James, Elaine T - Landscapes of The Song of Songs - Poetry and Place-Oxford University Press (2017)

Landscapes of the Song of Songs
Landscapes of the
Song of Songs
Poetry and Place
z
ELAINE T. JAMES
1
1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.
© Oxford University Press 2017
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress

ISBN 978–0–19–061901–5
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Abbreviations ix
1. Introduction: Landscape and Lyric 1

2. The Agrarian Landscape 25
3. The Garden 55
4. The Cityscape 88
5. The Map of the Body 118
6. Conclusion 151
Notes 153
Bibliography 199
Index 225
Acknowledgments
Reading the Song of songs, one is acutely aware of being late to the
conversation. The texts are ancient, their world is knowable only in frag-
ments and in shadows, and many gifted readers have shed their consid-
erable light on them already. I am first and foremost grateful to the many
scholarly minds I have been privileged to become acquainted with during
the writing of this book. I also acknowledge a great debt to the libraries (and
the skillful and patient librarians) of Princeton and St. Paul, where I had
the chance to encounter the voluminous writings on the Song of Songs.
I am grateful to be one more (belated) reader, an opportunity granted to
me by Princeton Theological Seminary and the doctoral fellowship that
provided the means of writing a first draft of this project.
I am grateful to many supportive friends and colleagues, especially
those who read portions and chapter drafts, and whose insight has chal-
lenged and clarified my vision: Cherice Bock, Sean Burt, Blake Couey,
Dan Pioske, Gary Rendsburg, Stephen Russell, Mary Schmitt, and Sarah
Zhang. Special thanks are due to Jacq Lapsley and Dennis Olson, who
served as members of my committee and whose advice, keen literary and
theological sensitivity, and constructive criticism I have especially valued.
Chip Dobbs-Allsopp has been an uncommonly generous and kind advi-
sor. He is remarkably smart, and expended considerable effort in helping
me to become a less unruly scholar. He models the humane significance
of scholarship both in his work and in his person, and the flourishing of
real people is never far from his mind. He provided welcome encourage-
ment for a creative and interdisciplinary project. Warm thanks to Martti
Nissinen, who generously read the project in its entirety. The commisera-
tion of a wonderful group of fellow dissertation-writers enlivened the writ-
ing process: Lisa Bowens, Katie Douglass, Oan Jaisaodee, Janette Ok, Jin
Park, Mary Schmitt, Sonia Waters, and Robyn Whitaker. Thanks are due
to my colleagues in the Old Testament Research Colloquium at Princeton
viii Acknowledgments
Theological Seminary and the Twin Cities Bible Colloquium in Minnesota

for discussions of my work at the beginning and end of my writing. I am
thankful for the institutional support of St. Catherine University: Alan
Silva, Dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Sciences, provided sup-
port for the revisions of this manuscript; the Collaborative Undergraduate
Research Program, headed by the inimitable Linda Szymanski and Cindy
Norton, enabled me to work with two exceptional students, Haley Mathison
and Shannon Tacheny, who helped me see slices of the Song in new ways.
I would like to extend thanks to the anonymous reviewers of the manu-
script, whose insights (and frank criticisms) have benefited me, and which
I have attempted to incorporate as seriously as possible. The shortcomings
that remain are wholly mine.
I am grateful to the following presses: to Vetus Testamentum and
Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, where portions of Chapter 4 first
appeared; and to Eisenbrauns, and Sarah Zhang and Kevin Chau, who
published a significantly revised version of Chapter 5.
Finally, for his insight and good humor in the course of our long con-
versation, I am grateful to Nathaniel Van Yperen.
It is my hope that this modest contribution to the vast scholarship on
the Song of Songs will offer one way of situating poetic readings in the
ethical tasks of caring for landscapes, imagining the many more readers
who are yet to come.
Abbreviations
AB Anchor Bible
ABD Anchor Bible Dictionary. Edited by David Noel Freedman.
6 vols. New York: Doubleday, 1992
AcT Acta Theologica
ACW Ancient Christian Writers
AEL Ancient Egyptian Literature. Miriam Lichtheim. 3 vols.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971–1980
AJA American Journal of Archaeology
ANET Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament.
Edited by James B. Pritchard. 3rd ed. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1969
ARE Ancient Records of Egypt. Edited by James Henry Breasted.
5 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1906–1907.
Repr., New York: Russell & Russell, 1962
ASH Ancient Society and History
ASOR American Schools of Oriental Research
ASV American Standard Version
AThR Anglican Theological Review
BAR Biblical Archaeology Review
BARIS BAR (British Archaeological Reports) International Series
BASOR Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research
BBET Beiträge zur biblischen Exegese und Theologie
BDB Brown, Francis, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs.
A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament
BHQ Biblia Hebraica Quinta. Edited by Adrian Schenker et al.
Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2004–
BHS Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. Edited by Karl
Elliger and Wilhelm Rudolph. Stuttgart: Deutsche
Bibelgesellschaft, 1983
x Abbreviations
BibInt Biblical Interpretation

BibInt Biblical Interpretation Series
BibOr Biblica et Orientalia
BJS Brown Judaic Studies
BKAT Biblischer Kommentar, Altes Testament
BLS Bible and Literature Series
BSac Bibliotheca Sacra
BZAW Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche
Wissenschaft
CAD The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the
University of Chicago. Chicago: The Oriental Institute
of the University of Chicago, 1956–2006
CANE Civilizations of the Ancient Near East. Edited by Jack
M. Sasson. 4 vols. New York, 1995. Repr. in 2 vols.
Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2006
CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly
CHANE Culture and History of the Ancient Near East
COS The Context of Scripture. Edited by William W. Hallo. 3 vols.
Leiden: Brill: 1997–2002
CTU The Cuneiform Alphabetic Texts from Ugarit, Ras Ibn Hani,
and Other Places. Edited by Manfried Dietrich, Oswald
Loretz, and Joaquín Sanmartín. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 1995
EBib Etudes bibliques
EBR Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception. Edited by Hans-
Josef Klauck et al. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009–
EncJud Encyclopedia Judaica. Edited by Fred Skolnik and Michael
Berenbaum. 2nd ed. 22 vols. Detroit: Macmillan Reference
USA, 2007
HANE/M History of the Ancient Near East/Monographs
HSM Harvard Semitic Monographs
HThKAT Herders theologischer Kommentar zum Alten Testament
IEJ Israel Exploration Journal
JAAR Journal of the American Academy of Religion
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature
JCS Journal of Cuneiform Studies
JESHO Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient
JNES Journal of Near Eastern Studies
JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
Abbreviations xi
JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

Supplement Series
JSPSup Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha
Supplement Series
KJV King James Version
LAI Library of Ancient Israel
LCL Loeb Classical Library
LD Lectio Divina
LHBOTS The Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies
LXX Septuagint
MGWJ Monatschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums
MT Masoretic Text (of the Hebrew Bible)
NAB New American Bible
NEA Near Eastern Archaeology
NEB New English Bible
NIB The New Interpreter’s Bible. Edited by Leander E. Keck.
12 vols. Nashville: Abingdon, 1994–2004
NICOT New International Commentary on the Old Testament
NIDB New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. Edited by Katharine
Doob Sakenfeld. 5 vols. Nashville: Abingdon, 2006–2009.
NIV New International Version
NJPS Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures: The New JPS Translation
according to the Traditional Hebrew Text
NRSV New Revised Standard Version
OBO Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis
OIP Oriental Institute Publications
Or Orientalia (NS)
OTL Old Testament Library
PEQ Palestine Exploration Quarterly
PRU Le palais royal d’Ugarit
RB Revue biblique
SAA State Archives of Assyria
SAAS State Archives of Assyria Studies
SBL Society of Biblical Literature
SBLDS Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series
SBT Studies in Biblical Theology
SemeiaSt Semeia Studies
StBibLit Studies in Biblical Literature (Lang)
UF Ugarit-Forschungen
xii Abbreviations
UNP Ugaritic Narrative Poetry. Edited by Simon B. Parker. WAW

9. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 1997
VT Vetus Testamentum
VTSup Supplements to Vetus Testamentum
WAW Writings from the Ancient World
WBC Word Biblical Commentary
ZAW Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
ZTK Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche
1
Introduction
Landscape and Lyric
This is a book about poetry. It considers the way that the poetry of the
biblical Song of Songs draws on human experience in landscapes, and
how it creates experiences of landscapes. This work uses methods that will
be familiar to readers of poetry: it explores how language, imagery, sound,
tone, and form create the poem. At the same time, it moves beyond formal
description to ask a larger question: What is the human place in the nat-
ural world? As geographer Yi-Fu Tuan argues, this is a basic question of
humanistic inquiry, with historical precedents in every time and place. Its
significance is cross-cultural, and its domain is interdisciplinary. It is a topic
that must be “a fundamental concern to all thinking people.”1 As such, it is
a perennial question in need of “perspectives, elucidations, and illustrative
instances.”2 Such elucidations are an ongoing need in the field of biblical
studies, in part because questions about “nature” and “worldview” in this
field have to some extent been governed by strains of twentieth-century
Old Testament theology, which tended to emphasize a prevailing interest
in sacred history.3 As G. E. Wright strikingly claims, “[t]‌he basis of [Israel’s
religious] literature was history, not nature, because the God of Israel was
first of all the Lord of history who used nature to accomplish his purposes
in history.”4 In light of the current ethical imperative of the ecological cri-
sis, however, scholars have increasingly given attention to the Bible’s rich
imaginary of the non-human world.5 This study adds to this important,
growing conversation by considering how the Song imagines the human
place in the landscape.
2 Introduction
This study has two essential starting points. The first is the idea that
landscape fundamentally forms human experience. But this influence
does not flow in only one direction: as geographers and archaeologists
have emphasized, there is a meaningful circle of influence between
human cultures and their physical environs, since humans are shaped
by their topography, and shape their topography in turn. The landscape
thus is not merely a material fact, but also a cultural product that encodes
meaning and promotes values. When literary texts describe landscapes,
then, they are not neutral backdrops against which the literary event takes
place; rather, the texts themselves are conceptualizing the landscape. The
ancient literature of the Bible is no exception: these texts evoke, respond
to, and significantly shape landscapes—both the landscapes in which they
were produced, and many subsequent real landscapes quite distant in
time and geography. In this study, I will consider how one particular set
of texts—the poems of the Song of Songs—conceptualize the relationship
between humans and their environs.6 The second starting point is that
the Song is love poetry, and so the way that the Song conceptualizes the
human place in the landscape is thoroughly lyrical, and its landscapes are
ethically charged poetic creations that draw the reader into its meditation
on the human place in the natural world. A consideration of the land-
scapes of the Song must take the poetic medium seriously as its mode of
constituting knowledge.
Attention to the Song is especially pressing because it offers such a
ready and rich “illustrative instance”—to use Tuan’s phrase—of the con-
ceptualization of the human situation in the larger world. Arguably more
than any biblical text, it is saturated with imagery relating to the natural
world, including, for example, vineyards (1:6, 14; 2:15; 7:13; 8:11, 12), fields
(1:7–8; 2:7; 3:5; 7:12), and gardens (4:12–5:1; 6:2, 11; 8:13, 14).7 The themat-
ization of such landscapes profoundly shapes the poetry, and provides a
visual vocabulary for the lovers, who describe themselves and one another
with terms drawn from these landscapes. Animal elements are used, as
when the young man is compared to a gazelle or deer (2:8–9; 8:14), the
young woman to a mare (1:9) and a dove (1:15; 2:14). But plant life is all
the more richly described: twenty-four varieties of plants are mentioned,
including aromatic plants like môr (“myrrh”; 1:13; 3:6; 4:6, 14; 5:1, 5, 13);
wild flowers such as šôšannah (“lily”; 2:1, 2, 16; 4:5; 5:13; 6:2, 3; 7:3); and
trees (1:17; 2:3, 5; 7:9; 8:5). As Daniel Grossberg writes, “[t]‌here is hardly
a thought, feeling, or movement … that is not likened to a plant or liv-
ing creature.”8 Its densely metaphorical imagination consistently situates
Introduction 3
humans in natural landscapes, and draws parallels between those land-

scapes and their human inhabitants. The Song is therefore an important
text for exploring ancient conceptualizations of the land, although it has
rarely been read with that sustained emphasis. Ultimately, this study will
show that the Song imagines humans deeply embedded in the landscape
and bonded to it by disciplines of attention, affection, and care.
Landscape in the Song’s History

of Interpretation (Very Briefly)
Despite the prominence of the Song’s landscapes, and a general acknowl-
edgment of this prevalence among interpreters, there is not yet a consistent
effort to explore how these elements work together toward a conceptual-
ization of the landscape. This lacuna can be seen in the Song’s history of
interpretation, which has tended to focus on mining its allegorical mean-
ing, or on solidifying its “literal” sense as erotic poetry. I will not attempt
here to survey the Song’s entire history of interpretation, which is both
voluminous and astonishingly complex.9 I will suggest very briefly that
both allegorical and literal readings of the Song tend to divert attention
away from the landscape.
The predominant way of reading the Song throughout its history has
been allegorical.10 The general impulse of allegorical interpretation has an
upward trajectory, moving away from the text in preference for a concealed
meaning: “The procedure is dialectical, aimed at the discovery of truth,
and characterized by unbroken ascent.”11 Allegory ascends away from the
text, and therefore also from the physical landscape conveyed by the text,
which is therefore not treated as a subject in its own right. The text, as well
as the natural elements it conveys, become, rather, an occasion for talk-
ing about something else—â•‰in the case of the Song, retelling the history
of Israel, or disclosing the true nature of the soul. That being said, some
ancient readers did have interest in the landscape of the Song of Songs.
Jewish commentators on the Song operated with the underlying assump-
tion that the place names and natural features in the Song (Lebanon, 3:9;
4:8, 11; 5:15; 7:5; Sharon, 2:1; Ein-â•‰Gedi, 1:14; Jerusalem, 1:5; 2:7; 3:5, 10; 5:8, 16;
6:4; 8:4; Tirzah, 6:4) are important precisely because they make the alle-
gory clear: They reveal the identity of the young woman to be the nation of
Israel. The Targum Song of Songs, for example, elaborates the entire Song
in terms of Israel’s history, and identifies the young woman as Israel, who
is the lover of God.12 Its midrash on Song 2:1 (“I am a rose of Sharon, a
4 Introduction
lily of the valleys”) takes the geographical specificity of Sharon to signify

that Israel was “hidden in the shadow of mount Sinai, and in a brief space
I blossomed forth in good deeds before Him like a lily with hand and
heart, and I said before him, All that the Lord has said we will do, and obey
(Ex. XXIV, 7).”13 In this way, the physical landscape signifies geographi-
cally, nationalistically, and historically—it indicates the place of Israel, its
nationhood, and its covenant relationship to God.14 By the same token, the
floral and faunal elements did not escape the notice of the rabbis; their
characteristics take on heightened, symbolic meanings. For example, in
Rashi’s commentary on 2:1, he claims that the particular type of rose men-
tioned (ḥăbaṣṣelet) is “prettier than the rose of the mountains because it
is always moist.”15 In this way, for early Jewish commentators, the natu-
ral elements are taken to be significant indicators of historical and geo-
graphical experience. At the same time, however, they are atomized and
interpreted to accord with a relatively restricted set of theologically deter-
mined meanings;16 thus the landscape and its elements are in some sense
important to these allegorical interpreters, although they never become an
explicit subject of interest.
Christian allegorical interpretation, on the other hand, tends to de-
emphasize the landscape altogether, focusing the allegory not nation-
alistically, but on the church, Christ, Mary, or the individual soul.17
Broadening its possible range of meanings, these interpreters effec-
tively remove the poetry from its roots in the landscape. For example,
reading the same verse about the lily of the valley, Origen comments,
“Christ is to be understood as speaking in this way with reference to
the Church, and to be calling Himself ‘the Flower of the field and the
Lily of the valleys.’ ”18 Theodoret similarly relates the flower to Christ,
while explaining that the valley indicates Christ’s further humiliation,
when he descended to Hades.19 Eventually, Bernard would write with
characteristic verve: “The flower is virginity, it is martyrdom, it is good
works” (Sermon 47).20 More to the point, the significance of Jerusalem
as a geographically and historically real city recedes in favor of a spirit-
ual location, the heavenly Jerusalem. In the sixth century, for example,
Cassiodorus writes, “The daughters of Sion are the same as the daugh-
ters of Jerusalem, children of the Church, holy souls, citizens of that
city on high who with the angels enjoy perpetual peace, and by contem-
plation behold the glory of God.”21 If early Jewish interpreters main-
tained a vested interest in the specific landscape of Israel, the trajectory
of Christian allegorical interpretation would downplay the pervasive
Introduction 5
natural imagery in favor of spiritual and tropological meanings directed

to the Church or the individual believer.22
Later interpreters have moved strongly away from allegorical interpre-
tation, toward more or less “literal” readings of the Song—proposing that
the Song is a drama, a wedding rite, or simply erotic poetry23—but this
emphasis on the literal content has largely not yielded a greater sensitiv-
ity to the setting in a landscape. For example, in the nineteenth century,
Karl Budde formalized a theory that the Song is a cycle of wedding poems,
drawing on parallels between the Song and modern Syrian marriage cer-
emonies, a seven-day celebration in which songs are sung and dances are
danced, and recitations are given of the bride and groom’s beauty.24 On
this “literal” reading, the Song is folk poetry, “a large circle of single songs
and fragments of songs”25 that celebrates “wedded and married love….”26
While Budde’s reading insists that the Song is non-allegorical, he nev-
ertheless draws attention away from the landscape, arguing that natural
elements are purely “figurative,” and he rejects more severe landscape
features (such as the mountains of Lebanon) as editorial insertions that
have no place in the bucolic joy of wedding poetry.27 It seems that Budde’s
preconception about what kinds of idyllic settings are possible in wedding
poetry foreclosed the possibility that some more severe landscape features
were original to the text. Even more to the point, the perceived subject of
the wedding eclipses the landscape itself.
Lyric reading strategies, which also see themselves as “literal” (as
opposed to “allegorical”) interpretive modes, either minimize the sig-
nificance of landscape, or relate it to interior psychological experience.
In his path-setting 1983 volume Paradoxes of Paradise, Francis Landy
argues that the Song is Wisdom literature, in that it is an inquiry into
“the nature of love and therefore of man [sic].”28 His reading explicates a
reified opposition between nature and culture, emphasizing the polari-
ties of the mountains of Lebanon and the garden in order to explore
“twin aspects of the Beloved, the archetypal Mother, from whom the two
lovers—brother and sister—are differentiated.”29 While Landy notes that
the landscape is a productive site of meaning in the Song of Songs, and
while he perceptively identifies some of the subtle oppositions between
its landscapes, they are always principally emblems of private psycholog-
ical experience—not potentially indicative of cultural values about the
natural world. J. Cheryl Exum, in offering one of the strongest cases for
the Song’s lyricism, defers most questions about landscape, favoring the
view that its features of geography and place are usually imaginative,
6 Int roduction
hyperbolic, and fanciful.30 Jill Munro, who attends to natural features

in order to unpack their significance as symbols, puts this most suc-
cinctly: landscapes are never “the object of interest”; rather, they serve as
vehicles “forever subordinate to the primacy of the lovers and their love.”31
The literal/â•‰erotic interpretation of the Song results in directing attention
away from the landscape as thoroughly as allegorical approaches do.32
This trend—â•‰to defer attention to the landscape itself in preference for
the true “subject” (whether this is perceived to be religious or erotic)—â•‰is
pervasive. It is my hope to show that turning our attention to the con-
structions of landscape can enrich our understanding of the poetry, and
complicate our sense of its “subject.”
Lyric Poetry and Landscape

The preceding “literal” interpretations of the Song rightly emphasize the
Song’s lyric mode, its genre. This project draws substantially on and owes
a great debt to these lyric readings, which have the advantage of offering
clear assessments of the Song’s poetry as its mode of thought and pointing
out pitfalls in earlier attempts to reconstruct the Song as “allegorical,” or
“narrative,” or “cultic” poetry. But my reading of the Song as lyric and land-
scape expands the understanding of lyric to accommodate the observed
phenomena of the Song itself.33 Here, I will briefly describe what I mean
by “lyric,” and will begin to suggest how my readings will progress.
By “lyric,” I mean a relatively short, non-â•‰narrative poem that is consti-
tuted by verbal artistry: sound, rhythm, structure, voicing, and figures of
speech are its stock in trade. It is “exemplary creativity.”34 As F.W. Dobbs-â•‰
Allsopp has argued, many—â•‰though not all—â•‰biblical poems “may be use-
fully and accurately described as lyric” under such a minimal definition.35
In acknowledging the Song as a lyric text, the reader is invited to appreciate
some of the many possible characteristics that are peculiar to this mode,
for example, its resistance to narrative; its use of deictic markers that keep
the reader’s experience in the present tense; and its lack of representation
of events (mimesis), which allows voicing and address to be prominent.36
The use of the term “lyric” already insists that the poem’s aesthetic form
constitutes its meaning—â•‰poems are irreducible works of art whose char-
acteristics are not merely ornamental.37 Understanding the Song, then,
can only proceed by “paying attention to the way it presents its vision
of love.”38 One especially distinctive element of the lyric style of biblical
Hebrew poetry is the way it lays bare interiority. This can be seen especially
Introduction 7
in contrast to biblical narrative. As Tod Linafelt has cogently argued, if bib-

lical narrative consistently suppresses explorations of thought, psychology,
motivation, and interiority (biblical narrative is “fraught with background,”
to use Erich Auerbach’s classic phrase39), biblical poetry consistently fore-
grounds precisely those features. Linafelt writes:
Lyric poetry tends to direct its attentions inward rather than out-
ward. The literary scholar Barbara Hardy writes, “The advantage of
lyric in itself is its concentrated and patterned expression of feel-
ing. This advantage is negatively definable: the lyric does not pro-
vide an explanation, judgment, or narrative; what it does provide is
feeling, alone and without histories or characters.” Thus, the lyric’s
concerns are, primarily, with the inner life rather than the outer
world, and its tools are the tools of linguistic play, that is, of struc-
ture, syntax, metaphor, productive ambiguity, etc.40
Biblical poetic style—especially when taken in contrast to biblical narrative

style—does allow access to the inner experiences, the feelings, of speakers.
This is one of its hallmark features. As Linafelt writes elsewhere, “[i]‌f bibli-
cal narrative trades in opaqueness of characterization, biblical poetry fairly
revels in the exposure of subjectivity. When biblical authors wanted to con-
vey feeling or thought, they resorted to verse form.”41 As a result of this ori-
entation to lyric, Linafelt locates the Song’s meaning in human, emotional
experience, to the extent that descriptions of the external world primarily
signify psychological states or experiences. The Song is “in the business
as all lyric is of elucidating the inner life more than the world outside.”42
Certainly the Song is interested in human interiority—its language is full
of expressions of emotion, including references to nephesh (“soul/self”;
Song 1:7; 3:1, 2, 3, 4; 5:6), for example, and ʾahăbâ (“love”; Song 2:4, 5, 7; 3:5,
10; 5:8; 7:6; 8:4, 6, 7). But this observation does not get us close enough to
accounting for the Song’s insistent evocation of the natural world. If one
standout feature of biblical poetry is its disclosive exploration of human
emotion, another is its consistent use of techniques of description—its
decided orientation toward “the world outside.”
As I will suggest here only briefly, an important hallmark of biblical
Hebrew poetry is its use of descriptive techniques, especially its description
of landscape. One place where this is evident is in the contrasting styles of
biblical narrative and biblical verse in Judges 4 and 5. Judges 4 is a narra-
tive account of the defeat of Sisera’s army at the hands of Deborah, Barak,
8 Introduction
and Jael. The narrative describes how Barak repulses Sisera’s army: “So
Barak went down from Mount Tabor with ten thousand warriors following
him. And the Lord threw Sisera and all his chariots and all his army into
a panic before Barak … ” (Judg 4:14b–15a). The poetic account—the Song
of Deborah in Judges 5—on the other hand, includes a descriptive account
of the landscape:
The stars fought from heaven,

From their courses they fought against Sisera.
The torrent Kishon swept them away,
The onrushing torrent, the torrent Kishon.
March on, my soul, with might!
Then drummed the horses’ hoofs
from the galloping, galloping of his steeds. (Judg 5:20–22)
Here, the poet describes the experience of war in typically lyrical fashion.
This includes, but is not limited to, the interior experience of the speaker,
who feels the ground thunder as the chariots roar past. The Hebrew is
highly rhythmic, capitalizing on the strong accent of the initial sylla-
bles: ʾĀZ HĀləmû ʿIQqəbê-SÛS (“then drummed the horses’ hoofs”). The
pattern juxtaposes short, stressed syllables so that the line itself drums
a persistent beat. This beat is redoubled in the second line: midDAhărôt
DAhărôt ʾABbîrāyw (“from the galloping, galloping of his steeds”). The pat-
tern here uses multiple unstressed syllables and a repeated word. Like the
sound “galloping, galloping” in English, the line is onomatopoetic, and
through it the reader experiences the onrush of the powerful warhorses
in the thunder of the land under their feet. The interiority is notable in
the irruptive cry, “March on, my soul, with might!” (Judg 5:21). At the
same time, this description is not limited to the interior experience of the
speaker. The poet is also aptly describing the landscape itself under the
assault of war. The hoofbeats of the horses are matched by the sweep of
stars and the torrents of the Kishon river (Judg 5:20–21), notably absent in
the narrative account. As is clear from this example, the poem’s interest in
the outside world is not merely mimetic, but also imaginative: the stars,
too, engage in the battle. The descriptive possibilities of biblical poetic
style are strikingly mobilized elsewhere. In Moses’ blessing at the end of
Deuteronomy, for example, the wilderness experience is described with a
metaphorical pathos:
Introduction 9
He found him in a desert land,

in a howling wilderness waste.
He encircled him
he cared for him
he guarded him like the apple of his eye.
As an eagle stirs up its nest
and over its fledglings it hovers,
so he spreads out his wings and catches him
he lifts him on his pinions.
Yhwh alone guided him
No foreign God was with him.
He bore him up to the heights of the land
and fed him with the produce of the field:
he suckled him with honey from the rock
and oil from the flinty rock,
curds of cattle and milk of sheep
with fat of lambs and rams
Bashan bulls and goats
with the very choicest wheat
and the blood of grapes, you drank wine. (Deut 32:10–14)
The poem gives a “bird’s-eye view” of the howling wilderness waste—

which from this angle is both precipitously dangerous and paradoxically
full of nourishing plenty. Psalms, too, regularly describe features of the
landscape, sometimes in minute detail. Psalm 65, for example, devotes
five climactic verses to a description of agriculture. Its final lines concen-
trate attention on the fields themselves and the perception that their fertil-
ity is a kind of celebration:
The wild pastures drip

with joy the hills dress.
the meadows wear flocks
And the valleys robe themselves with crops.
They shout out, they even sing. (Ps 65:13–14)
This particular poem even seems self-conscious of minimizing the role

of the speaker, whose voice is to some extent subsumed by the voice of
the land (cf. Ps 148). The book of Job (especially but not exclusively in
10 Introduction
the Yahweh speeches, Job 38–41) also devotes concerted attention to the
landscape and its various creatures, sometimes describing them at great
length. The warhorse in Job 39:19–25 is a case in point: the poet lingers for
many lines over its beauty and prowess, not to disclose something about
the interiority of the speaker, but to point beyond the speaker and beyond
the human world altogether. It is an example of the principle that Job artic-
ulates in his response to Zophar:
But ask the beasts, and they will teach you

The birds of the heavens, and they will tell you
Or the plants of the land, they will teach you
They will tell you—the fish of the sea.
Who among all these does not know
That the hand of the Lord has done this? (Job 12:7–9)
Knowledge of floral and faunal life in the ancient Near East is a subject of
wisdom literature, which is generally poetic.43 So Solomon’s knowledge of
“trees, from the cedar that is in the Lebanon to the hyssop that grows in the
wall … of animals, and birds, and reptiles and fish” is related to his com-
position of “three hundred thousand proverbs, and his songs numbered
a thousand and five” (1 Kgs 4:32–33). The book of Proverbs itself is rich
with appeals to natural phenomenon, for example: “the ants are a people
without strength, yet they provide their food in the summer” (Prov 30:25;
this chapter is especially dense with reflections on natural elements. Cf.
Isa 34–35).44 The contrast with biblical narrative is striking: rarely do narra-
tives describe landscapes, their elements, or experiences in landscapes in
detail. An exception, perhaps, is Exodus, which describes in prose a series
of events that afflict the land. Even here, though, the description of the
landscape is relatively spare in the prose account; what details there are
serve the developing plot:
The Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and
turned the sea into dry land; and the waters were divided. The
Israelites went into the sea on dry ground, the waters forming a
wall for them on their right and their left. (Exod 14:21–29)
The sea is “turned into dry land,” and the waters are “divided.” The poem
celebrating the same Exodus event, on the other hand, offers a triplet that
qualifies and intensifies the experience of the sea:
Introduction 11
At the blast of your nostrils the waters piled up

They stood up like a heap, the floods
the deeps congealed in the heart of the sea. (Exod 15:8)
Describing experiences in landscapes, it seems, is one of the unique

provinces of biblical poetic style. We might therefore offer an addendum
to Linafelt’s claim that “[w]‌hen biblical authors wanted to convey feeling
or thought, they resorted to verse form,”45 something like this: When the
biblical poets wanted to evoke an experience in a landscape, they turned
to poetry. The benefit of this type of landscape approach is twofold: first,
it allows the reader to acknowledge and investigate how poetry conceptu-
alizes the land; second, it can permit more expansive lyric reading. This
emphasis on landscape and lyric allows us to consider how the subject is
embedded in a larger context that brokers a relationship not just between
human lovers, but between humans and their communities—both human
and environmental. Because the Song is steadfastly descriptive of the land-
scape and its elements, as I have begun to suggest in the preceding, read-
ers will miss the opportunity to explore their significance when focusing
exclusively on eroticism. It is possible to the read the Song as lyric—paying
close attention to its style and its formal features (diction, lineation, word-
play, sound, rhythm, figures of speech, etc.)—while still acknowledging
that the Song’s subject is not limited to the representation of emotion.
This lyric landscape approach accepts the modern assessment of the
Song as love poetry. The Song is abundantly concerned with lovers and
their passions. It begins in eros: it opens, “Let him kiss me with the kisses
of his mouth!” (1:1), but it does not end there. It persistently dwells and
ultimately ends in a landscape: “be like a gazelle or a young stag on the
mountains of spices” (8:14). Moreover, the lyric form itself does not end
in the eros of human pleasure (the love shared between lovers), since it
necessarily opens to its readers. Lyric theorist Susan Stewart writes, “for
some unarticulated reason, pleasure does not suffice and the poet feels
compelled toward meaning, that meaning that only comes into being in
its encounter with the third position—the listener who introduces the
social realm of intersubjectivity.”46 The invitation draws the audience to
a consideration of the range of sense experience that is the ground of the
poem. The sense experience assumes a common engagement with the
larger world. A landscape approach allows us to explore how the Song
as lyric poetry both assumes and conjures a variegated world of sensory
experience—especially the landscape—by means of its lyric techniques.
12 Int roduction
The poetry builds its vision of love through a complex eidetic process that
not only draws on existing cultural knowledge, but also constitutes new
knowledge. The opening to the reader is to strive to constitute and re-â•‰enact
the meaning of this relationship between the lover and the landscape.
My concern about the reductive nature of the purely “secular” or “lit-
eral” erotic reading of the Song shares some concerns with, though it is not
identical to, recent work that re-â•‰engages the spiritual and religious dimen-
sions of the Song of Songs. As Martti Nissinen and others have noted, the
dichotomy between allegorical and spiritual approaches to the Song that
has dominated particularly the last decades of scholarship may be inimi-
cal to the nature of the poetry itself.47 Throughout the ancient Near East,
erotic poetry was consistently a medium for imagining the divine-â•‰human
relationship. The earliest audiences for the Song did not assume that the
Song could be restricted to a single (literal) meaning, but recognized that
its theological potential was directly linked to its literary form as erotic
poetry.48 This assumed plenitude of meaning that emerges intersubjec-
tively through the processes of reading is worth recovering. A landscape
view focalizes the Song’s potential meanings in light of the ethical con-
cerns of the present moment. We see ourselves with clearer vision through
the reciprocal vision of the poem. The lyric models an encounter—â•‰with
the world, and with the other person—â•‰and the Song in particular offers a
lyric vision for encountering our own world and its exigencies. Lyric poetry
is not necessarily a fixed form, but an intellectual process, a form of mak-
ing that engages the audience in a studied reflection on particular aspects
of human existence. Some of those aspects that come into view in reading
the Song are ethical orientations to land.
Made Things: Landscape in Theory

I have emphasized the made quality of the Song. The Song is an art form,
an aesthetic product that emerges from human experiences and engages
human experience. There is a link here to the concept of landscape. The
term’s etymology conveys the sense of land that responds to human inter-
vention.49 Colloquially, “landscape” signifies topography, and so one can
speak of the “landscape” of Israel and mean its geographical characteris-
tics. But the English term “landscape” comes from the Old English precur-
sors landskipe and landscaef, meaning to scrape and shape, to hew or form
the earth.50 A “landscape” was epitomized by a plowed field. John Stilgoe’s
classic definition captures this sense: “the antithesis of wilderness is
Introduction 13
landscape, the land shaped by men [sic].”51 Both a poem and a landscape are
artifactual:52 they are made things. There is an ancient connection between
writing poetry and working land: the Hebrew root ḥ-r-š refers to both plow-
ing and inscription; the Greek adverb boustrophedon describes both plow-
ing and writing in lines in alternating directions, in the way an ox turns at
the end of the row to plow the next one.53 There is, then, a certain fitting-
ness to exploring poetry through the concept of landscape: landscapes are
both processes and experiences—both engagements with and reflections
on places—and so they are able to account for the material grounding as
well as the aesthetic form of the Song’s lyricism. I will explore this double
aspect of landscape in the following.
Geographers have developed a robust articulation of landscape that
accounts for both these features, which I will borrow. The first aspect of
the landscape concept is the material intervention of humans in the land.
It is important to distinguish between the given—the land itself—and the
made—the landscape; that is, landscape is not merely the given geophys-
ical characteristics of a portion of the earth. As Augustin Berque writes,
“Landscape is not the environment.”54 If “environment” is a term that
assumes human absence, or imagines that the world is a neutral back-
drop against which the history and activities of humans unfold, “land-
scape” acknowledges the deep association between humans and the land.
Landscape is a complex of interdependent phenomena. It is “an area made
up of a distinct association of forms, both physical and cultural.”55 This
association of forms, this closely intertwined relationship between the
physical environs and human experience, is captured by Carl Sauer’s term
“cultural landscape.” He writes, “[t]‌he cultural landscape is fashioned from
the natural landscape by a cultural group. Culture is the agent, the natu-
ral area is the medium, the cultural landscape the result.”56 In order to
understand the natural landscape, that is, one must account for the ways
in which this topography is continually shaped by evolving cultural forces
and habits of daily life.57 To study the landscape means, at least in part, to
study human interventions in the landscape. Such a study acknowledges
that landscape is a process, an idea already latent in the verbal usage, “to
landscape.”58
The second aspect of landscape’s double meaning draws out human
experience and aesthetic form. In addition to the shaping of the land
(especially through practices of farming and gardening), the term also
signifies an aesthetic form. When the Dutch term landschap was intro-
duced to English in the sixteenth century, it came from the visual arts as a
14 Introduction
technical term for a type of painting: the figuration of natural scenery. For
several centuries in Europe (particularly in England), the idea of landscape
involved both of these two aspects: “landscape” refers to worked land, and
to artistic reflection on land.59 Berque goes on to write, “[t]‌he environment
is the factual aspect of a milieu: that is, of the relationship that links a
society with space and with nature. Landscape is the sensible aspect of
that relationship.”60 By emphasizing the “sensible aspect” of the relation-
ship between society and nature, Berque foregrounds the communal and
symbolic.61 Landscape is an experience that is mediated symbolically. One
place that such symbolic aspects are worked out is in texts:
Landscape as experience takes into account the degree to which the

landscape was perceived by the original inhabitants and was imbued
with meaning. Ironically, in the Near East, given the superb textual
corpus that often refers to the metaphysical world or the world of
experience, this area of research has been rather untapped.62
The texts offer a window into “landscape as experience”: how humans

invest the topography with meaning. A landscape thus has cognitive
dimensions; it draws on emotions, imagination, and tradition. Textual
representations of landscape (through poetry, maps, lists, paintings, or
myths) are a crucial aspect of the community’s engagement with land.63
A minimal definition might be drawn out of this double meaning I have
been highlighting: When I use the term “landscape,” I mean a materi-
ally grounded textual representation of human experience in a locale.64
I propose this definition tentatively and pragmatically, hoping to provide
some clarity and specification, since “landscape” is used in a wide diver-
sity of ways, variously to signify topography itself; or certain approaches to
archaeology, geomorphology, iconography, political boundaries, ideologies
of empire and expansion; or still yet, as a backdrop for literary events.65
While the breadth of use indicates the generative possibilities of the land-
scape concept, it also points to a need for critical specification of concepts
and terminology. For our purposes, “landscape” refers to physical topog-
raphy, as well as to the human experience of that topography, which both
conditions and is conditioned by the land.66 These two aspects of the land-
scape concept— process and experience— are especially apt since they
imply a close relationship between materiality and textuality (or, history
and literature).67 Both are necessarily mediated by embodied experience
in a place.
Introduction 15
I choose the word “place” here, in distinction from the broader term
“space,” which has been used more frequently in discussions of biblical
texts (drawing from the work of Henri Lefebvre and Edward Soja).68 But,
while “space,” is abstract, “place,” on the other hand, indicates a space from
a humanistic perspective, one that is seen, known, and integrated into a
system of thought or worldview. Yi-Fu Tuan writes, “What begins as undif-
ferentiated space becomes place as we get to know it better and endow it
with value.”69 “Place” highlights the element of experience, which has also
been central to my discussion of landscape. How does a space become a
place? Through time and proximity: “when space feels thoroughly famil-
iar to us, it has become place.”70 Tuan theorizes “human-place relations
with an eye toward restoring ‘place as the locus of human fulfillment.’ ”71
Like the “critical spatiality” approaches, a landscape approach is a “con-
structionist discourse” that seeks to study “how spaces are arranged, con-
structed, perceived, valued, practiced, and resisted.”72 It differs, though,
in its decided emphasis on the lyrical experience of places. So, for exam-
ple, Christopher Meredith and Sophie Thöne both offer spatial readings of
the Song that describe how space constitutes relationships. For Meredith,
space is “a process by which relationships come into being: relationships
between scenes, between characters, and, ultimately, between readers and
pages.”73 For Thöne, space constitutes gendered relationships, especially
by dichotomizing male and female.74 My intention, though, is to turn the
object of consideration around to look at the landscape not only for what it
tells us about human relationships, but also how it shapes and is shaped
by land itself.
As I have been insisting, textual representations of landscape are cru-
cial to understanding a society’s modes of valuing the natural world, its
sense of place. Such works “are the encodings that set and enframe human
situations. They are the posts that map out a ‘landscape.’ ”75 As we read the
Song, then, we will examine the kinds of experiences that human beings
may have had in actual landscapes, and the types of values with which they
invested the land as a result of that experience. Many of the landscapes in
the Song are places in Tuan’s sense: they are sites of yearning, memory,
and knowledge. One example of this is the appeal to the mother’s house:
O that you were like a brother to me

who suckled the breasts of my mother.
I would find you outside and I would kiss you
and no one would even look down on me.
16 Int roduction
I would lead you, I would bring you

into the house of my mother who bore me.
I would give you spiced wine to drink,
the juice of my pomegranates. (Song 8:1–â•‰2)
The young woman articulates her desire for her lover in terms of an inti-
mately known landscape—â•‰the mother’s house. But this is not merely
a “space” that symbolizes union. It is also a highly charged “place” that
draws on childhood memories of nurture and care, as well as a lifetime
of experiences of food production.76 It enables us to perceive significant
continuity with the passage that precedes it, in which the young woman
imagines bringing the young man into a vineyard, to see whether “the
pomegranates are in bloom” (Song 7:12). A landscape approach allows us
to describe the material experience of life in the ancient world—â•‰the pro-
cesses by which a vineyard is first a site of labor (care for tender pomegran-
ate plants) and food production (sustenance for a household), and then
becomes charged with erotic meaning. The pomegranates in blossom are
a metaphor for the young woman’s sexuality, hence the pleasing pain of
longing to give her lover their juice. The poem enables us to savor the
transformations of such experiences in landscapes that would otherwise
be lost. In this way, as Tuan writes, “[l]â•„iterary art can illuminate the incon-
spicuous fields of human care.”77
Reading for Landscape in Song 2:8–â•‰17

As lyric, the Song’s landscapes are fragmentary, episodic, and evocative;
they are “impossible to put on a map.”78 For example, Song 1 opens with a
royal setting: “the king brought me to his chambers” (v. 4). But the poem
doesn’t dwell there for long: the young woman’s speech moves the reader
imaginatively into the desert as she compares herself to the “tents of
Kedar” (v. 5), then imagines herself in a vineyard (v. 6), and, in another
breath, the sheep’s pasturage (v. 8). The landscapes of the Song are always
blending and shifting. This is part of the Song’s poetic strategy, which
also switches easily from rich metaphors to more direct narration, and
back.79 The poet’s viewpoint is not fixed, but ranges through a variety of
landscapes, drawing freely on diverse elements in its meditation on love.
And yet, the repertoire is somewhat restricted: the landscapes of the Song
tend to coalesce around productive, small-â•‰scale agriculture.80 In one of the
Introduction 17
more clearly individuated early poems of the Song (Song 2:8–17), several
poetic strategies crystallize the issue of landscape. In it, we can see the
two-part concept of landscape that I have been working out: its material
grounding in human process, and its aesthetic dimensions.
Song 2:8–17 is poem of springtime: it is part of that universal celebra-
tion of eroticism, in which the lovers awaken to one another just as the
land and its creatures awaken to the return of sun and growth: “Love is
springtime.”81 In this text, the poet capitalizes on the material heteroge-
neity of the physical topography of ancient Israel, with its hills and moun-
tains (v. 8; v. 17), its familiar architecture of the home (v. 9), its agricultural
fields in springtime (vv. 10–13), and its shepherds at pasture (v. 16). In this
way, Song 2:8–17 serves as a microcosm of the physical landscape of the
whole book, relying on the experience of the pattern of life in a rural or
semi-rural settlement that would have been relatively consistent through-
out history in the region. The ease with which the poet shifts back and
forth between the images reflects a sense of the material reality of daily life
in this ancient environment, in which these distinct landscapes also would
have been interwoven, perhaps even proximate enough to be traversable
by foot. At the center of the poem, the lover speaks:
Arise, my dear, my beauty, and come.

For look, winter is gone
The rains are over and gone
flowers appear in the land.
The time of singing has come
and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.
The fig ripens its fruit
the vine blossoms give fragrance.
Arise my dear, my beauty, and come. (Song 2:10–13)
Here we see clearly the poem’s grounding in a material reality of land.

