Honey, Spice, and Sacred Verse
Today I read Song of Songs, and I was immediately drawn to the imagery. There are gardens, spices, animals, water, fruit—so many metaphors tied to the natural world. Instead of telling us how these two lovers feel, the poem shows us through similes and sensory detail: cheeks compared to pomegranate halves, lips dripping with honey, a beloved described as a garden locked.
No Plot, Just Passion
There’s an intensity to it all, but not in a narrative sense. We don’t know anything about these characters beyond their mutual longing. No names, no setting, no plot. It’s just desire, spoken out loud and layered with symbol after symbol. I noticed how often perfume and spices came up—myrrh, frankincense, saffron, cinnamon. These aren’t just decorative touches; they seem to stand in for physical presence, memory, attraction. Smell is personal and evocative, and I wonder how much of this is meant to be felt rather than decoded.
The natural metaphors are not modest or shy. They’re lush, sometimes wild, sometimes cultivated. Her body is compared to a vineyard; his strength is like a stag. There’s both rawness and elegance here, a sense that the physical world is not something to be ashamed of but something to celebrate. That feels unexpected for a book placed in the middle of sacred scripture.
Invitation to the Garden
At one point, the woman says, "Let my beloved come into his garden and taste its choice fruits." It’s intimate, direct, and playful. The garden isn’t just a metaphor for her body; it’s also a place of invitation and mutual delight. That metaphor of a garden—private, cultivated, full of life—comes up a lot. I’m curious about what this suggests about how ancient writers thought about love and sex. Not as dirty or dangerous, but as something beautiful and complex.
Even though I’ve read the Bible before, this language still catches me off guard. And I don’t mean that in a shocked or dismissive way. It just feels different from the moral instruction or historical narrative that fills so much of the rest. Song of Songs is more like a poem you’d overhear than a lesson you’d be taught. It doesn’t seem to want to explain anything; it just wants to be experienced.
Metaphor as Emotional Map
Reading it makes me think about how we use metaphor to talk about things that are difficult to express directly. Especially when it comes to love or longing. Maybe that’s what this book offers—not answers, but language for things that resist explanation. Not every image is easy to understand. Some are strange, even jarring. But they create a kind of emotional setting, one rooted in the natural world, full of scent and taste and texture. That, in itself, feels worth noticing.