing females to become "breeders."  Many female slaves were forced to have sexual relations with various men in order to "breed" a fresh crop of slaves to work or sell.  Eliza Buck, a young "mulatto girl" and fugitive slave, came to the Stowe household in Cincinnati. She was the offspring of an illicit encounter between her former master and her slave mother.  She too became the victim of repeated rapes by the same man. Eliza told Stowe of being sold down in Louisiana and then to Kentucky.  Harriet had also met Lewis Garrard Clarke, an escaped slave so light he could pass for white. Clarke's family had been broken apart and variously sold, his sister being sent to New Orleans as a sex slave. Clarke's sister was befriended by a Frenchman who purchased her freedom. Harriet brings this secret "privilege" of the white slave owner out in full view in UTC. She was disgusted by it. The havoc of slavery on families ... indeed in most southern states marriage was illegal for blacks ... was an abomination to God. Stowe illuminates powerfully the family bond among slaves whether legal or not.

Another source of Stowe's growing hatred of slavery was the violence used by those who protected the system.  James Birney a family friend was a former slave owner who emancipated his slaves. He began what he believed was a mild and moderate voice for the emancipation cause, The Philanthropist. But on July 30, 1836 a mob estimated to be about 4000 strong, surrounded Birney's Cincinnati office, smashed his press and threw it in the Ohio. The mob then proceeded to pillage streets with the houses of free blacks.  Birney just escaped with his life.[6] The next year however, Elijah P. Lovejoy, a special friend, was attacked and murdered by a mob of proslavery advocates.

Finally Stowe became a reader of slave narratives. The stories of Josiah Henson, Henry Bibb, Lewis Clarke, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth and others. These heroic tales revealed to her people, not animals, with a thirst for liberty, capacity for learning and critical thinking, and above all the capability of pride in being God's creation. Stowe came to embrace the humanity of the African slave.

Harriet Beecher Stowe became convinced that Christianity and slavery was absolutely incompatible. In Uncle Tom's Cabin she unsparingly exposed the toll that slavery took upon both blacks and whites who, surprisingly, are bound by a common humanity.  For her the responsibility of slavery lie with both Southerners and Northerners who made economic profit off it. Slavery was more than a personal evil but a systemic evil that must be atoned for.  Indeed slavery was America's Calvary ... the beaten and dying slave was the American Christ.  That was Tom!

Wrapping up Part One ... Factoids to Whet the Appetite

Two of the most frequent responses to Uncle Tom's Cabin are:  1) the surprise that Tom was no "Uncle Tom" and 2) just how profoundly "religious" the work is.  The stereotype of "uncle Tom" as weak, servile, and passive is the work of a massive subversion of the book. Not only is Tom incredibly strong but George Harris (another major character) is a Malcolm X kind of man. When I think of Tom now I think of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr ... brave and willing to suffer on behalf of others. This is no trait of a weak and cowardly person. 

Stowe was an inspiration to both Leo Tolstoy (who thought UTC was a brilliant novel and I would say he was a qualified critic) and Vladimir Lenin who held UTC was his favorite novel from childhood [7]. Translated into 37 languages, used as a Sunday School text, adapted into countless "Tom" plays ... UTC remained a powerful and subversive force even when it was forgotten by many. 

More to come ...

Notes:

1] See the classic by  William Bradford Huie, 3 Lives for Mississippi with an Intro by Martin Luther King, Jr (New American Library, 1964, reprinted several times)

2] Daniel Vallaro discusses this remark and its authenticity at length in "Lincoln, Stowe, and the 'Little Woman/Great War' Story: The Making and Breaking of a Great American Anecdote," in Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association (Winter 2009) at www.historycooperative.org/journals/jala/30.1/vollaro.html#FOOT54

3] Quoted in Debby Applegate's Pulitzer Prize winning biography, The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher (Three Leaves Press 2006), 264.

4] David Walker, free black and fellow Bostonian, castigates white Christian preachers for condemning these very evils and yet turning a blind eye to slavery.  "The preachers and people of the United States form societies against Free Masonry, Sabbath breaking, Sabbath mails, Infidelity, &c. &c. But the fountain head [i.e. slavery] compared with which, all those other evils are comparatively nothing, and from the bloody and murderous head of which they receive no trifling support, is hardly noticed by Americans." David Walker's Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, ed. Peter P. Hinks, (Penn State Press 2000), 44.  Walker and his Appeal had a profound impact upon Garrison.

5] Henry Mayer, All on Fire: William Loyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery (St. Martins Press 1998), 417-424, quotes from p. 421.