The poem draws on landscape features, and does so with some descrip-
tive density, drawing our attention to a place in time and space. This is, in
fact, one of the most detailed descriptions of the natural world in the Song
(perhaps surpassed only by the garden text, Song 4:12–5:1). The young man
describes the season in detail—noting climatological factors (the rains
have gone), telltale features of the natural environment (the flowers have
appeared, the turtledove is singing), and the human practices that attend
18 Introduction
the season (ʿēt hazzāmîr, the time of singing), which result in flourishing
crops (figs and vines, vv. 6, 7). The description is available phenomenolog-
ically, through all of the senses: the rain is heard and seen and felt, flowers
are seen and smelled and touched, birds are heard, and the fruits are fra-
grant and perhaps tasted. The poem draws on local, seasonal knowledge, a
signal of the landscape idea. The return of the migratory turtledove (hattôr)
is an emblem of the arrival of spring, when the birds travel north again for
the summer months.82 The landscape available to the young man’s percep-
tion is thus not static or atemporal, but shifts in undulating patterns over
time. The perception of changing time is reiterated: the rains have passed
and gone, and this is now “the time of singing/pruning.” There is a subtle
wordplay here: ʿēt hazzāmîr higgîaʿ, I translated earlier as “the time of sing-
ing has come.” But hazzāmîr (“singing”) is a homonym that also means
“pruning.” Translators, of course, must choose one or the other, but the
poet plays with the coincidence, which allows human voices to mingle
with the voice of turtledove, even while they celebrate their own labor in
the fields. This is landscape in the first sense that I highlighted—namely,
it evokes a lived, material experience of human intervention in the topog-
raphy. It is not “wild nature,” but land that is shaped.
The second sense of landscape I have been highlighting is its aesthetic
dimension. A prominent strategy of this poem is a series of rhetorical
frames that crystallize its aesthetic. The first of these frames can be seen
by taking a step back to the beginning of the poem:
The voice of my lover! Here! he is coming

leaping on the mountains
bounding on the hills.
My lover resembles a gazelle
or a young deer.
Here he is, standing
outside our wall,
peering through the window,
gazing through the lattice.
My lover speaks and says to me … (Song 2:8–9)
The lines describing the spring landscape I cited earlier are quoted
speech—the description is framed within the young woman’s speech.
The young woman speaks, and discloses what the young man says. This
Introduction 19
initial frame is complemented by a second frame: the young man’s speech

frames yet another speech, qôl hattôr (“the voice of the turtledove”). The
“voice” of the bird is embedded in the “voice” of the young man, which
is embedded in the “voice” of the young woman (which is of course also
embedded in the voice of the poet). This artful framing enacts an aesthetic
of landscape as it embeds the lovers’ relationship in an experience of and
discourse about land. At the same time, the land can only be accessed by
the reader through the several frames of the poem’s speakers. It comes to
us consciously mediated by human perception and judgments of value.
The role of perception is a significant structural principle in the poem.
The twice-repeated presentative particle hinnēh (“Here!”) emphasizes the
young woman’s perception of her lover, even as it positions us as perceiv-
ers, both as her and beside her, at the window. Similarly, the verb dômeh
(“resemble”) self-consciously distances the lover from the young woman’s
metaphor about him: “My lover resembles a gazelle or a young deer” satu-
rates the description with her own awareness of her sense of perception.
The self-conscious making of the poem is both grounded in the landscape
and is itself an aesthetic of landscape, dependent on the sense of the
human perceiver.
Seen through the eyes of the young-woman-as-perceiver, the young
man’s form is part of the landscape. He is like a gazelle or the fawn of a
deer “coming,” “leaping,” “bounding,” “appearing,” “standing,” “peering,”
and “gazing.” All these verbs are participles, not finite verbs. They render
the lover, as it were, in still life. He is framed by her vision through the
window, forever in movement, but always static, near and far at once. He
is like a gazelle in a painting: She perceives his presence, but cannot fully
access it, arrested as it is in time and space.83 She describes the material
landscape, drawing on memories of the gazelle, both elegant and timid,
part of the known landscape but not (yet) fully known. While the poem
places the young woman peering out through a window, she is also the
active agent whose speech enfolds his speech, and whose description gives
him the bounded vitality of an image. In this way, the poem destabilizes its
own gender roles: while in one sense the young woman is “enclosed, sur-
rounded, and contained”—she looks through a window—in another sense
the young woman is the source of the only real action of the poem, which
is description.84 It is her voice that animates her lover.85 This animation
depends on an acute awareness of the human perceiver, who is attentive
to the landscape and whose art speaks in its terms.
20 Introduction
This structural embeddedness that I have noted—the voice of the land

nested in the voice of the young man, which is nested in the voice of the
young woman—echoes a larger thematic bias that we see throughout the
Song, namely, that human experience is inseparable from the apprecia-
tion of and experience within the material landscape. The play with the
repeated word qôl (“voice/sound”) is one example. The word qôl (“voice/
sound”) is repeated four times, threading a stitch of coherence through
each level of the poem’s frames (2:8, 12, 14). It is the first word of the
young woman’s speech (“The voice of my lover!”); it is what the young
man longs to hear from the young woman (“let me hear your voice /for
your voice is sweet”); it is what the turtledove says (“The voice of the tur-
tledove is heard in our land”). The Song consistently blurs boundaries,
making us wonder where people end and the earth begins. The young
man is imagined as a gazelle, and so when we hear his approach (qôl dôdî,
“the voice of my lover!”), it is not clear whether it is his speech or the
sound of his hooves rustling the brush outside her window. Similarly, the
young woman is described as a dove, so when the young man says that
her voice is sweet, is it the speaking voice of a human he describes, or the
coo of a dove? In the case of qôl here in v. 14, Brown-Driver-Briggs calls it
an instance of “human speech,” while Koehler-Baumgartner analyzes it
as a “loud noise of animals.” This interpretive disagreement points up a
dynamic that the poetry seems quite happy to exploit: Is it a sound or a
voice? A human one, or an animal one? The poetry self-consciously blurs
boundaries between the landscape and the lovers. We will see this met-
aphorical sensibility manifested in other ways, especially as the young
man is imagined as the shepherd, and the young woman is imagined
in terms of the vineyard, the garden, and the city. It is a kind of pleasant
astigmatism that threads throughout the entire book.
This poem, with its clear representation of the land and its aesthetic
embedding of voices, offers one example of the sense of landscape I have
been advocating, and hopefully gives a sample of its productive potential
for reading poetry. It can help us to explore the worldview of the ancient
writers and to understand “landscape as experience.”86 The texts are a pro-
found and still largely untapped resource in this way.
At the same time, it is one of the arguments of this study that such
understanding also has ethical implications for contemporary readers.87 It
is one of the privileges of lyric poetry to draw readers to reciprocal reflec-
tion on their own place and experience. As the young woman speaks, we
speak. In this way, the Song’s dialogic mode offers us an encounter—with
Introduction 21
ancient lovers, with ancient poets, and with their landscapes—that asks
us to see the world in a particular way. The poem beckons us: “see things
like this.” So for good reason, ecologically minded readers have begun to
turn to the Song for one source of ethical resources for thinking about
and responding to the contemporary ecological crisis. But for such read-
ers, the Song has largely been used as an example of “Eden restored,” a
celebration of an ideal of harmony.88 For example, Ellen Bernstein writes,
“Neither anthropocentric nor biocentric, the Song expresses a ‘natural
intelligence.’ What I mean by this is an intimacy with nature, an identi-
fication with nature, an intuitive knowing of nature born of the continu-
ity between the body of flesh and the body of the earth…. [It] is a paean
to love, nature, beauty, and wholeness.”89 Similarly, Daniel Grossberg
writes, “The delights of nature abound in Song of Songs to the virtual
exclusion of harshness … [It] sings of the harmony in nature.”90 As such,
readers have rightly noted, there is a pervasive insistence in the Song on
flourishing. But to focus exclusively on flourishing does not do justice to
the complexity of the Song itself.91
As I will suggest only briefly here—but which I will draw out in the
readings in each of the following chapters—is that there are two ethical
benefits to working with a landscape concept. The first is that it is human-
istic (though not anthropocentric) in its orientation. This is easy to see
in the Song, since humans and human love provide the central tension.
Reading for landscape, then, will not be a pursuit of pure “nature,” as
opposed to culture. As landscape architect James Corner writes, “[o]‌wing
to the inevitable imaging that enframes and represents nature to a given
society, the possibilities of a cultureless nature necessarily remain abso-
lutely unknown and unimaginable.”92 On the Song’s own evaluation, I will
suggest, a properly ordered humanism is capable of centering our values
of the natural world through the perspective of flourishing—and human
flourishing is not incidental to this, but intrinsic.93
The second benefit of a landscape approach for ethical reflection is
that its aesthetic orientation prioritizes the complexity of the lyric mode.
It does not attempt to resolve the landscapes of the Song into reified cat-
egories (male- female, public-private, nature-
culture, sexy- unsexy, etc.).
Meredith helpfully describes the problem: “[Such scholarly] divisions beg
the question of why the text is more spatially coherent in analysis than it is
in reading.”94 Meredith argues that the resistance to such easy categoriza-
tion is a function of the Song’s textuality: “Texts are, in fact, re-performances
of the spatialities by which texts come into being. By the same stroke, space
22 Introduction
is a re-performance of the textualities by which spaces comes into being.

The interplay, or better: the intercourse, that takes place between these two
projects is in a sense the very heart of the Song’s sexual discourse.”95 As
I have begun to suggest, though, this is more specifically a function of the
Song’s lyricism. And these spaces are not exclusively “harmonious,” as the
ecological readings cited earlier aver;96 rather, the Song seems cognizant of
threats to order and to love. The garden, the desert, cultivated spaces like
the vineyard and pasturage for sheep occur in a pattern of appearance and
disappearance that interlock in ambivalent ways with more strictly human
spaces like the city and the homestead. In this same poem, Song 2:8–17,
some of this ambivalence comes into view:
Catch us the foxes
the little foxes
who are ruining the vineyards.
Our vineyards are in blossom. (2:15)
A number of questions present themselves: Who is speaking? Who is

addressed? Who is charged to catch foxes? Who is implied in “our vine-
yards”? What do the foxes, and the catching of foxes, signify? How do foxes
spoil vineyards, anyway?97 In raising these questions, I am lifting up the
perplexing quality of these lines: In a poem that has had such a clear fram-
ing of voices, these lines feel almost disjointed—a breach in the frame,
an interlude without a clear connection to what precedes and follows. But
if we pause, and turn the attention back to the landscape, several things
emerge. In the world of the poem, there are foxes in the vineyard. They
are ambivalent themselves—they are “little,” which mitigates the sense
of their threat. But they are still threatening: the verb √ḥ-b-l (“destroy”)
is never used for benign action; moreover, foxes are conventional agents
of destruction in biblical texts (Judg 16:4; Ezek 13:4; Ps 63:11; Lam 5:18;
Neh 3:35).98 Despite this destructive potential—and increasing the sense of
urgency about the foxes—the vineyards are budding (səmādar99). A land-
scape awareness enables us to see that the poem presents a world that is
still coming into full fruition. It is enough, without attempting to fully
unpack the metaphors, to see that the landscape contains competing
forces; it is beset. As Marcia Falk has argued, the foxes are one of the
“ominous undercurrents” that weave through the Song.100 Foxes are oppor-
tunistic omnivores who would happily prey on ground-feeding birds like
pigeons and gazelles, and so they pose a threat to the lovers, who in this
Introduction 23
poem are imagined as dove and gazelle.101 Other hints of such ominous
undercurrents—and they are mostly hints, not fully limned—include the
lion and leopard that haunt the mountains (4:8), and the city whose guards
wound the young woman (5:7). According to the imagination of the Song,
landscapes are shaped by potentially dangerous competing forces.102 At the
same time, this poem gives a clue to the ethical potential I have begun to
introduce: the vineyards are “ours” (kərāmênû). The first person common
pronoun “our” signals that landscapes are not neutral backdrops; rather,
they are places with the dignity of personal knowledge and the pride of
possession.103 This echoes the description of land earlier in the poem: “the
voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.” The only time the word ʾereṣ
(“land,”) occurs in the Song is twice, here at the heart of the poem of
2:8–17. It is not “earth” as an autonomous agent or an abstract space.104 It
is a bounded, perceivable landscape that provides a place for the perpet-
ual tasks of daily life, the patterns of work and relationship that persist in
the topography of the known. “Our land” is the place where lovers share a
sense of belonging. In the “foxes” interlude, this sense of belonging comes
with a sense of requirement, even troth.
But in a moment, as quickly as they have come, the foxes are gone
again. In a similar way, the lovers appear and disappear to one another—
she is a pigeon hiding in the cracks of the rock, he is a gazelle darting
away over the hills. The landscape of the Song, in this way, is a patchwork
of appearance and disappearance; it enfolds the lovers, and it is also sub-
ject to their care. The sense of identity and belonging in the land and the
attendant notions of obligation and care, I will seek to show, largely define
the sense of landscape in the Song of Songs.
As this reading has begun to suggest, the Song is clearly cognizant of
land, and so we can expect our investigation into its imaginational land-
scapes to illuminate the experience and values of the natural world for the
ancient poet and audience. At the same time, a landscape concept enables
us to move nimbly through aspects of lyric interpretation. In what follows,
I will spend time with selected texts, showing how the Song moves in
and out of different imagined landscapes to build a complex, eidetic, and
highly variable experience. The Song seems to conceptualize the natural
world with distinct but fluid boundaries. I will trace four imaginational
landscapes in the Song, illuminated by the theoretical orientation I have
described here. Such an approach is not a methodology in a strict sense;
rather, it is a practical disposition that enables the reader to account for
a variety of features in the text. The advantages of this type of approach
24 Introduction
are several: first, it reveals how the poetry itself puts a high premium on
its material context. “Never is the power of the landscape idea underesti-
mated or severed from physical space.”105 This will be the central empha-
sis of Chapter 2, which explores the agrarian landscape that would have
grounded human experience in the ancient world. A landscape approach
also recognizes the necessarily complex relationship between the material
environment and the cultural processes that characterize human life in
that environment. The processes of shaping and reshaping will be exam-
ined, in different ways, in Chapters 3 and 4, which examine two land-
scapes of particular intensification: the garden and the city. Finally, the
landscape concept retains the idea of the human perceiver, which is a cru-
cial subject of the Song’s descriptive poems, absorbed as they are with the
gaze that beholds the lover’s body and finds a geography (the subject of
Chapter 5). Throughout these examinations, I will continue to draw on
aspects of landscape theory to enrich my analysis. Ultimately, the Song
of Songs imagines the lovers and the land as landscapes shaped by desire
and subject to conditions that require an ongoing ethic of care.
2
The Agrarian Landscape

What connections or responsibilities do we maintain
between our bodies and the earth?
W endell Berry (1977)
One of the most prominent landscapes in the Song is the farm.1 The
farm is close to the original sense of “landscape”: It is a portion of land
hewn by human hands, which Cicero called “second nature.” In his phil-
osophical treatise On the Nature of the Gods, he writes, “we sow corn, we
plant trees, we fertilize the soil by irrigation, we confine the rivers and
straighten or divert their courses. In fine, by means of our hands we essay
to create as it were a second nature within the world of nature” (II.lx).2 In
the Song, this “second nature” is a frequently evoked landscape, evident in
the pervasive imagery related to fields and vineyards (1:6, 14; 2:15; 7:13; 8:11,
12), cereal crops (2:7; 3:5; 7:2, 12), and orchards (4:13; 2:4; 3:4; 7:11–12; 8:2),
all of which were staples of the agrarian economy in ancient Israel and
Judah.3 The Song’s agricultural milieu is furthered by reference to animal
husbandry, the other cornerstone of the ancient agrarian economy: shep-
herds and sheep, too, frequently appear in the Song (1:7–8; 4:1–2; 6:5–6).4
The ancient farm was, persistently, a family farm. This farm was tra-
ditional, and its characteristics would be recognizable throughout much
of history in ancient Israel and, indeed, across the world. It was a config-
uration of nature, enclosed by human work, and directed toward human
ends. It would have utilized a variety of cultivated plants in order to diver-
sify nutritive value and maximize production.5 In the region of ancient
Israel and Judah, it would have comprised mainly fields and vineyards,
which are frequently evoked together in biblical texts as a merism for agri-
cultural potential (Lev 25:3–4; 1 Sam 8:14; Exod 22:4; Neh 5:11; Deut 32:32;
Isa 16:8; Hab 3:17; cf. CTU 1.23.8–11).6 These would have been the principal
products of such farms: “wine to gladden the human heart, oil to make
26 L andscape s of the Song of Song s
his face shine, and bread to sustain the human heart” (Ps 104:15). Such a
farm was usually worked by a family, which would have shared the various
tasks of labor, and so family members appear throughout the Song (1:6–â•‰7;
3:4, 11; 6:9; 8:1, 2, 5).7 A small-â•‰scale family farm would have to have been
locally adapted to the hilly, variable topography of Palestine. Because of the
dramatic contours of the region, steep ravines, and thin topsoil, the pro-
ductive capability of particular plots of land would have been highly par-
ticularized. Farmers would have needed an intimate, local knowledge of
their small parcels of geography.8 The success of such a farm, then, would
have depended upon the adaptation of agricultural practices to the unique
aspects of its location, effectively combining its productive elements to
stave off starvation, as well as resisting threats, including natural forces
such as drought, disease, and wild animals.
Despite the vulnerability of the small farm, this model is remarkably
resilient: “Like the annual plants on which farming life mostly depends,
the forces of nature and man can easily destroy it: but also like the grasses
razed by fire, it quickly re-â•‰establishes itself so long as some people remain.”9
Even the incursion of Assyria into the Levant, which brought with it trib-
utary expectations and new systems of production and exchange begin-
ning in the second half of the ninth century, would have decreased the
reserves and perhaps ownership patterns of individual farms, but probably
not their self-â•‰sufficiency or their family-â•‰based labor distribution.10 Indeed,
the tenacity of the farm is evident in the resurgence of rural settlements in
Yehud during the Persian period (one plausible time of the Song’s origin)
following the drastic decline at the end of the Iron Age.11 The combination
of vulnerability and fecundity is key to the lyric imagination of the Song of
Songs. The farmstead is a primary landscape in the Song, and it provides
a significant resource for the metaphorical imagination of the lovers. In
what follows, I offer readings of two texts that are grounded in the agricul-
tural landscape: Song 1:5–â•‰8 and 7:10–â•‰13. Close to the beginning and end of
the Song, they offer a sort of agrarian “frame,” recalling the fields to the
mind of the reader, reiterating a deep-â•‰seated connection between these
human lovers and their larger world. As I move through these readings, I
will draw some insights from contemporary agrarianism in order to help
underscore the ethics of agriculture.
Song 1:5–â•‰8
In an early section of the Song, the young woman and the young man are
imagined in an agricultural landscape like the one I have just described.12
The Agrarian Landscape 27
The poem plays with shifting landscapes. It is composed structurally of

three sections. In the first two sections, the young woman speaks, address-
ing first her friends, “Dark I am, but lovely /â•‰O daughters of Jerusalem”;
then addressing the young man, “Tell me /â•‰O you whom I love /â•‰where
do you pasture?” In the third section, the young women reply: “If you do
not know /â•‰O beautiful among women /â•‰go out in the tracks of the flock”
(v. 8).13 Each moment of direct address is followed by an evocation of an
imagined landscape, the countryside in various manifestations: desert (v.
5); vineyard (v. 6); and pasturage (vv. 7, 8). As I will show, the speakers
evoke the materiality of the agrarian landscape, which then provides the
substance of playful metaphors for the lovers themselves. The conceptual-
ization of these agrarian landscapes has particular ethical implications, as
it orients the poem around labor, cultivation, and care.
The Materiality of the Vineyard

The poem begins with a striking claim:
Dark I am, but14 lovely,

O daughters of Jerusalem
Like the tents of Kedar
Like the curtains of Salmah.15 (1:5)
This claim about her beauty is elaborated with descriptive language that
evokes the desert: the young woman says that she is “dark,” and “dark-
ish,” like the “tents of Kedar.” The name Kedar (qēdār) plays on the root
q-â•‰d-â•‰r meaning “to be dark” (1 Kgs 18:45; Jer 4:28; 8:28; Ezek 32:7–â•‰8; Joel
2:10; etc.).16 The name evokes a distant, pastoralist nation (Jer 2:10) asso-
ciated with flocks (Isa 60:7; Jer 49:28–â•‰29; Ezek 27:21), and remembered
for fierceness in battle (Isa 21:16–â•‰17). Their iconic black goats-â•‰hair tents
would be the refuge of nomads from the desert sun (Ps 120:5; Jer 49). By
the image of the black goats-â•‰hair tents in the desert, the young woman
speaks of herself in exoticizing terms, creating an image of a fierce for-
eign tribe surviving in the desert, and conveys a sense of exposure to the
elements: she is as exposed as the open desert. In this couplet, and in
the following two couplets, the poem plays with the idea that the young
woman is a shepherd in this desert landscape. It delays for eight lines the
non-â•‰metaphorical “aside” in which she reveals the reason for her dark-
ness: “they made me keeper of the vineyards” (v. 6d). This belated reve-
lation enjoins the reader to reimagine the lines already heard, through a
28 L andscapes of the Song of Songs
process of “retrospective patterning.”17 Through the temporal experience

of the poem, new thematic information is added that demands a revision
of the previous working understanding of the poem.
Do not look at me because I am dark,18

Because the sun has gazed at me.
My mother’s sons burned against me.
They made me keeper19 of the vineyards.
My own vineyard I have not kept. (1:6)
The poem plays with the š- sound here, repeating the hushing sibilant
sound “sh” at the beginning, middle, and end of four words in a row: Šeʾănî
Šəḥarḥōret/ŠeŠŠĕzāpatnî haŠŠāmeŠ. This strong consonance links the
young woman’s “darkness” (šəḥarḥōret) with the “burning sun” (šeššĕzāpatnî
haššāmeš), and it recalls the hushing tones of the Song’s ascription, Šîr
haŠŠîrîm ʾăŠer liŠlōmōh (“the Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s,” 1:1) and
its opening acclamation yiŠŠāqēnî minnəŠîqôt pîhû (“let him kiss me with
the kisses of his mouth,” 1:2). These words push the sounds to the front
of the mouth, like a whisper. They build the sense that what we are hear-
ing is overheard, a kind of private revelation. This soundplay also creates a
thematic link between the darkness of the young woman with the burning
sun. The natural initial reading of this line is that the young woman is dark
because of the burning sun of the open desert. But the belated revelation
that she is the keeper of vineyards (v. 6d) causes a retrospective revision of
this reading—we see now that we are not in the desert, but rather a domes-
tic vineyard. At this revelation, the reader must revisit the idea of the desert
with which the poem begins to consider in what ways the young woman
in the vineyard is like that desert landscape. The answer to that question
requires that the reader or listener draw on a bank of assumed knowledge
about the material realities of vine dressing in ancient Israel.
One material reality of vine dressing on which the poem capitalizes is
the young woman as a vine dresser laboring outdoors (1:6). This reflects
a likely agricultural reality for small-scale farmers, ancient and modern
alike: the household and all of its able-bodied members would have been
involved in the production of food (with varied seasonal intensity, with
all hands helping during the harvest, for example). Other biblical texts
serve as witnesses to women’s involvement in several aspects of viticul-
ture, including purchasing and participating in the household’s vineyard
(Prov 31:16), attending the grape harvest, perhaps with ritual roles (Judg
21:20–22), and drinking wine (Judg 16:27; Ruth 2:14; 1 Sam 1:9).20 Tasks
for youth likely involved hoeing, weeding, planting, harvesting, and—as
this text indicates—guarding the vineyard.21 As a guard, she would have
kept threats such as thieves and wild animals like boars or jackals at bay
(“Catch us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards,” 2:15; cf. Ps.
80:14). The poem plays with this material background, drawing out the
sense of the vineyard’s vulnerability as it works out its lyrical purposes.
Vines are grown from shoots of existing plants, are transplanted into
terraced groves, which require planning and heavy landscaping labor,
and then they require training and pruning.22 These activities are future-
oriented, and would provide a farm with crops of grapes for generations.
Vines generally do not produce their first meager crops until at least
their fourth or fifth years after planting, and a full crop often takes a full
decade to mature.23 The grape harvest is labor-intensive and intergen-
erational, in part because of the vulnerability of grapes to overripeness
and rot, which requires a fast-moving and skilled team of harvesters.24
In this way, the depth and power of the vineyard’s symbolism stem from
viticultural realities: Vines are a high-commitment crop that takes years
of intensive care and cultivation in order to be productive. Wine, their
main product, is itself also labor-intensive, involving harvesting, tread-
ing the grapes on presses, collecting the juices in vats, then transporting
and storing the must while it fermented into wine.25 Fermentation, the
final step in the process, acts as a preservative, effectively converting an
unstable fruit into a source of nutrition and enjoyment that would last.
All these realities suggest that the ultimately desirable products—fruit,
wine—will only be the reward of intensive, ongoing maintenance. Both
the vineyard and wine evoke a sense of hopeful futurity that is neverthe-
less fundamentally contingent on human care.
Like the desert, the vineyard is subject to the heat of the sun. That is,
the sun’s somewhat hostile quality represents the challenging realities
of subsistence agriculture in a hot, arid region. The summer (from mid-
June to mid-September) is marked by a complete absence of rainfall, and
this long dry period can be intensely hot under the unrelenting sun. It is
during this period that the vines flourish and grapes ripen, relying on the
morning dew for their moisture, and it would also be during this period
that much of the work of vine dressing would take place.26 In this way,
the climate interacts with the landscape, an interaction expressed most
visibly in vegetation, which “arrests or transforms the climactic forces.”27
Pruning both the leaves and branches of the vine would increase the
fruit’s exposure to the sun during the grape’s final stage of ripening.28 The
tenth-century Gezer inscription reflects the agricultural cycle in ancient
Palestine, and includes yrḥw zmr (“two months of pruning”).29 Given its
context in the calendar (taking place after harvesting, sowing, and the
barley harvest, but before the fall month of ingathering), the task is set
in July and August, which corresponds to contemporary Palestinian prac-
tices.30 Pruning is a fundamental practice of cultivation that makes the
vine flourish, and leaving off the task of pruning is a figure for abandon-
ment: “I will put it to waste: it will not be pruned or hoed” (Isa 5:6; cf. Lev
25:3–4; perhaps also CTU 1.23, obverse 8–11). The young woman is imag-
ined in the material landscape of the vineyard in the heat of summer, in
which she is working to maintain the vines. Both the young woman as
the exposed worker and the vines themselves are vulnerable to the blaz-
ing sun. The grape crop, too, can be devastated by exposure: “Will [the
vine of Judah] not utterly wither when the east wind strikes it—wither
away on the bed where it grew?” (Ezek 17:10).31 Similarly, in the Ugaritic
epic of Aqhat, Daniel “[a]‌djures the clouds in the awful heat, /‘Let the
clouds make rain in the summer, /the dew lay on the grapes.’ ”32 The
sun is personified, “gazing” at the young woman, and is an ambivalent
figure, emblemizing both the hostile elements and the possibility of the
vineyard’s growth.
In the next lines, a wordplay capitalizes on this ambivalence: “The sons
of my mother burned against me, /They made me keeper of the vine-
yards” (1:6). The word “burned” (niḥărû) can be construed either from the
root ḥ-r-h, meaning “to burn, be angry” (cf. Isa 41:11; 45:24), or from the
root ḥ-r-r, meaning “to burn, scorch” (cf. Ps 102:4). There is a nice sym-
metry here—while the sun is personified as it gazes at the young woman,
the brothers take on the characteristics of the sun: they burn. The role of
the brothers here is somewhat opaque; but a kin-based agricultural system
would have relied on their labor, along with the young woman’s. Like the
sun, their anger has a bit of a sinister tone. Just as the sun is both a neces-
sity and a potential threat, the brothers are also a necessity to the vineyard
as well as a potential threat to it. The intertwined themes of exposure and
refuge suggest that the desire for erotic encounter hinges on the power
of the sun that blends into the possibility of harm. This vulnerability is
also played up in the expressed need to “guard” the vineyard. The vine-
yard would have been vulnerable, not just to the elements, but to threats
of all kinds. Both walls and towers are known features of ancient vine-
yards (Isa 5:1–7; Isa 27:3), and would have provided deterrence for animals
and defense from attacking forces in war, which would routinely raid or
destroy orchards, fields, and vineyards (Judg 6:3–â•‰6; 15:3–â•‰5; 2 Kgs 3:5).33
Implicit in these lines, then, is a sense of the landscape’s vulnerability,
which will require the young woman’s vigilant care.
The Materiality of Shepherding

In verses 7–â•‰8 the landscape shifts from the vineyard to the shepherds’
fields (cf. 2:16–â•‰17; 6:2–â•‰3, 11).
Tell me,
O you whom I love,
Where do you pasture?
Where do you rest at noon?
Why should I be like one wrapped up
Beside the flocks of your companions? (1:7)
This easy transition is a feature of the Song’s poetic style, as well as a

reflection of the material reality of closely interweaving agricultural zones.
Sedentary herding practice was to pen flocks at the homestead at night,
and to graze during the day among both uncultivated pasturage and culti-
vated fields. This meant that shepherds and farmers would overlap in their
daily work. Occasionally this would lead to competition; literary texts such
as the Sumerian dialogue “The Shepherd and the Farmer” and the story of
Cain and Abel (Gen 4) dramatize this dynamic interaction between farm-
ing and shepherding. Despite the potential for conflict, the Sumerian dia-
logue resolves in hospitality and friendship: “Let your sheep pasture amid
my grain-â•‰stalks … become my companion.”34 Likewise, here in the Song
the two modes seem complementary.
Commentators frequently take the shepherding imagery to represent
leisure and pastoral idleness. For instance, Marvin Pope has written, “[the
shepherd] is idle all day and alone in the field and thus always acces-
sible for a love tryst.”35 Similarly, J. Cheryl Exum writes, “the harmony
and simplicity of life in tune with nature enjoyed by shepherds and other
rural folk is idealized.”36 Such readings highlight the presumed ease of an
agrarian life. And there are certainly images of pleasure and of rest in this
passage and throughout the Song of Songs. Here, for instance, the young
woman is seeking the shepherd’s tents (v. 8) to find where they are rest-
ing during the heat of the day (v. 7). Elsewhere in the Song, lovemaking
is compared to a king’s leisure on his couch (1:12) and to resting in the

shade of an apple tree (2:3; 8:5). To exclusively highlight the leisure of
love, though, doesn’t fully acknowledge the fragility of the landscape of
food production. Ruminants such as sheep and goats become more sus-
ceptible to diseases as a result of breeding, and the domesticated flocks
live in large groups in the open country when they are under human
care, making them all the more vulnerable to predation.37 The very fact
of human intervention in raising sheep and goats thus leads to the ani-
mals’ greater dependency on human care. As the shepherd attends the
flock, he is exposed to the same risks as his animals. The biblical tradi-
tions remember David as a shepherd who had to defend his herd against
a lion and a bear, using the same defensive skills that enabled him to kill
Goliath in battle (1 Sam 17:34, 49). The kinds of risks a shepherd might
face are articulated by Jacob’s complaint to Laban in Genesis 31 about the
many hardships he faced as a shepherd:
These twenty years I have been with you; your ewes and your female
goats have not miscarried, and I have not eaten the rams of your
flocks. That which was torn by wild beasts I did not bring to you;
I bore the loss of it myself; of my hand you required it, whether
stolen by day or stolen by night. It was like this with me: by day the
heat consumed me, and the cold by night, and my sleep fled from
my eyes. These twenty years I have been in your house; I served you
fourteen years for your two daughters, and six years for your flock,
and you have changed my wages ten times. (Gen 31:38–41)
His (melodramatic) complaint points to the potential difficulties faced

by flock and shepherd. These include starvation (v. 38), wild predators,
thieves (v. 39), exposure to extreme elements, fatigue (v. 40), and precari-
ous economic circumstances (v. 41). Jacob summarizes this laundry list of
difficulties as “my affliction and the labor of my hands” (v. 42). Similarly,
the comfort the shepherd provides in the Twenty-third Psalm is a contrast
to the dark valley and the fear of harm that might come upon the sheep
(Ps 23:4). The Song, too, does not forget that the labor of the shepherd’s
hands is rife with peril: wild animals lurk in the hills, as lions and leopards
in the mountains are a distant but very real menace to the shepherd and
the flock alike (4:8). As these examples indicate, shepherding presupposes
not just the leisure for a “love tryst,” but, on some level, an awareness of
struggle for survival.
In this poem, the shepherd and his flock are subject to the burning
sun, much in the way that the young woman and her vines are. The young
woman cannot find him (v. 7) because he is taking shelter at noon from the
highest heat of the day. The poem continues to plays with the ambivalent
presence of the sun. The consuming heat in the exposed pasturage forces
the young man to seek shelter, drawing on the same perceived threat of
high heat as in Jacob’s complaint, “… by day the heat consumed me”
(Gen 31:40). In seeking refuge, he becomes hidden to the young woman.
As she searches for him, she, too, voices an anxiety about needing to find
shelter, “Why should I be like one wrapped up?” The agricultural land-
scape indexes the lovers’ longing by providing an obstacle—the searing
sun—that prolongs their unfulfilled desire. At the same time, this obstacle
also provides an occasion for their desire—if she can find his tent, perhaps
there they will enjoy a tryst after all.
If you do not know for yourself,

O beautiful among women,
Go out in the tracks of the flock
and pasture your kids
beside the dwellings of the shepherds. (1:8)
The Daughters of Jerusalem, who have been listening to the young

woman, address her with their characteristic phrase hayyāpāh bannāšîm
(“beautiful among women”; cf. 5:9 and 6:1), which bolsters the young
woman’s assertion of her beauty (“dark I am, but lovely,” 1:5). This last
section of the first poem diverges somewhat from the lines that precede
it. It is not marked by soundplay, like the repeated š-and ī-sounds of verse
6; it doesn’t use syntactic parallelism to create symmetrical lines through
word repetition, as previous lines do: “like the tents of Kedar /like the
curtains of Salmah,” “Where do you pasture? /Where do you rest?” (vv. 5
and 7). Instead, these lines are a single, long prose-like sentence advising
the young woman to go on a journey, to follow the flocks into the land-
scape in pursuit of her lover. They reiterate the theme with which the
poem began—the idea that the young woman, too, is a shepherd—which
had been deferred by the interlude about the vineyard. These lines imi-
tate the journey they bespeak—they are themselves an unusually long
path—and they put to good effect another material reality, namely, the
knowledge involved in shepherding. The shepherd comes to know the
landscape intimately because he ranges over it by foot, driving the flock
to pasture. One reason the domestication of flocks is so appealing as part

of the mixed agricultural strategy is that these animals are able to utilize
marginal land that would not otherwise support human life.38 Regions—
particularly hilly ones—that do not receive sufficient annual rainfall to
support agriculture are amenable to flocks that graze unselectively on a
diet of available vegetation. In return, the flocks provide profitable goods,
including a daily supply of milk, dung for fertilizer and fuel, a yearly sup-
ply of wool or goats’ hair, as well as skins and meat on occasion.39 These
flocks effectively turn otherwise useless land into a variety of tangible
resources. But for shepherds to find sufficient pasture and water among
the marginal countryside, they needed to cover a large swath of land, often
traveling up to six miles twice a day during the dry season.40 During these
long journeys, shepherds develop an intimate knowledge of the land-
scape across which they range, driving the flocks to new pasture, seeking
hidden refuge and water. This motif of the hidden shepherd is a literary
convention. It is also evident, for example, in the Dumuzi-Inanna cycles
from Mesopotamia, where the god Dumuzi is consistently rendered as a
shepherd, and he is frequently pictured out in the steppe, away from his
lover, who must seek him. In this late Akkadian poem, Ishtar seeks her
lover Dumuzi. He is described as follows:
He leads his cattle, one after another,

He seeks a pasture where the grass conceals the moistest areas,
Where anemone-flowers blossom at the edge of the wood.
His eyes scan pasture and meadow,
They seek out springs in the open country
And the forests of the mountains.41
The salient aspect here is the keen perceptiveness of the shepherd to

the—often hidden—potential of the land. The grass conceals moisture,
the flowers blossom at the edge of the wood—one has to know to look for
such things. At the same time, the hidden potential also enfolds the shep-
herd into the landscape: as he seeks the hidden springs, he disappears and
becomes hidden himself, so Ishtar must seek him out. This sensitivity
to the landscape is also in view here in the Song, where the young man
disappears with his sheep, so that the young woman is unable to find him
(something he is often doing throughout the Song): “Where do you pas-
ture? Where do you rest at noon?” (Song 1:7). But the friends present this
type of knowledge as available to the young woman as well—she too might
journey with her sheep; she too might pasture; she too might be enfolded
into the landscape with her lover.
Agriculture and Metaphor

At the same time as the poems draws on the materiality of the ancient agri-
cultural economy, its lyrical imagination sets this materiality into motion,
pushing the imagery ever closer to metaphor. The poetry plays with the
idea that the lovers are themselves the landscape or part of the landscape.
As material experience becomes a source for metaphors about the lov-
ers and even about love itself, it mediates symbolic knowledge about the
world. As Christopher Tilley, a post-â•‰processual archaeologist and theorist
of landscape, has argued, the phenomenological experience of landscape
becomes the source of greater cultural signification. Tilley relates the
Apache metaphor, “wisdom sits in places,” which exhibits an orientation
toward the topography that invests environmental features with symbolic
dimensions, and creates knowledge by reflecting on them. In this way, a
moral aspect is encoded in the physical environs. He writes, “[a]â•„sense of
place is a way of imaginatively engaging with one’s surroundings and find-
ing them significant, a personal and cultural appropriation of the world.”42
The material context—â•‰ in this case, ancient agriculture—â•‰ becomes the
source of social and personal knowledge. It encodes values about the envi-
ronment. As we shall see, the poetry presses us to see that the material
farms are also suggestive of the lovers themselves. By appropriating the
landscape in this way, the poem develops imaginational resources for
moral responses to the natural world and to human sensuality. These met-
aphorical aspects of the poetry mean that the boundaries between the lov-
ers and their objects of comparison are consistently obscured, drawing
the reader into a kind of astigmatism that sees the lovers’ bodies in terms
of the land, and the land in terms of the lovers’ bodies. Even as the lovers
are depicted in an agricultural landscape, the poem presses the similarity
between them and their natural environs.
This metaphorical sensibility is most clearly on display in the vision of
the young woman as both the vine dresser and the vineyard. As I discussed
earlier, the young woman is the keeper of the vineyards (1:6). There is an
element of irony and chagrin in the young woman’s admission that she
has kept her family’s vineyard but not her own (1:6). It is not likely that this
refers to her own literal vineyard, her own plot of planted vines. Instead,
the reference appears to be symbolic of herself, or perhaps her readiness
for lovemaking, as scholars have often noted.43 This is elaborated through-

out the Song of Songs, as when her breasts are extolled as clusters of the
vine (7:8), and the vines’ ripeness signals her readiness to give the young
man her love (7:12). This reference to her own vineyard is picked up and
reiterated with a tone of confident self-determination in 8:12, when she
declares, “my own vineyard is for myself.” In this way, when the vineyard
is evoked, the poet is also conjuring the body of the young woman. As
I alluded to earlier, the nuances of this metaphor of the young-woman-as-
vineyard are necessarily colored by the realities of ancient viticulture in
Israel. The vine’s significance lies not just in its heady delicacy, but in its
stability—both in terms of the longevity of the vineyards, and in the lon-
gevity of the product, wine. That is, the young woman, imagined as a vine
dresser and as a vineyard, is full of potential that must be developed. When
she voices anxiety and regret (“my own vineyard I have not kept,” v. 6), she
likens the vineyard’s vulnerability to her own need for cultivation: the care
that she must give to the grapes—guarding their precious crop—she must
also give to herself. Like the grapes, she too must be cultivated, attended
to vigilantly. There is a sense of communal value implicit in the image.
After all, the value of the vineyard is ultimately in its provision of goods for
the community: grapes, raisins, and—most important—wine.44 While the
young woman desires to keep her own vines, she includes the young man
in the horizon of ownership: “Our vineyards are in blossom” (2:15). In this
sense, the metaphorical significance of the vineyard as the body also imag-
ines the lover sharing in body and desire. The landscape of the vineyard
suggests an expectation of proleptic abundance that will depend on care.
The shepherd at pasture, too, while not an explicit metaphor, moves
in the direction of the metaphorical. The young man becomes part of the
landscape as he drives the flock, but in so doing he blends together with
the sheep he cares for. The poem underscores this analogy between the
young shepherd and his sheep when the young woman inquires after her
lover: “Tell me, whom my soul loves, /Where do you pasture?/Where
do you rest at noon?” (1:7). The object “your flocks,” or “your sheep” is
frequently supplied by translations: “Tell me … where you pasture your
flock” (emphasis added; NRSV, KJV, ASV, NIV, JPS, etc.) But in the Hebrew
there is no object, so the verse literally reads, “Tell me … where do you
pasture?” The verb “pasture,” (√r-ʿ-h) can have both transitive and intran-
sitive senses,45 but the absence of the object makes the scene ambiguous:
the lover is imagined as a shepherd who will take his flocks to rest in the
pasture; at the same time, the lover himself could be understood as the
grazing animal. “Tell me … where do you pasture?” imagines the young

man as both shepherd and sheep. The same creative ambiguity is used in
6:2: “My lover has gone down to his garden … to pasture in the gardens.”
This text, too, closely identifies shepherd and sheep. The poem plays with
this double vision of the human caretaker, who is also metaphorically a
sheep in need of care. Elsewhere in the Song, the young woman is also
the lilies on which the flocks—â•‰or the young man—â•‰graze (2:16; 4:5; 6:3; cf.
6:2). This play on the lilies throughout the Song evokes the young wom-
an’s beauty and seductiveness: In 2:1, she declares “I am a lily of the val-
leys,” which the young man eagerly affirms: “As a lily among brambles, so
is my friend among the other young women” (2:2).46 His grazing among
the lilies suggestively if subtly evokes an erotic enjoyment of the lover’s
body, once again blending the human toward the metaphorical.
The young woman is also—â•‰less frequently—â•‰imagined as a shepherd-
ess: in the final lines of verse 8, the daughters of Jerusalem beckon her to
attend to the pasture:
Go out in the tracks of the flock

And pasture your kids
Beside the dwellings of the shepherds. (1:8)
While the young woman imagines the young man as a sheep needing rest,
the daughters of Jerusalem urge her to be the shepherd who pastures her
flocks, blending her caretaking of the vineyards (herself) with her caretak-
ing of the sheep (the young man).47 The effect of these blurred boundaries
between objects and agents of pasturing conveys the vulnerability of both
lovers, the parity of their shared desire, and the persistent need for care.
Gender and Landscape

As is clear from the preceding discussion, the metaphors drawn from
the landscape are conspicuously, if not strictly, gendered. As I have just
described, the young man is imagined as a shepherd much more consist-
ently than the young woman is, and he is allied with the flock in a way that
she never is: While she might pasture the flock, the Song does not allow
her image to slip into the image of the flock, as it does with the young
man. As I have shown earlier, the subject-â•‰object slippage of his pastur-
ing makes the metaphor of him as a flock also possible; when it comes
to the young woman, however, the object is supplied: he tells her, “graze
your kids” (that is, she is not imagined to be grazing herself, as the young
man is; 1:8). In this instance, the young woman is the landscape, while
the young man is the shepherd/flock that ranges through the landscape.
Like a shepherd who is persistently moving over the hills, he is also imag-
ined bounding ləʿōper hāʾayyālîm (“as a fawn of a deer”; 2:9, 17; 8:14), both
approaching the house and fleeing it. The roe deer, once the most wide-
spread variety in the ancient Levant, was a very small animal (only stand-
ing ca. 28 inches in height); it lived alone, almost entirely in forest cover,
emerging only occasionally to graze in nearby fields.48 The description is
not so much one of majesty (which the English translation “stag” perhaps
mistakenly conveys49), but rather of solitude and secrecy, emphasizing the
lover’s swiftness and subtlety. When he is imagined as one of these wild
creatures, he is both shy and fleet, which will make it possible for him to
arrive and vanish quickly.50 An ancient Egyptian love song also portrays
the male lover as a gazelle, also imagining him coming through a wild
landscape to approach the domicile:
If you would only come to (your) sister swiftly,

Like a gazelle bounding over the desert,
Whose legs are shaky, whose body is weary,
For fear has entered his body.51
The lovers are described in terms of cultivation (vineyards, shepherds), but

the imagined landscapes are not exclusively domestic; they incorporate
wild elements as well. What the shepherd, the flock, and the gazelle share
as images of the young man is the sense of creatureliness, as he emerges
from and disappears into the landscape.
The young woman, on the other hand, is depicted more or less as a
landscape herself: she is a vineyard. The gendering of the landscape par-
ticipates in a larger conceptual motif in ancient Near Eastern literature.
Other biblical texts play on the symbolic significance connecting agricul-
tural productivity and human sensuality. For example, the book of Ruth
connects an abundant barley harvest with a story of marriage and concep-
tion. The fertility of the harvest and the availability of food signify and pre-
pare for the marriage of Ruth to Boaz and their own ability to produce an
heir. Similarly, Samson’s accusation of the Philistines after they have plied
Delilah to discover the answer to his riddle employs the motif of likening
agricultural labor to human sexuality, and does so to bawdy effect: “If you
had not plowed with my heifer, you would not have found out my riddle”
(Judg 14:18). The analogy between sexuality and the productive landscape
is neither exact nor explicit, though these examples are suggestive.52 In
Sumerian literature in particular, though, the analogy is reified, and plow-
ing is an important metaphor for lovemaking. Take, for example, the fol-
lowing hymn, where the goddess Inanna describes her “nakedness,” as
various types of land that need to be cultivated:
My chased vulva so nailed down

