Abstract
Having explored the implications of experiencing one’s femininity as a form of generosity of self, a gift of self that is whole-hearted and generous, I then explore, in this chapter, the structure of this gift. There is an art of giving of oneself that must be rediscovered. This is the art form that is implied in the Shulamite’s repeated warning to the daughters of Jerusalem to “not arouse or awaken love until it is ready.” This warning constitutes a sharp contrast with the generally sensual and reckless lovemaking of the Song. From this contrast, I show that two voices of wisdom are to be heard in our text: That of sensuality and that of discretion, and that the art of seduction hangs precisely on the ability to protect the delicate balance between these two voices.
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Notes
- 1.
Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1978), 153.
- 2.
André Lacocque, Romance She Wrote, 153.
- 3.
Ibid., 48.
- 4.
The woman as the downfall of man finds a rich hermeneutic tradition in both Jewish and Christian exegetes. For the rabbis, not only did Eve cause man’s downfall by inciting him to sin, she also caused the expulsion from Eden and the loss of eternal life. Thus R. Joshua was asked: “Why does a man go forth with uncovered head, while the woman goes forth with her head covered?” He replied: “This is like someone who committed a transgression and is embarrassed before other people, therefore the woman goes forth covered [for she sinned and is ashamed].” He was further questioned: “Why do women go to the corpse first [it was the custom in Judea that women preceded the corpse in a funeral procession, while the men followed the bier]?” He answered: “Because they caused death to come to the world, they go first with the corpse” (The Babylonian Talmud, Genesis Rabbah 17:8). The Church Fathers have an even more virulent analysis of Eve’s sin. Referencing 1 Tim. 2:14, Ambrose argues in his Great Commentary on Genesis that the woman is the originator of the man’s wrongdoing, not the man of the woman’s. He adds that she even dragged her husband along with her into sin and showed herself to be an incentive to sin. Before Ambrose, Tertullian made the argument that blame for Eve’s first sin extended to all women and that God’s judgment and guilt will live in each one forward. In his treatise On the Dress of Women, Tertullian says of women that they are the Devil’s gateway, the un-sealer of that tree, the first foresaker of the divine law, and finally, the one who persuaded [Adam] whom the Devil was not brave enough to approach.
- 5.
The imagery of the prophets associates newly planted vegetation or gardens and flowing water to the time in history when Israel will be redeemed from her exile (cf. Isaiah 43, 55).
- 6.
Jeremiah 31:22.
- 7.
Indeed, the man shows no sign of passion until chapter four, which is pretty much the middle of the Song. The woman is the one initiating, wooing and seducing her lover until then. And although the man does say a few things before chapter four, he is outdone by the woman who speaks three to four times as much as he does. Only in chapter four do we have the first long and passionate discourse on the part of the man, expressing his commitment and desire to be with her.
- 8.
In her beautiful story Seul ce qui brûle, Christiane Singer tells of a young bride who has been shunned by her husband for perceived infidelity. For several years the bride bears her punishment with dignity and meekness, until she is freed by a stranger who happened upon the castle by chance and who convinces her husband to release her from her ordeal. Back-tracking into the dark moments of her ordeal, we find her brothers showing up to free her and take her back with them. Interestingly, she is shocked by their profound misunderstanding of the pain which she has freely consented to bear. As such, she is in no need to be “liberated” from it by them. She refuses to go with them or even to acknowledge them in a defiant act of love and fidelity for her husband.
- 9.
André Lacocque, “I am Black and Beautiful,” in Scrolls of Love: Ruth and the Song of Songs, edited by Lesleigh Cushing Strahlberg and Peter S. Hawkins (New York: Fordham University Press, 2006), 169–170.
- 10.
Ibid., 169.
- 11.
Several books have been written on the demise of the feminine in Israel’s spiritual development (cf. Merlin Stone, When God Was A Woman [New York: Harcourt Publishing Company, 1976], and Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade [New York: HarperOne, 1995]). And it is true that Israel has rigorously opposed the Canaanite religions and crushed and destroyed any vestige of feminine deities or Goddesses (such as the Queen of Heaven Ashtoreth or Asherah and her Baal. Cf. Judges 2:13; Judges 3:7; I Samuel 7:3, 4). Israel’s violent repression of the Goddess religions has been the subject of many harsh criticisms wherein the Hebrew Bible is depicted as conducting a violent patriarchal assault on the feminine. This is however to read only one section of the Bible—the Pentateuch. As I mentioned in my introduction, the Bible is anything but monolithic, and space is given in other texts for feminine approaches to spirituality. In fact, I would argue that our Song constitutes a reworking and a retelling of the Canaanite Goddess religions. Just like the Goddess religions, our Song has ties with nature, with springtime; the woman is seen as a central and powerful character who, like the Goddesses of the Canaanites, arouses the man rather than the other way around. The main difference is that unlike the Goddess religions, the woman does not end up sacrificing or killing the man (cf. When God Was a Woman, 129–152), but rather, in the case of the Song, redeems and elevates him.
- 12.
The NIV translates this passage as “like a mighty flame” but in the note it gives the alternate rendering of “like the very flame of the Lord” which is actually a closer rendering of the Hebrew text.
- 13.
In her beautiful book Waiting for God, Simone Weil speaks of this attitude of receptivity versus activity toward God as follows: “The effort that brings the soul to salvation is like the effort of looking or of listening; it is the kind of effort by which a fiancée accepts her lover. It is an act of attention and consent; whereas what language designates as will is something suggestive of muscular effort” (Waiting for God [New York: Harper Perennial, 2009], 126).
- 14.
Cf. Deut. 4:28 where idols are depicted as being made of wood and stone.
- 15.
Cf. Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, 153.
- 16.
Luce Irigaray, Ethics of Sexual Difference (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 74.
- 17.
Ibid., 75.
- 18.
Ibid., 75.
- 19.
Luce Irigaray, To Be Two (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2001), 114.
- 20.
Ibid., 59.
- 21.
Ibid., 13.
- 22.
Gila Manolson, Outside/Inside: A Fresh Look at Tzniout (Jerusalem: Targum Press, 2004), 85.
- 23.
Nancy Qualls-Corbett, The Sacred Prostitute. Toronto (ON: Inner City Books, 1999), 65.
- 24.
Ibid., 67.
- 25.
Ibid., 66.
- 26.
Irigaray, To Be Two, 115.
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Doukhan, A. (2019). The Art of Seduction. In: Womanist Wisdom in the Song of Songs. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30052-4_3
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