6] David S. Reynolds, Mightier than the Sword: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Battle for America (W. W. Norton 2011), 93-94.

7] ibid., 175

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For the Needy will not Always be Forgotten - The Psalms and the Poor

Welcome to a New Year (2013).  May the Lord of Israel grant us shalom as we wait for final redemption to appear.  As I write the nation of which I live (USA) has descended into virulent verbal war over guns, not just any guns but assault rifles, large magazines (the kind with bullets not words), and even types of ammunition.  I grew up with guns, I like to shoot them, and I respect them.  I find the tone of this "discussion" is unbelievably base (from both sides) and you would think that heaven depends on this ugly debate.  But as much as I like guns I refuse to let that issue become my purpose for being.  Can you imagine beloved, what would happen in the United States if we were as insanely passionate about genuine biblical justice and shalom as the Bill of Rights? For those out there that speak so pervasively about the pattern (I think they frequently have a make believe pattern like Alice in Wonderland) but are deathly silent on the real pattern of concern for the poor as a matter of kingdom obligation in Scripture.  So my first blog of 2013 is not about guns but about the real pattern - the pattern of neighborly love - of caring for the poor, seeking shalom for all God's creation, and living out God's justice. The Psalms (a book an elder once said to me "It is a shame Psalms is in the Old Testament there are some good passages in there") reveals the heart of God's concern ... through worship.

Worship and Justice

I take my title from Psalm 9.18, "For the needy will not always be forgotten, and the hope of the poor will not die forever." In Churches of Christ (I will generalize here) we have been raised on a diet of worship that has focused primarily upon mechanics. Is it lawful to sing during the Lord's Supper? Is it according to the pattern to have one or multiple cups? Are worshiping falsely (= in vain) if we use a pitch pipe or a rhythm guitar (no to the former and yes to the latter!).  These, and similar questions, that have consumed our corporate thinking are issues of mechanics.  Zeal for them has often let us believe that our Gatherings were "in spirit and truth" if we abstained from these innovations.  But we have failed to see that none of these questions actually bring us back to Scripture and its vision of worship.  Biblical false worship castigated in the prophets focused on the lack of implementation in Israelite daily life of the vision of God's world of shalom encountered in their holy assemblies. Thus when Yahweh rejects Israel's worship in Amos 5.23 it is not because God really hates harps as some zealously imagine [1].  The text reads

"Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever flowing stream." (5.23-24)

Yahweh has already rejected their worship (vv. 21-22). But Amos is not telling us God is opposed to Israel's worship because of harps nor is he opposed to the "songs" being sung.  What songs are those? Almost certainly the songs sung are what becomes part our book of Psalms - songs of the kingdom! Rather what is nauseating to the Lord, is the failure of the worshipers to appreciate the connection between their Gathered worship and neighborly love ... i.e. justice. Vain worship is in fact possible!  But it is not simply a matter of "mechanical instruments of music."  Vain worship is leaving the assembly without a commitment to spread the love of God to those around us.  Worship demands our (my) involvement in cultivating the vision of the world that is proclaimed in and through worship.

What "Songs" Were Offered

Amos mentions the "songs" that God rejects.  God loves David's lyrical poetry but he felt about Israel daring to sing such music the same way many Evangelicals would about Madonna singing "Mary Did You Know!" The chasm between the lyrics and the life of the person singing is rightly appalling. I will return to Pss 9-10 below but here is a sampling of the lyrics offered to God in prayer and Gathered worship ... [2]

"O LORD, who is like you?
You deliver the weak
from those to strong for them,
the weak and needy from those who 
crush them" (35.10)

"Happy/Blessed are those who consider the poor;
the LORD delivers them in the day of trouble.
The LORD protects them and keeps the alive;
they are called happy in the land.
You do not give them up the will of their enemies.
The LORD sustains them on their sickbed;
in their illness you all their infirmities" (41.1-3)

"Father of orphans, defender of widows,
such is God in his holy dwelling;
God gives the lonely a permanent home,
makes prisoners happy by setting them free" (68.5-6, JB)

"Be pleased, O God, to deliver me.
O LORD, make haste to help me!
Let those be put to shame and confusion
who seek my life ...
Let those who love your salvation
say ever more that "God is Great!'
But I am poor and needy;
hasten to me, O God!
You are my help and my deliverer;
O LORD, do not delay" (70. 1-5)

