I was feeling pretty discouraged in various ways when I went to bed last night. Partly situational, but a good deal of it was simply being absolutely saturated with listening to all kinds of podcasts and news updates this past week and yesterday, especially. I had over three hours of road time yesterday listening to this stuff, and then last night as I painted, I listened to more. It’s discouraging for a number of reasons.
I awoke this morning gearing for my day and decided I needed to listen to some scripture instead of more podcasts while I work.
Oh, but what? I’ve been listening to the New Testament on Audible but decided I wanted to dive back into the Old Testament today to one of my favorite books: The Song of Solomon.
For several reasons, this appealed to me today. And I decided I would only listen to this book (on repeat) today as I finished up two paintings and did household chores. It’s now been over 8 hours putting it on repeat, and I think I’m ready to take a break here and compose a few thoughts I’ve had during this day.
Every time I listen to the Song of Songs, I seem to fixate on varying phrases and imagery. For readers that may not be too familiar with this biblical book, it is typically interpreted in two ways (or both ways, together).
The writer of this book was King Solomon and clearly, it is a poetic work that drips with sexual implications and allegory of a deeply romantic encounter between two lovers. The book seems to go back and forth between the expressions of both the man and of the woman.
The book has also been interpreted as an expression of the love God has for us; the love that Jesus has for His bride. To contemplate these writings in both ways provides such rich imagery of not only a God who created us and through our relationship with Him in Christ Jesus, He is the lover of our souls. The imagery describes (through that lens) a God who is deeply enthralled and impassioned over His people–both collectively and also (I believe) as individuals in our personal relationship with him (whether male or female, as the hymn “Jesus, Lover of My Soul” and many others express).
He dances over us with songs of love!
Adonai your God is in your midst—
Zephaniah 3:17
a mighty Savior!
He will delight over you with joy.
He will quiet you with His love.
He will dance for joy over you with singing.’
You may be wondering at my title of this piece–what do raisins have to do with any of this? Well, as I listened through the first time, suddenly this phrase I’d never focused on before leapt out to my ears:
“Sustain me with raisins,
~Song of Songs 2:5 (NRSV)
refresh me with apples;
for I am faint with love.”
Really, it was simply the word raisins that caught my attention, but I am also very partial to the word sustain as found throughout scripture. And right now, I need a variety of sustaining in so many ways…not just materially but emotionally and physically. I need strength for all that is before me, and I keep looking to God for that sustenance.
I have concord grapes, and I recall last year a friend noticed some grapes had shriveled on the vine and thought they had become raisins that could be picked as such. OK, she just didn’t know how raisins are made…but…I suppose and wonder back to the times of King Solomon, how were raisins made?
Today we buy seedless raisins in bulk, processed by huge machinery. Back then I imagined they had some laborious process of drying fruits in the sun to save for times of the year when fruits were unavailable. And since right now is a time of year that is sparse in a number of ways for me (materially and emotionally) the image of raisins really caught my attention on this listening.
I actually remember listening to Song of Songs on loop for a whole day early last summer and interestingly I was working on the very painting that I am finally finishing today. (A painting of a bird escaping a fowler’s snare/net–a kind of large, abstract canvas with many words as art overlapping, based upon Psalm 91). That’s one of may favorite Psalms.
Most bible readers know that the image of grapes, wine and fruitfulness are woven throughout the Old and New Testament. And for this reason, I thought perhaps it was an odd image to think of sustaining your loved one with raisins! A raisin is a shriveled-up grape, and though the nutrients may be concentrated, it conveys to me something that is less luscious than a grape and possibly even conveys something salvaged and preserved from a prior harvest.
In the text, the lover asks to be sustained with raisins and refreshed with apples. I’m wondering (though maybe I’m over-reading into the text) if raisins might be a metaphor for thoughts of past encounters with this lover (God, or literal lovers)? In all relationships there are ebbs and flows and the Psalms especially have phrasings that we should “remember” the previous acts and encounters with God–to refresh and sustain us.
I’m sure that a scholar would have a better understanding of any deeper, specific reasoning of this biblical image; I’m just speaking from my own personal experience with fruit-growing, and my own metaphoric ideas.
I have concord grapes and I also have a small apple orchard. These fruits (where I live) basically ripen and are harvested around the same time of year although the grapes maybe several weeks sooner. So perhaps–and this is simply speculation–I am on to something that the speaker wants sustenance of dried fruit (perhaps from a previous year) and refreshing with what conveys more of a current ripened harvest.
I don’t know. Just some thoughts.
But lately I keep thinking about being sustained with “just enough” for each day by God. Daily manna, so-to-speak. Raisins are high in protein, but it would take a lot of them to feel satisfied and full, I suppose. In the text, the speaker is asking to be sustained with raisins and apples because they are “faint” with love.
Anyway, enough on raisins. Who knows. I just couldn’t pass up a chance to ponder the idea of being sustained by God (Lover of Our Souls) with dried up raisins!
As always, God knows exactly what we need!
__________
Below are a few more phrases/imagery that stood out to me:
“Your teeth are like a flock of shorn ewes
~Song of Songs 4:2 (NRSV)
that have come up from the washing,
all of which bear twins,
and not one among them is bereaved.”
I suppose this image caught my attention because I have two female sheep (and just got a ram, hoping to breed them and hopefully have twins from each ewe around August).
“Your head crowns you like Carmel,
~ Song of Songs 7:5
and your flowing locks are like purple;
a king is held captive in the tresses.”
I’m not sure why I paused more than once today in hearing this part. Images of a woman’s adorning, beautiful hair (tresses) and her lover (the “King”) being held captive in her hair is a compelling image of how much God delights in His people. We often think of God as King and “King Jesus”–worthy of our highest adoration and worship. Yet in this Song of Songs (as I prefer to call it for the poetical appeal rather than simply the “Song of Solomon”) if we put on the interpretive lens of allegory of Christ and His Bride (or our personal love affair with Jesus our Lord and Savior) we get a glimpse of God’s divine and pure love and delight in us–His children. (Yes, I intentionally mixed in a whole bunch of overlapping metaphors here!)
“My beloved is like a gazelle
~ Song of Songs 2:9
or a young stag.
Look, there he stands
behind our wall,
gazing in at the windows,
looking through the lattice.”
I once did a portrait for a woman who had lost a son to cancer when he was about twenty years old. She wanted me to do a portrait of her parents and to include a lattice in the background with climbing roses. Her father–who had passed–had been an avid gardener and she also told me a story surrounding her son’s death a few years earlier. She said that her son was deeply devoted to Christ and the night before he passed of cancer he had been on the phone with his grandparents and said that he was reading from Song of Solomon. After he died, they discovered his bible open to that passage and he had underlined the part “looking through the lattice.”
In the painting, I tried tried to hint at am image of a thorny-crowned Jesus (from a photo reference of an unusual photo I had taken years ago…I had photographed brambles with bright setting sun backlighting the image and it caused an abstract-like image that some feel conveys Jesus and crowny thorns) behind the lattice work.
I can never again hear this part of Song of Songs without thinking of this family I knew in Alabama and “peering through a lattice.” Today as I reflected on this part, I thought about a lover looking at his beloved through a lattice–as though in secret or from afar. And of course, this conveys that Jesus watches over His beloved though He may be obscured to our natural eyes.
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