It's all got a bit hot and steamy around here. We're deep in imagery of fruit and spices. We can smell pomegranates, cinnamon, wine, lilies and incense, as we enter the book Song of Songs today to find 'the Shulammite', a young maiden in the time of King Solomon, as enraptured with her lover as he is with her.
'You're looking nice today' is not part of their vocabulary. Oh no. Try instead:
'Your graceful legs are like jewels,
the work of a craftsman's hands.
Your naval is a rounded goblet
that never lacks blended wine'
(Song of Songs 7:2).
Better stop there.
It is a no holds barred celebration of erotic love, though they have their little 'moments', as do most couples. It's always in the timing isn't it?
She longs for him in her dreams. She gets up to look for him and finds only the city watchmen. Then at last there he is, to be taken lovingly back to her home. At last he can enjoy her 'garden'...
Another time he looks for her, banging on her door at night ('it's damp out here, let me in...') but she's not in the mood ('I have taken off my robe - must I put it on again? I have washed my feet - must I soil them again?' (5: 2-3).)
Then all of a sudden she is in the mood: 'I arose to open for my lover, and my hands dripped with myrrh (...) on the handles of the lock...' (OOOHHH, the suspense....) but he's given up and gone home. She's distraught (of course).
It's a hymn of praise to normal, bodily, chaotic, unpredictable, frustrating, exhilarating, exhausting, death defying LURRRRVE.
Amen to that.
The thing about having a completely square house in a hot country is that you can use the flat roof for, say, hiding people on, or for outdoor parties, or even for taking a bath...
...which is what the beautiful Bathsheba is doing when she is spotted by King David in the cool of a spring evening (hey, even her name contains the word bath). He is missing the action - everyone else is away at the wars - including Bathsheba's husband...
I am ashamed to say David feels bored of his other wives...
He takes one more peek and sends for Bathsheba...
Quite shortly afterwards, David succeeds in breaking the 6th, 7th, 9th and 10th Commandments, getting Bathsheba pregnant and having her husband killed.
Is Bathsheba complicit? It is difficult to tell. I think not. Is it rape? Hard to tell. Maybe. Awkward to refuse the King...
However, judgement falls on David, though of course she suffers too. After a hasty marriage, their love child is born and dies. They then have another who becomes the most famous and blessed King of Israel, Solomon....so wise...until foreign wives ruin him...
So for the dubious pleasure of being first mistress, then mother, to a powerful King.
Here's to Bathsheba.
And to the prudence of taking a bath indoors.