"Give the king your justice, O God ...
May he judge your people with righteousness,
and your poor with justice.
May the mountains yield prosperity for the people,
and the hills, in righteousness.
May he defend the cause of the poor of the people,
and give deliverance to the needy,
and crush the oppressor ...
For he delivers the needy when they call,
the poor and those who have no helper.
He has pity on the week and the needy,
and saves the lives of the needy.
From oppression and violence he redeems their life;
and precious is their blood (i.e. life) in his sight" (72.2-4; 12-14)

These, and many more, kingdom songs of Israel were rejected by God.  Not because they used harps to sing them nor because the theology is "this worldly."  Rather they were rejected precisely because the Israelites did not live the words they offered to God as their sacrifice of praise. These ancient hymns invite both Israel of old, and us today, to believe in a certain kind of God and a certain kind of world in which he is King. Daring to enter the gracious Presence of Yahweh and singing the songs of his kingdom is an act (yes act - I know that some of my friends don't like that word) that commits us to implement the vision of justice and shalom not only for ourselves but for our neighbors - so they too may have justice and shalom in God's world.

But we often do not hear these ancient kingdom songs. There are multiple reasons for this. First in our religious tradition the Hebrew Scriptures as a whole have mostly been mined for three purposes if at all 1) messianic prophecy; 2) polemical use in debates on the mechanics of worship listed above; and 3) occasional character studies of such people as Joseph, Hannah, Samuel and David.  Second because these texts were not among the "good passages" in the Psalms the elder mentioned - he liked Ps 23 - they did not become part of our functional canon.  But the loss of the "Old Testament" and the laments or cries for help in the Psalms from our daily prayers and our theology is "costly" [3].

Loosing the Songs of the Kingdom

But God does not want these songs of the kingdom lost. What God desires is for the vision of these psalms to become the pattern of our life as we live for him in in a fallen world full of injustice. It seems there are at least three serious costly consequences in our communal and personal lives when we either rarely sing/pray these psalms or never encounter them at all:

1) We silence the voice of the victims of injustice both in Scripture and "life" and thus have no "ears to hear"

2) We fail to have "eyes to see" and thus do not recognize injustice and those performing it - indeed we may end up siding with the oppressors

3) We are robbed of the opportunity to pray for and commit ourselves to the pursuit of God's kingdom and righteousness in our lives and his shalom in the world [4].

Constant exposure to the Story of God in the wider canon and the singing of the songs of the kingdom remind us that God is the God of the poor.  Through constant exposure to the songs Israel sang, but did not live, we come to embrace the vision that David Lipscomb grasped with clarity.  That vision is captured in this radical statement by the then editor of the Gospel Advocate:

"The poor of this world were the chosen vessels of mercy, the especially honored and blessed of God. They, as a class, constitute his elect."

Rather than a few isolated texts of "whiners" as WASP's may be tempted to look at the voices in
the Psalms, we come to embrace them as the voices of God's elect (to use DL's words).  Even if I, or you, have never experienced the poverty, the pain, the suffering, the humiliation of our humanity that many do, God in his wisdom and grace is giving us the opportunity to identify with the victims in an act of neighborly love and make their prayers our prayers and the concerns of their lives the concerns of ours.  Israel, perhaps, found it more profitable to be on the side of winners rather than the losers.

The Needy Will Not Always Be Forgotten

"But the LORD sits enthroned forever,
he has established his throne for judgment.
He judges the world with righteousness;
he judges the peoples with equity.
The LORD is a stronghold for the oppressed,
a stronghold in times of trouble ...
Sing praises to the LORD, who dwells in Zion ...
For he who avenges blood is mindful of them;
he does not forget the cry of the afflicted ...
For the needy will not always be forgotten,
nor the hope of the poor perish forever ... (9.7-9, 12, 18)

I began with Psalm 9-10 and I want to return here. This psalm, or song of the kingdom, gives us a special window not only on the victim but also to the purveyor of injustice. We have a lyrical portrait - from the perspective of the victim - of the ones seeking gain anyway then can get it (See 10.4, 6, 11, 13). What emerges from this song sung in Gathered worship is the picture of one who is self-centered and believes he answers to no one for his economic choices (this is common in the Psalms see Pss 3.1-2; 14.1; 42.10; 53.1; 64.5-6; 73.11; 79.10; 115.2).  In fact what is being described sounds very much like business as usual in most corporate contexts.

