Sunday, September 28, 2008



May the wine go straight to my lover, flowing gently over lips and teeth. I belong to my lover, and his desire is for me. (Song of Songs 7:9-10)

Ariel and Chana Bloch provide an enlightening commentary, reproduced here:

'ani le-dodi ve-'aly, tesuqato, literally "I am my lover's and his desire is for me." the use of tesuqah "desire" calls attention to itself, since this particular word occurs at only two others points in the Bible - indecidedly negative contexts: Genesis 3:16 "your desire shall be for your husband (el 'isek tesuqatek) and he shall rule over you" and Genesis 4:7 "its (Sin's) desire is for you ('eleyka tesuqato) yet you must master (literally, rule over) it." The resemblance between these three verses extends beyond the use of this particular word to a specific detail of syntax, namely that the prepositional phrase marking the object of desire occurs before tesuqah for emphasis; compare 1:4, 3:3.

In Genesis, man is expected to rule over woman, as well as over Sin (the use of the same verb - masal "to rule" - in both verses makes the parallelism painfully obvious). Moreover, sexual desire is presented as entirely one-directional: woman desires man, and he has dominion over her.

In light of the patently similar wording, (the passage above) reads almost like a deliberate reversal of Genesis 3:16, turning it upside down by making the woman the object of desire. And instead of the dominion of man over woman, the present verse speaks of a relationship of mutuality, expressed in a formula of reciprocal love like that in 2:16, 6:3. In the Song, sex is free of notions of control, dominion, hierarchy."

Above is from the Rothschild Canticle. In the upper register, Christ tenderly touches the chin of the Beloved with his left, and the Beloved reciprocates the gesture. A golden sun engulfs and shines behind them. The lower register is divided diagonally with snow and rain in the lower left and plants and a dove in a gold ground in the upper right.

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