As (with) linchpins attached to a big cart,
“… [My] boat of heaven, that which is fastened with ropes,
Like the new moon is full of allure;
M[y]‌uncultivated land, that which is left fallow in the steppe,
M[y]‌field of ducks, where the ducks teem;
My high field, that which is well-watered,
My own nakedness, a well-watered, a rising mound—
I, the maiden—who will plow it?
My nakedness, the wet and well-watered ground—
I, the young lady—who will station there an ox?”
“Young lady, may the king plow it for you,
May Dumuzi, the king, plow it for you!”53
The fallow field and the rich earth represent the eroticism (and perhaps
the fecundity) of female sexual organs, and the act of plowing is associ-
ated with intercourse.54 The “tender, sensuous sexuality” of the cycle of
love poetry of Dumuzi and Inanna, as in the example given here, is much
more interested in the vulva than the penis, and these poems tend to lin-
ger with images of durative cultivation. In this way, the tone differs quite
distinctly from the phallicism of mythology, for example in the mytho-
logical image of Enki thrusting his phallus into the canebrake. The result
of phallicism in the myths of Enki and Ninḫhursag, Enki and Ninmaḫ,
and Enlil and Ninlil is always conception and childbirth.55 The god’s
penis is imagined as a plow or pick, capable of providing seed as well
as freshwater irrigation (the basis of Babylonia’s agriculture).56 In Egypt,
the same analogy is discernible, if more attenuated. For example, in an
Old Egyptian love song, a young woman refers to herself as the earth in
which a young man dug a canal. The analogy between the young woman
and the earth is clear, but not uncomplicated, since her breasts, too, are
like gazelles, her teeth like sheep, and she is compared to a city.57 And,
as a result, crop agriculture and the cycles of plowing and reaping are
depicted in congruence with human sensuality and fertility. Both farming

and sexual partnership are related through fertility. But this is not merely
phallic. The Song resists a reductive or explicit link between intercourse
and fertilization. While the beauty of the young woman’s belly is likened
to a cereal agricultural product, neither the sex act itself nor the fertil-
izing properties of the phallus are foregrounded. Note, for example, that
despite the Song’s strong emphasis on agriculture, it lacks the vocabulary
of plowing (h-â•‰r-â•‰š, for example). Instead, in this line, “your belly is a heap
of wheat,” the young man’s aesthetic vision of the young woman is the
primary interest. Such resistance to explicit analogizing takes part in the
Song’s consistent preference for highlighting not the sex act itself, but
the aesthetics of desire. The Song prefers the exploration of feminine
sexuality through the medium of the vineyard, which, as I have noted
with some detail earlier, has much stronger associations with long-â•‰term
cultivation, skill, and the heady satisfaction of wine. No doubt the signif-
icance and success of the vine in Canaan prompted its particular signifi-
cance in those traditions (including ancient Israel and Judah); we see the
metaphor in operation at Ugarit, where the myth of how the moon god
Yariḫ obtained his bride Nikal includes the vineyard in the imagined sen-
suality of the woman: “I will make her field into a vineyard, /â•‰the field of
her love into a flower-â•‰garden” (CTU 1.24.22–â•‰23).58 Like the Sumerian love
poetry, the Song of Songs is not explicitly interested in the phallus, or in
the ubiquitous implications of sexuality: marriage, pregnancy, or progeny
(although there are echoes of motherhood and labor throughout).59 The
emphasis on the landscape and on images of cultivation in the landscape
suggest that the sensuality of the Song is not phallocentric, nor is it occu-
pied with conception as a direct outcome of the erotic relationship. At the
same time, there is an underlying interest in fertility that is underscored
by the agricultural imagery throughout. As I will suggest in the follow-
ing, the contemporary agrarian movement helps to frame this connection
between agriculture and sensuality.
Contemporary Agrarianism
The discussion thus far has drawn out some of the agricultural features of
the Song, showing how the poetry employs them in its imagination of the
lovers. I will pause for a moment here to pick up some insight from con-
temporary agrarianism in order to give a bit more substance to the critical
understanding of the landscapes of food production in this poetry of love.
There is no more intelligible and sustained modern conversation about

the values and cultural significance of agriculture than the contemporary
agrarian movement. Agrarianism, broadly understood, is a set of practices
and commitments that advocates the importance of agricultural produc-
tion and rural life.60 The contemporary agrarian movement, most closely
associated with the work of Kentucky writer and farmer Wendell Berry,
has at its heart this central concern for the role of agriculture in both eco-
logical and cultural sustainability. “Agrarian” has historically referred to
practices and lifestyles of farming, and as such “[it] is primarily a practice,
a set of attitudes, a loyalty, and a passion; it is an idea only secondarily
and at a remove.”61 The West has become increasingly removed from its
agrarian roots: now less than 2 percent of the population in North America
are currently responsible for growing over 95 percent of its food. This is
a stunning contrast to the 80 or even 90 percent of the population that
were involved in farming in the ancient world. Modern industrial agricul-
ture has led to grievous loss of topsoil, poisonous levels of pesticide use,
and species extinction—only a few of the increasing indicators of an agri-
cultural system gone awry. Of course this is not just a modern problem.
Well-known examples of deleterious ancient practices include the per-
manent deforestation of large swaths of the Levant and the salination of
the Mesopotamian farming plains.62 Since every person eats, and all food
ultimately comes from the earth through the photosynthetic processes of
plant life derived from solar energy, eating is the crucial link between the
health of humans and the health of the land.63
As a movement, agrarianism is loosely defined. It is largely literary,
aligning itself with traditional farming practices, and it sees continuities
with diverse writers, both ancient and modern.64 In contemporary use, the
title “agrarian” can be largely traced to the catalyzing impact of I’ll Take
My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition (1930).65 This collection
of essays by “twelve Southerners” was conceived as a defense of Southern
culture that advocated rooting its cultural recovery in the agrarian tradi-
tions of the South. Such a recovery was necessary, the authors argued, to
stem the destructive impact of industrialization, urbanization, and the loss
of unique local cultures. Since that time, agrarianism has broadened its
influence significantly.66 Its consistent ideological commitment still takes
the central insight of the “twelve Southerners,” which is that farming, the
“vocation of the soil,” is “the best and most sensitive of vocations, and that
therefore it should have the economic preference and enlist the maximum
number of workers.”67 This commitment to agricultural labor valorizes
food production and rural communities, with the belief that in the care-
ful production of food lies the clearest potential for the vitality of people,
cultures, and the land. Berry writes that “[e]‌ating ends the annual drama
of the food economy that begins with planting and birth.”68 Agrarianism is
an attempt to realistically assess human dependence on and involvement
in the natural world, and to acknowledge the necessity for complex forms
of cultural thinking to preserve the health of these relationships for the
sake of human and ecological flourishing.
As Ellen Davis has persuasively argued, agrarianism is “the way of
thinking predominant among biblical writers.”69 In Scripture, Culture, and
Agriculture, she offers close readings of selected biblical texts that show
how the ecological sensibility of the Bible is largely concerned with the
daily and seasonal habits of interacting with the soil, and its capacity to pro-
duce food.70 In many ways, the present study of agriculture in the Song is
guided by and furthers Davis’s inquiry. It differs, though, in the approach
to the Song of Songs. Her chapter on the Song helpfully describes how
human flourishing in the Song is situated in a complex web of relation-
ships that are familial, social, geographical, political, and ecological. The
main thrust of her reading emphasizes the young woman as an icon of the
city of Jerusalem during the Persian to Hellenistic periods.71 Davis insight-
fully emphasizes the agrarian situation of the ancient city of Jerusalem,
and helpfully describes the integration of the city with its hinterland, with
its interweaving of productive landscapes. However, her selective empha-
sis on the city of Jerusalem in the Persian period leaves room for attention
to the various other landscapes that also shape the sensibility of the Song.
Furthermore, Davis senses profound socioeconomic rifts and exploita-
tive economic practices in the cultural background of the Song of Songs,
which speaks “against a greedy urban-dominated agriculture that is obliv-
ious to rural or common people, with their practices and their needs.”72
Crucial to Davis’s argument is the idea of rapid agricultural and techno-
logical developments during the Persian and Hellenistic periods that led
to sharp socioeconomic divisions, such that the “economic domination of
the countryside [by Jerusalem] was complete.”73 But it is difficult to sustain
this reading, for two reasons. First, such divisions are not obvious in the
archaeological record of the Persian period in Palestine—the consensus
seems to be that this period was characterized not by rapid urbanization,
but by urban decline and a return to a predominantly agrarian subsist-
ence economy with significant tributary expectations.74 Second, neither is
there strong evidence for such divisions within the Song of Songs itself.
Davis finds hints of social and economic divisions in three places: between

the daughters of Jerusalem and the young woman (e.g., Song 1:5–6); in
the tension between the young woman and her brothers (1:6); and in the
prominence of Solomon’s vineyard (Song 8:11–12).75 But both the daugh-
ters of Jerusalem especially encourage the young woman (1:4, 8; 5:9; 6:1,
9–10); memorably they chant, “Eat friends, drink, and be drunk with love!”
(5:1); and the brothers signify a family-based agricultural system, so con-
flict can be read as a necessary part of cooperative labor, not necessarily as
evidence of an exploitative imperial economy.76 Solomon’s vineyard and
tenants appear to be the only real indication of agronomic consolidation
and its socioeconomic ramifications, but this serves primarily as a foil for
the lovers, and appeals to a tenth-century context to do so. The small vine-
yard is preferred to the magnificent royal vineyard: “Solomon had a vine-
yard at Baal-Hamon … My own vineyard is for myself. The thousand is
yours, Solomon!” (Song 8:11–12). The tone suggests pride in the personal
crop, and defies consumption with an illogic of affection that is happily at
odds with rational judgment. It is the same logic that makes a child “sin-
gular to her mother /flawless to the one who bore her” (Song 6:9). It is the
same logic that prefers affection to wealth: “if a man gave all the wealth of
his house for love, it would be utterly scorned” (Song 8:7). While the king
is on his couch (1:12), the lovers, in a contrarian fashion, revel in imagining
themselves not in luxurious quarters, but outside:
Truly, our couch is green

The beams of our house are cedar
our rafters are pine. (1:17)
In ways such as this, the Song celebrates the dignity of life on a small
scale. In what follows, I will draw from the work of contemporary agrarian
writers, highlighting two elements: first, the emphasis on “land” as com-
munity or membership; second, the underlying analogy in agrarianism
between people and the land.
Agrarians speak in terms of “land,” not of “nature” or “earth,” because
the latter terms imagine an extractable and abstracted subject. “Land,” on
the other hand, acknowledges intricate interconnections among soil, air,
water, and the unimaginably diverse organisms they support, from micro-
scopic bacteria to all varieties of plant life, to humans and animals. As a
term, “land” thus acknowledges the interconnected implications of natural
and cultural realities that cross easily from one domain to another.77 This is
the same sensibility that motivated Aldo Leopold’s classic formulation of

the “land community.” Such an orientation acknowledges that the role of
humans in the land community is properly that of “member and citizen,”
and as such entails a posture of respect for the sake of the whole.78 For
Berry, the term that captures this sense of wholeness is “membership.”
He writes that the world “is not the ‘sum of its parts’ but a membership
of parts inextricably joined to each other, indebted to each other, receiv-
ing significance and worth from each other and from the whole.”79 Berry
explores this idea in his fiction, essays, and poetry. Berry writes about how
membership is the “form” of the farm, which is made “of delight.”80 His
poem “From the Crest” (1977) is a direct address of a farmer to a farm, and
is marked throughout by the sense of belonging, the farmer to the farm,
and to all the parts of the world whose lives are made by and weave through
the small plot of land. It is the poem, uttered by the speaker together with
the farm, that will
… tell them of the great

membership, the mystic order,
to which both of us belong.
The farm is both “motherland,” and “brotherhood,” with whom the

speaker takes his place alongside all the plants, animals, and creatures,
both visible and invisible, whose lives are dependent on its “sod.” In this
view, “membership” is the literal sustenance the farm provides for a fam-
ily; it is also the network of interdependence that makes the farm and its
creatures “one body.”
In his fiction, Berry tells stories of the Port William Membership, an
imagined community Berry traces through four families and seven gener-
ations. One character, Andy Catlett, experiences dislocation, despair, and
a loss of connection to his place and his marriage, but finds restoration
when he returns home. This return enables him to be “re-membered,”
as he walks through his place with the memories of those who have gone
before him. Berry describes Andy’s ineffable re-entry into his own sense
of belonging:
Over town and fields the one great song sings, and is answered eve-
rywhere; every leaf and flower and grass blade sings. And in the
fields and the town, walking, standing, or sitting under the trees,
resting and talking together in the peace of a sabbath profound and
bright, are people of such great beauty that he weeps to see them.
He sees that these are the membership of one another and of the
place and of the song or light in which they live and move.81
This “membership” belongs to the land, its creatures, and to all who have
made their lives there, both the living and the dead. This sense of connection
is articulated by many of Berry’s characters, like Burley Coulter, who would
preach the membership, mocking a certain kind of preacher, yet

meaning every word he said: “Oh, yes, brothers and sisters, we
are members one of another. The difference, beloved, ain’t who is
and who’s not, but in who knows it and who don’t. Oh, my friends,
there ain’t no nonmembers, living nor dead nor yet to come. Do you
know it? Or do you don’t? A man is a member of a woman and a
worm. A woman is a member of a man and a mole. Oh, beloved, it’s
all one piece of work.”82
The land and its inhabitants (man, woman, worm, mole; one could
add: soil, sun, tree, river, every imaginable and not-yet-imagined thing)
are part of a single fabric of belonging. Thus every part of this “mem-
bership” has an integral belonging that has practical as well as religious
dimensions. Berry writes: “One is obliged to ‘consider the lilies of the
field,’ not because they are lilies or because they are exemplary, but
because they are fellow members and because, as fellow members, we
and the lilies are in certain critical ways alike.”83 Here, Berry pushes the
idea of membership toward the sense of fundamental likeness between
humans and the earth.
The analogy or likeness between the land and people has already been
apparent in the earlier discussion of the Song of Songs. Agrarianism
accounts for the use of agricultural elements in love poetry, which some
modern readers have found bizarre or off-putting. How is hair like a flock
of goats? Or cheeks like a pomegranate?84 But for agrarians, the funda-
mental resemblance between human sexuality and agricultural fertility is
“plain and strong and apparently inescapable.”85 Perhaps most apropos
is this highly poetic formulation, from Berry’s seminal early critique of
American agricultural orthodoxy, The Unsettling of America:
[O]‌ur bodies live by farming; we come from the earth and return
to it, and so we live in agriculture as we live in the flesh. While we
live our bodies are moving particles of the earth, joined inextrica-
bly both to the soil and to the bodies of other living creatures. It is
hardly surprising, then, that there should be some profound resem-
blances between our treatment of our bodies and our treatment of
the earth.86
The “profound resemblances” that Berry has in mind are literal ones—
the health of the land is the real index of human flourishing insofar
as flourishing is determined by stability, physical vitality, and connect-
edness to community. At the same time, the relationship between the
two is analogical, such that harmful treatment of the earth originates
from attitudes that also enable harmful treatment of people. He writes,
“[t]‌here is an uncanny resemblance between our behavior toward each
other and our behavior toward the earth…. By some connection that
we do not recognize, the willingness to exploit one becomes the willing-
ness to exploit the other.”87 Ultimately, Berry argues that the well-being
(or destruction) of agricultural land cannot be entirely separated from
human well-being (or destruction). The possibility for the wholeness
of each (the land, a lover) is in the disciplines and joy of affection. In
many iterations, Berry’s essays, poems, and fiction affirm a connection
between agricultural and erotic love, such that what moves in farming is
the same “delight that moves /lovers in their loves.”88 Here in the Song,
the landscape’s flourishing suggests symbolically the erotic potential of
the couple. As I will show in what follows, Song 7:11–14 plays creatively
with this agrarian sensibility.
Song 7:11–14 (MT; 10–13, Eng)

Toward the end of the Song, a brief poem is again occupied with the more
or less literal fruits of agricultural labor (7:11–14).89 The imagery of this
poem draws once again from a fund of agricultural knowledge, imagining
the lovers as farmers, knowledgeable about plant life and attentive to the
season and productivity of the land. It is an evocation of springtime, of
fields just coming into bloom.
This poem is structured by three single-line claims framing a set of
three triplets. The claims are relatively straightforward general statements
about the lovers’ relationship: “I am my lover’s, and his desire is over me”;
“There, I will give you my love”; “My lover, for you I have treasured them.”
But they are punctuated by three triplets that explore the general claims
about love among the very particular stirrings of local crops. The triplets
establish the terms on which the general statements might be understood
to be true. As I will show, the erotic claims of the poem are examined
through a subtle analogy between the lovers and the land. This is mobi-
lized lyrically by structural symmetry and wordplay.
Before examining these particular lyric strategies, I will consider
briefly how this poem might be considered an agricultural text. The young
woman’s voice speaks throughout: “Come, my lover, let us go out to the
field.” Commentators commonly describe this text as a retreat into nature.
Hendrik Viviers, for example, writes that this is a “retreat from ‘culture to
nature,’ ” and “wild, untamed Nature becomes a haven to [the lovers].”90
Gianni Barbiero writes, “By contrast with cultivated nature, śādeh [field]
expresses nature in the wild beyond the dominion of man.”91 It is true
that haśśādeh (“the field”) can conjure images of wildness—idiomatically,
wild animals are “beasts of the field,” and the young woman’s adjura-
tion in the Song evokes such wildness: she swears “by the gazelles and
does of the field,” (2:7; 3:5).92 However, interpreters frequently overesti-
mate the disjunction between the field and the city in an oversimplified
antithesis between “nature” and “culture.” Biblical evocations of “the field”
generally portray not wilderness, but the agriculturally productive land sur-
rounding a village or a walled city (cf. Lev 25:31, 34). The field is widely
associated with the tasks of human cultivation, which are nicely summa-
rized in Psalm 107: “They sow fields, and plant vineyards, and they pro-
duce a fruitful harvest” (Ps 107:37).93 Fields are tilled (Gen 4; 41:48; 47:48;
2 Chron 27:26), sown (Ps 107:37), and plowed (Jer 26:18; Mic 3:12). They are
the place for reaping and gleaning (Job 24:6; Ruth 2:2), and for orchards
of fruiting trees (Ex 10:5; Judg 9:27; Isa 55:12; Jer 7:20; Ezek 17:24; 31:4–5)
and for vineyards, which also housed the presses for wine (Prov 3:16; Judg
9:27).94 In this particular text, the close synonymous parallelism highlights
cultivation:
I am my lover’s, and his desire is upon me.

Come, my lover, let us go to the field
let us spend the night among the henna
let us rise early for the vineyards (Song 7:12–13 [11–12 Eng])
The fields and vineyards—and the plants described therein—denote spaces

of cultivation. The plants evoked in these lines are regional crops: Henna
(kəpārîm = L. Lawsonia inermis) was cultivated very early on for making
dyes and perfumes.95 A spring bloomer, its large clusters of whitish flow-
ers are powerfully fragrant. The vine (L. Vitis vinifera) was one of the most
important agricultural products throughout Israel’s history. The high
regard for this cultivated crop is contrasted with the worthlessness of its
wild counterpart in Isaiah’s Song of the Vineyard:
[He] planted it with choice vines …

he expected it to yield grapes (ʿănābîm),
but it yielded wild grapes (bəʾūšĭm). (Isa 5:2)
The wild vines would have produced a small, bitter berry unfit for human
consumption, unlike the domesticated vine with its juicy grapes (cf. Lam
2:6).96 This contrast displays how the vine is a particularly strong emblem
not of wild “nature” but of cultivation. In this text, the high regard for
the vine is underscored by the use of three different terms: the vineyard
(kərāmîm), the grape vine (gepen), and the vine blossom (semādar):97
Let us see whether the vine has budded,

the grape blossom has opened,
the pomegranate has bloomed.
There, I will give you my love (Song 7:13 [12 Eng])
Like the vine, the pomegranate tree is also cultivated for its fruit (rim-
mônîm = L. Punica granatum, v. 13). The seeds of this tree are highly
juicy and can be eaten fresh or made into spiced wine.98 While it is not
prevalent in contemporary Israel (it has in many cases been replaced by
more profitable fruiting crops), it once was plentiful in orchards, and
during late spring would have been ablaze with crimson flowers. When
the lovers go out into these fields, then, they are taking a familiar journey
common to young and old alike in the ancient world: out into the fields,
to see how the crops are growing. Their destination is not uncultural,
but agricultural.
These agricultural fields are not just a backdrop to the amorous
encounter of lovers. They are part of the material the poet employs to its
lyric ends, and they construct a vision of the ethical relationship between
humans and the land. A landscape, as I have suggested, is never neutral.
In these lines, the poem draws the landscape into a subtle analogy with the
human lovers. This analogy is strikingly apparent in the poem’s structural
symmetry. The structure of the poem, as I have suggested earlier, makes
claims about human love in one-sentence statements, then qualifies them

with triplets situating the lovers in an agricultural landscape. These trip-
lets imagine erotic fulfillment as a condition of the landscape. The first
triplet calls the lover to join the young woman among the crops:
Come, my love! Let us go to the field

let us spend the night among the henna
let us go early to the vineyards (vv. 12–13)
The second triplet follows an identical pattern, which I will render wood-
enly here to make the parallelism of the Hebrew more obvious:
Let us see whether it has budded, the vine

it has opened, the grape-blossoms
they have bloomed, the pomegranates (v. 13)
What becomes apparent in rendering this so literally is the close analogy

between the lovers and the land. In the first triplet, the subject is the lov-
ers and their actions (“let us …”). The crops are the objects of these sen-
tences, the destinations they seek. In the second triplet, there is a shift: the
action of the lovers is conditional (“Let us see whether…”), and each line
focuses not on the lovers, but the plants, which are now the subjects of
the verb, not objects: “the vine has budded, /the grape-blossoms have
opened.” The symmetrical structure closely links the lovers’ pursuit with
the flourishing of the crops. The expectation established by the first triplet
is that the human couple is both the subject and the originating signifi-
cance of the poem, but this expectation is subverted in the second triplet,
as the plants are ascribed their own agency. The erotic encounter, it turns
out, is contingent on the flourishing of the landscape. The symmetry of
the two triplets establishes a likeness between the lovers and the plants
that are coming into bloom.
This likeness between the lovers’ desire and the flowering plants is also
developed by wordplay. This wordplay comes most plainly into view in the
last lines of this poem:
The love-fruits give off their scent,

and over our doors are all our choice fruits,
new as well as old.
My love, for you I have treasured them. (Song 7:14 [13 Eng])
Here, the poem takes up and transforms the use of the word “love” (Heb.
d-w-d) through creative patterning. The word d-w-d (“love”) is repeated five-
fold times. The poem is framed by addresses to the young man as dôdî
(“my lover”):
I am my lover’s (lədôdî), and his desire is upon me (v. 11)

Come, my lover (dôdî), let us go out to the field (v. 12)
My lover (dôdî), for you I have treasured them (v. 14)
But in the center of the poem, there are two additional references that play
with the same word (d-w-d, “love”) evoking lovemaking and horticulture:
There, I will give you my lovemaking (dōday; v. 13)

The love-fruits (hadûdaʾîm) give scent (v. 14)
Lovemaking (dōday) connects the theme of love with sex. The next occur-
rence of the root related to love (d-w-d) is the word hadûdaʾîm. Although it is
commonly regarded as the mandrake, I have translated it as “love-fruits,”
which highlights the wordplay that can be heard or seen in Hebrew. The
actual plant referenced by “love-fruits” is not entirely certain, but its sexual
associations are apparent etymologically, which is corroborated by the bib-
lical story of Reuben collecting these “love-fruits” to enhance Rachel’s fer-
tility.99 The evocation of literal lovemaking is closely echoed by the plant’s
fruitful effusions. Just as the young woman will give (nātan) her love, so
the “love-fruits” give off (nātan) their heady fragrance. The plant closely
echoes and subtly analogizes the erotic potential of the young woman. In
this way, the entire passage is saturated with references to love. The final
use of the root d-w-d in the last line closes this section by drawing the
young man back into the circle of her love: “my lover (dôdî), I have stored
them up for you” (7:14). This playful repetition of d-w-d throughout creates
a sonic structure that reads like a lighthearted refrain, an echo of the love
that circulates from the young woman’s body, through the plants, to the
identity of the young man. It creates the sense of the all-pervasive quality
of love, which catches up both human lovers and the natural world. In
these ways, especially through the poem’s structural symmetry and word-
play, there is a bond imagined between the lovers and the land.
This bond between the lovers and the land is emblemized by flowers
ready on the branches, which are at once extravagant expressions of sen-
sual pleasure (visually beautiful and heady with scent), but also a signal
of fertility. These lines express hope that the plant’s flowering potential is
bursting forth, opening out to the world as the blossoms break through the
shielding husks, displaying their colorful petals. This “opening” (pataḥ)
indicates the availability of the plant for fertilization.100 The delicate wish to
see whether the grape blossoms are “open” heightens the erotic saturation
of the passage. Elsewhere in the Song of Songs, the same verb (pataḥ) is
suggestive of human desire: the young man knocks at the door and calls
“Open to me, my sister, my dear!” (5:2, 5–6). It is fitting, then, that after this
section of Song 7 meditates on the opening of flowers, the young woman
declares that all kinds of fruit are over pətaḥênnû (“our doors,” or more lit-
erally, “our openings”; 7:13). The recurrence of the word “open” is not only
suggestive of the physiology of lovemaking, but it perhaps also suggests
an emotional openness—vulnerability; that is to say, the doors will not pre-
vent their love, as when they stand on either side of the bolted door (5:4–5);
rather, the doors will be garlanded with fruit: “over our doors are all our
choice fruits, new as well as old. My love, for you I have treasured them”
(7:14). Fruit—and eating—are a kind of agricultural consummation, and
are potently symbolic of sexual consummation. As the agrarians are eager
to emphasize, it is eating that is finally the formal bond between humans
and the land. And so too in the Song, the edible products of plants are
always in view. Kisses and lovemaking are described as good wine, which
are intoxicating and offer delight to the lips, palate, and throat (1:2, 4; 5:1;
7:10), and raisins signal sustenance and satisfaction (2:4; 4:10; 8:2). In this
way, labor in the vineyard is associated with food, the reward of its agricul-
tural efforts. This important trope is a key to understanding the farming
landscape of the Song of Songs. Food is the visible connection between
human labor and flourishing.
The agricultural context and subtext of this poem embed the human
lovers in a productive landscape. The pleasure of the couple in love is
somehow also the pleasure of the person who works in a field, is somehow
also the pleasure of the fields themselves. Berry’s character Andy Catlett
describes working together with his community at the Crayton farm. As
he is hoeing tobacco, he stands and pauses to look over the fields: “The
field was beautifully laid out, so that all the rows followed the contours of
the ridge … a human form laid lovingly upon the natural conformation of
the place.”101 The farm itself is an art form, affirming the value of human
labor, guided by affection, to seek the flourishing of the landscape and in
so doing to make it beautiful by attention and care. Such work enacts the
“membership” of people in their place: “I saw how beautiful the field was,
how beautiful our work was. And it came to me all in a feeling how every-
thing fitted together, the place and ourselves and the animals and the tools,
and how the sky held us. I saw how sweetly we were enabled by the land
and the animals and our few simple tools.”102 The “fitness” of the human
lovers of the Song is indexed by nature’s own readiness in the opening
of its blossoms. This openness to fertility points to the synecology of the
cultivators in their landscape.
Conclusion: The Pastoral Impulse

This chapter has highlighted the agricultural landscape of the Song of
Songs, especially as it can be seen in Song 1:5–8 and 7:10–13. The con-
temporary agrarian movement illuminates how the evocation of farming
practices emphasizes the role of humans as interdependent cultivators in
the natural world, and makes sense of the link between human sexuality
and the fecund earth. It imagines them imagining working together, as a
couple in the ancient world would expect to do. Sharing their labor is a per-
ception of and response to the desire to see their lives commingled, which
“strengthen[s]‌bonds of interest, loyalty, affection, and cooperation….”103
The lovers imagine such a bond, perhaps, but it is as yet only desired. For
now, these young lovers will make do with a house made of trees: “the
beams of our house are cedar, are rafters are pine” (Song 1:17). In such
ways, the affection that grounds erotic desire is imagined as related to
and encompassing many greater loves, including the love of a land. Berry
describes the love shared by two characters, Elton and Mary Penn, in terms
that echo this sense of the nesting of affection within the larger world: “At
his best, Elton was a man in love—with her but not just with her. He was
in love too with the world, with their place in the world, with that scanty
farm, with his own life, with farming. At those times she lived in his love
as in a spacious house.”104 The sense of embeddedness that the Song relies
on reveals a sense of the commitment to a given landscape. It models a
stance toward the subject that is marked by dignity and affection.
The discussion of this chapter is not meant to suggest that the poet of
the Song of Songs was necessarily a farmer—although this is certainly a
possibility, and should not be dismissed. Dissenters might argue that the
Song’s literary qualities, its rarified diction, and its references to king and
palace are indicators that the Song is not agrarian at all, but courtly. This
has, indeed, been a significant emphasis in scholarly interpretation of the
Song. Hans-Peter Müller, for example, emphasizes the Song as a form

of nostalgia, a pastoral idyll composed and enjoyed by disaffected urban
elites.105 And this, too, is a possibility that should not be dismissed. But
even if the Song is composed by and/or for an urban elite—an assumption
that is merely speculative—it conveys a deep commitment to a particular-
ized landscape, and with it an explicit valorization of agricultural labor.
It should not be surprising for an emphasis on farming to emerge from
a largely agrarian ancient milieu; even an “urban” poet from the ancient
world likely had much closer experience of and knowledge about agricul-
ture than many contemporary readers, since the cities of the ancient world
were themselves, of course, predominantly agrarian. Ultimately, though,
this argument does not stand or fall on the Song’s compositional history.
The question asked here is how the poetry of the Song offers a mode of
thought that meditates on the human situation in the natural world. Is
there, even within the conventions of pastoral poetry, “a certain indispen-
sable truth and health”?106
In the two agrarian poems from the Song discussed in this chapter,
humans are envisioned as laborers in a landscape, as well as metaphor-
ically elided with the land. The blending of the lovers’ bodies with the
farmed landscape suggests that love itself is a kind of cultivation. By “cul-
tivation” I have in mind the attentive labor required by a human worker
on a farm.107 It is like the antique term “husbandry,” which also implies
a relationship of care. The labor of cultivation means “to use with care,
to keep, to save…. Husbandry is the name of all the practices that sus-
tain life by connecting us conservingly to our places and our world: it is
the art of keeping tied all the strands in the living network that sustains
us.”108 Both farming and love require intimate knowledge and careful
work. Yet this work is not conceived of as drudgery, as the poem consist-
ently reminds the reader that bountiful yields of sensual fulfillment can
be hoped for: fresh food, wine for the palate, fruits and spices in plentiful
array. The fact that love is cast in terms of cultivation suggests that the
qualities of affection and husbandry in human relationship will produce
goods equally satisfying to the senses: kisses as delightful as wine, love-
making as a storehouse of delicacies. But these positive outcomes are not
altogether assured. Rather, like a crop of grapes that is planted, it must
be watched; and like a flock of sheep, it must be pursued. Such threats as
the burning sun imply the vulnerability of the grape crops and the young
woman. As Berry writes, “This is no paradisal dream. /Its hardship is its
possibility.”109 Under the “gaze” of the sun, the possibility of neglect (“my
own vineyard I have not kept” 1:6), and the indeterminacy of “whether the
vine has budded” (7:12), how could a vineyard, or love, flourish? The only
way the vines will flourish, the only way that mutual desire will be realized,
the poetry suggests, is by attentive long-term cultivation.
3
The Garden
Let no one think that real gardening is a bucolic and
meditative occupation. It is an insatiable passion, like
everything else to which a man gives his heart.
â•‰â•‰K arel Čapek (1984)
Reading your way through the Song of Songs, you will stumble upon a
garden at nearly the center: “a locked garden” (gan nāʿûl, 4:12), which is
described in the ensuing four verses, 4:12–â•‰5:1.1 This section details the
various elements of the garden, including its plant life, its irrigation sys-
tem, and the fruits it produces. This landscape is formally enclosed by
the rest of the Song, which on either side moves from more fragmen-
tary (Chapters 1, 8) to more structured (it is surrounded on either side by
the “city” sequences in Chapters 3, 5). While this poem stands apart both
stylistically and thematically from the rest of the Song, glimpses of the
garden and its aspects spring up at various moments in the rest of the
poetry, heightening the sense that it is a crucial and generative image for
the entire book. The garden is quintessentially a landscape, in the twofold
sense of both a material process and an aesthetic product. In what follows,
I suggest that the garden in the Song is the emblem of ancient ideals about
the natural world. Through a close reading of this poem, we will see that
both order and abandon have their place in this garden.
The Garden Is a Garden

To begin, I suggest that this poem has an intrinsic interest in the natural
landscape—â•‰constituted as it is by a lengthy description of plants in a garden.
This poem’s controlling strategy is the list; it proceeds by itemizing plants:
… Pomegranates
with excellent fruits
Henna with nard
Nard and saffron
cane and cinnamon
With all the trees of incense:
Myrrh and eaglewood
with all the prime spices (Song 4:13–15)
This list is one of the most detailed descriptions of natural phenomena in

the Song. The garden itself is the center of the poem’s gravity, pulling our
attention toward the flourishing plant life that constitutes it. Its represen-
tation of natural elements, however, has been almost entirely overshad-
owed by an interpretive fixation on the garden as a metaphor for the young
woman’s sexuality.
Interpreters of this passage of the Song have most frequently taken
the garden to be a symbol of female sexuality, and the “locked garden,”
therefore, as a symbol of chastity. So, for example, the ancient Aramaic
commentary of the Targum Song of Songs includes the following interpre-
tation of these verses: “You women who are married are chaste like a chaste
bride, and like the Garden of Eden, which no one has permission to enter
save the righteous…. Your virgins are sealed thus they are like the spring
of living water….”2 Ambrose likewise writes, “Thou, O virgin, art a garden
inclosed, preserve thy fruits, let no thorns arise in thee, but let thy grapes
flourish, let not any take from thee the fence of thy modesty …” (de Inst.
Virg. C. 8),3 and the Vulgate’s hortus conclusus soror mea sponsas became
crucial in the Christian interpretation of Mary’s virginity.4 This view, that
the garden represents female chastity, persists among some contempo-
rary interpreters,5 while a more liberal attitude toward the young woman’s
sexuality has gained prominence. Othmar Keel writes, for example, “[t]‌his
image is simply about the inaccessible loved one, whose charms are all the
more wonderful, mysterious, and exotic the tighter the doors that lead to
them are locked.”6 Or, J. Cheryl Exum: “Here the garden is a sexual image
for the woman herself and her sexuality in particular. The man sees his
lover as his private, locked garden for his exclusive pleasure.”7 Whichever
specific way it is interpreted, there is a broad consensus that the garden in
the Song is primarily a metaphor for the young woman’s body, or her sexu-
ality.8 But, as I will suggest more fully in the following, to focus exclusively
on the metaphorically suggestive dimensions of the garden is to neglect
the poem’s own insistent focus on the landscape itself.
The Garden 57
To be sure, it has been widely recognized that across ancient Near

Eastern literature the garden is a pervasive motif of eroticism. An Old
Akkadian love incantation includes the garden as both a setting for love
and an emblem of female sexuality:
Two beautiful maidens were blossoming,

They went down to the garden,
To the garden they went down,
They cut from the sapflow of the incense-tree.9
In an Old Babylonian text known as the “Manchester Tammuz,” the young

woman expresses the desire for her lover’s presence in garden terms: “Into
the garden of apple trees he brought joy … Into the garden of grapes he
brought joy.”10 In Ludingira’s description of his “mother,” she is “a garden
of delight, full of joy, /an irrigated fig tree, covered with fir-cones….”11
The Assyrian Love Lyrics of Nabû and Tašmetu include an appeal to go to
the garden, and articulate the wish, “May my eyes see the plucking of your
fruit!”12 The Ugaritic myth of how the moon god Yariḫ obtained his bride
Nikkalu contains the following lines: “I will make her field into a vineyard,
/the field of her love into a flower-garden” (CTU 1.24).13 Egyptian poetry
also draws on this motif to some, although lesser, extent: “I am yours like
the field /planted with flowers /and with all sorts of fragrant plants.”14
Horticulture in broad perspective seems to evoke female sexuality and fer-
tility. It is not obvious, though, that the garden is a strong metaphor for
“the pudenda in particular,” as Shalom Paul has argued.15 This may be
the case in the more sexually explicit Sumerian love poetry, but this text
of the Song includes no itemization of the lovers’ body parts, nor does it
seem interested in assigning parts of the garden to particular referents—
such a strategy does not do justice to the subtlety of the imagery. As my
earlier discussions have emphasized, a landscape approach helps us to
dwell with the poem’s landscapes, appreciating their materiality and their
aesthetic dimensions, and ultimately shaping ethical responses to land. If
this text is governed by the metaphor “a young woman is a garden,” the
young woman is the target domain and the garden is the source domain. In
terms of conceptual metaphor theory, a landscape approach examines the
source domain, the garden, instead of emphasizing the target domain. Or, as
Roland Boer has written, it focuses “on the metaphoric screen rather than
assume something lies behind it.”16 Nevertheless, despite interpreters’
insistence that the garden here is a clearly and exclusively a metaphor for
the young woman, the Song is somewhat more reticent.
One place where we can see most clearly the Song’s own reticence is in
the first line: gan nāʿûl ʾăḥōtî kallāh. This phrase is commonly translated
“a garden locked is my sister, my bride”; the verb “is” has been supplied
by English translations, making the equation of the young woman with
the garden explicit, and crystallizing the interpretive fixation on establish-
ing and explicating the metaphor (NRSV, emphasis added; cf. KJV, ASV,
Luther, JPS, NIV, NLT, etc.). But the syntax of the first line gives the reader
a moment of pause. The phrase is verbless, which is capable of preserv-
ing a bit of ambiguity. The participle “locked” could as easily be translated
“A locked garden, my sister bride,”17 (the participle working as attributive
adjective) or “A garden is locked, my sister bride,”18 (the participle work-
ing as a predicate adjective). In either of these readings, “my sister bride”
might be not a third person description, but a vocative, an instance of
direct address. It might be observed that interpreters do not insist on sup-
plying an “is” later in 4:12b or in 4:15, both of which share the same para-
tactic pattern:
A garden locked, my sister bride (4:12a)

A garden locked, a spring sealed (4:12b)
A garden fountain, a well of living water (4:15)
That the young woman might be addressed here, not described, has a cer-
tain appeal because the immediate context is saturated with precisely such
invocations. In the four previous verses, and the two verses following, the
young man directly addresses the young woman with these two terms,
“my sister,” and “bride”:
[Come] with me from Lebanon, my bride (4:8)

You have ravished my heart, my sister bride (4:9)
How sweet is your love, my sister bride (4:10)
Your lips distill nectar, my bride (4:11)
I enter my garden, my sister bride (5:1)
Open to me, my sister, my friend (5:2)
Six times in succession, the young man employs this pattern, using
“bride” or “sister bride” in the second half of the line to address the young
woman directly. So when we encounter the same pattern here, it gives us
The Garden 59
a moment of pause: Is the young man speaking about the young woman?
Or to her? Is the subject the young woman? Or the garden? This ambigu-
ity momentarily defers the explicit equation of the garden with the young
woman. As it does so, the garden itself, standing at the head of the line,
emerges as the foremost subject, which is reinforced and elaborated by
the rich description of plant life that follows. As Murphy has rightfully
observed, “[t]â•„he woman is almost forgotten in the full description” of the
garden, whose own qualities take center stage.19 If the garden is a met-
aphor for the young woman, it is much more obliquely so than many
interpreters imply. The subtle cues of the poem draw our attention back
again and again to the garden, the garden, the garden. In light of these
considerations, I suggest that the poem has an intrinsic interest in the
garden, which becomes a window into its conceptualization of the ideal-
ized natural world.
“Third Nature”: Gardens in Theory

In order to consider the complex of values generated by the garden, it is
helpful to consider briefly theorizations of the garden—â•‰attending to an
increasing interest in garden practices and their significance.20 As a con-
structed space closely related to agriculture, the garden both refers to and
contains nature, but it is not nature per se. The garden, rather, is a cultural
form that serves as a microcosm for ideals about the natural world.21 I will
consider each of these aspects in brief.
The first and crucial aspect of the garden is that it contains and refers
to nature. As a branch of landscape management that utilizes the found
environment—â•‰most prominently its plants, along with its rocks, soils,
and waterways—â•‰it must imitate the native ecosystem closely enough to
ensure the survival of its elements. In that sense, it must be aware of and,
to a certain extent, attuned to the patterns and capabilities of the natural
landscape. Garden making, then, is intimately related to nature. This is
famously (though not originally) articulated by Alexander Pope:
Consult the Genius of the Place in all;

That tells the Waters or to rise, or fall,
Or helps th’ambitious Hill the heav’ns to scale,
Or scoops in circling theaters the Vale,
Calls in the Country, catches opening glades,
Joins willing woods, and varies shades from shades,
Now breaks, or now directs, th’intending Lines;

Paints as you plant, and, as you work, designs.22
Pope’s enjoinder to Lord Burlington has been an important theme in con-

temporary landscape architecture—an imperative to locate the garden in
the particularity of a site, its unique physical constituents and features—
which is to say, the garden is not a concept that can merely be transported
and reapplied in any given location.23 This ancient Roman idea of the gen-
ius loci, the “genius of a place,” as Pope has it, encapsulates the inescapa-
ble significance of the site itself. Philosopher Mara Miller writes that “it is
virtually impossible to get the same effect (including specifically aesthetic
effects) in two different gardens … differences in microclimate, in soil
composition, in drainage make it difficult to reproduce a given garden
somewhere else….”24 Every garden is a unique engagement with natural
elements. Site uniqueness may be especially important in ancient Israel/
Palestine, whose strikingly variable landscape comprises particularized
microclimates and broadly ranging soil qualities throughout the region.
The second important thing to note is that, although it contains
and refers to nature, the garden is not identical with nature. Insofar as
the garden departs from the native ecosystem (for example, through the
intensification of planting, or the importing of non-native species), the
gardener must make accommodations—providing irrigation to thirsty
plants, adjusting soil acidity, fertilizing relatively poor soil, weeding—so
that the plants can be “at home” in this foreign environment. Such adjust-
ments are necessary precisely because the garden is not “natural.” Rather,
“[i]‌f it is nature at all that we appreciate in such cases, this is ‘nature-as-
affected-by-humanity.’ ”25 Human intervention is represented foremost
in the gardener, whose presence is presumed by the garden. Geographer
Yi-Fu Tuan notes that the garden is an art-form, “a blending of nature
and artifice.”26 Unlike other forms of artwork—painting, for example,
or even sculpture—a garden is ephemeral and phenomenal. It must be
maintained, or it will revert to a natural state, becoming a non-garden;
a garden “requires constant vigilance.”27 The form of the garden itself,
then, presumes human actors who are continually invested in the preser-
vation of the site. For this reason gardens have invited comparisons to the-
ater arts, which, too, are ephemeral, subject to temporal vacillations, and
require human presence.28 This reliance on human intervention is evident
in biblical references to gardens: In the quintessential biblical garden, God
places the human in Eden “to till it and to keep it” (Gen 2:15). What is sown
The Garden 61
presumes that someone is sowing (cf. Isa 61:11). Gardens are an interven-
tion in nature, serving the food-production needs of humans (Gen 2:9, 16;
3:1), and are symbols of a long-term investment in a particular place (Jer
29:5, 28). Thus the garden, while it is distinctly natural, is also distinctly
cultural: “The garden is a cultural construction derived from nature under
the aegis of the fine arts.”29
This hybrid character was designated during the Italian Renaissance by
the term terza natura (“third nature”). This phrase was coined by Jacopo
Bonfadio, a sixteenth-century Italian humanist, in a letter to refer to villa
gardens. He writes the following in a description of his country seat in
Tuscany: “For in the gardens … the industry of the local people has been
such that nature incorporated with art is made an artificer and naturally
equal with art, and from them both together is made a third nature, which
I would not know how to name.”30 “Nature,” in Bonfadio’s terms, is a
wild space, while “art” refers to “second nature,” the agricultural strate-
gies I outlined in Chapter 2. Bonfadio, in his survey of his beloved home
landscape, is at a loss to describe gardens in terms of these “two natures”
alone. The combination of the two, “nature,” and “art,” results in some-
thing new: a “third nature.” For Bonfadio, this blending together of nature
and art extend well beyond utilitarian practices, such that the functional
needs of the site (i.e., to produce food) are exceeded by the formal, aes-
thetic effects. This is not to suggest that there is an opposition between
function and aesthetic (even though such a distinction is implied by
Bonfadio’s contrast between agriculture and gardening)—rather, it is the
particular capacity of the garden to prioritize aesthetic value while preserv-
ing utilitarian function. This is the last aspect of the garden that I wish to
emphasize, and the one that will be the most important for the present
analysis: the garden prioritizes aesthetics, and as such is a form that both
expresses and generates cultural values.
The idea of an aesthetic aspect of the garden is retained by the name
of the quintessential biblical garden, “Eden,” which means “luxury,” or
“delight.”31 The relationship with the natural world is thus construed as
one of human obligation that yields pleasure. This aesthetic emphasis is
readily apparent in biblical texts: in Isaiah, for instance, oaks trees are
described as a delight (Isa 1:29), and in the celebratory images of har-
vest, which in its plenty becomes “like a watered garden” (Jer 31:12). It
also is present in Ezekiel’s enumeration of various precious stones in con-
junction with the beauty of Eden, the garden of God (Ezek 28:13). This
“artifice,” as Bonfadio calls it, the desire to make a site beautiful, results
in joining metaphysical concepts with the concrete physical forms that

comprise the site.32 Human desire, therefore, shapes the space and leaves
traces of its shaping—as such, the garden is always a testament to the
designs and ideals of its maker, most specifically, the desired or sought
relationship with nature. Such ideals about nature are always referenced
by the gardens themselves, which always retain “a signature of the human
agency to which they owe their existence.”33 In the Song of Songs, these
“signatures” abound: in the passive participles (nāʿûl, “locked,” and ḥātûm,
“sealed,” 4:12); in the water courses (maʿyan, “spring,” bəʾēr, “well,” vv. 12,
15) that were such a crucial part of ancient Near Eastern horticulture;34 in
the list of exotic plants (vv. 13–14), which I will discuss in greater detail
later; and, most obviously, in the presence of the person in the garden
(4:16–5:1). The human interventions of which the poem is self-conscious
indicate that the garden is a natural space, shaped to accord with ideas
about the natural world.
These human desires and ideals are formally contrived, and they are
also diverse. By suggesting that gardens are a function of human desire
and ideas, I do not mean to say that they necessarily or always express
a single desire or idea. It should be stressed that there is a profusion
of meanings that inhere in gardens.35 These differ across cultures and
through time. In the ancient Near East, for example, the garden has a “util-
itarian purpose” as a space for intensive food production. Evidence for this
includes, for example, the Roman and Egyptian kitchen gardens, which
would have served the immediate needs of the household.36 Vegetables,
which have soft vegetal tissues that are eaten fresh (often before the plant
sets its seed), leave little archaeological trace, and so they are difficult to
verify empirically, but they were likely grown in garden plots throughout
the ancient world. The Sumerians, for example, developed a strategy of
shade-gardening by surrounding small plots with date-palm trees, which
would shelter the relatively vulnerable vegetable crops from both intense
sun and strong winds. These plots would have produced staples such as
peas, beans, and lentils, but also garlic and probably also leeks, cucumbers,
lettuces, melons, and a variety of spices.37 This pattern of gardening in
small-scale plots near households for the production of pulses, along with
a variety of vegetables and fruits, would have supplied protein and vita-
mins as crucial supplements to cereal production. While the most famous
gardens were large-scale imperial projects, as we shall see, it is likely that
small-scale gardening, which leaves minimal archaeological imprint, was
closely linked with agricultural production from the earliest times.38 This
The Garden 63
basic utilitarian function of the garden can also intersect with a variety of
other cultural meanings. Gardens can model aesthetic pleasure,39 accom-
modate mortuary spaces,40 create religious meanings by hosting and sym-
bolizing sacral and ritual rites of various kinds,41 and emblemize human
sexuality and fertility.42 Disparate meanings not only diverge among vari-
ous gardens, but also can converge in a single garden space.
I emphasize this point in order to insist that the garden in the Song
is evocative and multiply significant, and to offer a counter-voice to some
theories of the garden that focus exclusively on domination and power.
Much of our knowledge of gardening in the ancient world comes from
royal sources, whose texts and monuments are privileged in the archae-
ological-historical record. The most famous gardens of the ancient Near
East are related to kingship—much of the evidence for gardening in
the ancient world has come from the relatively permanent evidence in
royally sponsored inscriptions, literature, paintings, and garden sites,
which necessarily skews our understanding of gardens toward “offi-
cial” and royal agendas (including propagating imperial ideologies). For
example, the Egyptian pleasure gardens at Amarna, which surrounded
the palace in several terraces planted with trees and flower beds, surely
were “designed and understood as overt symbols of status and power.”43
This has a corollary with later traditions of gardening in seventeenth-
and eighteenth-century England, Europe, and China. As Tuan empha-
sizes, such large-scale pleasure gardens function as “symbols of surplus
power,”44 born of the basic human impulse to exert dominance over the
natural world. Christopher Meredith, following Tuan and other theorists
of the garden as power, argues that gardens in general (and the garden in
the Song, in particular) are precisely this, “… a product of human dom-
ination, a clearing away of the raw in order to impose a theatrical theme-
park version of ‘creation,’ the boundaries of which, ultimately, serve a
political reality.”45
Biblical texts include examples of royal gardens that seemed to be linked
to power of this kind. These references suggest a plot of land within or
abutting the wall of the city, and they are described as spaces for burial (2
Kgs 21:18; 26) or a sufficiently private path for escaping an attacking army
unseen (2 Kgs 25:4; Jer 39:4; 52:7). And the story of Ahab’s rapacious—
and ultimately deadly—desire to acquire the vineyard of Naboth in order
to turn it into a royal vegetable garden suggests that gardens could serve
as a locus of kingly arrogation (1 Kgs 21:1–16). The book of Esther—set in
the Persian palace—evokes the most famous “pleasure gardens” of the
ancient world as a setting for the royal banquet that engenders the plot
of the book (Est 1:5). (I will discuss the gardens of Ramat Raḥel later.) But
Tuan also admits that this power need not be sinister; rather, “its ano-
dyne is affection,” and one of the hallmarks of gardening is playfulness
and care.46 It is too reductionistic, then, to generalize that gardens func-
tion as “a kind of concretized fantasy of a conquered world … specifically
designed to showcase political control and domination.”47 While the power
and propaganda reading is one possible signification of the garden, it is
not the only one. As art historian Zainab Bahrani writes,
Even today, the discipline of Near Eastern studies continues to

equate serious theoretical discussion exclusively with the idea of
reducing social practices in Near Eastern antiquity to practices in
the service of royal power and overt propaganda. On the one hand
this seems simply a weak form of scholarship, unnuanced and
reductive at best; on the other it might even be pernicious, since
it adheres to that old tired trop of Oriental despotism and should
surely be re-evaluated.48
Meredith himself acknowledges that there is more than possible meaning

to the ancient garden. In addition to his reading of the garden as surplus
power, he also helpfully highlights the idea of effort in the maintenance
of the garden (this is an idea to which I will return). He notes that “while
gardens tend to evoke in us ideas about rest, relaxation, and escape from
toil, they could be more accurately described as sites of some considerable
labour.” But it is not necessarily the case that this labor is characterized
by “its sustained imposition against the forces of nature,” as he argues.49
As I have suggested earlier, gardens must equally work along with, not in
opposition to, nature. It is possible to conjecture that the garden itself is
a site where these two realities intersect—that the garden is a locus of the
conjunction of affection and work.
The following analysis will examine the “garden” poem of the Song
(4:16–5:1), paying particular attention to how its formal aspects build a syn-
thetic experience of the garden and shape our responses to it. As I will
show, the garden situates humans in both aesthetic contemplation and
ecstatic experience such that they both work in and lose themselves to the
larger landscape. This poem’s combination of observation and rapture—
contemplation and abandonment—models complex modes of thought
about the natural world, which values aesthetic form as well as an excess
The Garden 65
of wildness that courses through human life, remaining irreducible to

human ends. The ideals conveyed in this garden are threefold: the garden
is a landscape in which humans work to establish and promote ongoing
order; the garden’s order is permeable, it is always circumscribed by wild-
ness; and finally, in the garden the self may be lost in ecstasy.
The poem is composed of two movements. Its first twelve lines (vv.
12–â•‰15) describe the garden, and are marked by an absence of verbs. Its tone
is one of stasis and observation. The second movement is identifiable by
the striking and sudden shift to strong imperative verbs: “awake, north
wind, and come, south wind” (v. 16). In these latter ten lines, the voicing
becomes urgent and dialogic, as the lovers and their friends rapturously
describe the enjoyment of the garden. In what follows, I will treat each of
these movements in turn.
The Form of the Garden (Song 4:12–â•‰15):