But in worship we confess that Yahweh is in fact King "enthroned forever ... upon his throne for judgment" (9.7). Merely by confessing his Lordship, we deny the life and the values of the oppressor.  Those with illusions of power and self-control imagine, we confess in the kingdom song, are deluded because we declare "But you do see!! (10.14).  We side with the King in our worship.  We confess to a reality that is not seen nor believed by the powerful. In in the world of worship we cast aside our unwitting embrace of oppressive values - even economic values - that take away the dignity of our neighbor. We sing the songs of the kingdom of remembering the poor and then we become the living words of the song in flesh and blood.

Final Thoughts

We end where we began. Worship and justice cannot be separated in the biblical pattern. True worship results in lives that are sound and Spiritually healthy in the Pauline sense. True worship is about a vision of the God who is King. In our Gathered worship we are reminded that Yahweh calls for more than a melody emanating from our vocal chords. He demands that we "do justice" (Micah 6.8). The poor will not be forgotten.  The victims of those "who can" will not be erased from the story.  The widows shafted by corporations is seen by God. The children living on the street cold and hungry do not fall between God's cracks. The "aliens" who are used and abused to avoid paying taxes or a fair wage have the King's ear. Because we dare to come into his Presence, sit at his Table, read his Scriptures, and sing his songs ... then they better have ours.  Our singing of the songs of the kingdom lead us to be the one's who answer the Lord's Prayer - we live his will on earth as we see in the vision of heaven in worship.  When that happens the poor will never be forgotten among God's people.

Notes:

1] See Douglas Stuart, Hosea-Jonah: Word Biblical Commentary (Waco, TX: Word Publishing, 1987), 353-356 on the text and context.

2] For fellowship with the poor as a "means of grace" see my book with John Mark Hicks, Kingdom Come: Embracing the Spiritual Legacy of David Lipscomb and James Harding (Leafwood, 2006), 93-109.

3] See his rich essay "The Costly Loss of Lament," JSOT 36 (1986):

4] For an outstanding look at the Psalms as "Hope for the Poor" and the toxic consequences of silencing certain texts see J. Clinton MCann's "The Hope of the Poor: The Psalms in Worship and Our Search for Justice," in Touching the Altar: The Old Testament for Christian Worship, ed. Carol M. Bechtel (Eerdmans 2008), 155-178.

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A Black Intellectual Writes to Thomas Jefferson

The Colors of Liberty

On July 4, 1776 explosive words from Thomas Jefferson captured the hearts of men and women, white and black, in the British Colonies in America.  Those words read, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." These words set the world ablaze not only with war but with a new way of looking at humanity.  The "Age of Liberty" though was not exactly as it appeared to be however.

Following the Revolutionary War, from 1783-1800, many of the Patriots lead a full blown retreat from the implications of the famous words above.  The seventeen years following the war have been termed by the provocative work by Larry Tise as "the American Counter-Revolution."  In fact Thomas Jefferson, who always retained the rhetoric of the pursuit of individual rights is deemed as "the most radical counterrevolutionary" of them all [1]!

Jefferson had published, in 1785, his Notes on Virginia that attained near canonical status among slave holding Americans. When Jefferson won the most contentious election in American history it was because of the "federal ratio" - that is the Three-Fifths Clause in the Constitution giving southern slave states a greater number votes in the Electoral College (Jefferson lost the popular vote).  Future president John Quincy Adams wrote of the election of Jefferson, "The election of Mr. Jefferson to the presidency was, upon sectional feelings, the triumph of the South over the North - of the slave representation over the purely free" [2]. The Notes changed the way Americans thought and talked about liberty, freedom, equality and the rights of humans. Now even with the Revolution fresh in mind there was no vision that could bind all humans together within the United States.  For Thomas Jefferson black folks were constitutionally inferior, morally bankrupt, and unfit for social equality with whites. They may be good for sexual exploitation however [3]. 

Thomas Jefferson's new doctrine reads rather clearly in his Notes, "I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of the body and mind." Liberty was colored even for the writer of the Declaration of Independence.

A "Black" Enlightenment

If Thomas Jefferson did not believe his own words they inspired folks on the other side of the colored liberty line. The period saw African Americans breaking out of the stifling limits and bigotry in significant ways.  Phillis Wheatley dazzled white readers with her poetry. Olaudah Equiano became a world traveler and a crusader for black liberty. One man who emerged from the shadows was Benjamin Banneker.

