“Return, return O
Shulamith! Return, return, that we may gaze at you. What have you seen in the
Shulamith, like a dance of the camps?” (Song of Songs 7:1)
The daughters of Jerusalem
call up to Israel, urging her to return to her essence and true identity as her
common bond with God’s love. Once we make the choice to abandon ego’s fantasies
and illusions, and return to love’s ways and attributes as the means to follow
God’s will, our higher traits and positive qualities support us in our journey
back to God’s love. These know that God calls Israel the one who is all peace
(Shulamith), for through the encompassing peace of love's ways and attributes
we reach out to He whom peace belongs.
God asks the
daughters of Jerusalem what do they see in the wholesomeness of Israel, like a
dance in the camps. It is a rhetorical question, for they already know the
goodness inherent to Israel. The two camps evoke the episode about the meeting
of Esau and Jacob during the latter’s return to the land of Canaan (Genesis
32:2, 8).
There was and
there is a clear distinction between the character traits of the two brothers,
to the extreme that they are opposites. In this contrast, Israel’s wholesomeness
is remembered in the last verse of the sixth chapter of this Song. It’s brought
to relevance in the context of Israel and the nations. God praises Israel as
the bearer of peace that belongs to her.
“How beautiful
[were] your steps in sandals, O daughter of Nadib! The roundness of your sides
[are] as jewels, the work of a master's hand!” (7:2)
Israel takes the
steps of humbleness (represented by sandals) in their way to meet her Beloved,
as the daughter of the Benefactor’s (Nadib) goodness and loving kindness. God
remarks this time the beauty of the roundness of a body that epitomizes the
grace of her traits and qualities as God’s attributes of compassion with which
His hand forms and directs His entire creation.
“Your navel [is]
like a round basin, where no mixed wine is lacking. Your womb [is like] a heap
of wheat fenced with roses.” (7:3)
Israel’s “body”
as the encompassing material expression of her spiritual identity is
allegorically described as circular (“round”), meaning completeness and wholesomeness.
Mixtures of wine usually refer to diversity of vines as multidimensional
knowledge derived from the Torah that is the encompassing essence of the
Jewish identity. Here the physical body reflects the material expressions of
the spiritual body the Torah represents for Israel.
The womb (lit.
the stomach) is the metaphor for the place where life is nurtured from its
beginnings. Wheat is the quintessential food for feeding human life, and being mentioned
here as a womb reinforces its life sustaining qualities. God describes Israel’s
womb as a nurturing source to feed the goodness in life. It is “fenced” with
roses as the beauty inherent to goodness.
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