Order and Exoticism
The first movement establishes the form of the garden, which is marked
by formal order, and by exoticism. The text begins in this way:
A locked garden, my sister bride,

A locked garden,50 a sealed spring.
Your shoots51 are a grove:52
Pomegranates with excellent fruits,
Henna with nard.
Nard53 and saffron,54
cane and cinnamon,
With all the trees of incense:
Myrrh and eaglewood,
with all the prime spices.
A garden55 spring,
A well of living water,
flowing from Lebanon. (Song 4:12–â•‰15)
This first movement of the garden poem is marked by a tone of stasis and
observation. Within the first seven short lines (vv. 13–â•‰14), we are introduced
to a list of ten plants found in the enclosed garden. With no active verbs56
and few syntactical features except for the preposition ʾim (“with,” 3 x)
and the conjunction wə-â•‰ (“and,” 3 x), the description simply accumulates
names of flora, like row upon row in the garden plot. The controlling strat-
egy of this poem is the list—but it is not merely an itemization, or a pure
list. In this way it differs from the intellectual genre of list-making of the
ancient world.57 While it operates on the additive logic of the list, it sig-
nals abundance by these “what’s more” words: henna with nard; nard and
saffron. The repetition of key words and sounds links each line of the list
with what goes before. The first couplet establishes this pattern of loosely
cohering soundplay:
šəlāḥayik PaRdēs Rimmônîm

ʿim PəRî məgādîm
Your shoots are a grove of pomegranates
with excellent fruits
The second line reiterates the /p/and /r/combination of the first, and the
line ends are near-rhymes, encouraging the sense that “pomegranates” are
but one example of all the “excellent” fruits that are available in the garden.
A similar strategy informs the next triplet:
kəPāRîm ʿim-nəRādîm
nēRd wəKaRKōm
Qāneh wəQinnāmôn
Henna with nard
Nard and saffron
Cane and cinnamon
The first line picks up the /p/-/r/combination; the next line connects the
/r/sound and introduces the hard /k/sound, echoed by the hard /k/sound
of the qoph (“Q”) in the final line. These plants are ordered by sound. The
effect is of someone remembering a garden, a memory moved by the
euphony of words: each plant name triggers the remembrance of the next.
As if to reiterate the abundance of the garden, the poem insists on its own
incompleteness—ʿim kol (“with all”) is used twice, resumptively: “with all
the trees of incense,” “with all the prime spices.” Such repetitions serve
several purposes: They foreground the aesthetic quality of the garden
through the formal features available to the poet—the euphonic sound-
play is a signal of the order and beauty of the garden. At the same time,
such formal features call attention to the poem itself as an aesthetic prod-
uct, and raise the tension between the two art forms (the poem and the
The Garden 67
garden). The poem’s insistence that what it describes is merely a sample

of the abundance of the garden itself registers the incommensurability of
the two art forms. What we have in this poem is not a garden, per se, but
a garden ekphrasis—a description of an object made available through the
aesthetic presentation of the poem.58 The form of the poem, through its
lyric strategies, enables us to access and experience the form of the garden.
In addition to the features of soundplay I have addressed previously, the
first movement of the garden poem uses two additional formal features
to create the sense of the garden: order and exoticism. As I will show,
this garden ekphrasis promotes an ideal of nature ordered by human care,
which is most readily apparent in the garden’s enclosure and in the exoti-
cism of its plants.
The garden poem has some elements of structural enclosure, since
it is introduced and concluded by parallel statements: “a locked garden,
a sealed spring” (v. 12) is echoed by the phrase “a garden spring” (v. 15).
The description of the plants in verses 12–15 is in this way contained by
the repetition of the word gan (“garden”), which subtly distinguishes the
description from the text that surrounds it. As the preceding theoretical
discussion emphasized, the garden is not identical to nature, but has a
body distinct from it. This is a moment in which the poem mimics the
experience of the ancient garden, which is closed off from the rest of
the world.
While gardening practices differ across the ancient Near East, there is
consistency that the garden includes the idea of its enclosure, which is evi-
dent as a textual assumption in the barring of Eden (Gen 3:24), and in the
story of escaping the Assyrian siege undetected through the (sufficiently
private) king’s garden (2 Kgs 25:4; Jer 39:4; 52:7). Similarly, the royal gar-
den at the palace at Ras Shamra (Ugarit) was both enclosed by a wall and
protected by a guard post.59 At Ramat Raḥel, south of Jerusalem, a palace
garden was dug down into a hillside, utilizing the steep exposed escarp-
ments as a natural wall on at least three sides.60 Patterns of enclosure are
also attested in Egypt, and are particularly prominent in tomb paintings
that represent gardens.61 Such representations emphasize systems of
walling and enclosure, which preserve a sense of protection from the ele-
ments.62 Enclosure as an identifying characteristic of the garden is also
attested in Mesopotamian iconography of the garden. In a famous Neo-
Assyrian wall relief, trees and a wall line the garden on all sides, preserv-
ing its waterways, rows of plant life, and the temple atop the hill from the
chaos of the battle charge unfolding in the three registers below it.63 Such
examples suggest that the garden’s enclosure, which lends it a sense of
tranquil separation, is a form of human intervention that orders the space

and preserves the human experience of the natural elements it contains.
Within the tranquil, “still life” of the garden poem, its second feature
emerges: its interest in exoticism. The garden is constituted by a mini-
malistic description—a list—of exotic and native plant species. Of the
plants listed, four arguably grew in the region: rimmônîm (pomegranate),
kəpārîm (henna),64 karkōm (saffron),65 bəśāmîm (balsam),66 and qāneh (gin-
ger grass).67 The pomegranate is a tree not only native, but pervasively
grown, and so frequently called upon in literature as to be emblematic of
the fruitfulness of Palestine. It, along with the handful of native plants,
suggests a local garden—perhaps even an oasis, which is a kind of natu-
rally fruitful “garden.” The remainder of the list, however, evokes costly
spices that were known predominantly as imports, and it is doubtful that
they ever grew locally: nērd (spikenard),68 qinnāmôn (cinnamon),69 ləbônâ
(frankincense),70 mōr (myrrh),71 and ʾăhālôt (eaglewood).72
The logic of the list heads the description with the pomegranate, the
fruit most emblematic of the region, and suggests that this garden con-
tains groves in which other high quality fruits (v. 13) are equally as success-
ful. The ability of the native plant to flourish in this garden is the standard
by which all other plants flourish. The insistence on the success of both
native and exotic species continues in the pairings contained in following
lines: henna (native) with nard (exotic); nard (exotic) and saffron (native);
cane (native) and cinnamon (exotic; v. 14); myrrh and eaglewood (exotic).
The close interweaving of these native and exotic plant names suggests
that the poem is interested in how the plants—both native and exotic—
flourish together in a single garden.
The scholarly consensus, however, is that this garden, because of the
diversity of plants it contains, is a fantasy. J. Cheryl Exum writes that “[n]‌o
garden in the ancient Near East would have contained such a wide vari-
ety of spice-bearing plants and trees from such far-away places as Arabia,
Africa, and India, growing side by side.”73 Michael Fox writes, “[t]his can
only be a fantasy garden of exotic and precious plants.”74 Gianni Barbiero
insists further, “in fact, it is impossible to cultivate together in one garden
plants so disparate and from such different climates.”75 These analyses
largely draw from the observation of Gillis Gerleman, who suggested that
the diversity of plants is evoked not because they have any correspondence
to reality, but in order to create a rich sensory experience. In his much-
echoed assessment, “Es wird ein utopischer Phantasiegarten beschrieben,
der mit der Wirklichkeit sehr wenig zu tun hat.”76 These assessments are
The Garden 69
right insofar as they point to the nature of the garden as an idealized space
that does not exist on its own but that must be created. As Michael Pollan
writes, “gardens are simultaneously both real places and representations.
They bring together, in one place, nature and our ideas about nature.”77
They exist in reality; yet, at the same time, as an art form they are neces-
sarily representational. But these assessments of the Song’s garden as a
“fantasy garden” miss the mark slightly, for two reasons. First, as a label,
“fantasy garden” implies that a literary garden could be “real,” but this is
to mistake the poem for an actual garden. As I have already suggested,
any ekphrastic poem about a garden will necessarily be a “fantasy garden”
(regardless of the plants described in it) insofar as it is a textual represen-
tation. Second, the label “fantasy garden” does not take into account how
exoticism, the incorporation of foreign elements into the domestic, is a
persistent and traditional aspect of gardening in idea and practice. By such
standards, most if not all gardens are “fantasy gardens.” In what follows,
I will focus on the latter point: that exoticism itself is a prominent feature
of the gardening culture of the ancient Near East, and that the exoticism
evoked in the Song, therefore, takes its place in a particular landscape of
encultured garden meaning.
Both textual references and archaeological remains reveal how inte-
gral exotic plant elements were to the ancient Near Eastern garden. As
Karen Polinger Foster has argued, gardens of every era in the ancient Near
East evidence “the controlled coexistence of exotic and indigenous flora
and fauna….”78 Such exoticism is possible through a series of cultural
commitments and ideals, including (but not limited to) travel, botanical
interest and knowledge, and horticultural skill. As I will suggest in the fol-
lowing, the evocation of exoticism among the plants in the garden points
to, fairly revels in, the capability of skillful human intervention to order
the natural world.
A couple of examples of such garden exoticism will suffice to illus-
trate this pervasive practice. In Mesopotamia, Sennacherib (705–681 BCE)
claims to have created a great park at Ninevah with “fruit-bearing trees
of the hill and all lands, all the aromatics of Syria (Hatti) … every type of
wild vine and exotic fruit tree, aromatics and olive trees….”79 This follows
an older tradition: In a cylinder inscription, Tiglath-Pileser I (1115–1077
BCE) boasts: “Cedars and urkarinu-trees, and allakanish-trees … I took,
and in the gardens of my land, I planted them. And rare garden-fruits,
which were not found within my land…. [I]‌n the gardens of Assyria I have
caused them to flourish.”80 Continuing this tradition of incorporating
foreign elements, Assurnasirpal II’s building project at Kalhu (Nimrud,

876 BCE) included gardens filled with exotica that came both from for-
eign tribute and from military expeditions. He boasts about this interest
in cultivating a diverse and exotic horticulture:
From the lands I travelled and hills I traversed the trees and seeds
I noticed and collected: cedar, cypress, box, Juniperus oxycedrus,
myrtle, Juniperus dupracea, almond, date palm, ebony, sissoo,
olive, tamarind, oak, terebinth, dukdu [nut tree], Pistacia terebin-
thus, myrrh–type [ash?], mehru-fir, Dead Sea fruit [?]‌, ti’atu, Kaniš-
oak, willow, ṣadānu, pomegranate, plum, fir, ingirašu, pear, quince,
fig, grapevine, angašu- pear, ṣumlalu, titip [aromatic], ṣarbutu,
zanzaliqu [acacia?], “swamp-apple”-tree, ricinus, nuhurtu, tazzinū,
kanaktu [ frankincense?].81
Following this description of the exotic floral elements of the garden,

Assurnasirpal’s description continues with an affirmation of the aesthetic
experience offered thereby:
The canal-water came flowing down from above to the gardens: the

paths [are full] of scent; the waterfalls [glisten] like the stars of
heaven in the garden of pleasure. The pomegranate trees, which
are clothed with clusters of fruit like vines, enrich the breezes in the
garden of [delights. I] Assurnasirpal gather fruit continuously in the
garden of joys….82
The sensory experiences of the garden, full of its array of exotic and fruit-
ing plants, is here lushly evoked. The description moves away from a
catalog of plants, draws the reader along the path, beside the waterfall,
to appreciate the sight and the scent of the garden. These rich aesthetic
possibilities are simultaneously evoked in the threefold title given to the
space: “the garden of pleasure,” “the garden of delights,” and “the garden
of joys.” Like the garden passage in the Song of Songs, the list of plants
conveys the ordered and encompassing totality of the horticultural exotica,
accompanied by an affirmation of their aesthetic value. These examples
serve to show that exoticism itself was understood as a cultural achieve-
ment in the ancient world, one worth boasting about.
The high cultural value placed on exotic horticulture can also be
traced in Egypt. For example, the “Botanical Garden” reliefs of Pharaoh
The Garden 71
Thutmosis III (ca. 1479–1425 BCE) at Karnak render in exceptional detail

the horticultural and zoological gains from his extensive military cam-
paigns: “Plants which His Majesty found in the Land of Retenu … All the
plants that grow, all flowers that are in God’s Land.”83 There are obstacles
to certain identification of the plants represented, since color has disap-
peared from the walls of this temple, and the plants are not differenti-
ated by relative size but are rendered in like dimensions; however, it is
still possible to identify some of the plants depicted. These include date
and doum palm, sycomore fig, common fig, pomegranate, vine, waterlily,
iris, melon, and lettuce; likely are arum, crown daisy, teasel, bindweed,
and myrtle, among many others.84 Among the plants, twenty-six repre-
sent exotic species.85 The style is somewhat unusual in Egyptian iconog-
raphy, since it presents the plants in a catalog, as specimens on display,
and not in the typical geometric form of the Egyptian garden.86 The style
accomplishes visually what Assurnasirpal’s boast accomplishes literarily:
it impresses the viewer with the sense of accomplishment. The exoticism
is brought into relief by the sheer size of the collection, which is arranged
to showcase the variety of specimens, including a large number of exotic
and rare species alongside elements chosen to evoke the Egyptian envi-
ronment. In this way, the paintings depict the integration of the exotic
within the familiar.87 In another Egyptian example, Eighteenth Dynasty
Egyptian Pharaoh Hatshepsut’s (1508– 1458 BCE) funerary temple at
Deir el-Bahri was decorated with elaborate reliefs depicting her expedi-
tion to the land of Punt, including depictions of workers transporting
whole trees with their roots in baskets.88 This venture was echoed later by
Pharaoh Ramesses III (1186–1155 BCE), who imported incense and myrrh
trees to Memphis.89
Archaeological discoveries at Ramat Raḥel provide evidence of just
such garden exoticism in Palestine during the Persian period. During the
renewed excavations of this hilltop four kilometers south of Jerusalem,
researchers discovered an elaborate series of plastered pools, drains, and
stone-built channels to the west of a large palace structure.90 These water-
ways seem to have channeled and stored rainwater for a lowered garden
carved into the hillside.91 New techniques have allowed the fossilized
pollen trapped in the layers of plaster in the waterways themselves to be
analyzed.92 While some of the plaster layers contain largely native plant
species, the Persian period layer shows a large number of exotic species,
including citron, Persian walnut, cedar, and birch trees. These exotic spe-
cies appear to have been grown along with native species, including willow
and poplar, which would have required extensive irrigation, ornamental

myrtle and water lilies, as well as grapevine, olive, and the common fig.93
The success of this wide variety of species would have required extensive
preparation: the natural flint outcrops were hewn to create the lowered
garden, in which the bedrock was overlaid with a layer of rich, imported
earth (likely from the valley of Rephaʿim, west of Ramat Raḥel), nearly
forty centimeters thick. Such alterations constitute an impressive “trans-
formation” of a once rocky hilltop into an exotic garden.94
These examples help to show that exoticism itself was a regularly
practiced cultural form in the gardens of the ancient world. While the
preceding examples come largely from royal contexts in which exoticism
expresses an ideology of imperial prerogative and extent, there are also
hints that exoticism—of a more modest type—was also a feature of non-
royal gardens. An Egyptian poem from the Cairo Love Songs employs
familiarity with the kind of garden exoticism discussed earlier, but
removed from an imperial context—the vase fragments containing these
poems were discovered at Deir el-Medina, which was a craftsmen’s vil-
lage.95 It suggests that, as in the Song, knowledge of such botanical exoti-
cism could also be employed for other purposes:
If only my sister were mine every day,

like the greenery of a wreath! …
The reeds are dried,
the safflower has blossomed,
the mrbb-flowers are [in] a cluster [?]‌.
The lapis-lazuli plants and the mandragoras have come forth.
[The blo]ssoms from Hatti have ripened,
the bsbs-tree bloss[omed], …
the willow tree greened.
She would be with me every day,
like (the) greenery of a wreath.
All the blossoms are flourishing in the meadow,
… entirely.96
The safflower (a semiticism) and the “blossoms from Hatti” mark exotic
species, whose fleeting abundance in the meadow the young man wishes
to preserve in a wreath in order to enjoy them every day (not just when
they are blossoming). The speaker makes the metaphor explicit: “She
would be with me every day, /like (the) greenery of a wreath.”97 The poet
The Garden 73
uses known practices of horticultural exoticism to convey an idea about

love. In particular, the poem capitalizes on the fragile ephemerality of the
exotic plants. It does so with an eye to “ordinary gardens.” While refer-
ences to royal gardens point to the high art of garden practice, gardens are
also, pervasively, universally, a popular craft.98 In the vernacular garden,
the human body is engaged and useful; its requisite labor yields physical
pleasure in the enjoyment of the space. As in this Egyptian example, the
successful care of fragile exotic plants is not a matter of royal prerogative.
Rather, it is a wish for the pleasures of “every day.”
In this Egyptian love poem, as well as in the royal boasts about garden
accomplishments, there is an underlying recognition that exotic species
can be especially susceptible to failure—hence their success alongside
native plants is a prized cultural value. The catalogs in particular show
proud familiarity with knowledge of the plants themselves (the ability to
identify and name them) and thus to bring an array of foreign elements
into the ordered domain of the familiar. It is not coincidental that Pharaoh
Hatshepsut’s reliefs culminate in the depiction of her myrrh trees flour-
ishing outside the temple: Merely bringing back the plants will not suf-
fice.99 Alongside their imperial agendas, one could say that the appeal to
exotica also evidences a mindset of domestication, in which the foreign
elements are enveloped within the known, a crucial feature of which is the
modification of the native habitat to encourage the adaptation of the for-
eign elements. The imported species must be received with sufficient hor-
ticultural skill (most specifically, intimate knowledge of the native soil) in
order for plants to adapt successfully. Karel Čapek, in The Gardener’s Year,
remarks, “I find that a real gardener is not a man who cultivates flowers;
he is a man who cultivates the soil…. He lives buried in the ground. He
builds his monument in a heap of compost.”100 What underlies Čapek’s
statement is the reality that the plants themselves will flourish in propor-
tion to how attentively and skillfully the soil is cultivated. Such a skill, it
should be remembered, would have been of particular interest and impor-
tance in the hilly, dry, nutrient-poor terra rossa that comprised much of
Israel’s thin topsoil (hence the large-scale importing of garden soil at
Ramat Raḥel, noted earlier).
The kind and quantity of the labor required for the cultivation of
such exotic species imply that exoticism itself was a signal of a highly
organized and specialized cultural form— one whose technological
achievements broadcast the abilities of the humans charged with creat-
ing and maintaining the space. And indeed, the expertise of gardeners
as a specialized profession is well-known throughout the ancient Near

East.101 This passage in the Song plays with the expectation that the space
is the result of the presence of a gardener. Whose garden is this? Who
is doing the gardening? One place where this play is apparent is in the
third line: šəlāḥayik pardēs rimmônîm, which I translated earlier as “your
shoots are a grove of pomegranates.” But what are “your shoots”? The ten-
dency to establish and interpret the metaphor in reference to the young
woman’s sexuality is once again prevalent here: Interpreters tend to elab-
orate the metaphor, translating the obscure word šəlāḥayik as “your chan-
nel” (NRSV), “your limbs” (JPS), or glossing it in reference to the young
woman’s genitals or pubic hair.102 The issue is clouded by the style of the
lengthy descriptive poems that itemize the lover’s body elsewhere in the
Song of Songs (4:1–7; 5:10–16; 6:4–7; 7:1–7).103 But this poem includes no
list of the lover’s body parts (head, nose, lips, belly, legs, feet), such as
those found in the other descriptive poems. In light of the larger gravity
of the garden itself, it is probably better to render šəlāḥayik according to
the related root š-l-ḥ (“send out”), referring to a plant’s roots or branches
that are “sent out” from the body of the plant.104 There is precedent for a
botanical use of this root: in Isaiah 16:8, for example, the plant’s branches
(šəluḥôtêhā) stretch out over the sea (see also Ps 80:12; Jer 17:8; Ezek 31:5
[prob. bišlāḥāyw, for bəšalləḥô]).105 “Shoots” is an appropriate rendering
of šəlāḥayik, the plantings within a garden, hence my translation: “your
shoots are a grove.” Scholarly attempts to pinpoint a specific body part
evoked by the image jump too quickly to an explication of the garden as
part of the human body, instead of pausing, as the poem does, with an
appreciation of the floral elements of the garden. The Song is happy here
to play with the audience’s perception of the subject—readers’ desire for
anatomical specificity is a telltale sign of the Song’s ability to tantalize
and yet defer its subject. In light of the emphasis on intensification and
gardening, “your shoots” might suggest that the young woman is the gar-
dener, and “hers” because she is responsible for their cultivation and care.
This idea is picked up later when the young woman calls it “my garden,”
and then says, “let my lover come to his garden.”
The logic of the garden exoticism in the Song, then, persuades the
reader not that the garden is a “fantasy garden,” but that the space is the
result of attention and care—one that presumes the intervention of a
skilled gardener. In other words, the evocation of the space itself is capa-
ble of representing the order of the garden as an art form: “This attention
to different intensities of intervention in the world stems in part from
The Garden 75
what visual artists can make especially their own: the celebration of for-
mal effects, whether natural or artificial.”106 Exoticism construed in this
way is a formal effect, part of the congeries of artistic and natural qual-
ities that make a garden “third nature.” As such, it is hospitable to the
varied intensities of intervention. These varied interventions—â•‰including
also the waterways of which the Song is self-â•‰conscious—â•‰consistently
recall to the viewer not only the abundance of the natural world, but
also the ideal of order within it. The formal effects we encounter there
are the art and artifice of this “third nature.” The ideal of nature is in
the ordered domestication of exotic abundance—â•‰the incorporation of
diverse elements into the order of the known. This order is experienced
in a contemplative kind of moment: It is as though the young man, beck-
oning the lover to the garden, becomes entranced for a moment by the
beauty of the garden itself.
Song 4:16: A Glimpse of Wild

The second movement of the poem is characterized quite differently. Once
the garden is described in the first twelve lines, there is a sudden energetic
transition at verse 16, where the poem takes on an altogether different
tone, trajectory, and voice. The young woman summons the winds, turn-
ing the attention away from the plant life and the garden’s form that occu-
pied the previous section.107 In two spare, closely parallel couplets, the lyric
shifts from description to invocation, which is then followed by a couplet
expressing a wish to see her lover draw near:
Arise, north wind,
come, south wind,
make my garden exhale
to waft its spices.
Let my lover come to his garden
to eat its prime fruits.
This section situates the garden in the larger sweep of landscape that
includes the elements. But the garden is hardly forgotten. Instead of the
previous verbless description of the garden—â•‰with its “still life” quality—â•‰
the verbs here take center stage. This section is composed of two cou-
plets of short, two-â•‰word lines, each fronted by verbs (ʿûrî, “arise”; ûbôʾî,
“come”; hāpîḥî, “make exhale”; yizzəlû, “to waft”). The terse style is
also highly rhythmic. Note the highly regular pattern of stressed and
unstressed syllables: ʿÛrî ṣāPÔN / ûBÔʾî tēMĀN // hāPÎḥî ganNÎ / yizzəLÛ
bəśāMĀYW; the pattern of these lines, interposing single stressed beats
with two unstressed beats—like a dactylic trisyllabic foot of metrical poetic
traditions—is so much more regular than the surrounding verses that the
juxtaposition creates an almost incantatory quality.108 The final couplet is
somewhat longer (three-word lines) and shifts from the imperative com-
mands to a wish expressed by the jussive (yābōʾ, “let [him] come”; wəyōʾkal,
“to eat”). The garden is both subject and object, and it is a possession
shared: gannî (“my garden”) becomes, through this process of incantation,
gannô (“his garden”).
Instead of the plant life that featured so strongly in the first garden
section, it is the winds that now take center stage: ṣāpôn and têmān, the
north and south winds. The incantatory rhythm of these lines and their
apostrophe to the winds convey agency, concreteness, and power on the
winds.109 The winds are a natural force quintessentially outside of human
agency, and therefore sometimes serve as a cipher for wildness in the
biblical imagination. The winds are associated with the four directionals
(Zech 2:6; Ezek 37:9), and are used to evoke capriciousness or inscru-
tability (Hosea in particular uses the wind as an image of volatility, the
imagistic opposite of the vine). Wind is sometimes portrayed poetically
as an emissary of divine wrath or redemption (Exod 14:21; Isa 27:8; Jer
18:7; Ezek 17:10; 19:12; 27:26; Hos 13:5; Ezek 37:9), and thus signals pow-
ers beyond human control.110 The wind plays a vital role in two biblical
creation accounts: a rûaḥ sweeps over the expanse of waters before crea-
tion (Gen 1:2), is breathed into the nostrils of the human (Gen 2:7), and
blows through the garden while God strolls through it (Gen 3:8). In the
divine speech from the whirlwind at the end of Job, the wind is included
among the list of wild things: the snow, rain, light, darkness, and animals
over which people have no knowledge or jurisdiction (Job 38:24; cf. Amos
4:13). Similarly, Qoheleth draws on the tripartite imagery of the rising and
setting sun, the cycle of winds, and the coursing of waters to convey the
cyclical continuance of natural processes that are indifferent to human
intervention:
The wind blows to the south,

and goes around to the north;
round and round goes the wind,
and on its circuits the wind returns. (Qoh 1:6)
The Garden 77
The wind sweeps through landscapes, unbeholden.

In the larger scope of ancient Near Eastern mythology, the winds
are often enlisted as powerful forces with which the gods effect their
desires: In the Mesopotamian creation epic, Marduk harnesses the four
winds and also creates seven threatening new types of winds with which
to defeat Tiamat, the primordial sea.111 In the Standard Babylonian version
of the Anzu epic, Ninurta summons the winds in his battle against the
Anzu bird: “The warrior Marshaled the seven evil winds, /Who dance in
the dust, the seven whirlwinds….”112 In Ugaritic mythology, Baal fights
his battles with weapons of clouds, winds, thunderbolts, and rains.113
The winds are not only divine weapons, but also divine messengers. In
Mesopotamian epics, both the Anzu myth and the creation epic appeal
to the wind as a messenger that might convey the news of the death of
an enemy: “let the winds bear her blood to us as good news!”114 Wind as
weapon and wind as messenger both appeal to these unconfined aspects
of the wind’s force for its ability to move quickly and powerfully across a
large portion of the landscape. The landscape is rendered small in compar-
ison to a sweeping wind.
While an explicit mythological framework is absent here, the preced-
ing examples suggest that the evocation of the winds is an appeal to a
powerful force with the expectation that they will provide agency and effi-
cacy that exceed the scope of normal human ability. The young woman’s
appeal to the winds evokes a sense of their energy and power as a natural
force, dramatically exemplifying their power over the landscape. The wind
gusting through the landscape—and into and out of the garden—signals
that its dynamism is beyond human control, but is intimately related to
human vitality. Like the mythological messengers, the wind will carry the
reminder of her presence to her lover. Unlike the carefully tended plants
that are protected by walls, the wind is impervious to such interventions.
This, I suggest, hints at a wildness that permeates even the most carefully
ordered garden.
The wind, though, is not the only dynamic force beyond human con-
trol. Even within the first half of the poem, there is another hint at a per-
meating wildness. Water frames the passage, flowing around and through
its boundaries: “a locked garden, a sealed spring … a garden spring /a
well of living water /flowing from Lebanon” (vv. 12, 15). That the water sur-
rounds the garden suggests its importance in actual horticultural practices
in the Levant, which would have relied largely on rain-fed systems, stored
and channeled by plastered irrigation cisterns and channels.115 But the
burbling of water is another signal of the permeability of the garden. Water,

with its cycle of precipitation, saturation, and evaporation, is another force
that is always moving through the landscape. At the same time, it is also
constitutive of the landscape, shaping the contours of the land through
which it flows and providing sustenance to its vegetation. While the gar-
den is “locked” and “sealed,” it is also a well of “living water,” a term that
means moving water, a rivulet, or a well that flows and babbles (Gen 26:19;
Jer 17:13; Zech 14:8; Lev 14:5–6; 50–52; 15:13; Num 19:17). While the spring
is “sealed,” it is also fresh and running, like a mountain stream from
Lebanon—a mountain region frequently evoked in the Song (3:9; 4:8, 11,
15; 5:15; 7:5). The flowing water, like the evocation of the wind, reminds the
reader that the garden is permeated by natural forces on which its exist-
ence depends. We see this in the affinity of the two forces, of water and
wind, buttressed by the verb n-z-l, which is used for both elements. Like
the water that flows (n-z-l) in and through the garden, the young woman
beckons the wind to blow so that the spices may flow out (n-z-l).116 This
abundance is beyond the scope of human control—the verb itself conveys
an action whose origin is natural or divine: the sky “pours down” (n-z-l)
rain (Job 36:28; cf. Ps 147:18); Yahweh causes the “floods” (n-z-l) to stand
(Exod 15:8; cf. Isa 48:21). The repetition of the verb suggests that like wind,
water too is a powerful force that circumscribes the garden. The stasis that
characterizes this first half of the poem is a formal effect of the garden that
is only partially achievable, and belies the garden’s ultimate dependence
on the wildness that constitutes it.
The garden, as I have suggested earlier, is a uniquely hybrid landscape—
constituted as it is by both “nature” and “art”—and its domesticity is intrin-
sically related to its wild aspects. In this passage, the garden’s order can be
seen in part against the backdrop of the predatory animals that populate
the mountains in the text preceding the garden passage:
[Come] with me from Lebanon, my bride

Come with me from Lebanon,
Travel from the peak of Amanah
From the peak of Senir and Hermon
From the dens of lions
From the mountains of leopards (Song 4:8)
The garden is “locked” to distinguish it from such wild places as the

mountains of Lebanon, which are full of wild animals, lions, and leopards.
The Garden 79
Wilderness is only occasionally evoked in the Song, though there are

glimpses of it: in 3:6, the desert is the space from which the exoticism of
merchants is anticipated from a distance; and in 8:5, the young woman
comes up from the wilderness leaning on her lover. In the scope of the
Song, wildness is a relatively attenuated theme, so it is all the more strik-
ing that the verses immediately preceding the garden passage are pre-
occupied with wildness, with the mountains that harbor threatening,
undomesticated creatures. This passage closely precedes the description
of the garden, and shares some of the style and strategy of the garden pas-
sage, which leads some interpreters to see them as part of a single poetic
unit.117 The walls and boundaries of the garden are thus set to keep out
such imagined predators, protecting and distinguishing the garden from
wildness, as the images of walled gardens I discussed earlier demonstrate.
The wild spaces of the Song form a kind of margin around the known
space of the homestead, where love tends to be localized.
These wild spaces, though, are not entirely separable from the domes-
tic spaces. The threefold repetition of “Lebanon” in these closely related
lines links three distinct spaces: The mountains of Lebanon (4:8), the
scent of the young woman’s garments (4:11), and the garden fountain,
which flows from Lebanon (4:15). The garden, in this way, is both distinct
from, as well as intimately linked with, these high hills of the famous ante-
Lebanon range. While the wildness is imagined as distant and predatory,
it also invades and helps define the garden. The same root is also used in a
soundplay that hooks back into the previous description of the garden: kol-
ʿăṣê ləbônāh (“all the trees of frankincense,” 4:14). This repetition of the
consonants l-b-n closely links the distant wilderness of Lebanon with the
sensory stimulation of the lover and the garden. The imagined proximity
of the immediate with the distant, the domestic with the wild, suggests
that a pure separation between the two is only an idea. The domestic is per-
meated by the wild; culture is not finally separable from nature. The water
comes “from Lebanon” and, like the wind, it courses through the garden,
serving the garden’s purposes. To a certain extent, the reader is reminded
that natural forces are realistically responsible for the fundamental pro-
cesses of pollination and decomposition, without which a garden cannot
live. Wildness, thus, is complexly a force of death as well as a force of
life: On the one hand, the waters sustain the garden. Proverbs includes
the truism that “the north wind produces rain” (Prov 25:23), which is just
one way in which life is dependent (viz., for water) on wild forces.118 The
wild elements of the garden do not let us forget that the garden is both
natural and artificial. It is a human construction, but it is ultimately (and

sometimes woefully) dependent on the forces of nature for its fertility, its
sustenance, and its preservation.
When she evokes the north and the south wind, then, the young
woman—â•‰ to use Karel Čapek’s phrase—â•‰ “cultivates the weather”: she
appeals to the winds to intervene in the garden. Behind this appeal lies
the sense that from her vantage in the garden, and in her desire to share it
with her lover, such forces will be needful and beneficial. Čapek writes, of
this impulse to “cultivate the weather”:
If it were of any use, every day the gardener would fall on his knees
and pray somehow like this: “O Lord, grant that in some way it may
rain every day, say from about midnight until three o’clock in the
morning, but, you see, it must be gentle and warm so that it can
soak in; grant that at the same time it would not rain on campion,
alyssum, helianthemum, lavender, and the others which you in your
infinite wisdom know are drought-â•‰loving plants—â•‰I will write their
names on a bit of paper if you like—â•‰and grant that the sun may
shine the whole day long, but not everywhere (not, for instance, on
spiraea, or on gentian, plantain lily, and rhododendron), and not
too much; that there may be plenty of dew and little wind, enough
worms, no plant-â•‰lice and snails, no mildew, and that once a week
thin liquid manure and guano may fall from heaven. Amen.”119
Such a prayer, not unlike the invocation of the winds, betrays a sense of
dependence on the larger sweep of landscape in which the garden is situ-
ated, and which is composed not merely of stable features of topography,
but the capricious powers of water and wind (and, we might add, the pro-
cesses of photosynthesis and decomposition, to name only two). While it
is enclosed and protected, it is not impervious to the wildness that never-
theless surrounds and partially constitutes it. While the first section of the
garden poem is marked by attention to order and aesthetic form, here we
see a subtle acknowledgement of an inescapably wild element that persists
in the garden.
Eat, Drink, and Be Drunk with Love!