By 1791 Banneker had become a well known celebrity of sorts.  Banneker was a free black tobacco farmer in Maryland. He was in many ways he was the counter part of his white name sake Benjamin Franklin. He was born and raised in destitution. Both were self-taught. Both loved mathematical puzzles. Both were fascinated by nature, patterns of weather, and astronomy. Both enjoyed the challenge of creating almanacs. Both, it would seem, were products of the Age of Enlightenment. Banneker's first almanac was rejected because the publisher did not believe a black man was capable of performing the mathematics required for one. Yet when his almanac was published for 1792 that it was a "COMPLETE and ACCURATE EPHEMERIS for the year 1792" and had been

"calculated by a a Sable Descendant of Africa, who, by this Specimen of Ingenuity, evinces, to Demonstration, that mental Powers and Endowments are not the exclusive Excellence of white People, but that they Rays of Science may alike illumine the Minds of Men of every Clime, (however they may differ in the Colour of the Skin) particularly those whom Tyrant-Custom hath too long taught us to depreciated as a Race inferior in intellectual Capacity."

In other words black men were not mere brutish beasts.  Further in 1791 Banneker had been engaged by President George Washington as one of the surveyors and planners for the soon to be capital of the United States. Banneker, a true son of the Enlightenment, was a man who believed that liberty came for those of a different color too. Thomas Jefferson did pass on the Almanac to the Academy of Sciences in Paris as possible evidence that some blacks were capable of science.

A Black Intellectual Writes Thomas Jefferson

On August 19, 1791 a sixty year old Benjamin Banneker sat down to write a short note to Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson.  As Banneker explains at the end of the letter he initially intended to only send Mr. Jefferson a copy of almanac so he could peruse the contents.   But something moved Banneker to express himself to the supposed Apostle of Human Liberty on the matter of liberty for black people within the United States. It is not without irony in the shadow of Jefferson's Notes that Thomas' Paine's The Right's of Man was published in May of 1791 just a few months prior to Banneker's letter.  Paine's book was endorsed by Thomas Jefferson.  But what did the black intellectual say to the author of the Declaration of Independence and Notes on Virgina?  He opens

"Sir: - I am fully sensible of the greatness of that freedom, which I take with you on the present occasion {Banneker it will be recalled was a free black man}, a liberty which seemed to me scarcely allowable, when I reflected on that distinguished and dignified station in which you stand, and the almost general prejudice and prepossession which is so prevalent in the world against those of my complexion."

Banneker mentions how common the notion is that blacks are mere brutes ...

"I suppose it is a truth too well attested to you, to need a proof here, that we are a race of beings who have long laboured [sic] under the abuse and censure of the world, that we have long been considered rather as brutish than human, and scarcely capable of mental endowments."

But Banneker submits his almanac as proof of the mental endowments and human qualities of his race. He tells Jefferson that "we are all of the same family, and stand in the same relation to him [i.e the universal Father]."  Banneker likwise appeals to the "obligations of christianity" [sic]. It is because blacks and whites are part of the same family and "christian" obligation that Jefferson should pursue liberty for all men regardless of color.  He appeals directly to the Revolutionary heritage in his letter to Jefferson. Surely the men of 1776 were no hypocrites.

"Sir, I have long been convinced that if your love for yourselves and for those inesteemable laws, which preserve to you the rights of human nature, was found on sincerity, you could not but be solicitous that every individual thereof, neither could you rest satisfied, short of the most active diffusion of your exertions in order to their promotions from any state of degradation to which the unjustifiable cruelty and barbarism of men have reduced them. 

Sir, I freely and cheerfully acknowledge that I am of the African race, and in that colour which is natural to them of the deepest dye, and it is under a sense of the most profound gratitude to the Supreme Being of the universe that I now confess to you that I am not under that state of tyrannical thraldom and inhuman capacity to which to many of my brethren are doomed ..."

Banneker reminds Jefferson of the "powerful effort" of the "British Crown" to reduce the colonists to a "State of Servitude."  At that time Jefferson "clearly saw into the the injustice of a state of slavery."  So clearly did he see that Banneker ironically quotes back to Jefferson those nearly immortal words that filled so many oppressed with a sense of hope.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their creator [sic] with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Banneker confesses his dismay at how any person could say those words much less write them and justify the existence of slavery and the racism required for the peculiar institution to survive in the atmosphere of the post-Revolutionary War. Banneker forthrightly points out Jefferson's hypocrisy witnessed in his Notes and in his own possession of slaves. 

"Here, sir, was a time in which your tender feelings for yourselves had engaged you thus to declare, you were then impressed with proper ideas of the great valuation of liberty and the free possession of those blessings to which you were entitled by nature; but sir, how pitiable is it to reflect that although you were so fully convinced of the benevolence of the Father of mankind and of his equal and impartial distribution of those rights and privileges which he had conferred upon them, that you should at the same time counteract his mercies in detaining by fraud and violence so numerous a part of my brethren under groaning captivity and cruel oppression, that you should at that same time be found guilty of that most criminal act which you professedly detested in others with respect to yourselves."

The black intellectual pleads with Jefferson to become empathetic with black slaves.  Appealing to the the words of a lamenting Job "put your soul in their souls stead."  Thomas Jefferson did not and could not ever do that.

Adding Benjamin Banneker to the "Canon"

The letter of Benjamin Banneker to Thomas Jefferson on August 19, 1791 was laden with potential to renew the promise of the American Revolution. Banneker knew that Jefferson symbolically stood at the head of the revolution but also sadly was the man who derailed.  Jefferson went on to become President of the United States on the back of slaves who were not even recognized as a full human and denied even three-fifths representation and his Notes became the water hydrant to quench the fervor for rights for all Americans.

Banneker, an elderly self-educated genius saw through Jefferson and called Jefferson's bluff. This man can serve as a model of what can be every bit as his white counterpart Benjamin Franklin. He did not let his circumstances define him. He had limited "formal" schooling but was a life long disciple in the best sense of the word.  He disciplined himself daily and nightly in the path of knowledge rather than property or wealth. His physical travels were very limited but his mind traveled the entire Creation of God. He broke through the stereotype that black men were ignorant sexual brutes.  He even shows that "elderly" people are not over the hill with nothing to accomplish or contribute - after all he did not publish his first almanac until he was nearly 60 years of age. Facing systemic bigotry on a daily basis he overcame by the power of his God-given and cultivated intellect.  When I read the story of Banneker I am reminded of the startling quote Thomas Chatterton Williams attributes to his father regarding basketball, "If you're going to complete then do your best, son, always do your best, but remember that I really don't care if we ever have another black athlete or entertainer" [4]. The problem is not athletes or entertainers but the stereotype that pigeon holes African-American males in those roles ... they do not define "blackness."  Banneker destroys that image and can show both white folks who still retain a subtler form of Jefferson's blatant racism and at the same time inspire a generation of new intellectuals.  Both black and white.  He is worthy of emulation.

Perhaps Banneker should be in the Canon of American Saints as much - perhaps more - than Thomas Jefferson.  The more I think about it I think Tise was correct, Jefferson was the most radical counterrevolutionary.

Perhaps you do not know much about the great American hero Benjamen Banneker.  If not let me recommend the excellent study by Robert Silverstein and Charles Cerami, Benjamen Banneker: Surveyor, Astronomer, Publisher, Patriot (Wiley, 2002). You will be blessed.

Notes:

1] Larry E. Tise, The American Counter Revolution: A Retreat from Liberty, 1783-1800 (Stackpole Books, 1998), 439-451.

2] The only book length study on the role of the "Three-Fifths" clause in Jefferson's election is the marvelous work by Garry Wills, "Negro President": Jefferson and the Slave Power (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003).  Quote from p. 1.

3] See Jan Ellen Lewis & Peter S. Onuf, eds, Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory and Civic Culture (University of Virginia Press, 1999).

4] Thomas Chatterton Williams, Losing My Cool: How A Father's Love and 15, 000 Books Beat Hip-Hop Culture (Penguin Press, 2010), 34-35.  Emphasis in original.

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Holy of Holies: Returning to Eden 4 - Song of Songs, Celebrating Sex & Egalitarian Women

“Sex becomes a search. A search for something we are missing. A quest for the unconditional embrace. And so they go from relationship to relationship. The search is about that need.

But sex is not the search for something that’s missing. It is the expression of something that’s been found. It’s designed to be the overflow, the culmination of something that a man and a woman have found in each other.  It’s a celebration of this living, breathing thing that’s happening between the two of them.” (Rob Bell, Sex God, p. 123)

“KISS ME, make me drunk with your kisses!

Your sweet lovemaking is better than wine.

You are fragrant, you are myrrh and aloes.

All the young women desire you.”

(1.2-3, my translation)

Links to Previous Studies in this Returning to Eden Series:
1 - Song of Songs, Sexuality & Spirituality 
2 - Song of Songs & The History of Denying Sexuality
3 - The Song of ALL Songs or Just a Silly Little Love Song?

A Neo-Platonic Nightmare: Celebrating Sex!