In the poem’s final lines, the subject shifts more explicitly from the gar-
den itself to the young man’s enjoyment of the garden (specifically, eat-
ing and drinking). Lured by the scent of the garden on the breeze, the
The Garden 81
young man moves closer to the locus of pleasure, closer to the garden.
The winds draw the lover by tantalizing his olfactory senses: “breathe
on my garden, waft its spices /Let my lover come to his garden,” (v. 16).
Smell has an ineluctable directional aspect, namely that its perception
becomes increasingly more powerful the closer the perceiver draws to
the smell’s source. As he catches the scent on the wind, he will move
from farther away (the observation of the garden from a greater distance)
toward and finally into the garden, where he will become increasingly
“enveloped by the power of that [olfactory] force until the point where
it is impossible to hold it at a distance.”120 Enveloped by the powerful
perfume of the garden, the young man will no longer experience distinc-
tion from the garden, but will experience proximity and identity with it.
In entering, eating and drinking, a third ideal of the garden emerges,
namely, one of identity and absorption.
This identity is most clearly evoked by the image of eating:
I enter my garden, my sister bride

I pluck my myrrh with my spice
I eat my honeycomb with my honey
I drink my wine with my milk.
Eat, friends!
Drink! And be drunk with love. (5:1)
Here, the young man enumerates a series of actions anticipating his

enjoyment of the garden, eating, drinking and being satisfied. In stark
contrast to the opening description of the garden (which lacked any
finite verbs and thus had a sense of timelessness and stasis), these four
lines bristle with verbs: bāʾtî … ʾārîtî … ʾākaltî … šātîtî (“I enter” … “I
pluck” … “I eat” … “I drink”). Francis Landy has commented memorably
on this passage:
It is a song of greedy exploitation, of masculine triumph, expressive

of satiety. This catalogue of satisfactions is the culmination of the
process, the consummation of the enclosed garden. The keynote of
the verse is “I” … the ego, the possessive, divisive centre of con-
sciousness, can only be selfish. The powerful verbs … represent a
phallic thrust.121
Landy’s reading assumes that the ego can only act in selfish and destruc-
tive self-interest; it is not clear, though, that the poem fixates on destructive
phallic potential. As Anselm Hagedorn rightly notes, “[t]‌he careful avoid-

ance of the ravishing of the garden eschews all connotations of sexual
force.”122 Instead, the progression of verbs conveys movement: The first
two lines indicate the young man’s spatial envelopment in the garden.
He enters (bāʾtî) the garden’s enclosure, and gathers (ʾārîtî) myrrh and
spices. As people enter the garden, they participate in its art, physically
joining the features of the space and becoming—for a time—an extension
of the landscape. They do this to enact the temporal experience of contem-
plation, that is, to enjoy the aesthetics of the space, but the other reason
people enter the garden is to join in the persistent temporal demands of
the garden’s ongoing creation and maintenance. As he “gathers” myrrh,
the young man takes up one of the fundamental stances in and toward the
garden: the stance of gardener. The first two lines, then, embody the young
man’s absorption into the landscape of the garden with the young woman.
The next two lines suggest an increasingly specified focus on the body
of the young man in the garden: “I ate” (ʾākaltî) and “I drank” (šātîtî). The
absorption of the young man into the garden is now matched by the absorp-
tion of the garden into the young man—emblemized by eating, through
which he takes into himself the “excellent fruits” (4:13) that were previously
described by both the lovers (4:13, 16). Fiona Black rightly observes that eat-
ing throughout the Song serves as a signal of sexuality. She argues that the
themes of “the translation of food onto the body … and, in reverse, the
description of sexual conduct via food” blend surprising, incongruous, and
grotesque elements throughout the Song. Ultimately, for Black, it is the
young woman who is the object of male consumption: “She is indeed an
incredible, edible woman.”123 But, it should be remembered, food is imag-
ined as shared throughout the Song, and the woman’s enjoyment—not
just the man’s—is also related to consumption: “Let him kiss me with the
kisses of his mouth /for your love is better than wine” (Song 1:2). Similarly,
the friends’ acclamation seems to include both the lovers: “Eat, friends!
Drink! And be drunk with love” (5:1); “His fruit was sweet to my palate”
(2:3; cf. 4:10, 11; 5:16; 7:10). Black’s interpretation continues the trend of
localizing and over-determining the garden as the young woman’s body.
In doing so, it is susceptible to what Roland Boer calls reading as a “car-
nal allegory.”124 There is a connection between eating and the suggestion
of sexual consummation—in a previous chapter, I have already discussed
how eating as the consummation of agricultural production is an apt sym-
bol of sensual consummation. But eating also says something meaningful
about the garden.
The Garden 83
Over the course of the whole garden poem, there is an ascending move-
ment toward this absorption: First, the choice fruits are observed and
admired by the young man, but at a remove (4:13); then, the young woman
offers the fruits to him to eat (4:16); only at this moment, he is not only
in the garden, but also eating (5:1). If smell effectively represents desire
and the ascending trajectory of proximity, taste is its fulfillment, since
it implies touch (first with the hand, and ultimately with the feel of the
object on the tongue), and the evocation of taste suggests incorporation:
the food is taken into the body and will become part of the body, providing
it with pleasure and sustenance. The close symmetry of the triplet uses
synonymous parallelism to convey a sense of decisiveness and extrava-
gance: Throughout these lines, the primacy is placed on the more exotic
food first. This is the opposite of the traditional tack of parallelism, which
tends to employ an ascending logic.125 The lines emphasize myrrh, hon-
eycomb, and wine over the generalized term “spice,” the more common
noun “honey,” and the less costly and non-â•‰intoxicating drink, “milk.”126
As in the list of the garden description, where the exotic is paired with the
local, the common and the rarified are once again conjoined. The empha-
sis here on the exotic, the rarified, evokes a sense of superlative pleasure.
As the young man enters the garden, the garden will also enter the young
man, in a reciprocity of incorporation.127 In this way, first by smell and
then by taste, the distinction between the garden and its observer begin
to dissolve. Eating is a signal of the blurring of boundaries between the
garden’s art and the human who makes and enjoys it.
Conclusion: Eating and Ecstasy

The garden, as an art form, is a kind of “third nature,” an ordered encoun-
ter with the natural world that signifies values about human involvement
in the landscape. It is quintessentially a “landscape” in the twofold senses
of both material and representation—â•‰the poem of the garden is a further
representation of a representation—â•‰ an ekphrasis—â•‰that suggests aes-
thetic and ethical dispositions toward the landscape. The foregoing anal-
ysis has suggested that gardens are particularly potent manifestations
of human desire, most particularly of desires about and for the natural
world; as “third nature,” they exhibit a formal density—â•‰like a poem does.
Both the poem, with its density of creative and technical skills, and the
garden, with its intensification of natural forms, have a particular capacity
to present an abundance in a very small space. The poem and the garden
are microcosms of intensification, in which ideals about the larger world

are distilled.
The Song’s garden is divided into two distinct sections, marked by
very different tones, styles, and qualities. The first section, which is
achieved formally by a list, imagines the garden as an ordered, aesthetic
space. It is a list that is mobilized as much by memory and euphony as
it is a catalog in a strict sense. As the poem progresses, the experience of
the garden is reimagined, invigorated by both wild elements that perme-
ate the garden and human subjects who participate bodily in the garden
and its effects. Despite the formal efforts to keep the garden a bounded
space, the latter portion acknowledges the garden’s fundamental per-
meability; it depends on and yet also contains and is subsumed by the
humans who experience it.
Perhaps one way to think about the abrupt stylistic transition that the
reader encounters in the garden of the Song is through Nietzsche’s aes-
thetic categories. In his early work The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche chal-
lenges the received account of Greek art, which had generally privileged
the contemplative mode of sculpture. Nietzsche’s account added to this an
experiential mode, which is characterized more by participation than by
contemplation. He named these two modes after two gods of the Greek
pantheon: “Apolline” (which is the mode of sculpture, characterized by
contemplation, and represented by the dream- state) and “Dionysiac”
(which is the mode of music, characterized by participation and abandon-
ment, and represented by intoxication).128 What is helpful about these aes-
thetic categories is that the “Apollonian” and “Dionysian” elements aptly
convey the aesthetic experience of the garden: namely, it can be an object
of aesthetic appreciation, with a three-dimensional body, features from the
plastic arts, and elements of formal fixity. At the same time, though, the
garden is always permeable: it is subject to changes through time, through
the vagaries of weather, and its aesthetic qualities always must include
those features of the environment that extend beyond it (the seasons, the
sky, the horizon, etc.).129 Moreover, upon entering the garden, the viewer
is absorbed into its body and is, in a sense, no longer distinct from it.
On this reading, the first half of the garden poem is characterized more
by Apollonion contemplation, with its recognition of the ordered form of
the garden and its measured description of the plants found therein. This
latter portion, on the other hand, is characterized by participatory enjoy-
ment—the Dionysian. Here, the reader is invited in as the voices ascend
to a tone of ringing celebration: “Eat, friends! /Drink, and be drunk with
The Garden 85
love!” (5:1). Intoxication represents not merely satiation, but over-fulfill-

ment, the excesses of sensuality. For Neitzsche, intoxication was precisely
the state that best emblemizes the Dionysian aesthetic. Eating and drink-
ing are frequently evoked in the Song, memorably at the beginning: “your
love is better than wine” (1:2). The explicit idea that the lover and lovemak-
ing are delectable to the mouth echoes throughout the Song: (“his fruit
was sweet to my palate,” 2:3; cf. 4:10, 11; 5:16; 7:10). Alongside this, the
wish to eat and drink also appears (“sustain me with raisins /refresh me
with apples,” 2:5; cf. 7:2, 9, 13; 8:2). Intoxication, which is a state related
to the satiety of eating, is an intensification of the experience of losing
oneself that is already implicit in the act of eating. Landy also perceptively
notes the line of danger with which the poem plays. He goes on, “[y]‌et the
assertion of the ego verges on dissolution. Underneath the array of inflec-
tions—‘bāʾtî’, ‘gannî,’ etc.—the verbs evoke sensations of intoxication and
confusion. He absorbs the essence of the Beloved, quenching his thirst,
consuming sweetness; she comprises his plenitude.”130 The act of con-
suming evokes the possibility of personal dissolution or loss. Eating and
drinking in the garden, that is, are a kind of ecstasy, a loss of the self. The
formal construction of the garden creates a place in which the momentary
loss of the self is possible. One might see the garden, then, as a site of
ecstasy, in the etymological sense, ek-histanai (“out of [one’s] place”).
Being “out-of-[one’s]-place,” of course, is neither easy nor risk-free.
In her famous account of spiritual ecstasy, Teresa of Avila writes of a
vision in which an angel plunges a golden dart tipped with fire into her
heart: “When he drew it out, I thought he was carrying off with him the
deepest part of me; and he left me all on fire with great love of God. The
pain was so great that it made me moan, and the sweetness this greatest
pain caused me was so superabundant that there is no desire capable of
taking it away.”131 Teresa experiences ecstasy that puts her very close to
experiences of both pain and death. The ecstasy of the garden, wherein
one is absorbed into the larger landscape of nature, is not without its
memento mori, the reminder that ecstasy puts one very close to the lim-
its of human life. This sensibility can be seen in the famous “Garden
Party” relief from Assurbanipal’s North Palace at Ninevah. This famous
relief shows the ruler and consort reclining in a lush garden, under a
bower of vines. Here, they eat and drink, encircled by servants who play
music, fan them, and provide their repast. The rulers drink wine, a sign
of luxury, indulgence, and social bonding. Their complete security is
indicated by the ease of Assurbanipal, who reclines on a bed with his
feet elevated. Theirs is the quintessential ease of the garden. There is a

subtle suggestion of sensual encounter that is conveyed by the reclined
position of the ruler and the privacy of their bower: they are elevated,
nearly out of the eyeline of the servants, and they are drinking wine,
which suggests the promotion of social bonds through the loosening
of social inhibitions. And the satisfaction of the various sensory desires
(through eating, drinking, reclining, and hearing music) is suggestive of
the analogous satisfaction of sexual desire. There are multiple overlap-
ping motifs with this Song of Songs text. But, the relief also includes a
sinister memento mori: a polar contrast to the ease of the ruler is the
head of a vanquished ruler hanging upside down in a nearby tree (upper
left). The relief, as Assyrian palace reliefs often do, portray the royal com-
petency of the ruler, especially through the celebration of military victo-
ries, and thus this executed head is usually understood as an ideological
signifier for royal power. I suggest, though, that one might see the pres-
ence of death in the garden as part of the danger of ecstasy. There is a
risk in the encounter with another.132
The experience of the garden is a microcosm for the experience of the
natural world, in which the human being is only a small part, whose exist-
ence—though powerful—is nevertheless precarious or liminal. In this
garden one becomes aware, moreover, that the natural world is depend-
ent on forces of death for its ongoing fecundity: decay, destruction, and
decomposition are part of the web of forces that are beyond human ken,
and out of human control. At the same time, such forces represent the
larger nature that—ultimately—will also absorb each human life. On this
reading, “love is strong like death” (Song 8:6) might be read as just such
a memento mori, the reminder that in the midst of abundance, death is
not only present, but the ever-present source of regeneration, of life: “In
the garden, death becomes the seedbed of birth.”133 The suggestive quality
of death’s presence—taken along with the attenuated wild elements of the
garden—presses us to imagine the lovers in a landscape that is aware of its
finitude. Landy writes, “[i]‌n the Song, however, the lovers will never grow
old; death is excluded from their garden. Whereas for the Egyptian poet
both love and death are part of the same necessary cycle, the ambiguous
message of the Song is that love is as strong as death, the one thing that is
eternal.”134 The Song, though, permits death—gardens are presumed on
the reality of death’s fundamental role in the processes of life.
The Garden 87
A landscape approach to the garden helps us to see that the garden is

not exclusively a metaphor for love. It is also a guide for thinking about
the human situation in the natural world—as a source of signification and
order, for example, and as finally susceptible to the wildness of the world
that remains ultimately beyond human control.135
4
The Cityscape
[In] … the city in which I love you
… I never believed that the multitude
of dreams and many words were vain.
li-young lee (1990)
This chapter will consider the significance of the city in the Song of
Songs as a landscape, or a cityscape.1 Architectural features are evoked
to portray the young woman in the descriptive poems: she is like a tower
(migdāl; 4:4; 5:13; 7:5; 8:10; 8:9–10), and she is described with the magnif-
icence of two great capital cities of Israel and Judah’s history: “You are
beautiful as Tirzah, my love /comely as Jerusalem” (6:4). But the city (ʿîr)
is also evoked in two passages where the young woman imagines night-
time walks to seek her lover (3:1–5; 5:2–8); in the second case, she is found
by watchmen, who beat her (5:7). I will argue that the Song’s use of the
motif of the city is highly ambivalent, evoking the twin themes of protec-
tion and vulnerability. The Song playfully casts the lovers in a battle of the
sexes, in which the young woman is a threatened city, and her lover is the
encroaching enemy. This “embattled” motif helps explain a puzzling final
section, Song 8:8–10. Ultimately, the Song imagines the city as a body—
dependent on and susceptible to its surrounding environment, gendered
female according to the conventions of the ancient world, and evocative
of desire. This chapter first examines how the city appears in the Song of
Songs (looking especially at the two episodes in Chapters 3 and 5 and the
descriptive poems of the young woman); then, it will consider how the city
is used symbolically for the young woman. Along the way, I will consider
how contemporary theorizations of the city can help to illuminate the pat-
terns of poetic use.
The Cityscape 89
The City in Song of Songs Scholarship

Despite the prominence of the city in the Song, its construction and role
have yet to be addressed in a significant way in scholarship. When they are
addressed, scholars have tended to regard the city as a point of contrast
with the natural world; the distinction between “culture” and “nature” is
frequently reified. As Francis Landy argues, it is one of several polarities
that undergird the symbolic subtexts of the Song: “life and death, city and
country, desert and forest;”2 Sophie Thöne argues that they are a “pair of
opposites”: “Natur und Kultur bilden folglich ein weiteres Gegensatzpaar.”3
Gianni Barbiero writes, “the nature-â•‰city opposition … is one of the funda-
mental poetic axes of the Song.”4 And, strikingly, Fiona Black writes, “the
land is … a platform on which the efforts of human engineering might
be constructed. The imposition of buildings and the cold, impersonal ele-
ments of their construction and artifice—â•‰ivory, bricks and mortar?—â•‰paint
an inhuman setting for the body.”5 As this begins to suggest, many schol-
ars assume a strong binary between the land and the city. For Black, the
results in seeing the city as a “canvas” or “platform,” and, perhaps ironi-
cally, as “inhuman.”6
Two scholars in recent work begin to remedy this situation: first, Ellen
Davis has pointed up the centrality of the city to the Song of Songs. She
argues that the Song is “altogether the most complex and comprehen-
sive biblical representation of Jerusalem, her people, and her hinterland,
although it has received too little attention from that perspective.”7 She
reads the Song as a positive reappropriation of the prophetic motif of
Jerusalem as an unfaithful lover of Yahweh.8 Davis’s argument is thor-
oughly allegorical: she proposes that the young woman in the Song is a
figure for (“embodiment of”) Daughter Zion throughout the Song as a
whole.9 I will take a cue from her observation that the Song picks up on
a larger symbolic network that compares women and cities, while main-
taining that the Song is first and foremost love poetry. A second reader
who has recently emphasized the importance of the city in the Song is
Christopher Meredith, who has similarly observed the tendency of Song
scholarship to overlook the city, or to reduce it to a foil for other land-
scapes. He writes, “On those occasions when the Song’s city has been
discussed, the analysis has invariably served to contrast the city with the
garden or the countryside.”10 Meredith begins his analysis with a refresh-
ing stance of ignorance: “What if we begin with a certain degree of uncer-
tainty as to what a city actually is, and with a certain amount of caution
about assuming too quickly that we know what constitutes cityness in the
text? How is cityness constituted in the Song, particularly?”11 The answer
he supplies comes by way of the rich modern theorization of the city, draw-
ing, for example, on James Donald’s Imagining the Modern City and Walter
Benjamin’s unfinished The Arcades Project. For Meredith, the city is not
first and foremost a realized place, but rather “an idea-â•‰become artifact,”
characterized by opacity and transparency, and configurations of power.
The modern city is a labyrinth:
There is a certain kind of terror that can come alive only in the
maze or in the walled city late at night, where one finds oneself
cast adrift between the emotions attached to being lost and those
of being imprisoned. The space of the labyrinth mixes the desire of
the prize with a fear of the puzzle, endlessly duplicating the familiar
until it becomes alien, until it shocks us by means of its familiarity.12
Meredith’s reading of the labyrinth has explanatory power with respect

to the episode in Chapter 5, where the young woman is beaten by the
guards, but it is less effective in helping to understand the rest of the
positive elements of the city, particularly as it is used metaphorically to
describe the young woman. As I will suggest in the following, the Song
holds the city in a kind of ambivalent regard, and the poetry itself explores
various facets of “cityness,” celebrating its aesthetic splendor as well as its
potential problems.
The City in Theory

I have used the term “city” up to this point to refer to the built environ-
ment. But it should be noted that the term itself is not unproblematic
when addressing biblical texts because the material reality of settlements
in ancient Palestine during the biblical period are so vastly different from
the modern urban experience that undergirds contemporary theorizations
of the city.13 As Michael Patrick O’Connor writes, “[t]â•„here is no Biblical
Hebrew word for ‘city’; that is, there is no word that can always reasona-
bly be so rendered in modern European languages,” because the modern
meaning is based in a radically different urban experience.14 The first and
most notable difference, of course, is size, both in physical area and in
population. Jerusalem, for example—â•‰even after its dramatic growth dur-
ing the late Iron Age that made it the largest urban center in the Southern
The Cityscape 91
Levant—was only about sixty hectares (0.2 square miles) and housed less
than ten thousand inhabitants.15 This is much smaller than the famous
monumental cities of Mespotamia and Egypt, but even Assur and Tanis
were tiny by modern standards.16 I will use the term “city” with some cau-
tion; it is the most common translation of Hebrew ʿîr and—as I will show in
the following—contemporary theorizations of urban spaces can effectively
address issues in ancient text and context, as long as care is taken to keep
both the textual engagement and the materiality of ancient cities in mind.
There is a wide array of scholarly theories of urban space—too many
to address in a comprehensive way. Instead, I will point to two threads of
thought that will bear most decisively on the interpretation of the Song.
First, there is a pervasive parallel in urban theory between the city and the
human body; second, new developments in landscape urbanism empha-
size the city as an ecology, situated in the larger environment. Both of
these observations are keenly felt in the ancient context, where both the
scale and the technology of the urban site would have emphasized human
habitation as well as embeddedness in an agricultural context.17 I will dis-
cuss the parallel to the human body first, and return to developments in
landscape urbanism at the end of this discussion.
First, as social geographers have emphasized, the city is not merely
a material fact, but an experienced, imagined reality. I quoted earlier
the work of Edward Soja, an influential geographer and urban theorist,
who follows Henri Lefebvre’s theory that social reality and relationships
are always spatialized.18 Soja follows Lefebvre’s threefold description of
space: It is “perceived,” a material reality (Soja’s “Firstspace”); “conceived,”
a symbolic or psychological reality, an “imaginary,” a mental map of a space
(Soja’s “Secondspace”); and it is “lived” (Soja’s “Thirdspace”), the complex
interaction between those two realities in daily experience.19 I am not so
much interested in adopting or reifying the tripartite scheme as in lift-
ing up—as many others have—the distinction between the physical realia
of ancient cities and conceptualizations of them.20 As Mary Mills writes,
textual representations of the city can be thought of as displaying and fos-
tering an “urban imaginary,” a phrase that conveys that the city is not a
reality which the text merely describes; rather, the city is “constructed via
imaginative responses to the space that the urban environment offers.”21
The city therefore has a symbolic reality, an “imaginary,” that complexly
interacts with material reality in lived experience.22
As I have already begun to suggest, the materiality of the ancient city
would have been far different from our own experiences of the developed
twenty-first-century metropolis.23 Scale is the first and most striking dif-

ference. It would have particularly been the case for the ancient city that
there was a direct correlation between the human body and this built envi-
ronment.24 It was necessarily the human body that was enlisted to build
in the ancient world, and the social configuration of the city was scaled to
the human body: it provided avenue and access for human beings to work,
to live, and to walk.25 In the biblical imagination, Jerusalem was the quin-
tessential city, and though it fluctuated in size and population through its
history, the cooperative labor of the kin-based agrarian system was primor-
dially evident in the many small, pillared houses of the city.26 Interwoven
with narrow alleyways that served as footpaths, the experience of the city
would not have been highly centralized, but would have closely followed
the topography.27 In such ways, the basis of the city was the body’s engage-
ment of the landscape. In his discussion of the development of the ancient
city, Soja writes that “[t]‌his process of producing spatiality of ‘making
geographies’ begins with the body, with the construction and performance
of the self, the human subject, as a distinctively spatial entity involved in
a complex relation with our surroundings.”28 It is the biological experi-
ence that first informs the experience of space.29 One ancient expression
of this is found in the work of first-century BCE Roman architect Marcus
Vitruvius Pollio, whose Ten Books of Architecture describes the geometry
of the human body as the fundament on which the principles of classical
architecture are derived. His notion was that the human body in full exten-
sion, like a geometric square, is perfectly circumscribed by the shape of a
circle. This concept was famously rendered by Leonardo da Vinci and pro-
vided the philosophical grounding for the humanistic conceptualization
of architecture through the Renaissance.30 “Underlying this view of the
city as a product or projection of the body (in all its variations) is a form of
humanism…. Humans make cities.”31 Twentieth-century architect Rudolf
Schwarz has similarly argued that the human body is determinative for
architecture. Building is a task completed by the human body, so there is
an intrinsic connection between the movements of the body and the living
space. He writes,
What then comes into being is first and foremost circumscribed

space— shelter, living space, ceremonial space, a space which
replaces the space of the world. We could almost say, and indeed it
is true, that building is based on the inner spaciousness of the body,
on the knowledge of its extent and the form of its growth, on the
The Cityscape 93
knowledge of its articulation and of its power to expand. Indeed it

is with the body that we experience building, with the outstretched
arms and the pacing feet, with the roving glance and with the ear,
and above all else in breathing.32
The city is built by human bodies, for human bodies, and it is also like a
body.33 In addition to a causal relationship, there is also a representational
one: a “parallelism or isomorphism between the body and the city.”34 This
is not to suggest that every evocation of the city is intended to symbolize a
specific bodily part or attribute35 (this would too severely reduce the space
between the symbol and its signification—â•‰as Shira Wolosky helpfully
reminds, “[t]â•„here remains a gap, a missing part, which the reader must
contemplate, and which is purposely withheld. If the symbol is a sign,
what it signifies remains suspended or kept back”36). The metaphor is sug-
gestive: a city gathers together diverse members into a single functioning
unit, defines and protects its individual identity against the outside, and is
often perceived to have an ineffable personality that transcends its individ-
ual qualities. T. J. Gorringe talks about this as a “creative spirituality,”37 and
this is perhaps not far from the biblical description of the city as a corpo-
rate personality and, most frequently, as a woman: “Here is a gathering of
the self, body and city in which symbolism is a key feature.”38 This ancient
idea, the personification of the city as a woman, merits a fuller discussion,
but first let me describe how the Song conceptualizes the cityscape.
The Cityscape in the Song

In the Song of Songs, the city comes to the fore prominently in two sec-
tions, Song 3:1–â•‰5 and 5:2–â•‰8, and it appears in scattered references in the
text, especially in the descriptive poems. In this section, I will develop a
concept of the “city” in the Song as a figure of ambivalence. It accommo-
dates both a sense of value (especially aesthetic value) and connection, as
well as a keen sense of its potential dangers.39
The ambivalence of the city imagery is perhaps most clearly apparent
in the poems of Song 3:1–â•‰5 and 5:2–â•‰8, which describe the young woman’s
pursuit of her lover “on her bed at night” and her subsequent search for
him “in the city” (3:2; 5:7). These poems feel disjunctive with the rest of
the Song—â•‰for one thing, they have a more narrative quality, in which the
young woman tells a sequence of events that hinge on her spatial move-
ment from the bedroom (3:1; 5:2–â•‰3) to the city (3:2–â•‰3; 5:7).40 These two
poems share similarities, but my reading will emphasize several key dif-
ferences; in conflating these two very different accounts of the city, one
loses sight of the striking variability in the concept of “cityness.” As the
following analysis will emphasize, in Song 3, the city does not seem to
be configured negatively; in Song 5, however, the potential dangers of the
city—which are latent but unrealized in Song 3—take on significance and
ultimately control the shape of that latter construal of the city.
In Song 3:1–5, the word “city” appears for the first time in the Song.
Like many poems of the Song, this one is cast in the voice of the young
woman: “I will rise now and go about in the city, in its streets and in its
plazas” (3:2). As we shall see, the city interlocks with the intimacy of the
bedroom and chamber and evokes the proximity of the field.
This poem’s recursive structure helps define its sense of the city. The
poem is structured largely by repetition, and both near and far echoes cre-
ate a sense of aural coherence. The first of these is a couplet:
I sought him whom my soul loves

I sought him but I did not find him (3:1)
The repeated verb biqqaštî (“I sought him”) at the beginning of each line
highlights the urgency and the reiterative quality of her search. This reit-
erative quality is again expressed by the repetition of a nearly identical
couplet three lines later:
I will seek whom my soul loves

I sought him but I did not find him (3:2)
The lover is identified as the object of her search by a three-word phrase,

ʾēt šeʾāhăbāh napšî (“whom my soul/self loves”). He is the object of her
search and is conspicuously marked as the grammatical object with the
particle ʾēt, which is relatively rare in poetry but occurs five times in this
section. Over and over again, he is uttered in this way, the phrase “whom
my soul/self loves,” forming a kind of refrain every few lines of the poem,
invoking the lover’s presence (vv. 1, 2, 3, 4). Other, more distant repeti-
tions stud this poem as well: “I will go about the city” is echoed five lines
later by the watchmen “who go about the city,” using the same verb and
phrasing (waʾăsôbəbāh bāʿîr /hassōbəbîm bāʿîr, vv. 2, 3). The phrase “until”
(ʿad-še-) is repeated three times: “until they found me,” “until I brought
him to my mother’s house,” “until it [love] is ready” (vv. 4, 5). The verb
The Cityscape 95
“to find” (√m-ṣ-ʾ) occurs four times: twice in the couplets cited earlier (“I
did not find him”), which sets us up for the irony that “they found me,”
prolonging the sense of yearning and the anticipation that is finally real-
ized “when I found him” (vv. 1, 2, 3, 4). In ways such as this, the repetitions
cue the audience not only to the binding coherence of the poem, but to its
use of subtle distinction. Another distinction involves the same syntax but
different words:
I sought him but I did not find him (v. 1)

I sought him but I did not find him (v. 2)
I seized him and I would not let him go (v. 4)
All three of these lines are three words each, hinging on the conjunction
wəlōʾ (but/and not). This heightens the perceived parallel between search-
ing and holding (between desire, and consummation). The creative use
of transformed repetition is also evident, for example, in slight variations
in syntax. The repeated phraseʾēt šeʾāhăbāh napšî (“whom my soul/self
loves”), usually occurs in the second half of a line—so when it fronts a line,
the audience takes note: “whom my soul loves … you have seen?” (3:3).
Where we expect the phrase to bespeak her search for her lover, the final
word instead resituates her in conversation with the watchmen, seeking
their help and support. A final transformation of this phrase occurs in the
last line, where the phraseʾet-hāʾahăbāh (“love”) echoes ʾēt šeʾāhăbāh napšî,
but is now generalized to refer not just to the sought lover, but to love as a
concept or an ideal. There are other repetitions as well, but these examples
begin to describe the circular logic of the poem, which does not move for-
ward in a straightforward way, but loops persistently back on itself in an
open iterative pattern.
I emphasize this iterative quality because of how it interacts with and
constructs the spatial movement of the poem. The poem opens “upon
my bed at night,” moves into the city (“I will rise, now, and go about the
city”), then imagines bringing the lover “to the house of my mother, and
to the chamber of she who bore me,” and finally evokes the country-
side: “I adjure you, Daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles and deer of the
fields….”41 But this is not a perfectly tidy spatial movement. The repeti-
tions remind us of the fuzzy boundaries between spaces: the same seek-
ing and not-finding happens in the bedroom and in the city, for example,
and the holding and not-letting-go happens in the city and, in imaginative
projection, when they reach the mother’s house. The same “going about”
that the young woman does, the watchmen also do. The linearity implied
by the spatial movement (bedroom-city-mother’s house) is complicated by
the circular aural patterning that returns back to itself time and again,
criss-crossing the spatial directiveness at the poem’s surface. It conveys
the sense of wandering, and perhaps evokes the nonlinear journey that
one might take around the circle road that ringed the inside edge of the
city-wall in many ancient cities, or the footpaths one travels by heart in a
place that is intimately known.42
In such ways, the city in this poem is not defined by clean disjunc-
tions like interior/exterior, private/public, female/male, or even dream-
ing/waking.43 Indeed, this city has no walls. Whereas Song 5 and other city
descriptions in the Song emphasize walls and other architectural features
of disjunction (doors, towers, windows, latches, locks, and lattices), such
features are absent here. Though the built environment does seem to sig-
nal disjunction between the lovers, it is not quite right to say that the city
is hostile to the lovers (as scholars tend to do).44 She enters the public space
of the city as a remedy for her private loneliness; the city is the salve, not
the wound. Her search begins on her bed, in the home that, too, is part
of the cityscape—groupings of homes are the core of many ancient cities.45
The city here, we might observe, is characterized first by the house and
its spaces for sleeping and intimacy, and only secondarily by the relatively
more public streets and plazas. The blurring of the intimate with the pub-
lic is echoed in a different way by the blurring of the city with the coun-
tryside in the last lines, where the young woman adjures the other young
women “by the gazelles and the deer of the fields,” drawing attention to
a sense of continuity with the surrounding landscape (an aspect that is
missing from the “city” poem in Song 5, a point I will return to later).
That this “city” poem leans toward intimacy is also evident in the terms
for the built environment that do occur. While walls and doors are miss-
ing, we hear the young woman evoke bed, city, streets and plazas, mother’s
house, and chamber. In these terms, we see the city imagined as a place of
intimacy and conviviality. The intimacy of the bed is self-evident; and so is
mother’s house and chamber. The latter term itself is opaque, so it should
not be taken as evidence for separate women’s quarters,46 but it is evoc-
ative of the household and its attendant intimacies: of intergenerational
dependence, childlike affection, the sensual bodily experiences of sleeping
and eating, and, ultimately, sexuality and fertility.47 In this way, the city
is comprehended by kinship and homeplace.48 The streets (šəwāqîm) and
plazas (rəḥōḇôt) where the young woman searches are the places between
The Cityscape 97
houses and buildings, which are conducive to the foot traffic of the ancient
city. They are a merism for the totality of her search—like searching “high”
and “low,” she searches “narrow” and “wide.” These spaces between
houses exemplify the communal aspects of city life, marked by the sharing
and exchange of resources. One of the advantages of the city is that its built
structures accommodate the movement of people. Walking about in the
city is exactly what the city invites; it is something that mourners, worship-
pers, and prostitutes all do as a matter of course (see Isa 23:16; Qoh 12:5;
Ps 48:13). Such walks enable people to meet one another, such that “the
city provides the order and organization that automatically links other-
wise unrelated bodies.”49 So it is that she is “found” by those who go about
(√s-b-b) in the city (v. 3), even as she herself “goes about” (√s-b-b) in the city
(vv. 2, 3).
It is worth emphasizing again that such journeys through ancient cities
would have been undertaken on foot: the ancient city would have been very
small, and scaled to the movement of the human body. The ancient city
would have been known phenomenologically by its inhabitants through
the embodied daily motions of walking its streets, going out to work in the
fields, gathering water for use in the home, and meeting neighbors who
are doing the same. This is especially true for ancient women, many of
whose daily tasks would have been performed in a community of shared
resources.50 The features of the city described here in Song 3 move toward
the facilitation of this kind of interaction. When the young woman gets
up from her bed to go for a walk in the city, she expects to meet other
people who are also freely taking the evening air. And this expectation is
met: while at first she does not find her lover (v. 2), she encounters others,
the watchmen, and asks them whether they have seen her lover (v. 3). The
result is that moments later, she finds him:
In a little while I passed by them,

Until I found whom my soul loves
I seized him, I did not let him go
until I brought him to my mother’s house
to the chamber of she who bore me. (3:4)
The city here is imagined as a place for the gathering and movement of
people, and for the pursuit and development of social relationships. This
is one of the moments in the Song that comes the closest to a sense of
consummation, one of the themes with which the poetry plays (cf. 7:10,
13; 8:5).51 This section concludes with the imagined enfolding of the lover,
bringing him back to the seat of family relationships, the mother’s house.
So it is not quite right that here “[t]‌he city at night is eerie, unfamiliar,
desolate.”52 Rather, it is a place for wanderers, and for the seeking and
consummation of relational intimacies. In this initial presentation, the cit-
yscape is defined by certain features, bed and house, streets and squares,
which are spaces that accommodate sociality and intimacy. It facilitates
close social encounters and the development of intimate human relation-
ships, which the proximity of urban life makes possible.
There is a link between the shared household and the shared cityscape,
an overlap that Soja calls “synekism,” derived from synoikismos, the con-
ditions arising from sharing one house (oikos): such shared spaces con-
note “the economic and ecological interdependencies and the creative—as
well as occasionally destructive—synergisms that arise from the purpose-
ful clustering and collective cohabitation of people in space, in a ‘home’
habitat.”53 If this poem emphasizes the creative potentialities of such
shared space, the next “city” poem in Song 5 emphasizes its destructive
potentialities.
In a parallel text, Song 5:2–8, the second and final use of the term “city”
appears. As in the first “city” poem, the young woman narrates a night-
time experience of desire:
I slept, but my heart was awake

The voice of my lover, knocking!
The tone, though, is markedly different. Instead of a symmetrically organ-

ized three-part structure of seeking and finding in the city, this poem
opens with a lengthy evocation of a lovers’ encounter hindered by architec-
tural features. There is a sense of immediacy and indeterminacy: not only
does this poem lack the sense of action that marks Song 3:1–5, but it uses
less structuring repetition. The parallels we see are largely distant. With
the exception of two couplets in 5:3 whose syntax uses synonymous par-
allelism and the repeated word ʾêkākāh (“how”), repetitions are limited to
one-word echoes: pātaḥ (“open”; vv. 2, 4, 6), yād (“hand”; vv. 4, 5) šōmərîm /
šōmrê (“watchmen”; v. 7). Even the phrase of seeking and finding that was
so prominent in Song 3:1–2 is transformed and interrupted:
I sought him but I did not find him

I called him but he did not answer me
The Cityscape 99
Song 5:6 eliminates the invocation of the lover here (ʾēt šeʾāhăbāh napšî,
“whom my soul loves”) and the repetition of the word bqš (“seek”), and it
redoubles the sense of loneliness and lack: “I called him but he did not
answer.”54 The most striking repetition is the word dôdî (“lover”), which
occurs six times in the poem (in 5:2, 4, 5, 6, 8)—this is a brief, single word,
unlike the grounding long phrase that describes the lover in half-lines in
Song 3: ʾēt šeʾāhăbāh napšî (“whom my soul loves”). Similarly, the word ăʾnî
(“I”) (vv. 2, 5, 6, 8) opens, closes, and stands at the heart of the poem. It,
too, is a short word, and provides a glimmer of coherence—what structure
there is—drawing our attention back to the young woman and her lover,
and to the distance between them. The lack of structural-spatial move-
ment, combined with what seems to be a conscious limitation of the use
of repetition, works to give this poem a gauzy, elusive quality. This enacts
the lack of resolution toward which the poem ultimately moves: she will
not find her lover here, as she did in Song 3.
Other features instead take on heightened significance. The focus is
twofold: on architectural features, and on the bodies of the lovers. The
first suggestion of an architectural feature is the sound of the lover,
who is “knocking” (dôpēq, v. 2), implying a door that stands between
them; he beckons her “open to me,” which, too, suggests a barrier. His
speech brings attention to his body: “for my head is full of dew /my
locks with the drops of night.” She similarly brings her attention to
her body, even as she describes the obstacles that stand between them:
“I stripped off my garment /how could I dress? /I washed my feet /
How could I soil them?” She goes on to describe his hand at the “lock”
(haḥōr, “socket,” “hole”), which suggests both a barrier and a latch or
opening. On the other side of the door, her fingers fumble with “the
handles of the bolt” (ʿal kappôt hammanʿûl)—this word, “bolt,” is used
elsewhere, along with “doors” and “bars,” to indicate the fortifications
of a gate (Neh 3:6, 13, 14, 15; cf. Deut 33:25). These images together sug-
gest a built environment construed as an obstacle or barrier, which they
are each striving to overcome. This continues as she rises to “open”
(pātaḥ) to her lover, and the audience is invited to imagine her swing-
ing open a door to admit her lover. This is an encounter at the thresh-
old, a built feature of the city that divides one space from another.55
These architectural features are also erotically suggestive, especially
because of the dual emphasis on the lovers’ bodies and the architecture
that surrounds them. And, as I will describe more fully later, this is all
the more so in light of the broader thematization of the woman-as-city
that we see elsewhere in the Song. And yet, while there is a suggestive
quality, there is also a certain reticence; there is not a clear metaphori-
cal one-for-one evocation of body parts here. Instead, the poem stages
the (near) encounter in terms of the built environment—instead of fos-
tering the lovers’ union, this city comprises obstacles that deter them:
“my lover turned, and was gone” (5:6)—and in this way constitutes
desire through the prolonged sense of yearning.56 In short, this “city”
passage is far more focused on boundaries.
The boundaries of the city become even clearer in the second half of
this poem. In the previous “city” poem, the young woman resolves to
go about in the city and to seek her lover (3:2). Here, on the other hand,
there is no clear resolution, no identifiable spatial shift, only the orphaned
refrain, “I sought him, but I did not find him” (5:6). The familiarity of
this line is undermined by its interruption—it lacks the familiar first line,
and is followed by a new one: “I called him, but he did not answer” (5:6).
The sense of loneliness is compounded by the hint of a cry that echoes,
unanswered, through the empty street of the poem. The most crucial dif-
ferences in this passage come in 5:7:
They found me, the watchmen going about in the city.

They struck me, they wounded me
They lifted up my garment from me
The watchmen of the walls.
Unlike the tone of consummation in Chapter 3, here we have a jarring

image of something gone quite wrong. Again, the poem trades on irony:
she cannot find her lover, but she instead is found by some third party.
Once again, she is found by those “going about” in the city, haššōmərîm
(“the watchmen”), whose identity is further articulated at the end of this
sequence: They are not just “watchmen,” but “the watchmen of the walls”
(5:7). This disclosure of identity selectively emphasizes the city’s system of
fortification, its walls.57 Walls, which were not mentioned in the previous
“city” poem, here seem to evoke control, taking up the sinister potenti-
ality of the figures. In two other biblical texts of nighttime danger, those
who “go about” (√s-b-b) cities at night are gangs of men bent on sexual
violence (Judg 19:22; 20:3; and Gen 19:4). Social control and social dis-
order are closely linked: both are manifestations of power, are gendered
male, and emphasize the walls of public space. The emphasis on bound-
aries here in the Song—the walls and other features of protection—leads
The Cityscape 101
not to the consummation of the relational space of the mother’s house,

but rather to a social control that disrupts the young woman’s own bod-
ily integrity: “They struck me, they wounded me … I am sick with love”
(5:8).58 She is beaten, wounded, shamed. In this second poem, the city at
night is clearly configured as a place of danger.59 Here, the danger and
threats that I have been hinting at in the rest of my analysis take center
stage, and are concretely realized. If there were any doubt about the vul-
nerability of love or lovers, this text answers them, crystallizing in a single
moment the fragility of the world.
It is this fragility that informs the poem’s closing adjuration. Instead
of evoking the gazelles and does of the field (as the previous “city” poem
did), the young woman here pleads with her friends: “if you find my lover /
what will you tell him? /That I am sick with love” (5:8).60 If the gazelles
and does in the previous city poem signal the awareness of the larger land-
scape and evoke a sense of the city’s permeability, their absence here rein-
forces this poem’s awareness of the city’s boundaries and walls. The poem,
like an encircling wall, ends exactly where it begins. The last word is the
same as the first: ʾănî (“I”; vv. 2, 8). The city, in Song 5, appears as a more
negatively coded space. It is defined largely by built elements of impedi-
ment, and it is a place in which power is magnified and corroded.
In these two poems, the built environment of the city is freighted with
nearly opposing valuations. On the one hand, the city is a place that fosters
relationships and whose built features enhance the pursuit and consum-
mation of love; on the other, the city is a place that is subject to an insidi-
ous fixation on its own boundaries, with dangerous consequences for the
young woman. Already, the ambivalence at the heart of city imagery is
apparent.
The city also appears in each of the descriptive poems of the young
woman (Song 4:1–6; 6:4–9; 7:2–7). In each case, elements of the city are
used to describe the young woman, and they too show a certain ambiva-
lence, as they evoke both aesthetic affirmation, as well as military confron-
tation. This ambivalence at the heart of the city symbolism draws on a long
tradition in the ancient Near East of personifying women as cities, partic-
ularly as cities under siege. The architectural features associated with the
young woman in the Song participate in a larger trope of gendering that is
specifically related to the twin themes of protection and vulnerability. As
I will show, the Song casts the lovers in a battle of the sexes, in which the
young woman is a threatened city, and her lover is the encroaching enemy.
The descriptive poems have a fragmentary quality, so it is not the case that
she is described from head to toe as a complete image of a city. But as the
gaze moves down the face to the throat, the imagery evokes the monumen-
tal architecture of a tower:
Like the tower of David is your neck,

built in courses
a thousand shields are hung upon it,
all the shields of warriors. (4:4)
The image conjured is a neck strung with jewelry (cf. Ezek 16:13), which
is an emphatically positive aesthetic evaluation. But this is mobilized by
way of architectural imagery whose celebratory tone has a clear military
undercurrent. The tower (migdāl) was a key fortification feature of a city
wall, providing reinforcement and a defensive position often adjacent to
the vulnerable city gate.61 Towers served as vantages for military watches
(2 Kgs 9:17; 17:9; cf. Isa 5:2), and places to discharge weapons (2 Chr 26:15),
and were part of a city’s defense that would have to be overcome by an
attacker (Judg 9:52; cf. Ezek 26:9). The military connotation in this text is
bolstered in two ways: first, by the “shields of warriors” hung upon it, and
second, by its association with the name of David, whose military prowess
is celebrated in biblical texts (1 Sam 17; 18:5–7; 1 Chron 18–20; etc.)
This military undertone of the built environment is reiterated in the
second descriptive poem:
You are beautiful, my love, like Tirzah,

lovely, like Jerusalem
formidable, like an army procession (6:4)
Both lines place the accent on aesthetic appreciation. But this sense of
beauty here is immediately qualified by the third line of the triplet, which
employs an adjective of terror: ʾăyummā usually translated “dreadful,”
or “terrible.” It refers to a dangerous force, frequently a military enemy
(Hab 1:7; Josh 2:9; Isa 33:18; Ezra 3:3). In Job, the fearsome warhorse is
described: “Its majestic snorting is terrible (ʾêmāh). It paws violently,
exults mightily, it goes out to meet the weapons” (Job 39:20–21). This mil-
itary tone is furthered by the comparand: she is formidable, like an army
procession (kannidgālôt; cf. 6:10).62 In this second description, the young
woman is not only described in terms of the structural features of the forti-
fied city; she is also geared for battle.
The Cityscape 103
This link between aesthetic preeminence and militarism is again ech-

oed in the third description of the young woman:
Your neck is like an ivory tower

Your eyes are like pools in Heshbon
by the gate of Bath-Rabbim
Your nose is like the tower of Lebanon
Overlooking the face of Damascus (Song 7:4)
Here, the city imagery is “the most precise in its architectural details.”63
Meyers notes that the public works noted here—pools in Heshbon, the
gate of Bath-Rabbim—evoke the type of construction projects that would
support military endeavors (regardless of their actual historicity). The
gate is part of the fortification structures of any city.64 In the Song, then,
“cityness” is constituted by a sense of the walled city as a built environ-
ment, a human achievement that both fosters relationality and is subject
to dangerous permutations of human power. It also evokes a sense of
military threat and defense, especially when the city is a figure for the
young woman.
These observations comport well with what we know of ancient cities.
One central feature of the ancient city was protection. Its system of walls
and towers, enclosing a central space, provide first and foremost a place
of refuge for citizens as well as for surplus goods. “In many cases, the
city in the OT is not so much a place of residence as a fortified place of
refuge.”65 Its basic function was protection for its inhabitants and for those
living in its vicinity. Indeed, fortifications are the prototypical feature of a
“city” in ancient Israel (although not all biblical cities are walled, and in
the Iron Age, most were not). Later texts make a distinction between vil-
lages (ḥăṣērîm) and cities (ʾir) with walls, for example the jubilee laws: “But
houses in villages (ḥăṣērîm) that do not have a wall around them will be
considered open country” (Lev 25:31; cf. Ezek 38:11). The itemization of for-
tification features is one way that cities are identified and defined. This
pattern is in evidence, for example, in the description of the conquered cit-
ies of King Og of Bashan in Deuteronomy: “All these were cities fortified
with high walls, double doors, and bars” (Deut 3:5); or in Asa’s descriptions
of city building: “Let us build these cities, and surround them with walls
and towers, gates and bars” (1 Chron 14:6 Heb [14:7 Eng]). In these enu-
merations, it is common to indicate the security of the gate, which would
have been the place most vulnerable to attack (1 Kgs 4:13; Ezek 38:11). This
significance of fortification structures can also be seen in an example from

nearby Moab66:
I have built Karchoh,

the wall of the woods and the wall of the citadel,
and I have built its gates,
and I have built its towers,
and I have built the house of the king,
and I have made the double reser[voir for the
spr]ing(?) in the innermost part of the city.
Mary Mills acknowledges the powerful role that walls play in the self-â•‰
understanding of cities’ inhabitants, and how the prophets play with this
self-â•‰understanding. In Nahum 3, the prophet inveighs against the sense
of Ninevah’s unassailability by arguing that its fortresses will fall and its
gates will be opened (esp. 3:12). Emphasizing this same idea of the wall as
an assurance of protection, in Micah 7, Israel’s return to power is expressed
through the imagery of the rebuilding of the wall. In such examples, “the
imaginary produced is that of city-â•‰as-â•‰walled space, that is a measure of urban
strength and something to be contested when armies march against it.”67
These ambivalent and military aspects bear on the operative gender
norms of the Song. As Carol Meyers has convincingly argued, the Song’s
descriptive poems of the young woman evoke not just awe or grandeur,
as is commonly suggested; they evoke a military context. She goes on to
argue that these military associations are “masculine” images that, used
of the young woman, are a subversion of gender expectations. She writes,
“Since military language is derived from an aspect of ancient life almost
exclusively associated with men, its use in the Song in reference to the
woman constitutes an unexpected reversal of conventional imagery of
stereotypical gender association.”68 It is certainly the case that the archi-
tectural imagery for the young woman at every turn assumes a military
backdrop. But rather than being a reversal of gendered imagery, the depic-
tion of the young-â•‰woman-â•‰as-â•‰city conforms quite well to a larger pattern of
gendered imagery that obtains in biblical texts, as well as in the broader
literary context of the ancient world: the idea of the city-â•‰as-â•‰woman.69
City-â•‰as-â•‰Woman
As has been widely recognized, the Hebrew Bible contains a stream of
imagery that personifies capital cities (most frequently Jerusalem) as
The Cityscape 105
women. The imagery is variable, and different elements of the feminine

depiction are lifted up in different texts. She is imagined as the wife of the
deity (Hos 2:21–22; Ezek 16:8–23; Jer 3:19–20; etc.), as a mother (Isaiah
66:7–11; Hos 4:5; etc.), and as a woman in labor (Isa 26:16–18; Jer 4:31;
etc.).70 Such depictions occur largely in prophetic texts, and generally have
a negative valence: she is a wife who has been adulterous (and will be
punished); she is a woman who is writhing in travail (often under divine
punishment). As Christl Maier has argued, Jerusalem as both daughter
and mother are part of the complex mobilization of personification rel-
ative to the contexts of war and destruction.71 The city-as-woman is thus
a consistent image for a city beset by military foes. This is related to the
phrase “daughter of Jerusalem” (bat + geographical name), which espe-
cially signifies a beset city.72 For example, Isaiah prophesies the destruc-
tion of Jerusalem: “And daughter Zion is left like a booth in a vineyard, like
a shelter in a cucumber field, like a besieged city” (Isaiah 1:8), about which
Maier comments, “both the role of daughter and the image of the city as
a shaky shelter embody social insecurity and threatened existence.”73 The
personification does not apply only to Jerusalem, however: in Isaiah 47,
both Babylon and Chaldea are imagined as women who are being hum-
bled (made to sit in the dust, their veils removed), signals of the vengeance
of the Lord (Isa 47:1–3; cf. Sidon and Cyprus in Isa 23:12; Egypt and Dibon
in Jer 46:11–19 and 48:18; Babylon in Jer 50:42; 51:33). Similarly Jeremiah
4:31: “For I heard a cry as of a woman in labor, anguish as of one bringing
forth her first child, the cry of daughter Zion gasping for breath, stretching
out her hands, ‘Woe is me! I am fainting before killers!’ ” Jeremiah makes
the military context for the personification of Jerusalem explicit: “[the
enemy is] equipped like a warrior for battle, /against you, O daughter
Zion!” (Jer 6:22–23). But the military context of the personification of cit-
ies is not limited to the prophetic corpus. It becomes the taproot of the
poetry of Lamentations, decrying the destruction of Jerusalem:
The Lord determined to lay in ruins

the wall of daughter Zion;
he stretched the line;
he did not withhold his hand from destroying;
he caused rampart and wall to lament;
they languish together. (Lam 2:8)
The examples begin to suggest that frequently the personification of the

city is used to indicate a setting of distress—the city is besieged, or under
threat of siege. Brad Kelle has identified this tendency in prophetic litera-
ture: “cities are personified as females exclusively in context of destruction,
even if that destruction takes the form of a threatened action or present
state.”74 The gendering of the metaphor is also persistent in the larger tex-
tual milieu of ancient Southwest Asia.75 One set of examples occurs in
the five Sumerian city laments (as well as in the derivative balag and ersh-
emma genres), which depict the goddess wailing for her destroyed city,
alongside the personification of the city’s architecture. Two passages from
the Lament for Ur illustrate these two features. In the first section, the
destruction of the city and the lament of the goddess Ningal are described;
in the second, the personified city speaks back to her:
They were wrecking with pickaxes

the good house
—the people mourn—
Were making the city
a mound of ruins
—the people mourn—
Until its mistress was crying: “Alas my city!”
Until she was crying: “Alas, my house!”
Until Ningal was crying: “Alas, my house!”
…
My lady [Ningal], your city weeps for you
as for its mother,
Ur, like a child lost in the street,
searches for you,
your house, like a man who has lost something,
stretches out [?]‌the hand for you,
the brickwork of your good house,
as were it human, says of you: “Where is she?”
My lady, though you may have left the house,
never leave the city!
The poet is self-conscious about the technique of personification in the latter

verses, and makes the stylization absolutely clear: “the brickwork of your good
house, / as it were human, says …” (emphasis added).76 As Dobbs-Allsopp and
others have argued, the gendered personification of Jerusalem (and, in partic-
ular, the appellative “daughter Zion”) in the Bible draws at least in part from
these traditions.77 I wish to draw attention simply to the context of distress
The Cityscape 107
that attends the image of the weeping goddess, and the personified city, in the
Sumerian lament traditions, as well as in the biblical appropriation and trans-
formation of the metaphor. Positive uses of the metaphor are possible, as can
be seen in the reclamation of the imagery in second and third Isaiah, which
envision Jerusalem as a bride who will be returned to her proper relationship
with the deity (esp. Isa 54:4–â•‰8, 11–â•‰12; see Isa 66:7–â•‰11; etc.) These visions invert
the expectations of the image—â•‰using it to project hope for the restoration of
the city—â•‰but still presuppose the context of destruction.78 While the imagery
is put to positive use, this seems to be an appropriation and development of an
image that, fundamental to its vocabulary, implied vulnerability.79 From both
biblical and extra-â•‰biblical evidence, it is clear that the reader’s expectations are
shaped to regard the conceptual overlaps between the imagery of cities and of
women as evocative of military threat.
Why Military Imagery in the Song?