Modern Evangelical and "Church of Christ" Christians have, at times, imbibed a worldview that is on many counts not simply unbiblical but anti-biblical.  As noted in the second of these studies (see Song of Songs & the History of Denying Sexuality here) in the second and third centuries Christianity drunk deeply from the Platonic culture surrounding it. This influence is seen in two ways: 1) the Gnostic rejection of creation and the Jewish Creator god with its denial of the goodness of that creation; 2) the denigration of sexuality, sexual urges, and the denigration of women as the agents of Satan for tempting men.  Sex became a “necessary evil” for the propagation of the race. The Song of Songs was a clear problem.  To fix that perceived problem allegory was resorted too. 

Plato in his Symposium, has Socrates waxing eloquently on the status of “love” (for the non-Greek reader the love in the Symposium is eros).  At the end Socrates offers the highest form of “eros” in which we get our notion of “platonic love” from.  None of the love(s) celebrated in the Symposiumis remotely like the biblical notion.  Women for Plato were worse than the animals (he says so in another Socratic dialogue Timaeus).  The greatest love was the pursuit of wisdom as understood by Plato. The appetites of the body were to be denied for that pursuit … indeed in Platonic salvation the “immortal soul” would one day be set free from the cage of the degrading body.

Modern Christians have, even unawares, often reflected that Platonic outlook.  Even as the rest of the world has become “liberated” so to speak the church has remained Victorian.  To associate Sexuality and Spirituality is virtually unheard of.  The impression that is granted to the world and even to many of our own members is that sex is tolerated (even though everyone does it!) but it is not to be celebrated as a good in itself.  And it is a faux paux to let others know you actually enjoy it!

The Joy of It All

How different is the Hebraic worldview from that of many in modern Evangelical Christianity.  The Proverbs declare

Let your fountain be blessed,

and rejoice in the wife of your youth,

a lovely deer, a graceful doe.

May her breasts satisfy you at all times

may you be intoxicated always by

her love!

(5.18-19, BV)

The worldview of Song of Songs is not confined to the Song.  Rather the worldview of Song of Songs is the worldview of ancient Israel.  The vision of Israel, expressed in the Song of Songs is the redemption of relationships.  Rather than being antagonistic to humanity as Gen 3 prophesies, creation is the setting for shalom in the Song for the love of the couple that is as unabashed as in the Garden.

If we believe in the canon of Scripture then the Holy Spirit is not shy about sex. Sexuality is a dominant theme in the Song.  It oozes sexuality!  This is sometimes obscured because of our Platonic lenses and unhappy English translations.  The Hebrew word ‘ahaba is a word that means love.  We read in 7.6 (v.7 in Hebrew)

mah yapit u-mah na’amt ‘ahabahba-ata’anugim

How splendid and how sweet you are, O Love among [all] the delights!

Love is an abstract noun here. But ‘ahaba is a fairly rare word in Song of Songs. But even in 7.6 it is the woman’s physical charms that elicit such an exclamation.  But the word that dominates Song of Songs from the vocabulary of “love” is dodim.  We encounter this word in the second verse of the book quoted above where I rendered it “lovemaking.” The root dd occurs a total of 36 times in Song of Songs.  That this word is explicitly sexual in nature we need only read Proverbs 7.18,

Come, let us take our fill of love until morning;

let us delight ourselves with love. (NRSV)

Or the explicit Ezekiel 23.17

And the Babylonians came to her into the bed of love, and they

defiled her with their lust …(NRSV)

Though the word may be rendered “love” in Hebrew it is always sexual love.  For other examples of dodim in Song of Songs see 1.2, 4; 4.10; 5.1; 7.13; etc [1]

Here a biblical book literally begins with a description of sexual desire and it is boldly stated.

Equal Opportunity Sex in the Song of Songs

Hers. The Song of Songs has dialogue present between the woman and the man; the woman and the daughters of Jerusalem, and the woman and the night guards.  The distribution of this dialogue is far from equal. The woman is far and away the primary speaker approximately 70 percent of the words coming from her mouth.  The woman is the primary “actor” in the book.

It is true the man does speak his praise for her in 1.9-11, 15; 2.2; 4.1-7; 6.4-9 and 7.2-10.  Yet he disappears (as far as a voice is concerned) completely in chapter 8.  Even when he comes to “his garden” it is only at her invitation (4.16-5.1a).

This woman is no passive lady! She does not let him set the agenda so to speak. For example she outdoes his praises for her by bragging on him (1.16-17; 2.3). She begins the Song and she ends the Song. She is the one who speaks its refrains.  She is the one who calls on her lover to do things – draw her after him (1.4), be like a gazelle (2.17), to come out to the fields with her (7.12-14), set her as a seal on his arm (8.6) and to flee with her (8.14).  She seeks him (1.7). She “seizes” him to bring him into the chamber of love (3.4 & 8.1-2).  She is such a powerful presence that in the middle of the Song he confesses to be driven mad by just one of her glances, with but one strand of her necklace (4.9)!!

She is hardly shy or even "polite" about her public praises of her man.  Her friends, perhaps tired of her continual bragging about his traits, finally say exasperation (5.9)

mah dodek mi(n)-dod se-kakah hisba’tanu

What’s so special about your lover, that you make us swear in this way?

This is no private conversation the woman is having.  She boldly declares “He Rocks!!” Of course that is a loose paraphrase but it captures the meaning quite well. She responds to her "critics" with a gushing report on his uniqueness.  To these friends/critics(?) she mentions his gorgeous head (v.11), his eyes (v12), his facial features (v.13), how she loves his puckered lips (v.13b), how hot his body is (v.14b), his legs and voice (vv.15-16). Finally she declares he is simply her “friend” (v.16b).  Such discourse was proper for God’s People in Israel.  One can hear Plato groaning ... and perhaps not a few church people too! She repeats this public praise of her man to the watchmen.

To say that Song of Songs smolders with sensuality is to make the proverbial understatement.  But here is the reality of the situation.  This is how God desires our love to be! In the song mutuality is the atmosphere that is breathed between the man and the woman.  She is not a passive entity but is the driver behind the entire book.

His. The man is not as articulate in the Song as the woman. However he is not shy about saying things about his isha.  In chapter 4.1-7 he erupts like a volcano about her. He unashamedly celebrates (as God directs in Proverbs) the “goods” of his “babe.” The poetry is exquisitely graceful. It is sensuous and replete with erotic imagery and allusions and wonderful word plays.  Here is a man who had indeed savored his woman and become “intoxicated” (to use Proverbs 5.18f). He begins with the particle hinneh (2x!).  He says

Wow! You are so beautiful, my love

Wow! You are so beautiful! (4.1)

The man is literally arrested at this moment - stopped in his tracks - by what he perceives to be her beauty [2]. She is not just any beautiful woman but his.  He takes delight in her beauty.  Twelve times in the Song her beauty (Heb, yapa) is proclaimed (1.8; 15 [2x]; 2.10, 13; 4.1[2x], 7; 5.9; 6.1, 4, 10).  What the man’s poem revels in is the beauty, the allure, sensuality, and delight he has for his woman’s body.  He even praises her breasts no fewer than four times (4.5; 7.3, 7-8. they are mentioned a total of 8x in the Song, 1.13; 4.5; 7.3, 7-8; 8.1, 8, 10).

This last point is more important than we might think. I find this “naked” admiration of the “Shulammite’s” physical beauty refreshing.  It reminds us that at the bottom God has created us as embodied creatures, biological creatures. Our bodies Matter! How anti-Platonic and anti-Gnostic.  The man’s admiration of his woman’s body leads to the valuation of her [3].

Wrapping Up For Today

The Song of Songs is powerful medicine in the Word of God for the warped views regarding sexuality both in and out of the church.  The Jewish worldview that God created us and made us by intent to be creatures in relationship – even intimate ones – is foundational.  The Song is the antidote to perversions of Sexuality whether that is asceticism or what might be called the Porn world. 

Sexuality is more than sexual intercourse but intimacy is celebrated as wholesome before God.  In the Song sex is good in and of itself.  It is not justified on the grounds of procreation but for delight and pleasure.

The Song reminds us of what God had longed for in the Garden of Eden.  In our marriages we can participate in and mirror a world that is creational and even redeemed.  The Song gives a balanced relationship between the sexes. In our culture in which wives are often treated more as property than partners, the woman is shown here by the Spirit’s intent as the more active partner.  It is an egalitarian relationship that exists in this relationship.

The Song has to be used to become effective in counter acting the corrosive effects of a history of misapplication in Christianity.  We must become comfortable in reading the book. In our own relationships we should “practice” using exotic metaphors to communicate the wonders and uniqueness of our spouse. What a gift. 

Notes:

1] For more on dodim see Daniel Grossberg, “Nature, Humanity, and Love in Song of Songs,” Interpretation(2005), 229-242.

2] See the excellent article by F. W. Dobbs-Allsop, “The Delight of Beauty and Song of Songs 4.1-7,” Interpretation(2005), 261-277, especially p. 262.

3] See the delightful discussion of this and similar “flavors” in Carey Ellen Walsh, Exquisite Desire: Religion, The Erotic and the Song of Songs (Fortress Press, 2000), 105-132.

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