This observed ambivalence of the city-â•‰as-â•‰woman motif may help to explain
its relative absence in the repertoire of ancient Near Eastern love poetry.
The city rarely appears in Egyptian love poetry, nor does military imagery.
Nor does it occur with any frequency in Mesopotamian love poetry. There
is a striking exception: The hostility of the siege encounter is also used in
a Old Babylonian text, the Love Lyrics of Hammurabi to Nanaya (ZA 49,
168–â•‰169).80 This text evokes a more overtly hostile relationship between
the lovers than we see in the Song. I will quote here selectively:
…
She
I will catch you, and this very day I shall reconcile your love
with mine.
I keep on praying to Nanaya;
[So that] I shall accept your peace, my lord, forever, as a gift.
…
He
I shall lay siege upon you,
I shall gather my clouds upon you. (i. 22–â•‰28)
…
The tone of this lyric diverges markedly from the tone of the Song. In
the first stanza, the male speaker appears to celebrate male sexual
aggression: “He who lies on his back for a woman is a weevil from the city
wall” (i. 6–7). The tone is perhaps appropriate to the imagery of embat-
tlement. She makes an offer of peace, but his reply heightens the sense
of conflict: “I shall lay siege upon you, /I shall gather my clouds on you”
(i. 27–28). The siege language dramatizes the tension, the “battle of the
sexes,” between the lovers.81 While the Song of Songs does not position
the lovers with the same hostility that is seen in this Old Babylonian lyric,
there is striking congruence in the imagery of the woman as a city who is
threatened with the siege of an encroaching lover. The motif of the woman-
as-city, that is, implies a kind of “battle of the sexes”: When the young man
details her beauty in terms of the architecture of the city, the relationship
that is presupposed is one of embattlement: She is a wall (how will she be
scaled or breached?); she is a gate (how will she be opened?); she is a tower
(how will her defenses be brought down?). In other words, he is playfully
positioned in terms of an enemy.
Thus far, I have argued that the motif of the city in the Song of Songs
draws on a pervasive ancient tradition of comparing cities to women. The
general function of the metaphor is to portray the vulnerability of a cap-
ital city that is under attack by a foreign enemy. The Song employs this
imagery in a surprising way: to cast the lovers in a battle of the sexes. The
young woman is depicted as a city (in a reversal of the standard metaphor,
wherein a city is depicted as a woman), and the young man, her suitor, is
the encroaching enemy. Its use in the descriptive poems emphasizes her
beauty and intimidating grandeur, while it also plays on the obverse dimen-
sions of the protective functions of urban architecture, underscoring the
young woman’s vulnerability in the lovers’ encounter. This vulnerability is
in view in the descriptive poems of Song 3 and 5, which suggest intimacy
and, ultimately, susceptibility to violence. The preceding argument has
been informed in part by a metaphor drawn from urban theory, the city-
as-body. This metaphor implies boundaries, such as the wall, the “skin” of
the city, that serve to define and protect the body from what is beyond it.
At the same time, it also implies an organic unit: a body is dependent on
and implicated in the environment that surrounds it. On this reading, the
Song imagines the lovers as playfully embattled, but ultimately belonging
to and dependent on one another. As we shall see, this tempers the hos-
tility of the metaphor—it is not merely an image of sexual conquest, but
of reciprocity and incorporation. There is one way that the “military” en-
counter of the lovers can be realized without violence: through surrender.
The Cityscape 109
And it is exactly surrender that finally resolves the imagery of the young-â•‰
woman-â•‰as-â•‰city in Song 8:8–â•‰10.
Reading the Cityscape in Song 8:8–â•‰10

In Song 8:8–â•‰10 the woman-â•‰as-â•‰city appears in one of its most dramatic
instantiations in the Song:
We have a little sister,

she has no breasts.
What shall we do about our sister
on the day when she is spoken for?
If she is a wall
we will build beside her a camp of silver.
If she is a door
we will blockade her with cedar planks.
I am a wall,
and my breasts are like towers;
Already, I am in his eyes
as one who brings peace. (Song 8:8–â•‰10)
The imagery here distinctly employs the city-â•‰as-â•‰woman motif. The “wall”
(ḥômāh) evokes an architectural barrier signaling protection. The “door”
(delet) signals both protection and vulnerability.82 Both play on the image of
the walled city.83 The traditional reading of these is that they refer to male
social control over female virginity. As Marvin Pope writes, “Whether the
damsel as a door is open or closed, it is the relatives’ concern to keep her
closed until the proper time for opening … the silver buttress and cedar
board refer to formidable and valuable devices, real or imaginary, for pro-
tection of cherished virginity, a kind of chastity belt.”84 This view reads the
metaphor of the city too flatly as a euphemism for intercourse, and under-
stands the “brothers” too literally as kin relations. The terms “brother” and
“sister” are used throughout the Song, and are always metaphorical terms
for lovers (Song 4:9, 10, 12; 5:1, 2; 8:1), which suggests that we see them
as suitors, or potential lovers. The one time that literal “brothers” occur
in the Song is in 1:6, where the poem clearly specifies kin-â•‰relations using
the technical phrase “sons of my mother.”85 Moreover, the speakers here
eagerly observe the young woman’s coming-â•‰of-â•‰age, which puts them in
the company of other suitors who show up at various times in the Song,
offering competition for the young woman’s love (1:7–8; 2:3, 15; 6:1–3).
If she is a wall
we will build beside her a camp of silver.
What does it mean that the suitors “will build beside her a camp of sil-
ver”? The phrase ṭîrat kāsep the NRSV translates as “battlements of silver,”
having in mind a row of buttressing stones on the top of the wall.86 But
the word ṭîrat almost always indicates an encampment, a dwelling place
of some kind. It is used synonymously with tents (Ezek 25:4; Ps 69:25),
villages (Gen 25:16), or even cities (Num 31:10).87 In only one other use, the
term ṭîrôt seems to indicate a row or wall of stones (Ezek 46:23; used in
conjunction with ṭûr, which is used of courses of stones and beams in the
Temple walls, 1 Kgs 6:36; 7:12).88 This single occurrence has led scholars to
associate the ṭîrat kāsep with the fortification of the wall itself: it is a deco-
ration or an enhancement of the wall.89 But I suggest that, taken in light of
the larger motif of the sieged city, the reference is to a built encampment,
a temporary dwelling outside or beside the wall.
Such temporary dwellings, or “camps,” are described in several
places: The Sennacharib inscriptions famously describe the conquest of
the cities of Judah: “Himself (Hezekiah, king of Judah) I made a prisoner
in Jerusalem, his royal residence, like a bird in a cage. I blocked him with
fortified posts and made departure via the gate of his city into an unbear-
able ordeal.”90 Similarly, the annals of Tiglath-pileser III describe his war
against Damascus: “For forty-five days I set up my camp around his city,
and I cooped him up like a bird in a cage” (ITP 78:9'–11').91 These reflect
a type of siege strategy, the blockade, in which the city is fully encircled to
prevent travel of people, goods, and food into or out of the besieged city.92
The blockade tactic was to wait for the besieged city to surrender, enticing
it with various offers of peace, remuneration for surrender, ruse tactics, or
threats to the surrounding bioregion (water supply, fields, fruit trees, etc.).
I suggest that creating “fortified posts” and “camp[s]‌around the city” is
precisely what the suitors in the Song propose to do.
If she is a door
we will blockade her with cedar planks.
Taking a cue from the blockade tactics described in the preceding, we

can see here that the “blockade” (nāṣûr) is “siege” language that evokes a
The Cityscape 111
military confrontation (Deut 20:12, 19; 1 Sam 23:8; 2 Sam 11:1; 1 Kgs 15:27;
16:17; 2 Kgs 6:24–25; 16:5; 17:5; 18:9; 24:11; Jer 21:4, 9; 32:2; 37:5; Dan 1:1;
1 Chr 20:1).93 It can refer to additional structures of fortification erected by
the attacking army, as in Isaiah 29:3, an oracle against Jerusalem:
wəṣartî ʿālayik muṣṣāb
wahăqîmōtî ʿālayik məṣurōt
I will siege upon you a blockade

I will raise upon you a siegeworks (Isa 29:3)
The grammatical construction in Isaiah is identical to the one here in

the Song (finite verb of destruction + ʿal + pronominal suffix + military
implement):
nibneh ʿālêhā ṭîrat kāsep

we will build beside her a camp of silver
…
nāṣûr ʿālêhā lûaḥ ʾārez
we will blockade her with cedar planks. (Song 8:9)
One description of such additional structures of fortification is given

in the description of Thutmosis III of Egypt’s seven- month siege of
Megiddo: “They measured the town, surrounded (it) with a ditch, and
walled (it) up with fresh timber from all their fruit trees. His majesty him-
self was on the fort east of the town, guarding [it day and night] … [sur-
rounded] by a thick wall….”94 Similarly, the Zakkur inscription describes
the building of both an enclosing wall and a ditch: “All these kings laid
siege to Hazrach. They raised a wall higher than the wall of Hazrach, they
dug a ditch deeper than its ditch.”95 The walls served to reinforce the enclo-
sure of the city, and also to provide a protection for the “fort” of the attack-
ing army while it waited out the siege, hoping that someone from the city
would “knock at the gate of their fortress (in order to surrender).”96
Yigael Yadin gives a classic summary of siege warfare: “The lengthy
process of siege was resorted to by a hostile army when time was on its
side and it could afford to wait, or when it lacked the means of penetra-
tion by force, or when the fortifications of the city were too powerful to
overcome. Some sieges lasted several years.”97 Such a military tactic would
require, more than anything, time. It was a strategy that took months or
years. To call to mind only two obvious biblical examples, Samaria was
captured by Shalmaneser V only “at the end of three years” (2 Kgs. 17:5–6;
18:9–10); Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar after eighteen or thirty months
(Jer 39:1–2; 52:4–7; 2 Kgs 25:1–4).98 The siege is not first and foremost a
frontal attack; it is a waiting game. If the suitors are imagined as building
encampments around the city, they are signaling their intention to wait for
her. This understanding of the military stratagem involved with the siege
helps to nuance Robert Gordis’s reading. He writes of this passage:
The young maiden is surrounded by suitors who complain that she

is not ready for love and marriage. [They are determined] to break
down her resistance … : If she remains obdurate, like the wall of a
city, they will lay siege to her. This is the plan to do in approved mil-
itary fashion, by building around her another temporary embank-
ment, from which they will launch the “attack.”99
Gordis here keys in to the same basic idea of the military aspects of the
woman-as-city imagery. But he too flatly reads hostility into the encoun-
ter by ascribing to the suitors all the tactics of siege warfare. The much
more dangerous and less tactically desirable approaches of siege involved
techniques of breach: assault ladders, tunneling, and battering rams, for
which there is a specialized vocabulary that does not appear here (see 2
Sam 20:15).100 None of these devices, or more specialized siege vocabulary,
is featured in the Song. While Gordis is right that the metaphor implies a
siege, he is wrong that it sets into motion all the accoutrements of this lat-
ter phase of warfare. The metaphor, while it has a violent undertone, does
not fully exploit the possibly violent valences of the metaphor. The inten-
tion is not to breach the city, as Gordis implies. The intention is to wait.
For these reasons, this passage should not be understood as an oath to
protect the young woman’s chastity. Rather, the poetry trades on an under-
lying tension in the young-woman-as-city motif. The tension presented
by her architectural fortifications (walls and doors) is the desire to see
them “open,” which is exactly what the lover entreats her to do in the other
“city” sequences in the Song: “Open to me, my sister, my friend!” (Song
5:2, 5, 6; cf. 7:12). This language of opening evokes the lovers’ encounter,
and it is also reflected in military texts. For example, an eighth-century
Egyptian victory stela includes the following appeal of the enemy attacker
to the city: “Look, two ways are before you; choose as you wish. Open [your
gates], you live; close, you die.”101 But the sweetness of the imagery in the
Song mediates the hostility of the metaphor: “silver,” a precious metal, and
The Cityscape 113
“cedar,” an expensive, aromatic wood also used in building palaces and

temples, both suggest the luxurious quality of this encounter.
For a city under siege, there are two options: shore up defenses to wait
out the siege (secure access to water sources, reinforce walls, build an inte-
rior counter-â•‰ramp, e.g., Isa 22:9–â•‰11), or surrender. Here, in the Song’s final
use of the young-â•‰woman-â•‰as-â•‰city motif, the young woman resolves the ten-
sion in the battle of the sexes. She claims that she is ready for love, she
is a “wall” and her breasts are like “towers.” She will not need to shore
her defenses to wait out the siege, so she what she offers instead is will-
ing surrender: “I will be in his eyes as one who makes peace.” The root
š-â•‰l-â•‰m reflects a peaceful surrender, the preferred goal of a siege. This is
prescribed in Deuteronomy: “When you approach a town to attack it, you
shall offer it terms of peace (ləšalôm). If it answers you with peace (šālôm),
and opens to you, then all the people in it will serve you” (Deut 20:10–â•‰
12; cf. Josh 9:15; 11:19; 2 Kgs 18:31–â•‰32 //â•‰Isa 36:15–â•‰16). The terminology of
“peace” and “opening” reflects the sense of surrender to the lover in the
Song.102 There is a change of voice here in this moment: If the previous
lines have been dominated by plural forms (the suitors speaking as “we,”
a group), the young woman directs her offer of peace to the lover alone: “I
will be in his eyes.” If there is a hypothetical threat to a young woman, con-
ceived as a city under siege, the young woman has a plan to ameliorate the
situation. She will offer surrender to her lover alone, on her own terms,
and the tension (the “battle of the sexes”) between the lovers is dissolved.
I have argued that the motif of the city in the Song of Songs draws on
a pervasive ancient tradition of comparing women to cities. The general
function of the metaphor is to portray the vulnerability of a capital city
that is under attack by a foreign enemy. It may be that the young woman
is depicted as “unkonventionell, ungewöhnlich, ja: seltsam” but the poet
nevertheless is drawing on a widespread (conventional) motif.103 The Song
employs this imagery, though, in a surprising way: to cast the lovers in a
battle of the sexes. That the young woman is depicted as a city emphasizes
her vulnerability in the lovers’ encounter. At the same time, this vulnera-
bility is in some sense resolved by the young woman’s own readiness to
welcome her lover in.
Conclusion: Landscape Urbanism
The preceding argument has been informed in part by a metaphor drawn
from urban theory: the city as a body. This metaphor implies several
things: boundaries, such as the wall, the “skin” of the city, that serve to
define and protect the body from that which surrounds it. That the body is
gendered female is also significant. As art historian Sue Best argues,
… feminizing space seems to suggest, on the one hand, the pro-

duction of a safe, familiar, clearly defined entity, which, because it
is female, should be appropriately docile or able to be dominated.
But, on the other hand, this very same production also under-
scores an anxiety about this “entity” and the precariousness of its
boundedness.104
The anxiety about the boundaries of the city is pronounced in the watch-
men who patrol the city’s walls (5:7) and in the bantering about the
young woman’s own walls (8:9). Both the city and the young woman are
ambivalent figures that inspire conviviality but contain the possibility of
disruption; they are marked by boundaries as well as openings.105 The
precariousness of its boundaries, though, also implies something larger
about the city’s nature as an organic unit: a body is dependent on and
implicated in the environment that surrounds it.
This dependency is helpfully understood in light of landscape ur-
banism. The term “cityscape” was first coined in 1955 by the architect
Victor Gruen, who is most notable for pioneering shopping malls in the
United States. He viewed the “cityscape” as a polarity in contrast to the
“landscape.” In his thought, the cityscape is defined by human interven-
tions that override what is natural in the land—these interventions include
buildings, paved surfaces (roads, sidewalks, parking lots, etc.), and other
types of infrastructure. The city, in such an understanding, is foremost a
built environment. In this understanding, “landscape” is opposed to “cit-
yscape,” as the space in which “nature is predominant.”106 As I suggested
earlier, exactly this type of thinking has characterized readings of the Song
of Songs. But there is a significant movement among contemporary geog-
raphers and landscape architects, loosely called “landscape urbanism,”
which acknowledges that urban sites are deeply embedded in their natural
environments. The contours of the built environment are shaped in ac-
cordance with a preexisting natural surface, and must respond to that en-
vironment appropriately in order to be sustained for any duration of time.
At the same time, the built environment is not indifferent to the principles
of ecology, namely, that complex interactions between elements within ec-
ological systems are a fundamental characteristic of those systems, which
The Cityscape 115
cannot be understood in isolation of the parts. This is true both for the way
that the built environment interacts with the natural environment (and
responds to and draws from natural systems such as wind flow, hydrology,
vegetal communities), as well as for the social systems within the city. The
city is part of a larger ecosystem, but the city itself, with its human and
nonhuman members, is also a kind of ecosystem. It is in this sense that
James Corner writes, “cities and infrastructures are just as ‘ecological’ as
forests and rivers.”107 The city, that is, must be understood as a continuous
network of interrelationships (both visible and invisible).108 So, to shift
the analogy, the city is an ecology. This ecological orientation to the city
informs a significant shift in approaches to understanding cities:
Landscape Urbanism describes a disciplinary realignment currently

underway in which landscape replaces architecture as the basic
building block of contemporary urbanism. For many, across a range
of disciplines, landscape has become both the lens through which
the contemporary city is represented and the medium through
which it is constructed.109
This shift emerges in part from important changes in urban organization

in the modern West,110 and it is geared in a constructive way to the design
and planning of contemporary urban spaces.111 Landscape urbanism is
intended to seize on the potential benefits of locating “urban fabrics in
their regional and biotic contexts.”112 What I am suggesting here is that
this reorientation to urbanism is an apt way to think about ancient, pre-
industrial cities, insofar as it enables us to recognize and appreciate fea-
tures of ancient cities. Such features include especially smallness of scale,
orientation to the human body, and, perhaps most important, integration
in and dependence on the surrounding environment. Corner writes, “the
promise of landscape urbanism is the development of a space-time ecology
that treats all forces and agents working in the urban field and considers
them as continuous networks of inter-relationships.”113 Such interrelation-
ships, which have not been at the foreground of modern approaches to
urban spaces, would have been a de facto part of the experience of the
ancient city.
Christopher Meredith, who has gone the furthest in recent Song
scholarship to emphasize the importance of the city, emphasizes the
city’s anonymized, labyrinthine “space.” But this is perhaps too heavily
indebted to Walter Benjamin’s experience of the post-industrial urban
center. The experience of the ancient city would have been more fully
knowable by virtue of its scale and the relative lack of mobility—most
people in the ancient world would have remained in the cities of their
birth, and many would have traversed the boundaries of the city every
day. The poetry of the Song relies on an understanding of the city as
closely proximate to its surrounding countryside, and intimately con-
nected with it. This reflects a reality of the ancient world: agricultural
fields would have abutted the small cities of the ancient world, and its
workers would have spent their days out in the agricultural landscape.
The pervasive terracing abutting Jerusalem testifies to this, as do myriad
biblical texts. According to one narrative, for example, both the crown
prince Absalom and the chief military leader Joab were directly depend-
ent on agricultural fields in the vicinity of Jerusalem, such that Absalom
could spur Joab to action by burning his fields (2 Sam 14:30). Agriculture
was not merely the province of rural farmers; even urban elites expe-
rienced the integration of the city with its fields. This shifting focus
between the city and the country is indicative of the intimate, proximate
relationship between urban centers and their rural outlying areas. This
relationship is well-articulated by Ellen Davis:
The terms “city” and “field” would not have denoted … two entirely
separate settings and lifestyles, as they do for most contemporary
readers. Rather, … the Israelite city and its immediately surround-
ing fields formed a tight economic and defensive unit. Many farm-
ers lived within the city’s protective wall and “commuted” with their
draft animals to work in fields within walking distance.114
The ancient city, that is to say, could only thrive in the context of a healthy
and thriving agricultural hinterlands.
Taking a cue from landscape urbanism, I suggest that the city in the
Song points fruitfully to a larger argument about the ecology of the city.
There is a sense in which, in the Song, the city’s military, protective dimen-
sions put forward a particular image of the city (as impregnable, independ-
ent, and even fearful) that is actually belied by its very vulnerability.
On the one hand, the importance of the wall in the ancient concept of
the “city” implies a stark division between the city and what surrounds it.
At the same time, this wall was constantly traversed: For most local inhab-
itants, daily life would have meant crossing the wall and participating in
the larger landscape. It would have meant—necessarily—by virtue of its
The Cityscape 117
limited technologies and agricultural dependence, leaving the city, devel-

oping the threads of ecological dependence. We could ask, for example, is
the Siloam tunnel an element of the city, or of the land? The answer must
be both: It functioned to harness a landscape element for the purposes
of the urban center—enabling and preserving the site’s impregnability
under military assault. At the same time, the Gihon spring is an emblem
of dependence on and permeation by the larger landscape. After all, the
only times that a city is impregnable is when it is under military assault,
when the city is fragile and threatened. The besieged or enclosed city is not
in a state of permanent, durative health. A city cannot survive a long-term
siege; this is the very premise on which the military siege is presupposed.
A hermetic city, whose walls are fixed and whose gates are closed, which is
not permeated by the cycle of agricultural productivity of its hinterlands,
is a city that is dying.
To speak of the ecology of the city is to acknowledge the symbiotic rela-
tionship with its surrounds, between the built environment and the nat-
ural environment. One might see the strange poem of Song 5, then, as
an ecological commentary of the following type: the fixation on walls and
guards does not provide a sustainable vision of connection and flourish-
ing. Instead, it reflects the various ways in which a reified division between
the city and its countryside is potentially detrimental.115 We might see
Song 5, with its fixation on architectural features, the abiding sense of
enclosure, and the vigilant protection of walls (Song 5:2–8), as embodying
a kind of urban disorder. This poem concludes with the young woman’s
declaration of her own “sickness”: śeḥôlat ʿahăbah ʾānî (“I am sick with
love”), the manifestation of this disorder. The Song seems to operate on
the understanding that cities are not self-contained; perhaps it argues spe-
cifically against it. The tension—between a walled city and the enemy it
confronts—is posed in a different way by the imagery of surrender that
comes late in the Song, in Chapter 8. This passage stands to resolve the
struggle between city and countryside, in the sense that when the gates are
opened (through the willing surrender of the young woman to her lover),
a healthy symbiosis between city and country will be restored. Another
way of talking about vulnerability is to talk about permeability, reliance,
dependence, need, or lack. This vulnerability, this dependence, is what
defines the city as a signifier of desire, and it is also the way that the Song
imagines a healthy urban ecology.
5
The Map of the Body

Many a man beguiled by her beauty has said:
Describe her!
I said: that is easy and difficult,
All at once.
ibn al-rūmī, “Waḥīd, The Singing Slave-Girl of ʿAmhamah”
The eye needs to be trained so that it can discern beauty

where it exists.
Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place
Running through the center of the Song of Songs like a backbone,

three major descriptive poems focus on the body of the young woman:
4:1–7; 6:4–7; and 7:1–7.1 Each one envisions the physical beauty of the
beloved by extolling her body parts.2 These bear some resemblance to
the later Arabic literary form, the waṣf (“description”—a form of minute
description of an object), and so scholars frequently refer to these bib-
lical descriptions as waṣfsT, although I will avoid that terminology here.3
The style of the descriptive poems stands apart from the rest of the Song:
“It has the effect of a still life with its complex absence of main verbs;
in it each image is paratactically juxtaposed. If the passage is isolated,
distinctively bounded from its neighbours, without logical connectives,
each sentence within it duplicates this isolation.”4 Although they each
stand apart from the rest of the Song, their similarity to each other rec-
ommends reading them in light of one another, as emblems of a kind
of poetic process. Reading these poems as a reiterative process, so far as
I can tell, has not been undertaken with respect to the Song’s descrip-
tive poems. Such a reading strategy is suggested, for example, by Roland
Greene, who describes the driving phenomenon of the Petrarchan lyric
series in precisely such terms, as a “conceit of process.”5 Of these biblical
The Map of the Body 119
“descriptions,” two (4:1–7; 6:4–7) dwell on the face and head and move
down the body, while the final example (7:1–7) moves in the opposite di-
rection, from the feet up the middle of the body to the top of the head.
In each case, the young woman is “mapped” visually, and her body is
allied topographically with the land of Israel. The geographical refer-
ences create a map of the land of Israel—not a complete one, of course,
but one in which the ineffable totality of the young woman is evoked by
the presentation and iteration of select parts. The vision of the lover as
a cartography links the aesthetic of the land with the beauty of the lover.
This chapter will explore the spatial developments of these lyric descrip-
tions over the course of the three descriptions, taking quite seriously
the experience of the landscape that develops temporally for the reader.
The vision of the landscape, the visual orientation implied in the rep-
resentation of a physical topography, is in process, and is specified and
refined over time. As J. Cheryl Exum has observed, “the lovers’ gazes …
enumerate details about each other’s body that progressively build up a
fuller picture.”6 As I will show here, the reiterated attempts to represent
the young woman’s beauty elaborate the likeness between the beauty of
the land and erotic beauty. An analysis of the perspectives implicit in the
descriptive poems of the young woman shows a crescendo in the poet’s
repeated attempts to capture this experience. In each subsequent de-
scription, the landscape is increasingly particular and increasingly com-
plete. The repeated attempts suggest that the evocation or encapsulation
of this beauty is not sufficiently addressed or comprehended by a single
vantage. I will argue that through the sequence of the three descriptions
of the young woman, the perception of the beholder is specified and
refined. The young woman is seen with increasing clarity in each suc-
cessive poem. The Song thus models a lover’s knowledge: the reiterative
process of description suggests that the subject’s beauty cannot be ade-
quately comprehended by a single vantage or a single glance. The gaze
must be cultivated in order to perceive it.
Landscape and Vision
The portrait of the young woman as a geography can be helpfully expli-
cated by recourse to the idea of landscape. Here, I intentionally invoke
the representational aspects of the term, referring to the technical strat-
egy developed in the visual arts. In the descriptive poems of the young
woman’s body, the interest in the natural world is evident through the
verbal depiction of the young woman’s body, which is described in terms
of the landscape of ancient Israel. The topographical elements range
across the land of Israel, many from northern locales, like Carmel (7:5),
Damascus (7:4), and Tirzah (6:4).7 But other regions are also invoked,
including Jerusalem (6:4), the oasis of Ein-Gedi on the western shore of
the Dead Sea (1:14), Gilead (6:5), and Heshbon in the Transjordan (7:4).
This observation is not new. As I discussed in Chapter 1, Jewish interpreta-
tion traditionally took the topographical elements to explicate the identity
of the young woman in the Song as the nation of Israel.8 André Robert
and Raymond Jacques Tournay have taken a similar but more elaborated
line of argumentation, emphasizing the geographical nature of all the
features of the descriptive poems. They stretch the analogy between the
young woman and the nation of Israel to make the young woman fit a
literal map of Israel, part for part: “[D]‌ans le contexte subséquent, chaque
trait de la description s’inspire d’une particularité géographique de la Terre
Sainte….”9 Such sensitivity to the aspects of the landscape in the descrip-
tive poems leads to some far-fetched comparisons; for example, it means
that the young woman’s feet are located at the Nile, and that her rounded
thighs are contoured like the Mediterranean coastline.10 The reading of
the body moves north from there: her navel is plotted at Jerusalem, and
her head at Carmel. The strict adherence to the South-North geographi-
cal axis in Robert and Tournay’s reading runs into trouble as it places her
eyes (at Heshbon) quite out of alignment, to the East, as Pope has noted.11
Nevertheless, more than any modern commentator, Robert and Tournay
are bold in detecting elements of the land of Israel in the poem’s descrip-
tions, and the view is worth rehabilitating. The problem both for allegoriz-
ers (ancient and modern), of course, is that they reduce the young woman
to a metaphor that can be discarded when the reader has construed the
point of the poems (which is, on this reading, a plea for eschatological
peace reminiscent of the Solomonic empire).12 Both the Rabbis and Robert
and Tournay point up the significance of the analogy between the young
woman’s body and the landscape of Israel. This analogy presses us to take
the landscape features of the descriptive poems of the Song as thematically
significant both as they pertain to the description of the young woman,
and as they reveal an attitude toward the material landscape. What nei-
ther the Rabbis nor Robert and Tournay acknowledge is that this “map-
ping” is not static over the course of the Song, but is located particularly at
the three descriptive poems, all of which differ from one another. These
descriptions require a particular mode of viewing, ones that changes over

the course of time.
Geographer Denis Cosgrove has been particularly keen to emphasize
the integral importance of the viewer to the concept of landscape. He draws
on the developing conventions of European landscape painting to show
how a representation of a material landscape, especially in the visual arts,
presupposes a vantage. The gaze that is implied potently reflects values
and assumptions about the relationship between the viewer and the world.
That is to say, landscape is a way of seeing that implies a seer, as well as
an attitude toward the object that is seen. As Cosgrove writes, “The subject
of landscape in art is the spectator or the artist, participating as creator or
controller through the medium of perspective.”13 For example, in nine-
teenth-century American landscape painting (the foremost example is the
work of Thomas Cole), the viewer’s eye is consistently overwhelmed by the
wilderness panorama, with its infinitely receding skyline, and vast swaths
of mountain terrain.14 In the case of Cole, and much of the early American
landscape tradition, the viewer strains to take in the grand scope of the yet-
untamed frontier—which played a crucial role in the imaginary of early
America. The perspective is a medium that conveys the larger ideological
point of the insignificance of the human presence (conventionally present
in the foreground, as tiny appreciators of the vista), facing the vast task of
westward expansion. This representational aspect of the “landscape” con-
cept suggests that it is an aesthetic category that is culturally and ethically
laden. While the descriptive poems in the Song of Songs are not exactly
about the landscape, but have as their primary subject the beauty of the
lover, they also depend on the viewer’s gaze as it commands the reader’s
(mental) gaze in a way that is strongly reminiscent of other landscape tra-
ditions. The poet creates a (verbal) artistic description of a (visual) depic-
tion of the young woman-as-landscape.
Since, as I have suggested in a cursory way, this visualization imagines
the young woman as a geography, the natural world is not depicted per se,
but is summoned via an accumulation of images of the lover—as such,
the land must be seen as an image of an image, a tertiary experiential cat-
egory generated by the poetic voice. When the young man describes the
young woman, it is as a kind of “landscape” of the lover’s body. Within this
landscape, the physical, literal geography that is called to the mind’s eye
throughout the Song of Songs is explicitly evoked to describe the beauty of
the lover’s body, part by part. By comparing elements of the lover’s body to
elements of the landscape, the body is constituted as a beloved geography.
The young woman-as-landscape emerges with greater precision over the

course of the three descriptive poems, which suggests that the gaze of the
lover is heightened, specified, refined, by the act of seeing.
The Gaze
Seeing is all the more significant to the Song because the poetry is self-
conscious about its visual aspects. That is, the visual perspective is not
just an implicit aspect of the Song of Songs, but one trope that serves as
a building block for the poetry. The Song is studded with verbs of seeing.
The general verb rāʾāh (“see”) is used eight times. Of these, three are
directed toward the woman: once, she is seen by her friends, who bless
her (6:9); once, she expresses a wish not to be seen (1:6); and once, the
young man pleas with her, “let me see your face,” and what is implied, of
course, is that he cannot (2:14). Three times, it is the land and its plants
that are seen (2:12; 6:11; 7:13); and twice, men are the objects of look-
ing, once by the watchmen (3:3), and once by the young women (3:11).
At two points, the vision of the lover is expressed in other vocabulary
of sight, particularly when the young woman imagines or describes her
lover on the other side of a wall, trying to catch a glimpse of her: He is
mašgîaḥ (“gazing”) and mēṣîṣ (“peering”) through the windows and lat-
tices. And, finally, in a cryptic passage late in the Song, unindentified
speakers express a wish to look at the Shulammite: “Return, return, O
Shulammite, return, return, that we may look (ḥ-z-h) upon you. Why
should you look (ḥ-z-h) upon the Shulammite, like a dance of two
armies?” (6:13). In addition, each of the lovers’ bodies—both the young
woman’s and the young man’s—are perceived as beautiful, especially in
the descriptive poems that are predicated on the appreciation of the lov-
er’s body (the young woman, in 4:1–7; 6:4–7; and 7:1–5; the young man
in 5:10–16). As I will suggest in what follows, though, this appreciation is
visual but not limited exclusively to visuality; instead, it is a progressive
and multisensory appreciation.
The visual nature of the Song is also apparent in the frequent use of
the presentative particle hinnēh. As I will suggest, though, hinnēh is not
strictly visual, but rather layers visuality with the evocation of the lovers’
presence. The lovers are beautiful to one another—both male and fe-
male: “Here you are (hinnāk, fem.), you are beautiful, my friend … Here
you are (hinnəkā, masc.), you are beautiful, my dear” 1:15, 16). The presen-
tative particle hinnēh is classically translated as “Behold!” or “Look!” (e.g.,
KVJ). So Exum suggests that its use “invites its addressee to look, along
with the speaker, and see what he sees from his point of view … with
hinnēh, the poet directs the reader’s gaze as well, creating the illusion of
immediacy by bringing what the lovers see immediately before our eyes.”15
Exum’s core insight about the sense of immediacy wonderfully describes
the poem’s ability to create a lover’s experience for the reader. But this is
not exclusively a visual experience, since hinnēh has no essential refer-
ence to vision.16 Instead, it is a deictic marker for interiority—specifically,
the awareness of the other that “flashes across a character’s conscious-
ness” as internal speech.17 Not merely an invitation to view the lover’s body,
hinnēh throughout the Song enacts the lovers’ awareness of one another’s
presence (so the translation “Here!” is perhaps more fitting).18 This point
is particularly important because it helps create a more complex under-
standing of the gaze in the Song, in conversation with feminist discourse.
The relation between this pervasive gaze in the Song and power, gen-
der, and the erotic has been a site of contention. The problem of the gaze
for feminist interpretation was largely spurred by Laura Mulvey’s influen-
tial 1975 article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” in which she uses
psychoanalysis to identify the passivity of women in film as objects of the
active gaze of men.19 In her view, women have two options: either to iden-
tify as objects of the male gaze, or to appropriate the distant, objectifying
male gaze (thereby alienating themselves). Following such a view, David J.
A. Clines writes of the Song of Songs, “The woman, for her part, is offered
the subject position as the focus of the male gaze, and not unwillingly
(for she knows no alternative) she adopts that subject and subjected pos-
ition, misrecognizing herself.”20 This essentializing of the gaze assumes
a rigidly dichotomized “masculine” and “feminine” perspective, as well
as a set of assumptions about the universality of what constitutes male
and female psychological development and identity formation— thus
explicating the gaze will be more contingent than Mulvey’s original for-
mulation allows.21 That the gaze can be oppressive and exploitative is
no doubt true, and that it has been used in the Song’s interpretation in
oppressive and exploitative ways is no doubt also true; however, it would
be short-sighted to assume that the gaze must therefore be oppressive and
exploitative. Moreover, the Song itself raises problems for such readings.
To wit, the woman’s gaze is also thematized, both in her own pleasura-
ble viewing of the male body (5:10–16),22 and in the clear account of the
woman’s eyes, which gaze out (4:1), destabilize (4:9), and terrify (6:5).
These features undermine the hegemony of the male gaze. As Catherine
Nash writes, “Asserting women’s visual pleasure resists both the idea of
women as passive objects of the male gaze and hegemonic versions of
what is an appropriate feminine viewing position and objects of view.”23
Indeed, as Exum has aptly noted, it is precisely the lovers’ consistent par-
ticipation in their own descriptions that entails an erotic, not a voyeuristic,
gaze.24 It should be added that the kind of objectifying gaze made possi-
ble by film media is only partially analogous to that of ancient lyric visual
description. There is a wide cultural gap between our heavily saturated
visual media culture (in which it is normal to view hundreds of bodies oth-
erwise unknown to us in a day) and ancient cultures, in which the visual
would necessarily be constituted by some degree of physical presence and
the personal knowledge and multisensory experience that such presence
implies. So when the reader encounters hinnēk (“Here you are!” fem.),
this is not exactly an invitation to the audience to look at the woman; it is,
rather, a moment when the young woman’s presence strikes the aware-
ness of the young man. His consciousness registers the profound impact
of the lover’s presence. This is the underlying tension of an Egyptian love
poem, which expresses the wish simply to see the lover, a luxury her mir-
ror always enjoys: “If only I had a morning of seeing … /Joyful is her
mirror, /[into] which she gazes” (Cairo Love Songs, Group B: no. 21D).25
This is not to suggest that visual exploitation was not possible before the
technological invention of photography and the economies of production
that accompanied it; rather, film is an imperfect analogy to begin with.
The gaze here in the Song mixes proximity and distance as it elaborates a
more complete, multisensory “view” of the lover and the landscape, pro-
gressively unfolding in time.
How the woman is in view in the descriptive poems is related to the
question of her beauty. Scholars have been at odds about whether and how
the strange imagery should be understood. For instance, Athalya Brenner
writes, “her belly is fat and jumpy like her breasts (3c, 4), her neck is (dis-
proportionately?) long, her eyes by now turbid, her nose outsize (5). In
terms of slang, she is a ‘mixed bag’ ” and the poems are teasing or ridicul-
ing her.26 Fiona Black has been most vocal in emphasizing the “grotesque”
nature of the descriptive poems, locating her analysis at the provocative
seam revealed by the Song’s puzzled history of interpretation of the de-
scriptive poems.27 She writes that the body is “a site of confusion” in the
descriptive poems: “they ridicule, or worse, are repulsive, and as such they
indicate something about the lover’s unease about his lover’s body, and
her sexuality.”28 Using the idea of the grotesque, Black argues against the
dominant “hermeneutics of compliment” that has governed the Song’s

interpretation:
Most troubling, from my perspective, is that to mandate that the

statements about beauty in the text are meant to be explicated by
what follows them is something of a terminal option for interpreta-
tion: it provides for no other alternative in reading than that these
perplexing images are aesthetically complete, or, that they expli-
cate (perfect) beauty. It is precisely the perplexing nature of the
imagery, however, that demands that readers at least consider other
alternatives.29
Black rightly notes that the texts do not explicate beauty in any straight-
forward way; the omissions in the description alone pose a problem
for such a view. But that they do not explicate beauty does not mean
that they cannot convey an experience of beauty. It is not the particular
cultural aesthetic preferences that are the subject; rather, “the emotive
content of desire is paramount.”30 The descriptions are not ambivalent
or negative toward their subject, and the acclamations of beauty affirm
the overall positive nature of the descriptive poems.31 The celebratory
tone is most clearly in view in these acclamations, which frame each of
the descriptive poems of the young woman. The first descriptive poem
(Song 4:1–7), for instance, begins, hinnāk yāpāh (“Here you are! You
are beautiful”; 4:1) and ends similarly, kullāk yāpāh (“all of you is beau-
tiful”; 4:7).32 The body of the descriptive poem between these two fram-
ing acclamations enacts the search for metaphors commensurate to her
beauty. The poem traverses the lover’s body, beginning with the top of
the head, and moves downward to end at the breasts, lingering with the
intimate details of the lover’s body. The other two descriptive poems of
the young woman are also structured by the admiration of her phys-
ical form. The second poem similarly begins, yāpāh ʾat (“you are beau-
tiful”; 6:4), and ends with a summary of her incommensurability,ʾaḥat
hîʾ yônātî tammātî (“she is one, my dove, my perfection”; 6:9). Similarly,
the final descriptive poem starts with a proclamation of her beauty, mah-
yāpû pəʿāmayēk (“how beautiful are your feet”; 7:2), and ends mah-yāpît
ûmah-nāʿamt (“how beautiful, and how lovely”; 7:7). These exclama-
tions serve as literary signals that draw the reader in to see with the
eyes of one who is entranced by beauty. This emphasis on the young
woman’s beauty suggests that the intervening description will express
the speaker’s experience of her aesthetic distinction, and it will do so in

terms of landscape, as we shall see.
The First Description (Song 4:1–â•‰7)

Here you are! You are beautiful, my love.
Here you are! You are beautiful.
Your eyes are doves
Behind your veil.33
Your hair is like a flock of goats
Moving down34 from Gilead.
Your teeth are like a flock of shearlings35
Coming up from the wash
All of them twins
No blemish is in them.
Your lips are like a scarlet thread
And your speech36 is lovely.
Your cheek is like a slice of pomegranate
Behind your veil.
Your neck like the tower of David
Built in courses37
A thousand shields are hung upon it
All the shields38 of warriors.
Your two breasts are like two fawns
Twins of a gazelle
Which pastures among the lilies.
Until the day breaks
And the shadows flee
I will go to the mount of myrrh
And the hill of frankincense.
All of you is beautiful, my love;
There is no flaw in you. (Song 4:1–â•‰7)
The description begins with her face, with first the eyes, which are con-
cealed like doves “behind your veil” (v. 1), then her hair, her teeth, her lips,
and finally her cheek, which is also “behind your veil” (v. 3). These two
occurrences of “behind your veil” form an inclusio, a literary curtain that
is drawn around the description of the young woman’s face, creating the
sense of symmetry, as well as distance.
What the veil actually represents is a complex and perhaps finally inde-
cipherable matter. To begin, the issue is clouded with modern symbolic
associations, from the eroticized veil of the nineteenth-century Orientalist
imagination,39 to contemporary discourse about the ḥijāb and issues of
women’s liberation.40 Added to this, the Hebrew ṣammāh (customarily
translated as “veil”) is a rare word, used only here, in a parallel passage
in Song 6:7, and in Isaiah 47:2. In Isaiah, the ṣammâ is among the gar-
ments (it parallels šōbel, “skirt”) that the personified city of Babylon is
commanded to remove in an act of exposure that subjects her to reproach
(47:3). The term ṣāʿîp (also translated as “veil”) occurs in Genesis 24:65;
38:14, 19. In the former passage, Rebekah covers herself when she finally
meets Isaac, who will become her husband, although the text does not
explain why she does so. It should probably not be interpreted as a sign of
wedding custom, since the wedding does not follow within any specified
time frame in the narrative (nor is it clearly the context the Song of Songs
has in mind).41 And since Rebekah puts it on when she greets Isaac, she
was not wearing it as a matter of course. In Genesis 38:14, 19, Tamar covers
herself with a ṣāʿîp not as her regular costume, but to disguise her identity
so that she can trick her father-in-law Judah. Indeed, there’s no evidence
that Judean women wore customary veils during any period. The only evi-
dence of veiling practices in Mesopotamia come from the Middle Assyrian
Laws, which stipulate that married women out in public must wear a veil,
while unmarried women and prostitutes must be uncovered.42 An incanta-
tion also dating to the Middle Assyrian period includes the line “she wears
no veil and has no shame.”43 The limited nature of these references and
the lack of corroborating visual evidence reinforce the problem of how to
interpret the veil here.
Moreover, since so few examples of visual and plastic arts from ancient
Israel are extant, and since textiles do not survive in the archaeological
record, the nature of such a garment is all the more speculative. Would it
have been diaphanous, such that the eyes and cheeks could be perceived
through the fabric?44 Or was the veil a more substantial piece of fabric
drawn across the face, leaving the eyes exposed?45 An Assyrian relief por-
trays women from the Judean city of Lachish wearing some kind of a
shawl over their heads—a large piece of fabric framing the face on either
side.46 This suggests a piece of fabric worn over the head that could be
drawn across the face to obscure the identity (as the stories of Leah and
Tamar both highlight). The “veil” may thus have been a piece of fabric
that was part of the accoutrement of the young woman’s beauty, which
could be used to conceal, or not. Clothing is certainly one of the marks of

adornment that the young man identifies, hence his praise: “the scent of
your garment is like Lebanon” (4:11). Her jewelry is another such marker
of adornment (evoked in 1:10; 4:4, 9; and 7:1). As Irene Winter has argued
for Mesopotamian art, such adornments are essential to an understand-
ing of aesthetic value.47 For these reasons, we might see this garment
as a literary evocation of allure. In the narratives of Leah and Tamar, the
garment symbolizes the women’s access to and use of sexual power to
effect an outcome; similarly, while Rebekah does not cover herself as an
act of trickery, it signals her erotic forwardness, through which she seeks
out her husband. In “The Descent of Ishtar to the Netherworld,” Ishtar
elaborately attires herself before she begins her journey (in the Sumerian
version), then upon her arrival at the entrance to the Netherworld, must
systematically remove her adornment—first her crown, then jewelry, then
her garments.48 In so doing, she is symbolically divesting herself of one
famous aspect of her power—her sexual allure.49 The young woman here
in this descriptive poem is both visible, and yet behind a piece of fabric,
which “arouses the viewer’s desire to see what lies behind it.”50 That she
is behind a veil is a problem for description because it closes off visual
access;51 the veil is also a possibility because it prompts the imagination to
probe the beauty that is inaccessible to the lover. As the veil symbolically
reinforces, describing the young woman is both a problem and a possibil-
ity for the poem.
Within the inclusio of the veil, the hair flows like a flock of goats down
a mountainside. This metaphor is no doubt prompted by an actual similar-
ity: the black hair of the goats, running individually but flocking together,
creating a bouyant, dark surface that moves downhill, offers a simulacrum
for a mane of thick, dark hair flowing loosely over a young woman’s head
and shoulders. But, it should be emphasized, this view is only possible
from a distance.52 The gaze presupposed by this description is one from
far away, in which the whole visual impact of the flock can be compre-
hended in a single glance. From the midst of the herd of goats, the viewer
would see a noisy clutter of hooves, tails, and dust. The perspective taken
by the poem—taking in the sight of the young woman from a distance—
reinforces the literary distance created by the inclusio of the veil: the young
woman is seen or imagined from far away, and is only imaginatively attain-
able. Elsewhere in the Song, this sense of distance is evoked by images
that feature the young woman out of reach: in the window (2:9), behind
the wall (2:9), in the clefts of the rock (2:14), in the Lebanon mountains
(4:8), even in a palm tree (7:7–8). Her distance is thus one crucial feature
of her portraiture.
What emerges is a perception of the young woman’s face, neck, and
torso, and while the initial metaphors rely on a distant view, there is a
simultaneous closeness of perspective implied by the ability to see the
body as a body, the face as a face with its details: The eyes are like doves
(4:1); the hair is like a flock of goats streaming down from Gilead (4:1 and
6:5); the teeth are like a shorn flock coming up from the wash (4:2 and
6:6), and the breasts are like fawns that feed among the lilies (4:5 and
7:4). These closely viewed parts, moreover, are described not merely as ele-
ments of the natural world, but as the animal life that animates the land-
scape of the young woman’s body.53 The doves flicker against the water of
the bath and the goats stream down the hilly mountainside. Their pres-
ence suggests not merely a static depiction, but a living, breathing quality.
She is a landscape within which moving creatures suggest the perpetu-
ally glimmering, inspirited quality of her beauty. That her teeth are like a
shorn flock suggests not only their purity and completeness, but also that
the mouth is a locus of energy, vibrancy, and movement. Similarly, the
breasts are gazelles that graze “among the lilies,” which throughout the
Song is used as a cipher for the young woman’s body and beauty (2:1, 2,
16; 4:5; 6:2, 3; 7:2).54 The formal structure of the catalog of her beauty in
this way effects a mild astigmatism for the viewer, which blends different
perspectives required by the different images in order to convey the com-
peting senses that her total body is writ large like the landscape, and, at the
same time, is minutely and vibrantly detailed.
There is coherence to the landscape of her body, insofar as the poem
identifies her with particular local regions. Her hair flows like goats not
on any mountain, but in Gilead. This mountainous region rises rap-
idly from the plains of Bashan to a height of over 3,300 feet in the Gilead
Dome. The height, seen from the valley of the Jabbok, which runs through
its center, or from the plains of Bashan that mark its northern border, is a
striking and rapid elevation gain (so it is remembered as the har haggilʿād;
Gen 31:21, 23, 25; Deut 3:12; cf. Jer 22:6; 50:19).55 As a well-watered region,
it is characterized by forest cover; even after centuries of deforesta-
tion, the highest hills are still covered by scrub oak, carob, and pine, and
its beauty seems to have been comparable to the famous cedar forests of
Lebanon (Jer 22:6; Zech 10:10).56 The region also supports some impor-
tant vineyards and olive orchards, its hilliness accommodating such forms
of cultivation, as well as hosting a pastoral economy, being well suited to
grazing livestock such as sheep and goats (cf. Num 32:1; Josh 21:38; Mic 7:14;
1 Chron 6:66 (MT, 6:80, Eng)).57 The image of goats streaming down from the
hillside in Gilead thus elaborates an image based in pastoral life in that par-
ticular locale. The beauty of the young woman is like the particular landscape
known to the speaker (and, presumably, the audience)—from that admixture
of personal familiarity and oral history that constitutes local knowledge.
The coherence of the young woman-as-landscape is brought into relief
by the Old Babylonian poem, “The Message of Lu-dingira to His Mother.”
This work includes a lengthy description of a woman based on a conceit of
helping a third party identify Lu-dingira’s “mother”: “If you do not know my
mother, I shall give you some signs.” (The conceit is playfully undermined
in the fourth description, when the poet comes teasingly close to revealing
the true identity of his “mother”: “She is a lover, a loving heart who never
becomes sated with pleasure,” lines 40–4658). The descriptions progress
from comments on qualities of her character and gracefulness (“she is the
fair goddess … she is loving, gentle, and lively,” lines 9–20), to specific
comparisons (“she is an alabaster statuette of a protective goddess standing
on a pedestal of lapis lazuli,” lines 21–31). The descriptions, like the Song,
use elements drawn from the local landscape: “My mother is like a doe
on the hillsides” (line 22); she is “a bountiful harvest of full-grown bar-
ley,” “a garden,” and “a well-irrigated pine tree.” The depiction is character-
ized by general references that draw from the same basic analogy between
the young woman and the land.59 This descriptive poem places a similar
emphasis on natural comparands, but they are more eclectic and more
autonomous: instead of building a image of the lover based on a sequential
view of the lover’s body, it has the effect of creating a cache of general meta-
phors that can be flexibly applied to various attributes, whether physical
or those of character.60 A similar strategy can be seen in the Neo-Assyrian
composition, “Love Lyrics of Nabû and Tašmetu” (eighth century BCE)—
which has a great deal in common with the Song in theme, imagery, and
style61—includes the following description of the goddess Tašmetu:
* [ša šapū]lāki ṣabītu ina ṣēri [xxxx ] * [whose thi]ghs are a gazelle
in the plain! [*]‌
* [ša ki]ṣallāki šaḫšūru ša simā[ni xxxx] * [whose an]kle bones are an
apple of Siman! [*]‌
* ša asīdāki ṣurrumma [xxxx] * whose heels are obsidian! [*]‌
* ša mimmūki ṭuppi iqnî [xxxx] * whose whole being is a tablet
of lapis lazuli! [*]‌62
Here, the catalog form is clearly employed, as is the palette of natu-

ral imagery. But the form is not overlaid with the repetitions we see in
this descriptive poem in Song 4 (with the exception of the determina-
tive pronoun ša, “whose,” at the head of each line). Instead, the images
here are distinctly more discrete. And although there are landscape ele-
ments employed (gazelle, apple, obsidian, lapis lazuli), they do not seem
to build a single, coherent picture. The individual comparands perhaps
are employed for their symbolic function—as Martti Nissinen points out,
“the outward shape of [the tablet of lapis lazuli] can hardly be equated with
any part of the body, least of all with the ‘whole being’ of Tašmetu” and the
reference more likely symbolically associates her with the tablet-bearing
god Nabû.63 The parallels with the Song of Songs are striking here, but the
differences in their descriptive technique helps bring the coherency of the
Song’s description into relief.
A stronger priority in the Song is given to particular place-names,
which help to build the overall sense of the topography of the region.
Some of these place-names, though, do not appear to be real references;
instead of evoking concrete historical realities, they draw on local know-
ledge, memory, and imagination in equal parts. The landscape is vividly
evoked by the poetic strategy of interweaving the intimately known with
the imagined. Perhaps the strongest example of this effect is the use of the
proper name in the phrase migdal dāwîd (“tower of David,” v. 4). Such a
tower has not been identified, and may never have existed, although com-
mentators have tried to link it to the stronghold of Zion (by way of 2 Sam
5:7, 9; Neh 3:25–27).64 Whether or not an actual tower was known to the
poet, the evocation of David’s name mobilizes a memory associated with
a golden age in the land of Israel.65 The name evokes a trace of human
history and presence in the landscape, affecting its contours. Features in a
landscape—as geographers have noted—can operate like a palimpsest, re-
maining visible in the topography, “until there is a force or process that is
strong enough to remove it…. Furthermore, if a feature is heavily etched
into the landscape, it may well be perpetuated through long periods of sub-
sequent use….”66 We might add that if a feature is etched heavily enough
into the memories or social systems or ideals of a people, it may persist in
memory, language, and text long after its physical presence is gone. Had
such a tower ever existed, this text may be evidence of its lingering signif-
icance. But even if it never existed, the image evokes persistent legendary
memories of David, employing broad cultural resources to compel the au-
dience to associate the young woman with the specificity of the land, its
history, and its traditions. The landscape is thus known not only through
physical familiarity, but through the re-â•‰creation of its history in the minds
and experiences of its inhabitants—â•‰a different kind of cultural knowledge.
The poem employs some features that lend formal coherence to the
structure of the catalog—â•‰repetitions that are sonic (the alliterated initial š-â•‰
sound in the four lines of v. 2: Šinnayik, Šeʿālû, Šekkullām, wəŠakkulāh, and
which re-â•‰emerges in v. 5: Šənê Šādayik kiŠnê ʿopārîm/â•‰ … /â•‰baŠŠôŠannîm),
thematic (the repeated images of ʿeder, “flocks,” in vv. 1–â•‰2; the significance
of “twins” and “two-â•‰ness” in v. 3, which is reiterated in v. 7 in the descrip-
tion of her breasts), and verbal (the phrase mibbaʿad ləṣammātēk, “behind
your veil,” which I have already discussed, in vv. 1, 3; and ʾēn b-â•‰to represent
wholeness, vv. 2, 7). These repetitions intersect at various points in the
poem, not in a strict pattern but with a loose consistency that heightens
the sense that the description of the young woman is meant to cohere, that
the parts bear resemblance to one another even though the imagery draws
on diverse select features. The loose structure of Song 4 works, along with
the underlying analogy of the young woman-â•‰as-â•‰landscape, in order to bol-
ster the latent sense that the young woman somehow resembles the whole
of the land of Israel, even though she is only partially visible.
The Second Description (Song 6:4–â•‰7)

The Song’s second descriptive poem takes many of the motifs of the first
poem, but heightens their particularity:
You are beautiful, my love, as Tirzah67

Lovely as Jerusalem
Awesome as an army procession.68
Turn your eyes from before me
For they terrify me.
Your hair is like a flock of goats
Streaming down from Gilead.
Your teeth are like a flock of ewes
Which come up from the wash
All of them bear twins
None of them is bereaved.69
Like a slice of pomegranate is your cheek
Behind your veil.
Sixty they are queens
And eighty concubines

And maidens without number.
One is she my dove, my perfect one
One is she to her mother
Pure is she to the one who bore her.
Who is this who looks out like the dawn
Beautiful as the moon
Pure as the sun
Awesome as an army procession?70 (Song 6:4–7)
The poem reiterates language from the previous description in exact or

nearly exact repetition.71 Her hair is like a flock of goats (6:5; cf. 4:1); her
teeth like a flock coming up from the wash, all of them bearing twins (6:6;
cf. 4:2), and her cheek is a slice of pomegranate behind the veil (6:7; cf.
4:3). As in the last poem (4:1), the second description also begins with an
acclamation of beauty: (“you are beautiful, my friend,” (yāpāh ʾat raʿyātî,
6:4). Both poems break off abruptly below the young woman’s face (at the
breasts, 4:5; at the cheeks, 6:2). These overlaps suggest that the descriptive
poems should be read together as further iterations of the same quest for
an adequate account of the young woman’s beauty.
The repetition of the animal imagery reinforces its impact: the flocks
evoke the local economy of the ancient Levant. As I discussed in Chapter 2,
this imagery is most appropriate not to a wild landscape, but to a domes-
tic one. The poet, by repeating the flocks of goats and the flock of ewes,
draws on the familiar elements of subsistence agriculture. While the
young woman is writ large as the whole land of Israel, she is also uniquely
small—seen through the elements of the individual farm, which would
have been recognizable to hearers and readers throughout Israel over the
course of a long period of time. The poems, through the repeated ele-
ments of minute description, thus develop a sense of individuality along-
side the sense of the whole of the landscape—the concluding lines of the
second descriptive poem emphasize precisely this individuality:
One is she my dove, my perfect one

One is she to her mother
Pure is she to the one who bore her. (Song 6:9)
If there are strong similarities between the two descriptions, there are also
significant differences: the poet is not merely repeating verbatim, but is
selecting and developing the presentation of her beauty. In the second

poem, for instance, there is an “intensification in the way the Song speaks
of the Shulamite’s eyes,” since they are described first as “like doves” (4:1;
cf. 1:15), then as powerful enough to threaten the lover (“turn your eyes …
for they terrify me,” 6:5).72 This ability to inspire awe is evoked in framing
lines, at the beginning and end of this description: ʾăyummâ kannidgālôt
(“awesome in splendor,” 6:4; and in closing, 6:10). In this way, the sec-
ond descriptive poem has upped the rhetorical ante, framing the second
descriptive attempt with a far stronger claim about her beauty. Moreover,
unlike in the first description, the second does not immediately dive into
the enumeration of parts, but lingers for an extra moment, expressing the
sense of the overall impact of the lover’s beauty:
You are beautiful, my love, as Tirzah,

Lovely as Jerusalem,
Awesome as an army procession. (v. 4)
What is implicit in the first descriptive poem—that the young woman is

the landscape—is more fully articulated here. Her beauty is allied with
two particular topographical locales—Tirzah and Jerusalem. In this way,
the second descriptive poem takes the problem of how to describe the
young woman’s beauty, and more explicitly states the analogy of the young
woman with the landscape of Israel. She is as lovely as two of its cities.
The evocation of Tirzah has perplexed interpreters: ancient versions
did not recognize it as a city-name, translating it instead according to
the root r-ṣ-y (“to be pleasing”).73 Robert and Tournay call attention to its
unclear political significance: If the poet intended to draw a parallel with
the southern capital, Jerusalem, then the northern capital, Samaria, would
be the clearer choice. The combined histories of Judah and Israel suggest,
on Robert and Tournay’s view, that an idealized vision of “Grand Israël” is
implied.74 While Robert and Tournay are right to seek a geopolitical sig-
nificance to Tirzah, they seems to overlook that while the significance of
the site of Tirzah is only obscurely known to us, its significance is clear to
the poet, who confidently evokes it in direct parallel to Jerusalem. Edmée
Kingsmill sees a theological problem with reading “Tirzah”: “in the eyes
of the poet a parallel to Jerusalem is unthinkable. Jerusalem stands alone,
and if it has a parallel it can only be the heavenly Jerusalem.”75 The problem
with this approach is that the poet has put the two words in parallelism,
and tirṣāh never means “beauty itself,” as Kingsmill translates it; rather,
it is always a proper name (in the case of the daughters of Zelophehad,

Num 26:33; 27:1; 36:11; Josh 17:3). The idea of “heavenly Jerusalem” is a
much later development—alluded to only in sketchy form in the New
Testament (Heb 12:22–23; Rev 21:2–22:5)—and only makes sense as part
of her allegorical program. Based on a number of references in Joshua
and 1–2 Kings, it appears to have been the early capital of Israel, from the
time of Baasha through Omri, and is usually understood as Tell el Farah
(North; Josh 12:24; 1 Kgs 14:17; 15:6, 16; 16:17–18, 23).76 The relative obscurity
of the reference serves as a reminder to the contemporary reader that what
is known to the poet is not fully knowable to the audience, and lyrically
evokes the intimacy of lovers.77
If details about Tirzah remain obscure, the references to both cities
nevertheless play into the pervasive ancient trope of the city personified
as a woman, which serves as background to this ideation of the young
woman as a city (Isa. 37:22; 52:1–2; Isa 47:1–2; Lam 1:1).78 That the city is
gendered as a woman helps underscore that the comparisons to both
Jerusalem and Tirzah evoke the young woman’s beauty and pleasure.
Tirzah’s derivation from the root r-ṣ-h (“pleasure”) serves as a verbal evoca-
tion of the sense of aesthetic esteem. Jerusalem’s association with beauty
can be traced through literary emphasis: its heights are beautiful (yəpēh
nôp; Ps. 48:3); it is lovely (hannāwāh wəhamməʿunnāgāh dāmîtî bat-ṣiyyôn,
“I have likened daughter Zion to the loveliest pasture,” Jer 6:2; cf. Lam
2:15; Ezek 16). By the exilic period, each of these cities would have suffered
some destruction; in a sense, their beauty is recalling a past time of vitality.
Like the tower of David, they are powerful signifiers, evocative of history
and particularity in a place. The emphasis on their beauty encourages the
reader’s sense that affection depends not on the objective reality of their
superiority, but on loyalty and memory. The perspective implied in the
initial two descriptive poems of the young woman is thus progressively
localized in the landscape.
This localization, though, is still fragmentary. Like a landscape, the
descriptions of the young woman have the effect of creating a vision (illu-
sion?) of wholeness. At the end of the description in Chapter 4, the poem
affirms: “all of you is beautiful, my friend, and there is no flaw in you”
(4:7). This affirmation, kullāk yāpāh (“all of you is beautiful”) is a verbal
claim that is in tension with the undeniably fragmentary nature of the
first two descriptions. The same problem is echoed in 6:8–10, follow-
ing the second description of the young woman. Here, the poet suggests
that there are many other women, regal ones and innumerable young
maidens, but there is only one lover: ʾaḥat hîʾ yônātî tammātî (“one is she,
my dove, my perfect one,” 6:9). While the descriptions claim a sense of
wholeness, they are not only selective in the parts they describe (the eyes,
nose, breasts, etc.), but the gaze also breaks off at the chest. The young
woman’s body is never fully known to the young man (or the audience) in
the first two descriptive poems. The claim that “all of you” is beautiful is
thus in tension with content of the poem—as though the beauty that has
provoked the poetic response cannot be fully captured by the poet, whose
descriptions come up short, falter, and resign. Both of these descriptions
of the young woman self-consciously evoke the wholeness of the young
woman’s beauty while describing only a portion of the young woman—
her face and bust.
The partialness of the young woman in these initial two descrip-
tions resembles the artistic convention of the “woman at the window,”
which localizes the woman’s presence as a distant face or bust as look-
ing out from within a building. The rectangular frame of the window,
often marked with architectural details, limits the viewer’s access to the
woman’s body. This is a common motif in early first-millennium ivory
carvings from the Near East.79 In these carvings, the woman’s face is
framed—as through a window—and decorative balustrades, with colo-
nettes topped with volute capitals, appear where we would otherwise ex-
pect to see the young woman’s body. Because she is looking out from a
closed architectural space, these details emphasize that the young woman
is seen only in part, and that she is physically separated from the viewer.
The effect clearly situates the viewer as distant from the young woman—
she is accessible only via this small portal. The additional detailing of the
courses of architectural framing in three stages around the young woman
reinforces the sense that she is set off from and not easily available to
the viewer. This convention is used literarily in the Song of Deborah, in
which Sisera’s mother, ignorant of her son’s death in war at the hands of
Jael, looks out of her window:
Out of the window she looked.

The mother of Sisera gazed
Out of the lattice (Judg 5:28)
The distance between the mother of Sisera and the action of the story is
emphasized by her position behind the window, whence she is unable
to see her son’s death and defeat.80 In the Song, this distancing effect is
evoked by the truncation of the young woman’s body in the first two verbal
depictions of the young woman. This motif is also clearly evoked in 2:8–â•‰
9, when the young woman envisions the young man as a gazelle on the
mountains, who arrives behind the wall, and gazes in (at her) through the
interposing architectural features of the wall and windows. Similarly, in
the “dream sequences” of 3:1–5 and 5:2–â•‰8, the young woman is located spa-
tially inside, on her bed. In the latter scene, her lover knocks from behind
a door. As I have already mentioned, the veil appears twice in the first de-
scription, literarily “framing” the description of the face with a visual (not
architectural, but textile) barrier (4:1, 3). Like the graduated visual frames
of the window in the Neo-â•‰Assyrian plaque, the poem verbally “frames”
the young woman, limiting the access available to the speaker (and the
reader). She is not ignorant, as in the case of Sisera’s mother. But she is
not available. She is visible only in part, as glimpsed from behind a veil
or a window. The partiality of the description points to the larger sense
of wholeness by a technique of inclusion and omission. Her wholeness,
or totality, then, must be supplied by the imagination. When the speaker
exclaims, kullāk yāpāh raʿyātî ûmûm ʾên bāk (“all of you is beautiful, my
dear, there is no flaw in you,” 4:7), he evokes a reality that is a fundamental
problem for the artist: the seeing “eye” cannot comprehend the whole, and
the artist’s medium cannot fully express the quality of beauty perceived by
the person who is in love. The eye of the lover sees that the beauty of the
beloved one exceeds the ability to depict it.
The sense conveyed in the first two descriptive poems, in the tension
between the partiality of the descriptions and the claims to wholeness, is
that her beauty can be conveyed by “mapping” her as the particular land-
scape of Israel. It will remain to the final descriptive poem to understand
what that might mean. In the final descriptive poem of the young woman,
these conventions get turned upside down. The poet will, in this third
attempt to capture her beauty, break out of the “woman at the window”
frame, overcoming some of the limits of description, revealing greater
intimacy, as well as a greater sense of totality as he considers her beauty
from the ground up.
The Third Description

(Song 7:2–â•‰7 [MT; 7:1–â•‰6, Eng.])
Building on the vision that begins to take shape in Chapters 4 and 6, in
the final descriptive poem, the gaze of the poet reiterates and revisits the
young woman’s beauty. The gaze here is far more intimate, and it is also
more panoramic:81
How beautiful are your feet in sandals,

Daughter of a noble,
The rounding82 of your thighs is like jewelry83
The work of a mastercraftsman’s84 hands.
Your navel85 is a rounded bowl86
It does not lack for mixed wine.87
Your belly is a heap of wheat
Fenced with lilies.
Your two breasts are like two fawns
Twins of a gazelle.
Your neck is like an ivory tower.
Your eyes are pools of Heshbon
Upon the gate of Bath-Rabbim.88
Your nose is like a tower of Lebanon
Overlooking the face of Damascus.
Your head upon you is like Carmel.
The loom89 of your head is like purple
A king is captured in its tresses.90
How beautiful, and how lovely
Oh love, in delight. (Song 7:2–7)
Intervening between these latter two descriptions is the descriptive poem

of the young man (5:10–16). This poem, uttered from the perspective of the
young woman, is an appreciation of the young man’s beauty that proceeds
downward from the top of the head to the legs. Its metaphors have some
overlap with the young woman’s (eyes like doves, v. 12; cheeks like beds of
spices, v. 13), but the overall cast of the imagery seems to be drawn more
from statuary than from local landscape: “His arms are rounded gold, set
with jewels. His body is ivory work, encrusted with sapphires” (5:14).91 The
final description of the young woman seems to benefit from the previous
two iterations, as well as dialogically from her description of the young
man’s beauty—her speech prompts and perhaps models yet another—
and more complete—answering glance. In this final description of the
young woman, the gaze glides upward from the ground, and the total view
includes descriptions of parts of her body not normally accessible to the
viewing eye. That the poem begins with the feet shows that the perspective
has shifted drastically. The vision of the feet implies, at the outset, that the
viewer sees a more total picture—we have access here to a part of the young
woman that was entirely occluded in the previous two descriptions. The de-
scription moves up to the thighs, then the navel, then the belly. The view is
directed toward parts of the body that were not previously disclosed—and
that would not normally be on display, but would be concealed by cloth-
ing.92 In this way, the third description assumes a new level of intimacy
between the speaker and the lover’s body. It is unsurprising, then, that the
veil, which had such a prominent role in the first two poems, does not
appear in this final description. The boundaries that had previously enacted
the distance between the speaker and the lover have dropped, creating the
sense of a new, private proximity to the lover’s body.
In this section, the perspective doesn’t focus immediately on the land-
scape, but rather lingers momentarily with finely wrought objects. The thighs,
under the gaze of the viewer, have a created and manufactured quality: “the
rounding of your thighs is like jewelry /the work of a master craftsman’s
hands” (7:2). The viewer, perhaps influenced by the description of the young
man, evokes the aesthetics of adornment to represent the young woman’s
value.93 Jeremiah 10:3–4, 9 describes the tasks and skills of fabrication:
A tree from the forest is cut down

And worked with an axe by the hands of an artisan
With silver and with gold they beautify it …
Beaten silver is brought from Tarshish
And gold from Uphaz
The work of an artisan and the hands of a goldsmith
Their clothing is blue and purple,
They are all the product of skilled workers. (Jer 10:3–4, 9)
The skill of the workers lies in their ability to work wood, or to use specific
metallurgical technologies to form something beautiful from raw natural
materials. The NRSV renders verse 4: “they deck it with silver and gold,”
but there is more positive, aesthetic evaluation being made: yəyappêhû
(“they make it beautiful,” v. 4). Adornment, that is, the work of skilled
workers, has the power to seduce the eye of the viewer with its beauty. The
conjunction of this intimate view with the aesthetically charged images of
fabrication and adornment suggest that part of intimacy is seeing precious
valuability that is not normally in view. In the intimacy of the parts that are
described, as well as in the emphasis on fine crafting, the young woman is
more fully visible, and her value more fully appreciated, in this description
than in the previous poems.
This fuller visibility makes the abdomen available as well, as the gaze
rests on the navel, which is also crafted, “turned.” Here, the poem evokes
agricultural elements in addition to fabricated ones, specifically hammāzeg
(“mixed wine”) and ʿărēmat ḥiṭṭîm (“a heap of wheat”). Each of these
images invokes the productive farmstead, and plays on the locally pro-
ductive landscape to embody the beauty of the young woman. There is a
moment of concrete visual landscape here, when the belly is visualized as
a heap of wheat, encircled with lilies. Landy describes the image of lilies
as having the effect of “a pointillist painting,”94 which nicely captures how
individual blossoms could help build a cumulative picture of the young
woman. One could say further: this is to a certain extent not unlike the
way the descriptions gather up disparate imagery in order to summon
the young woman as a whole. If the previous poems, in their more lim-
ited attempts at description, draw together images from the local agrarian
landscape, this description takes such imagery and adds to it elements of
fine craftsmanship, then specifies elements of produce (wheat and wine)
that emphasize the delicious fertility of the land. To the visuality of the pre-
vious poems, this poem adds a gustatory element that plays more fully on
the experience of the local farmstead. A fuller picture of life in an ancient
landscape is evoked. As geographer Yi-Fu Tuan notes, in addition to the
visual aspect, “the world is known through the senses of hearing, smell,
taste, and touch. These senses, unlike the visual, require close contact and
long association with the environment….”95 The sense of sight operates
over the greatest distances, and also therefore implies less proximity and
less intimacy than the other senses. Tuan also emphasizes that the kind
of intimacy possible through the other senses emerges more slowly, the
familiarity accruing over a length of time. He writes, “[T]‌o know the town’s
characteristic odours and sounds, the textures of its pavements and walls,
requires a far longer period of contact.”96 The multisensory characteristics
of the landscape become increasingly available in subsequent descriptive
poems, evoking close association over time. This is a developing perspec-
tive, still related to the other descriptions through the reiteration of the
previous poem’s image of the breasts: šənê šādayik kišnê ʿŏpārîm /toʾŏmê
ṣəbîāh (“Your two breasts are like two fawns /twins of a gazelle,” 4:5; 7:4).
As the description continues to move up the young woman’s body, it

is evident that the perspective in the third description is not merely more
intimate; it is also more panoramic. If in the previous descriptions there
were hints of topographical comparisons, here the greatest cluster of top-
onyms in the entire book occurs:
Your neck is like an ivory tower

Your eyes are pools of Heshbon
Upon the gate of Bath-Rabbim.
Your nose is like a tower of Lebanon
Watching the face of Damascus (v. 5)
As the gaze is cultivated, the comparisons with the landscape are increased
(there are more of them), and they also take on a more sweeping tone. First,
the eyes are bərēkôt bəḥešbôn (“pools of Heshbon,” 7:5). Heshbon, on the
far side of the Jordan, lies outside of the geography of Israel during most
periods, but was remembered as part of Israel at its widest reach: When
the Israelites defeated Sihon (Num 21:21–25) it became the boundary be-
tween Reuben and Gad (Josh 13:15–23, 24–28), and was eventually desig-
nated as a Levitical city (Josh 21:39; 1 Chron 6:81).97 This reference is not
necessarily a sign of the poet’s preference for exotic, non-Israelite locales,
as Zakovitch argues,98 but may suggest an idealization of the broadest pos-
sible “map” of Israel, drawing on the most expansive literary formulations
of Israel’s traditional land claim (Gen 15:18; Deut 1:7; 11:24; Josh 1:4). Maps,
like landscapes, are imaginative and artistic representations of space (in-
debted though modern mapmaking is to science).99 The “pools” may refer
to the thermal hot springs very near the city of Madaba in modern-day
Jordan, near where the ancient city was located, north of the Dead Sea
where the Nahr Ḥesbān flows into the Jordan.100 Elsewhere, the Song lik-
ens the lover to the oasis at Ein-Gedi (1:14) at the western edge of the Dead
Sea, and presumably could have done so here; in other words, the image
of these more distant pools at Heshbon emphasizes a broader conceptu-
alization of the young woman-as-landscape. “Eye” and “spring” are hom-
onyms in Hebrew; the shared word ʿayin perhaps suggests their shared
liquidity and sparkle. It is the watery surface of the pools that are evoked
here, seen from above or afar, glinting and reflecting the light.101 These
dual elements—the distant toponyms and the phenomenologically rich
descriptions—charge the audience to imagine the utmost reaches of the
conceptualized landscape of Israel, a view made possible by an imagined

stance high above the ground.
Bath-Rabbim is another example of a term best understood, along
with Heshbon, as a topographical reference, although the location has
not been identified. The pools of Heshbon are “near” the gate (cf. ʿal, Gen
41:1), which suggests that Bath-Rabbim is intended to further specify the
pools, pointing the reader to an even more particular place. Even if the
location is opaque to the reader, the reference is made in a way that sug-
gests the speaker’s familiarity. We are simultaneously invited to see with
intimacy, and yet we are excluded from it. The cryptic intimacy that char-
acterizes this description is reinforced by the catalog of rare terms used.
No less than five hapax legomena occur in this passage (see notes 82–90),
heightening the sense that the vision of the young woman here is rarified;
even the vocabulary reflects the speaker’s attempt to more adequately
account for the young woman’s elusive totality, and for the intimacy of the
lovers’ experience. Anselm Hagedorn has nicely observed, “Die Sprache
der Liebenden ist auch immer eine Geheimsprache, deren vollstän-
dige Dekodierung unmöglich ist.”102 As the gaze becomes increasingly
panoramic—we can see more, farther, and at greater distance—the reader
simultaneously understands less of the vocabulary of the description. The
speaker describes her in greater detail, but she remains undisclosed to
the reader.
The gaze continues to move upward, taking in her nose and then the
top of the head. Just as the young man turns the gaze upside down (from
toe to head) in this description, he also images the young woman’s gran-
deur in broadening strokes, taking on larger proportions: Her nose is com-
pared to the tower of Lebanon.103 Delitzsch believes that the meaning of
this description lies in the physical characteristics of the nose, which “…
without being blunt or flat, formed a straight line from the brow down-
ward, without bending to the right or left … a mark of symmetrical beauty
combined with awe-inspiring dignity.”104 Pope suggests that its “moun-
tainous” quality is a fitting hyperbole for the extremes of the young wom-
an’s “superhuman” beauty.105 Rather than creating a mimetic description
of the young woman, though, the images reinforce the governing meta-
phor, which links the young woman with topography. Her nose is seen as
part of the ante-Lebanon range, looking out over the city of Damascus, to
the North and East of Israelite territory in present-day Syria.106 The phras-
ing here subtly plays with the developing idea of the young woman as
a landscape: ṣôpeh pənê dammāśeq (“overlooking the face of Damascus,”
7:5). The phrase is not unique, and can idiomatically refer to the surface
of the ground.107 The phrase is thus rightly translated simply as “overlook-
ing Damascus,” (NRSV, similarly KJV, ASV, JPS). But this rendering loses
some of the richness: the poem plays with the image of the young woman
as the land, calling our attention to the deep metaphor for the face of the
land as a trope for open space. The nose looks over “the face of Damascus”
because this is a typical way of saying that the nose is a high point overlook-
ing open land. But it takes on special significance here because the nose
also overlooks the face of the young woman. The topography of the young
woman’s facial features is like the open face of the land, on which the nose
is a stately feature. In this way, the poem seems to self-consciously put the
resources of the language to play with the governing analogy of the young
woman as a landscape. The landscape panorama is completed by the final
image of this description: rōʾšēk ʿālayik kakkarmel (“your head upon you is
like Carmel,” 7:6). One can only take in the abrupt rise of Carmel from
the valley floor from a certain distance. The headland of Carmel is a ridge
on the northwestern end of the range, rising steeply nearly two thousand
feet near the Mediterranean Sea close to modern-day Haifa. If standing
on a slope of Carmel, the viewer would be absorbed by vegetation—oaks,
pines, olives, and laurels. Taken at close perspective, that is, the striking
visual effect of the promontory would not be perceivable. In the same way,
the scale of the young woman’s beauty implies that the perspective of the
viewer is taken from an appreciable distance, from which angle the total
is perceivable. The perspective taken by the lover, and conferred upon the
reader, then, is one with a particularly panoramic quality.108 It is the distant
viewer who can take in the whole.
The vision assumed by this poetic description is at once more intimate
and more panoramic in its depiction of the young woman than the pre-
vious two descriptions. As the poem works toward the impossible task
of describing the young woman’s wholeness, it accumulates a greater
fund of resources. While the first two attempts break off at the torso,
this final poem marshals greater detail, conveying intimate details of the
young woman’s body, and encompassing the totality of her body, from
her foot to the crown of the head. And yet, once again, the complex mul-
tiplicity of the poem’s perspective is immediately apparent: wədallat rōʾšēk
kāʾargāmān /melek ʾāsûr bārhāṭîm (“the loom of your head is like purple /
a king is captured in its tresses”). Here, the description returns to ele-
ments of fabrication—specifically, textile arts—reminding the reader of
the detailed, heavily encultured aesthetic qualities of beauty with which
this description began. The density of topographical referents suggests

both the familiarity of the poem’s locale, as well as its vastness, which can
only be apprehended at an appreciative, imaginary distance. The bird’s-eye
view implied by the descriptive poems was technologically impossible at
the time of composition. The inability to literally “see” the land in this way
at this point in history (without aerial photography, for instance) means
that the poet is relying on a mental map to develop the perspective of the
young woman. The imagination of the lover is forced to convey totality by
a unique perspective that soars over the landscape, attempting to convey
its totality by the selective appreciation of its parts.
This panorama is in apparent conflict with the minute attention to the
intimate details of the young woman’s body, which are by no means in view
from a distance; they are best seen (and the quality of their craftsmanship
appreciated) from close up. The catalog itself is a form that relies on just
such a technique of juxtaposition, since its conceit is that by listing images
of individual parts together, an appreciation of her total aspects may come
into view. This juxtaposition of apparently conflicting perspectives has
the effect of conveying a stronger sense of totality, since we are seeing all
aspects of the young woman from an array of angles. An analogy from the
visual arts helps to clarify what I mean by this conflict in perspectives. In
a famous painting from the unlocated Egyptian tomb of Neb-Amun, the
conflation of viewing angles enables the viewer to appreciate the myriad
elements of the garden simultaneously. The landscape includes verdant
plant life, including several varieties of fruiting trees seen from a distance
at ground level. At the same time, the rectangular pond is viewed from
above; as we look down into the water, the trees can be seen to be planted
in rows surrounding the edges of the pool. The fish swimming in the
water are seen in profile, as if from underwater, while the ducks float on
top of the water and yet are also viewed in profile in the same plane as
the fish. The conflation of viewing angles helps the viewer to appreciate
the beauty of each individual part simultaneously.109 This is, of course, at
least partially a necessity of working before the invention of the artistic
technique of fixed perspective. At the same time, the poet employs these
techniques of inclusion, employing intimate and panoramic views that si-
multaneously bring us very close to the young woman’s beauty while we
soar high above it, appreciating it from a distance. This conflation of per-
spectives is a technical strategy that conveys a sense of totality.
The depiction that is envisioned by the young man’s utterances is not
intended to mimetically reproduce the young woman’s actual essence.
Rather, it assumes that the young woman’s beauty is related to her whole-
ness, which is not literally created by the imagery, but which lies behind
and beyond it. This increasingly full visibility might be understood as a
result of the poetic process itself—the perceived limitations of the medium
(embodied in the breaking off and the partial viewpoints of the first two
attempts) prompt the viewer to return to the subject. The poem is part of
an intensely focused, creative attempt to recapitulate, to be commensurate
to, its object, such that the gaze is honed, trained, by the poetic process.
Conclusion: The Landscape, Picasso’s Women,

and the Gaze (Again)
This chapter has lifted up two significant themes in the descriptive poems
of the young woman: first, the gaze is related to the task of description,
which is both a problem and a possibility; second, there is a significant
analogy between the young woman’s body and the land. The perspective
assumed throughout these descriptive poems requires both distance, in
order to see the young woman as a landscape, and closeness, in order to
appreciate her body as a body. Throughout the Song—especially in these
poems, but throughout the Song as well—the land is eroticized. This erot-
icization extends beyond the descriptive poems and pervades the Song:
the hills, for instance, are “cleft,” as round and deliciously scented, spicy,
as the breasts of a lover (4:6; 8:14; cf. 2:14).110 This intimate and erotic
vision of the young woman-as-land confronts a problem; these descriptive
poems convey the sense that the task of description is impossible—for
how could one take in, let alone represent, the total and complex aspects of
a person with one glance? The lover’s return to the young woman’s beauty
is a conceit of process, which suggests the impossibility of conveying the
“wholeness” that is perceived and desired. Even the fullest description in
7:1–7—while the view moves from the foot to the top of the head, and thus
in one sense portrays her “whole” body—is still characterized by omis-
sion: It can only selectively describe her in parts. Like the landscape that
serves as her primary analog, the young woman’s wholeness is elusive; it
can’t be taken in at a single glance, “mastered” by the eye of the viewer,
or accounted for in every detail. The perceiver’s capacity to apprehend the
complexity of the whole always falls short. This insurmountable complex-
ity, I suggest, is intrinsic to an understanding of beauty. Her dynamism is
the dynamism of a living organism, whose whole is greater than the sum
of its parts.
The liveliness of the images cuts against Black’s suggestion that the
description of parts is an act of literary violence. The descriptive poem, in
her view, “plots the woman’s body across the topography of Israel, in effect
merging her not only with certain features of geography, but mapping her
body, as one might tread from place to place, as if on a journey.”111 She goes
on to say that, in light of the priority of topographical elements, “the body
is cut up and spread across the land, a little like the victimized woman of
Judges 19, and reassembled, Picasso-like, as the pieces are gathered into a
geographical portrait.”112 Black’s invocation of Pablo Picasso’s art is strik-
ing and perceptive. Like Picasso’s later works (especially during his ana-
lytic and synthetic cubist periods), the Song portrays the lover not in any
kind of realist mode, but highly selectively, developing a style of represen-
tation that is not strictly mimetic of portraiture or person, but that uses ele-
mental forms to build a cumulative image of the lover. A parallel might be
noted, for example, in Picasso’s Girl with Mandolin (Fanny Tellier) (1910).
Here, as much as one sees the contours of the young woman, the two-
dimensional plane of the painting is highlighted with the foregrounding
of elemental shapes—rectangles, squares, triangles, circles comprise the
background, as well as the body of the young woman. But while Black
is right that the strategy of paintings like this is a kind of “reassembly,”
it is not, therefore, necessarily marked by satire, or violence. The young
woman in the Song is not “victimized,” nor is the subject of Girl with a
Mandolin (Fanny Tellier). Despite its resistance to realism, this is a paint-
ing of great tenderness and sensitivity—its muted tones, the gentle angle
of the neck that echoes the neck of the mandolin, the soft waves of the sub-
ject’s hair, the way the body of the woman advances subtly from the shared
geometry of the background—suggesting not a disposition of mockery on
the part of the painter or viewer, but one of affection. Such a disposition is
also evident in the great 1913 painting Woman in an Armchair (Eva), which
is rendered in even greater distortion. Indeed, over the course of his long
career, Picasso chose to work not with professional models, but preferred
to paint people who were his intimates— wives, lovers, friends.113 He
painted series of the young Marie-Therèse Walter, and later of Dora Maar.
In each case, the lover is repeatedly painted or drawn, and each rendering
is different, though it shares characteristics with the previous renderings
of the subject. The sequence reveals the artist’s intense interest in the sub-
ject, and the style of the painting—especially the surreal use of color and
rendering of form into blocks of shape and parts that represent the body
in a two-dimensional plane—does not necessarily reveal an underlying
dismantling of the lover’s form, but rather a steady and passionate artistic
response to it. As Arthur Danto writes, “Picasso did not develop Cubism
to disclose an outer structure in the world but to project an inner structure
of feelings and attitudes toward that in the world which claimed his emo-
tions.”114 Black’s comparison to Picasso is apt: each of these very disparate
arts (Picasso’s modernist painting; the lyrics of ancient Israel) employs
non-realist strategies to render the subject of the lover. More than this,
though, Picasso’s sequential and repeated paintings of the lover are also
curiously parallel to that of the Song—each sequence suggests that one
representation is not enough to be commensurate to the inner experience
of being in the lover’s presence.
What I have attempted to show here is that the non-realistic assembly
of the descriptive poems is not fundamentally violent or oppressive, but
rather recognizes the inherent problem of description, and works within
this problem to create a progressively more encompassing perspective on
the lover. Neither the landscape nor the young woman is subject to an
exploitative gaze that would dismember the young woman or reduce the
landscape to an anonymous resource: the specificity of the face and the
particularity of the named landscape render the subject not anonymous,
but known, seen, and loved. These poems, taken this way, do not “expli-
cate” beauty. Rather, the partialness of the descriptions recognizes the inev-
itable hermeneutical circle of lovers: the appreciation of the lover is not
objective, but affective. Like the affection for one’s particular landscape, it
is not constituted first and foremost by objective evaluations, but proceeds
out of intimacy and experience. What comes first is love—for one’s lover,
as for one’s place—and the attempt to convey the rationale for that love,
for example, by presenting an experience of the presence of beauty, is only
secondary. It is an ongoing attempt over time to offer an accounting of
the affective commitment. The process of poeticizing this affection—by
attempting to describe the apparent beauty of the lover—enables the poet
to see the complexity of the whole of the lover’s being more clearly, more
fully, and with greater totality. The progressive descriptions of the young
woman model a kind of cultivation of the gaze, in which people and land
are perceived with ever increasing fullness and complexity.
At the same time, the perspective of the other, the lover, shapes the self-
perception of the subject. As Susan Stewart writes,
The beloved’s voice is untouchable. It is that which touches me

and which I cannot touch. Yet the one who “owns” it—that is, the
one who belongs to it—cannot touch it either. I cannot see my eyes

when I see; they are invisible to me. And I cannot hear my own
voice when I speak: I hear only its echo or resonance and when it
comes to me on a recording it comes as a stranger’s voice, as horrid
and uncanny as a glimpse of my own corpse. The voice and the eyes
take part in the more general truth that I cannot witness my own
motion as a whole: I cannot see what is alive about myself and so
depend on the view of others. It is the viewpoint of the beloved that
gives witness to what is alive in our being.115
I began this exploration of landscape with mapping and painting as points

of reference, admitting that the European landscape tradition is an imper-
fect analogy for these ancient lyrical descriptions. The Western (modern)
mindset is quite different from what we see in the Song. Barbara Bender
writes that there is a particular “Western Gaze” that motivates landscape
and cartographical traditions. It is one that “skims the surface; surveys
the land from an ego-centered viewpoint; and invokes the active viewer
(the subject) and a passive land (object). This active viewer is equated
with ‘culture’ and the land with ‘nature’; and viewer/culture are gendered
male, land/nature are gendered female. Finally, the Western Gaze is
about control.”116 She is perhaps correct to note that this gaze can exploit-
atively serve imperial and hegemonic interests. I raise this issue because
I believe it points to the limitations of the cartographical approach taken
by Robert and Tournay, who wish to map the young woman point by
point, and to the approach of Black, who assumes precisely this type of
objectifying view. The experience of landscape here is a quite personal
process that takes place through time. It evokes a layered, multisensory
experience that conflates an imaginary bird’s-eye view with the close prox-
imity of land experienced by someone who knows it intimately. In this
way, the lover experiences the lover and the landscape as an embedded
member, alive to multiple senses, traveling through a known place, savor-
ing its multiple associations, and developing a clearer appreciation over
time. These depictions explore the complexity of a dynamic and affective
human experience in a beloved landscape. The map that is summoned
in this landscape view, then, is something closer to an “indigenous
map.” Bender remarks on the conflict in the 1970s and 1980s between
the Peruvian government and the local peasant communities of a gov-
ernmental project to create a nature preserve at Lake Titicaca that would
have disrupted the centuries-inhabited settlements and lifeways of the
indigenous people. The government drew up an official map to help

make their case, de-emphasizing the size and number of settlements,
and emphasizing the lakeside sites that would become tourist attractions.
The peasant communities responded by creating their own maps—these
exaggerated the proximity and size of settlements, emphasizing their
significance. Their maps were not to scale, and did not include towns.
Rather, “[t]‌heir maps moved between the conventional over-view and a
ground view: houses and mountains were shown vertically. The maps,
faithful to indigenous perceptions, showed the natural features that cra-
dled and protected the settlements. Each settlement was crowned with
a small Peruvian flag, thus coopting the official insignia of power.”117
Similarly, Barry Lopez remarks on the perceptions of the Inuit people in
Arctic, whose knowledge of the landscape is intimate and multifaceted,
and while they are capable of creating maps, they navigate large swaths of
ocean and land without them, relying instead on mental maps. He writes
of the distinction between this indigenous mapmaking and Western car-
tographic approaches: “[i]n the face of a rational, scientific approach to
the land, which is more widely sanctioned, esoteric insights and specula-
tions are frequently overshadowed, and what is lost is profound. The land
is like poetry: it is inexplicably coherent, it is transcendent in its meaning,
and it has the power to elevate a consideration of human life.”118
The gaze of the lover in the Song employs the power of an intimately
experienced landscape to elevate the human lover. The gaze required is an
imaginary one, one that travels over a landscape and experiences it, pro-
gressively unfolding in time. The attempt to reassemble the depictions is
not therefore de-humanizing, it is re-humanizing, a response of love to the
perceived wholeness that is yet technologically impossible. The consider-
ation of the female body in the descriptive poems develops and models a
practice of attentive empathy,119 one shaped by physical presence and the
resources of memory. Lopez writes, “[i]‌f one can take the phrase ‘a country
of the mind’ to mean the landscape evident to the senses, as it is retained
in human memory and arises in the oral tradition of a people, as a reposi-
tory of both mythological and ‘real-time’ history, then perhaps this phrase
will suffice.”120 Such a “country of the mind” becomes available through the
ancient practice of walking through a known landscape, slowly, at the pace
of the human gait. The landscape thus makes itself available to the senses,
through the sights, scents, and sounds that are familiar or anomalous, and
which corroborate or challenge the accretive stories and songs of its inhab-
itants, and which finally become part of the long-term understanding of
a particular topography.121 The kind and quality of vision that draws the
young woman’s beauty in terms of the land of Israel is a vision of affection,
of memory, and is reminiscent of a long-term experience in a particular
topography. This landscape is experienced over time, through several reit-
erations. It conveys the sense of the magnitude of the landscape’s beauty,
and the excesses of its possibilities.
6
Conclusion
Throughout this inquiry I have sought to describe the poetic con-

ceptualization of the natural world that is so pervasive in the Song of
Songs, and that provides the basic components of its vocabulary and imag-
ination. What I have hoped to show is the Song’s consistent enmeshing of
human flourishing within a flourishing cultivated landscape. One way—
perhaps the most significant way—that this is accomplished is through
the underlying analogy between the lovers themselves and the eroticized
landscape, particularly between the young woman’s body and the body
of the land. Such an analogy is pervasive in the ancient world, as I have
indicated from time to time in each of the previous chapters, but it is not
altogether fixed: there is enough fluidity and variability in the analogy that
it is too simple to say, as Lévi-Strauss does, that “woman is everywhere
synonymous with nature.”1 What the conceptual overlaps do accomplish
is to eroticize the landscape. Sensuality and desire are “powerful motivat-
ing aspects of imagination, mobilised in complex ways in relation to the
vision which they often direct, and cannot be ignored as responses to land-
scapes,”2 an assumption that the Song employs to great effect. In a sense,
the Song elaborates a vision of what it might mean to love one’s land,
which is to see it with affection and to intervene in it with care.
In the secondary literature on the Song, I found that scholars have
largely not explored the Song’s conceptualization of the natural world,
and those who do tend to reify “nature” and “culture” as opposing forces,
and to romanticize nature over against culture. On my reading of the
Song, the medial spaces—such as the farm and the garden—are espe-
cially prominent, and they are spaces that are defined largely by complex
152 Conc lusion
interactions between human cultures and the land. It may be that the
interest in celebrating a landed, agricultural existence emerged from a
particular historical moment in Persian Yehud—one can imagine the
ideals of long-term agrarian resettlement converging with imperial pro-
grams in a number of hypothetical configurations3—but it is equally plau-
sible that such values emerged from and would have been intelligible to
people across a wide swath of political and historical contexts. Certainly,
the genre of pastoral, with which the Song has strong similarities, tends
to emerge at times of cultural transition, when traditional patterns of set-
tled agriculture are challenged by forces like urbanization, political upset,
or technological innovation. But given our historical ignorance and lyric’s
characteristic capacity to transcend time and place, we might simply note
that the Song offers a hopeful vision of the human situation in a land-
scape that is as available now as it was to any number of imagined ancient
audiences. There is a sense of belonging of each to the other that is cir-
cumscribed by an ethical awareness that values cultivation and long-term
durability, and one that privileges affective commitments and emotional
experiences.
I have taken some pains to show, though, that the generally opti-
mistic sensibility of the Song is tempered throughout by an awareness
of labor practices, the vulnerability of plants and other elements of the
landscape, and the possibility of death or harm that lingers at the edges
of the poetry. The celebration of flourishing in light of fragility creates a
fuller sense of goodness as a precious, even threatened possibility, and
heightens the need for human responsibility and care. In speaking of
“care” throughout this project, I have kept in mind the growing philo-
sophical conversation around ethics of care, largely developed in femi-
nist theory and psychology. I point to them as a fruitful place for further
inquiry.4 However, I have refrained from explicitly engaging this cor-
pus, in part because it is my intention to highlight the aesthetics of this
ancient literary body, which is not itself an ethic, although it has ethical
implications. Rather, as my final chapter has especially attempted to
highlight, what the poetry of the Song does so effectively is to recom-
mend a way of seeing, in both literal and metaphorical senses. “Nature”
in the Song of Songs is a landscape, and like the human body, we can
learn to care for it as we learn to see it with a quality of vision that is
shaped by affection.
Notes
C h a p t er 1
1. Yi-Fu Tuan, Man and Nature (Resource paper 10; Washington, DC: Association of
American Geographers, Commission on College Geography, 1971), 1.
2. Tuan, Man and Nature, 1.
3. Gerhard von Rad, “The Theological Problem of the Doctrine of Creation,” in From
Genesis to Chronicles: Explorations in Old Testament Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress
Press, 2005), 177–86; Walther Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament (trans. J. A.
Baker; Old Testament Library; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1933), 100–101;
Von Rad came to question his own position in later works: Gerhard von Rad,
“Some Aspects of the Old Testament Worldview,” in From Genesis to Chronicles:
Explorations in Old Testament Theology (ed. K. C. Hanson; Minneapolis: Fortress
Press, 2005), 205–22. Cf. Ronald Simkins, Creator and Creation: Nature in the
Worldview of Ancient Israel (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994), 7–11.
4. George Ernest Wright, The Old Testament against Its Environment (SBT 2; London:
SCM Press, 1950), 28.
5. There are many examples; I cite here Ellen Davis, whose Scripture, Culture, and
Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2009) anticipates some of my concerns. Inquiries into the biblical perspec-
tives on the natural world largely proceed almost exclusively through the theologi-
cal concept of “creation.” Jacques Trublet, “Peut-on parler de nature dans l’Ancien
Testament?” Recherches de Science Religieuse 98 (2010): 193–215.
6. Simkins notes three important aspects to considering ancient Israel’s relation-
ship to its environment: the impact of the Israelites on their environment; the
influence of the environment on the development of Israelite religion and cul-
ture; and Israelite attitudes toward nature; this study is of the third type (Simkins,
Creator and Creation, 3, 19).
154 Notes
7. Ellen Bernstein, “The Natural Intelligence of the Song of Songs,” in The Gift of
Creation: Images from Scripture and Earth (ed. Norman Wirzba and Thomas G.
Barnes; Morley, MO: Acclaim Press, 2009), 94–103; Yehuda Feliks, Song of Songs:
Nature Epic and Allegory (Jerusalem: Israel Society for Biblical Research, 1983).
8. Daniel Grossberg, “Nature, Humanity, and Love in Song of Songs,” Interpretation
59 (2005): 233.
9. Numerous good studies exist; especially Harold Henry Rowley, “The
Interpretation of the Song of Songs,” in The Servant of the Lord, and Other Essays
on the Old Testament (London: Lutterworth, 1952), 189; J. Paul Tanner, “The
History of Interpretation of the Song of Songs,” BSac 154 (1997): 23–46; Marvin
H. Pope, Song of Songs (AB 7C; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977), 89–229;
Duane A. Garrett, Song of Songs (WBC 23B; Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson
Publishers, 2004), 59–91.
10. Although not exclusively. Theodore, bishop of Mopsuestia, advocated an

erotic interpretation, which was condemned at the Council of Constantinople
in 550; Jovinian’s marital interpretation was condemned by a papal synod in
393, although his marital reading also complemented his ecclesial interpreta-
tion. See Karl Shuve, The Song of Songs and the Fashioning of Identity in Early
Latin Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). Later advocates
include Sebastian Castellio (reprobated by Calvin), and Grotius (Rowley, “The
Interpretation of the Song of Songs,” 206–9).
11. Ann W. Astell, The Song of Songs in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1990), 8. For a survey of diverse Jewish approaches to allegory, see Lipinski
et al., “Allegory,” EncJud 1 (Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2007): 665–67.
12. Philip S. Alexander, The Targum of Canticles: Introduction, Translation, Apparatus
and Notes (The Aramaic Bible: the Targums 17A; Wilmington, DE: M. Glazier;
T&T Clark International, 2003), 45–51. See, for example, Ellen Davis, “Romance
of the Land in the Song of Songs,” AThR 80 (1998): 533–46.
13. Harry Freedman and Maurice Simon, eds., Midrash Rabbah, Translated into
English with Notes, Glossary and Indices (London: Soncino Press, 1939), 92.
For brief discussion, see Jacob Neusner, Song of Songs Rabbah: An Analytical
Translation (BJS 197–198; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), 183–85.
14. This strategy becomes clearer in a Midrash on 7:5 (ʾappēk kəmigdal halləbanôn
ṣôpeh pənê dammāśeq, “your nose is like a tower of Lebanon looking out over
Damascus”) as referring to the city of Jerusalem and its eventual expansion
northward to Damascus (Freedman and Simon, Midrash Rabbah, 152).
15. A. J. Rosenberg, The Five Megilloth: A New English Translation (Judaica Books
of the Hagiographa: The Holy Writings; New York: Judaica Press, 1992);
cf. Richard Frederick Littledale, A Commentary on the Song of Songs: From Ancient
and Medieval Sources (London: J. Masters, 1869), 59; http://www.archive.org/
details/commentaryonsong00litt.
Notes 155
16. Jacob Neusner, Song of Songs Rabbah, 1:2. The Targum Song of Songs is less
atomized than other Targumim and Midrashim, but its theological unity is still
quite restricted; see Alexander, The Targum of Canticles, xi.
17. See the excellent articles on “Allegory,” in EBR, ed. Hans-Josef Klauck et al.
(Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2009); Astell, The Song of Songs in the
Middle Ages, esp. 1–24; E. Anne Matter, The Voice of My Beloved: The Song of Songs
in Western Medieval Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvannia,
1990); Rowley, “The Interpretation of the Song of Songs,” 194–202; Karl Shuve,
The Song of Songs and the Fashioning of Identity in Early Latin Christianity.
18. Origen, The Song of Songs: Commentary and Homilies, trans. R. P. Lawson, ACW
26 (Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1957), 176.
19. Cf. Ambrose, De Spir. Sanct. ii.5; Littledale, A Commentary on the Song of Songs, 58.
20. Bernard of Clairvaux, On the Song of Songs III, trans. Killian Walsh and Irene
Edmonds (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1979), 6. Cf. William E.
Phipps, “The Plight of the Song of Songs,” in The Song of Songs, ed. Harold
Bloom (New York: Chelsea House, 1988), 5–23.
21. Cited in Littledale, A Commentary on the Song of Songs, 315.
22. More recent allegorical approaches emphasize the politics of the Song. See
Paul Joüon, Le Cantique des Cantiques: Commentaire Philologique et Exégétique
(Paris: G. Beauchesne, 1909), 9– 11; André Robert and Raymond Jacques
Tournay, Le Cantique Des Cantiques: Traduction Et Commentaire (EBib; Paris: J.
Gabalda, 1963); Luis I. J. Stadelmann, Love and Politics: A New Commentary on
the Song of Songs (New York: Paulist Press, 1992), ix; Scott B. Noegel and Gary
A. Rendsburg, Solomon’s Vineyard: Literary and Linguistic Studies in the Song
of Songs (Leiden: Brill, 2009); Jacques Cazeaux, Le Cantique des Cantiques: des
Pourpres de Salomon à l’Anémone des Champs (LD 222; Paris: Cerf, 2008). A more
traditional religious allegory is traced by Edmée Kingsmill, The Song of Songs
and the Eros of God: A Study in Biblical Intertextuality (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2009).
23. These developments are conveniently traced in Martti Nissinen, “Song of Songs
and Sacred Marriage,” in Sacred Marriages: The Divine-Human Sexual Metaphor
from Sumer to Early Christianity, ed. Martti Nissinen and Risto Uro (Winona Lake,
IN: Eisenbrauns, 2008), esp. 174–78; for a critique of the idea of “literal” interpre-
tation, see Roland Boer, Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door: The Bible and Popular Culture
(London: Routledge, 1999), 53–70; “Making It, Literally: Metaphor, Economy,
and the Sensuality of Nature,” in The Earthy Nature of the Bible: Fleshly Readings
of Sex, Masculinity, and Carnality (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 35–46.
24. Drawing on the observations of J. G. Wetzstein, “Dei syrische Dreschtafel,”
Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 5 (1873): 270–302.
25. Karl Budde, “The Song of Solomon,” New World 3 (1894): 72.
26. Budde, “The Song of Solomon,” 64.
156 Notes
27. Budde, “The Song of Solomon,” 72–

74; for critique, Samuel Krauss, “Die
‘Landscaft’ im bliblischen Hohenliede,” MGWJ 78 (1934): 81–97. This may
be a result of the influence of Greek bucolic poetry; see Heinrich Graetz, Schir
Ha-Schirim, oder, Das salomonische Hohelied übersetzt und kritisch erläutert
(Wien: W. Braumüller, 1871), 67–73; Pope, Song of Songs, 36–37; Anselm C.
Hagedorn, “Of Foxes and Vineyards: Greek Perspectives on the Song of Songs,”
VT 53 (2003): 337–52; Richard Hunter, “‘Sweet Talk’: Song of Songs and the
Traditions of Greek Poetry,” in Perspectives on the Song of Songs = Perspektiven
der Hoheliedauslegung, ed. Anselm C. Hagedorn (Berlin; New York: Walter de
Gruyter, 2005), 228–44.
28. Francis Landy, Paradoxes of Paradise: Identity and Difference in the Song of Songs
(BLS 7; Sheffield, UK: Almond Press, 1983), 31.
29. Landy, Paradoxes of Paradise, 110. A similar distinction between “nature”
and “culture” is a fundamental theme elaborated by Gianni Barbiero, Song of
Songs: A Close Reading (VTSup 144; Boston: Brill, 2011), 92–93, 369, etc.
30. J. Cheryl Exum, Song of Songs (OTL; Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox,
2005), 45–47.
31. Jill M. Munro, Spikenard and Saffron: The Imagery of the Song of Songs (JSOTSup
203; Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic, 1995), 96.
32. Exceptions include Marcia Falk, who treats “settings” for the pursuit of love in
Love Lyrics from the Bible: A Translation and Literary Study of The Song of Songs
(Sheffield, UK: The Almond Press, 1982), esp. 88–91; cf. Munro, who studies
the symbolism of “nature imagery,” Spikenard and Saffron; Brian P. Gault, “Body
Concealed, Body Revealed: Shedding Comparative Light on the Body in the
Song of Songs” (Ph.D. dissertation, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of
Religion, Cincinnati, 2012). These latter studies have treated “natural” elements
atomistically among a wider catalog of discrete types of images.
33. I am inclined to see the genre term “lyric” as useful, even while the account
of lyric—especially for ancient, non-Western poetry such as the Song—should
be historicized and adapted to describe empirical features of particular bodies
of poetry. See, e.g., Ralph Cohen, “History and Genre,” New Literary History 17
(1986): 203–18.
34. Susan Stewart, Poetry and the Fate of the Senses (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2002), 328.
35. F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, “The Idea of Lyric Poetry in the Bible,” in On Biblical Poetry
(New York: Oxford, 2015), 178–81; Jonathan Culler, “Genre: Lyric,” in The Work
of Genre: Selected Essays from the English Institute, ed. Robyn Warhol (Cambridge,
MA: The English Institute, 2011), par 35. For a critique of the transhistorical
existence of lyric, see esp. Gérard Genette, The Architext, trans. Jane E. Lewin
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992 [1979]); Virginia Jackson, Dickinson’s
Misery: A Theory of Lyric Reading (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).
36. Jonathan Culler, “Genre: Lyric,” par. 46.
Notes 157
37. Cleanth Brooks, “The Heresy of Paraphrase,” in The Well-Wrought Urn: Studies

in the Structure of Poetry (New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World, 1947), 192–214;
cf. Dobbs-Allsopp, On Biblical Poetry, 220.
38. J. Cheryl Exum, Song of Songs, 3.
39. Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature,
trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1953), 12.
40. Tod Linafelt, “The Arithmetic of Eros,” Interpretation 59 (2005): 251. Linafelt’s
view of lyric draws especially on the work of Barbara Hardy (The Advantage of
Lyric: Essays on Feeling in Poetry [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977]),
W. R. Johnson (The Idea of Lyric: Lyric Modes in Ancient and Modern Poetry
[Berkeley: California University Press, 1982]), and Helen Vendler (Poems, Poets,
Poetry, 2nd ed. [New York: Bedford; St. Martins, 2002]); cf. Linafelt, “Lyrical
Theology: The Song of Songs and the Advantage of Poetry,” in Toward a Theology
of Eros: Transfiguring Passion at the Limits of the Discipline, ed. Virginia Burrus,
Catherine Keller (Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press, 2007), esp. 292–93; and
“On Biblical Style,” The St. John’s Review 54 (2012), esp. 39–40.
41. Linafelt, “On Biblical Style,” 39; cf. F.W. Dobbs-Allsopp, “A Feeling through
Language,” in On Biblical Poetry, 210–12.
42. Tod Linafelt, “The Arithmetic of Eros,” 253; cf. Munro, Spikenard and Saffron, 96;
Falk, Love Lyrics from the Bible, 88–91.
43. Anne W. Stewart, Poetic Ethics in Proverbs: Wisdom Literature and the Shaping of
the Moral Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).
44. Stephen Geller suggests that there are few instances of “nature poetry” in the
Hebrew Bible, where nature is celebrated for its own sake. He includes the
Song; Job 38–42; Ps 104; Ps 19; Prov 3:3–18, 19–20 (“Wisdom, Nature, and
Piety in Some Biblical Psalms,” in Riches Hidden in Secret Places: Ancient Near
Eastern Studies in Memory of Thorkild Jacobsen, ed. I. Tzvi Abusch [Winona Lake,
IN: Eisenbrauns, 2002]), 105.
45. Linafelt, “On Biblical Style,” 39. Cf. F.W. Dobbs-Allsopp, On Biblical Poetry, 211.
46. Stewart, Poetry and the Fate of the Senses, 47. For a study of the Song’s ethical ori-
entation toward the other, see Sarah Zhang, I, You, and the Word “God”: Finding
Meaning in the Song of Songs (Siphrut 20; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2016).
47. Martti Nissinen writes, “the distinction between sacred and secular texts is dif-
ficult, if not impossible, to maintain. Even Egyptian love songs demonstrably
borrow from religious and magical literature. Many Mesopotamian poems have
an indisputably cultic context, yet in many cases—including some Sumerian
love poetry—drawing a distinction between entertainment and cultic is impos-
sible and, indeed, irrelevant.” “Song of Songs and Sacred Marriage,” 196. Other
scholars who have resisted strictly secular approaches include Marvin Pope,
Song of Songs, esp. 210; and Hans-Peter Müller, “Die lyrische Reproduktion
des Mythischen im Hohelied,” ZTK 73 (1976): 23–41; Linafelt argues for a
theological-erotic reading of the Song in “Biblical Love Poetry (… and God),”
158 Notes
JAAR 70 (2002), esp. 336; David Carr, The Erotic Word: Sexuality, Spirituality, and
the Bible (New York: Oxford University, 2005).
48. “Allowing multiple readings of the Song of Songs, including religious, is

necessary by virtue of its very nature as a characteristic representative of the
ancient Near Eastern poetic tradition,” Nissinen, “The Song of Songs and
Sacred Marriage,” 214; cf. Davis, Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture, 172. Such
an orientation is something like the “religion and literature” approach advo-
cated by Lesleigh Cushing Stahlberg, “Time, Memory, and Recital: Religion and
Literature in Exodus 12,” Religion & Literature 46 (2014): 75–94.
49. Kenneth R. Olwig, “Recovering the Substantive Nature of Landscape,” Annals of
the Association of American Geographers 86 (1996): 630–53.
50. German Landschaft, “land-shape.” Sauer, “Morphology of Landscape,” in
Land and Life: A Selection from the Writings of Carl Ortwin Sauer, ed. John
Leighly (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 315– 50; Paul
Groth and Chris Wilson, “The Polyphony of Cultural Landscape Study,”
in Everyday America: Cultural Landscape Studies after J. B. Jackson, ed. Paul
Groth and Chris Wilson (Berkeley; Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 2003), 2.
51. Emphasis added. Cited in Corner, Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary
Landscape Architecture (New York: Princeton Architectural Press), 5.
52. Dobbs-Allsopp, On Biblical Poetry, 191.
53. Susan Stewart writes, “This deep analogy between the turning that opens the
earth to the sky and the turning that inscribes the page with a record of human
movement is carried forward in the notion of verse as a series of turns and in the
circling recursivity of all lyric forms,” Poetry and the Fate of the Senses, 85.
54. Augustin Berque, “Beyond the Modern Landscape,” Architectural Association
Files 25 (1993): 33.
55. Carl Ortwin Sauer, “The Morphology of Landscape,” 19–54.
56. Sauer, “The Morphology of Landscape,” 345. Similar concerns were formulated
in Germany under the title Kulturlandschaft, and in France, with Paul Vidal de la
Blanch and the ideas of the genre de vie and paysage.
57. J. B. Jackson advocated that an accounting for the history of the American land-
scape must include “talking about fields and fences and roads and crossroads
and schoolhouses, and eventually it means talking about the grid in towns and
cities,” “How to Study Landscape,” in The Necessity for Ruins, and Other Topics
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1980), 113–26.
58. Denis E. Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape (Madison: University
of Wisconsin Press, 1998).
59. These two streams converged in aesthetics, where “landscape” became closely
allied with a picturesque aesthetic of nature, specifically referring to represen-
tation of a pleasing panorama as in estate gardens (see Groth and Wilson, “The
Polyphony of Cultural Landscape Study,” 3). Concern over this double meaning
is the central tension of Richard Hartshorne (The Nature of Geography: A Critical
Notes 159
Survey of Current Thought in the Light of the Past [Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,
1976]); cf. Olwig, “Recovering the Substantive Nature of Landscape,” 630.
60. Berque, “Beyond the Modern Landscape,” 33.
61. Berque, “Beyond the Modern Landscape,” 33; cf. Corner, Recovering Landscape,
4; Barbara Bender and Margot Winer, eds., Contested Landscapes: Movement, Exile
and Place (Oxford; New York: Berg, 2001); for an overview of approaches, see
Jeremy Michael Hutton, The Transjordanian Palimpsest: The Overwritten Texts
of Personal Exile and Transformation in the Deuteronomistic History (BZAW 396;
Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2009), 31–35.
62. T. J. Wilkinson, Archaeological Landscapes of the Near East (Tucson: University
of Arizona Press, 2003), 7. Wilkinson follows the work of Preucel and Hodder,
who outline four potential approaches to landscape that range from defin-
ing landscape as nature to defining landscape as a phenomenon of culture.
These are (1) landscape as environment (which is occupied with analyzing and
reconstructing paleo-economies); (2) landscape as system (which attempts to
take a settlement-based approach); (3) landscape as power (which treats ideo-
logical manipulation of landscapes); and (4) landscape as experience. Robert
Preucel and Ian Hodder, Contemporary Archaeology in Theory: A Reader (Social
Archaeology; Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996), 32–34; See also Aren M. Maeir,
Shimʻon Dar, and Zeev Safrai, eds., The Rural Landscape of Ancient Israel (BAR
International Series 1121; Oxford: Archaeopress, 2003).
63. Helene J. Kantor has argued that landscape becomes a subject in its own right
in the visual arts of the Akkadian period: “Landscape in Akkadian Art,” JNES 25
(1966): 145–52. See also Irene Winter, “Tree(s) on the Mountain: Landscape and
Territory on the Victory Stele of Naram-Sîn of Agade,” in On Art in the Ancient
Near East (CHANE 2; Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2010), 109–31.
64. Cf. Hutton: “[L]‌andscape is the total perceived and conceptualized set of relation-
ships existing between humans and named locales.” My definition nuances the
understanding of “total,” and “named”—landscapes will always be partial, and
though many locales will be known, not all will be named (The Transjordanian
Palimpsest, 35).
65. See, e.g., the diverse uses in two volumes of essays presented to the XLIV
Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale (1997), published under the title
Landscapes: Territories, Frontiers, and Horizons in the Ancient Near East: Papers
Presented to the XLIV Rencontre assyriologique internationale, Venezia, 7–11 July
1997, ed. Lucio Milano, et al. (Padua: Sargon, 1999).
66. “Human ideas mould the landscape, human intentions create and maintain
spaces, but our experiences of space and place itself moulds human ideas,”
Denis Cosgrove, “Place, Landscape, and the Dialectics of Cultural Geography,”
The Canadian Geographer 22 (1978): 66.
67. Jon Berquist, “Introduction: Critical Spatiality and the Uses of Theory,” in
Constructions of Space I: Theory, Geography, and Narrative, ed. Jon L. Berquist and
Claudia V. Camp (London: T&T Clark, 2007), 3.
160 Notes
68. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson- Smith
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1991 [1974]); Edward Soja, Postmetropolis: Critical Studies
of Cities and Regions (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000). On the development of
this discourse in Biblical Studies, especially the work of James Flanagan and
the Constructions of Ancient Space Seminar, Jon Berquist, “Preface,” and
“Introduction: Critical Spatiality and the Uses of Theory,” in Constructions of
Space I: Theory, Geography, and Narrative, ed. Jon L. Berquist and Claudia V. Camp
(London: T&T Clark, 2007), ix–x; 1–12. For a critique of the wide application of
Lefebvre’s tripartite model of space (le perçu, le conçu, le vécu), see Christopher
Meredith, Journeys in the Songscape: Space and the Song of Songs (Sheffield,
UK: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2013), esp. 9–15.
69. Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota, 1977), 6.
70. Tuan, Space and Place, 73.
71. Wesley A. Kort, “Sacred/Profane and an Adequate Theory of Human Place-
Relations,” Constructions of Space I: Theory, Geography, and Narrative, ed. Jon L.
Berquist and Claudia V. Camp (LHBOTS 481; London: T&T Clark, 2007), 34.
72. Berquist, “Critical Spatiality,” ‘Imagining’ Biblical Worlds: Studies in Spatial, Social
and Historical Constructs in Honor of James W. Flanagan, ed. David M. Gunn
and Paula M. McNutt (JSOTSupp 359; Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press,
2002), 29.
73. Meredith, Journeys in the Songscape, 3.
74. Sophie Thöne, Liebe zwischen Stadt und Feld: Raum und Geschlecht im
Hohelied (Exegesis in unserer Zeit 22; Berlin: LIT, 2012). Thöne follows
and critiques, esp. Stefan Fischer, Das Hohelied Salomos zwischen Poesie und
Erzählung: Erzähltextanalyse eines poetischen Textes (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010).
75. James Corner, “The Hermeneutic Landscape,” Theory in Landscape Architecture:
A Reader (Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture; Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 130–31.
76. Cf. Tuan, Space and Place, 138.
79. Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry (New York: Basic Books, 1985), 188–89;
cf. Landy, Paradoxes of Paradise, 140; Landy, “The Literary Unity of the Canticle,”
Biblica 72 (1991): 571.
80. “[T]‌erms for ‘garden,’ ‘orchard’ and ‘vineyard’ denote the literary as well as per-
haps the circumstantial background of the SoS … [and] are primarily cultured
(cultivated) rather than uncultured nature spots, places designated for food pro-
duction and the growing of other produce (such as herbs) …,” Athalya Brenner,
“The Food of Love: Gendered Food and Food Imagery in the Song of Songs,”
Semeia 86 (1999): 107.
81. Exum, Song of Songs, 101.
Notes 161
82. Probably the European turtledove (streptopelia turtur, ‫ מצוי תור‬in modern Hebrew).
Also Jer 8:7 lists several species of migratory birds including hattôr (along with
the stork, the swallow, and the crane), which “observe the time of their arrival.”
Its migratory pattern is perhaps echoed by the overlap with the verb √t-w-r, mean-
ing to range, travel through, or explore a landscape (Num 10:33; 13:2, etc.; 1 Kgs
10:15). There is a clear distinction maintained between hattôr (“turtledove”) and
hayyônâ (“pigeon,” “dove,”); sacrificial codes repeatedly specify that turtledoves
and pigeons are equivalent sacrifices (Gen 15:9; Lev 1:14; 5:7, etc.); yônâ probably
refers to one or two closely related birds, the rock dove (columba livia) or feral
pigeon (columba livia forma domestica). Both are non-migratory birds widespread
throughout the Near East—the former inhabiting cliffs or mountains, the latter
in rural and urban areas, feeding on weeds, seeds, and human scraps, living
closely among humans.
84. Pace Exum, “Song 2:8–17 presents a somewhat conventional picture of gender
relations,” Song of Songs, 125.
85. Pace Meredith, “The action is all his. This dynamic male is placed outside as an
almost elemental force and by virtue of his considerable descriptive powers, in
fact, he becomes the cervine harbinger of the springtime itself,” Journeys in the
Songscape, 122.
86. Preucel and Hodder, Contemporary Archaeology in Theory.
87. See, e.g., Kort, “Sacred/Profane,” e.g., 45–46.
88. This is the widely followed argument of Phyllis Trible, “Love’s Lyrics Redeemed,”
in God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978), 144–65.
89. Bernstein, “The Natural Intelligence of the Song of Songs,” 103; cf. Anselm
Hagedorn, “Sie stehe damit in der Nähe der Bukolik und repräsentieren
eher eine idealisierte pastorale Welt,” ( “Die Frau des Hohenlieds zwischen
babylonisch-assyrischer Morphoskopie und Jacques Lacan [Teil I],” ZAW 122
[2010]: 417–30).
90. Grossberg, “Nature, Humanity, and Love in Song of Songs,” 234.
91. Davis begins to suggest a more complex picture (Scripture, Culture, and

Agriculture).
92. Corner, Recovering Landscape, 3.
93. Philosopher Chris J. Cuomo writes, “[s]ince nonhuman communities and enti-
ties are necessarily, intrinsically bound up with human life and interests, the
well-being of nature is implied, at least in a minimal degree, in human flourish-
ing…. Ethics that begin with flourishing capture the sense in which instrumen-
tal and noninstrumental values are often enmeshed.” Feminism and Ecological
Communities: An Ethic of Flourishing (London: Routledge, 1998), 63.
94. Meredith, Journeys in the Songscape, 5. He addresses specifically the work of
Sophie Thöne, but the same observation can be applied to other readers.
95. Emphasis original. Meredith, Journeys in the Songscape, 188.
162 Notes
96. Bernstein, “The Natural Intelligence of the Song of Songs”; Grossberg, “Nature,
Humanity, and Love in Song of Songs”; also Carole Fontaine, “‘Go Forth into
the Fields’: An Earth-â•‰centered Reading of the Song of Songs,” in The Earth Story
in the Wisdom Traditions, ed. Norman Habel and Shirley Wurst (Earth Bible 3;
Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2001), 126–â•‰42; cf. Hendrik Viviers, “Eco-â•‰Delight
in the Song of Songs,” in The Earth Story in Wisdom Traditions (Sheffield,
UK: Sheffield Academic, 2001), 152.
97. Discussion in Exum, Song of Songs, 128–â•‰30.
98. Stefan Fischer, “The Foxes That Ruin the Vineyards: A Literal Interpretation of
Song of Songs 2:15,” AcT 23 (2003): 76.
99. Səmādar is only here and 2:15; 7:12 [13 H]; the latter instance connects səmādar
with “opening,” suggesting early buds.
100. Falk, Love Lyrics from the Bible, 178.
101. Dobbs-â•‰Allsopp, On Biblical Poetry, 154.
102. Lisa Sideris has been particularly eloquent on natural selection in ecological the-
ology ( Environmental Ethics, Ecological Theology, and Natural Selection [Columbia
Series in Science and Religion; New York: Columbia University Press, 2003]).
103. “Possession” need not imply “ownership” in a legal sense.
104. Pace the Earth Bible Project; Norman C. Habel, ed., Readings from the Perspective
of Earth (Earth Bible 1; Cleveland: Pilgrim Press; Sheffield, UK: Sheffield
Academic, 2000), 24.
105. Corner, Recovering Landscape, 5.
C h a p t er 2
1. Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture (1st ed., San
Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1977), 97.
2. Nostris denique manibus in rerum natura quasi alteram naturam efficere conamur;
emphasis added, translation slightly modified. Marcus Tullius Cicero, De natura
deorum: Academica trans. Harris Rackham (LCL 268; Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1967), 271; John Dixon Hunt, Greater Perfections: The Practice of
Garden Theory (Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture; Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 33.
3. Gustav Dalman, Arbeit Und Sitte in Pälastina, 7 vols. (Hildesheim: Georg
Olms, 1964), IV; David C. Hopkins, The Highlands of Canaan: Agricultural Life
in the Early Iron Age (Sheffield, UK: Almond Press, 1985), esp. 241–â•‰45; Oded
Borowski, Agriculture in Iron Age Israel (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1987),
87–â•‰99; Jane Renfrew, “Vegetables in the Ancient Near Eastern Diet,” in CANE
(Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995), 1:191–â•‰202; Eyre, “The Agricultural Cycle,”
CANE, 1:175–â•‰89.
4. Oded Borowski, Every Living Thing: Daily Use of Animals in Ancient Israel (Walnut
Creek: AltaMira Press, 1998), 39–â•‰85; Philip J. King and Lawrence E. Stager, Life
Notes 163
in Biblical Israel (Library of Ancient Israel; Louisville, KY: Westminster John

Knox Press, 2001), 113–14; 147–48; Jill Munro, Spikenard and Saffron: The
Imagery of the Song of Songs (JSOTSupp 203; Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic,
1995), 92–98.
5. For descriptions of agriculture in ancient Israel, see, e.g. Borowski, Agriculture in
Iron Age Israel; Eyre, “The Agricultural Cycle, Farming, and Water Management
in the Ancient Near East,” 1:175–89; Hopkins, The Highlands of Canaan; cf.
Gustaf Dalman, Arbeit und Sitte in Pälastina, esp. vols. 1, 4.
6. Carey Ellen Walsh, The Fruit of the Vine: Viticulture in Ancient Israel (HSM 60;
Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2000), 12–15; W. G. E. Watson, “Fixed Pairs in
Ugaritic and Isaiah,” VT 22 (1972): 460–68.
7. Familial terms are used metaphorically, so the young man refers to the young
woman as his “sister,” in 4:9, 10, 12; 5:1, 2. Egyptian love poetry also places
a high premium on familial relationships, with particular prominence given
to the mother. See especially “The Stroll,” P. Chester Beatty I, Group A: Nos.
31–37 in Michael V. Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985). See also Carol L. Meyers, “‘To
Her Mother’s House’: Considering a Counterpart to the Israelite bêt ʾāb,” in The
Bible and the Politics of Exegesis, ed. David Jobling, Gerald T. Sheppard, Peggy L.
Day (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 1991), 39–51.
8. Davis, Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture, 108; Daniel Hillel, The Natural History of the
Bible: An Environmental Exploration of the Hebrew Scriptures (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2006), 154.
9. Yi-Fu Tuan, Man and Nature (Commission on College Geography, Resource
Paper 10; Washington, DC: Association of American Geographers, 1971), 25.
10. Forces of urbanization could impact kinship structures (e.g., predatory credit
could alienate a family’s access to land, as in the case of Nuzi); Ryan Byrne,
“Statecraft in Early Israel” (PhD diss., Johns Hopkins University, 2002), 118.
11. Kenneth Hoglund, “The Achaemenid Imperial Context,” in Second Temple Studies,
ed. Philip R. Davies et al. (JSOTSup 117; Sheffield, UK: JSOT Press, 1991), 57–60;
Oded Lipschits, “Achaemenid Imperial Policy, Settlement Processes in Palestine,
and the Status of Jerusalem in the Middle of the Fifth Century b.c.e.,” Judah and
the Judeans in the Persian Period (ed. O. Lipschits and M. Oeming; Winona Lake,
IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006). The phenomena described by the Song are to some
extent invisible archaeologically (Byrne, Statecraft in Early Israel, 98).
12. This delimitation is supported by BHS and BHQ, which indicate vv. 5–8 as a
unit with a sətûmāʾ. Scholars tend to treat these sections are separate units, e.g.,
Robert Gordis, The Song of Songs and Lamentations; A Study, Modern Translation
and Commentary (rev. ed.; New York: Ktav, 1974), 46–47; on the other hand,
Exum regards 1:2–2:7 as a coherent poem (Song of Songs, 97–119).
13. The address hayyāpāh bannāšîm (“beautiful among women”) is always spoken
by the daughters of Jerusalem (5:9 and in 6:1) and in each case they provoke her
164 Notes
response, as they do here. Occasionally, these verses are assigned to the young
man (the Greek manuscripts with identifying rubrics identify the young man as
the speaker here).
14. The waw (wənāʿwâ, “but”) can be construed as either conjunctive (“dark and
lovely”) or adversative (“dark but lovely,” KJV, ASV, NJPS); the context suggests
the adversative sense, hence the Vulgate’s Nigra sum sed formosa (“Black I am,
but comely”), which has been mostly followed in the tradition (see discussion
in Pope, Song of Songs, 307–18). Issues of race do not seem to be in view here.
Renita Weems argues that the tone need not be apologetic; rather, she is defend-
ing her sense of her own beauty ( Renita J. Weems, “Song of Songs” [NIB;
Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2001] 5:382–84); pace, e.g., Fox, The Song of Songs and
the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs, 101. Cf. F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, “‘I Am Black and
Beautiful’: The Song, Cixous, and Écriture Féminine,” in Engaging the Bible in
a Gendered World, ed. Linda Day and Carol Pressler (London: Westminster John
Knox, 2006), 128–40; cf. Exum, Song of Songs, 103–4.
15. The reading šlmh is certain, attested in all witnesses. MT vocalizes as šəlōmōh
(“Solomon”), which the versions support. Welhausen et al. suggest construing
śalmâ (“Salmah”), a tribal name that parallels Qedar (Ru 4:20; cf. 1 Chron 2:11),
an ancient Arabian tribe mentioned in the Targumim (Targum Onqelos Gen
15:19; Num 24:21; Judg 4:17) as well as in Assyrian and South Arabic sources
and in the Jerusalem Talmud ( Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena Zur Geschichte
Israels [Berlin: G. Reimer, 1905]). MT no doubt assimilates toward other men-
tions of Solomon in the Song, which are concentrated in two sections (3:7, 9, 11;
8:11–12) and the superscription (1:1).
16. Ernst Axel Knauf, “Kedar,” ABD (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 4:9–11.
17. Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), e.g., 110–14; 212. She is concerned
with the ends of poems, but such revisions of hypotheses of readings are ongo-
ing in the midst of a reading.
18. A hapax derived from šāhōṛ , black.
19. n-ṭ-r is a less common parallel of n-ṣ-r “keep, guard,” and a likely Aramaism. See
Roland Murphy, The Song of Songs: A Commentary on the Book of Canticles or the
Song of Songs (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), 4, fn. 10; F. W.
Dobbs-Allsopp, “Late Linguistic Features in the Song of Songs,” in Perspectives
on the Song of Songs = Perspektiven der Hoheliedauslegung, ed. Anselm Hagedorn
(BZAW 346; Berlin; New York: de Gruyter, 2005), 57.
20. Walsh, The Fruit of the Vine, 11, 62.
21. Meyers, Rediscovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2012), 52, 137.
22. Denis Baly, The Geography of the Bible (new and rev. ed.; New York: Harper &
Row, 1974), 156–57; Hopkins, The Highlands of Canaan, 228–29; Walsh, The Fruit
of the Vine, 100–101.
Notes 165
23. Walsh, The Fruit of the Vine, 20, 120; Hopkins, The Highlands of Canaan, 227–28.
24. Walsh, The Fruit of the Vine, 59–63; 170–71.
25. Walsh, The Fruit of the Vine, 187–93.
26. Baly, The Geography of the Bible, 43; Walsh, The Fruit of the Vine, 119–22.
27. Carl Sauer, “The Morphology of Landscape,” 337.
28. Walsh, The Fruit of the Vine, 38.
29. F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp et al., eds., Hebrew Inscriptions: Texts from the Biblical Period
of the Monarchy with Concordance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005),
156–65. Bibliography, ad loc.
30. L. Turkowski, “Peasant Agriculture in the Judean Hills,” PEQ 101 (1969): 21–33;
101–12.
31. On heat conjoined with wind, Ps 103:16; Job 37:16–17; Hos 12:1; 13:15; Ezek
17:10; 27:26; Jer 4:11; Isa 27:8; 40:6–8; Jonah 4:8; Luke 12:55; James 1:11; cf. Baly,
The Geography of the Bible, 67–70.
32. “Aqhat,” trans. Simon B. Parker, UNP (ed. Simon B. Parker; Atlanta: Scholars
Press, 1997), 68–69.
33. Jacob L. Wright, “Warfare and Wanton Destruction: A Reexamination of

Deuteronomy 20:19–20 in Relation to Ancient Siegecraft,” JBL 127 (2008): 423–58.
34. Yitzhak Sefati, Love Songs in Sumerian Literature: Critical Edition of the Dumuzi-
Inanna Songs (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1998), 324–43. The two
subsistence modes could be symbiotic: flocks grazing on stubble or weeds
would leave behind dung for fertilizer (Borowski, Every Living Thing, 40; 46–
47; cf. Naomi Frances Miller, “Down the Garden Path: How Plant and Animal
Husbandry Came Together in the Ancient Near East,” NEA 64 [2001]: 4–7).
35. Pope, Song of Songs, 329.
37. Borowski, Every Living Thing, 67; George Soper Cansdale, Animals of Bible Lands
(Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1970), 41–56.
38. Borowski, Every Living Thing, 61–62; Brian Hesse, “Animal Husbandry and
Human Diet in the Ancient Near East,” CANE (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson,
1995), 1:203–23.
39. Borowski, Every Living Thing, 52– 71; Baly, The Geography of the Bible, 105;
Dalman, Arbeit und Sitte, VI:180–96.
40. Hillel, The Natural History of the Bible, 56.
41. Benjamin R. Foster, Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature (3rd
ed.; Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 2005), 1025; on the gendering of shepherd
imagery, see Gwendolyn Leick, Sex and Eroticisim in Mesopotamian Literature
(London: Routledge, 2003), 87.
42. Christopher Tilley, Metaphor and Material Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 182.
43. E.g. Murphy, The Song of Songs, 78–79. Pope correlates the vineyard to the wom-
an’s sexual organs, but it is not clear that there is a genital focus here (Pope, Song
of Songs, 326; cf. Fox, The Song of Songs, 102).
166 Notes
44. Wine would have been an important trade commodity and occasionally was pro-
duced on a large scale (e.g., Gibeon; James Bennett Pritchard, Gibeon, Where
the Sun Stood Still: The Discovery of the Biblical City [Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1962]); nevertheless it would have mostly served the house-
hold, as in situ wine presses suggest.
45. Usually animals are the direct object (Gen 30:31, 36; 37:12; Exod 3:1; 1 Sam
17:15; in a figurative usage, Gen 48:15; Hos 4:16; Isa 40:11, etc). Intransitive
instances are also well attested, in which case the meaning is closer to “feed,”
or “graze” (Isa 30:23; Gen 41:2, 18; 1 Chr 27:29; Isa 5:17; 11:7, etc.). The same
ambiguity exists with the following line in the Song: “Where do you cause to lie
down” (1:7) also appears without an object, which is unusual for the verb √r-b-ṣ,
especially in the hiphil (Ps 23:2; Ezek 34:15; Jer 33:12). Isaiah 13:20 provides a
parallel in which the object is implicit.
46. The šôšannâ is a type of water lily or lotus, clearly a loanword from Egyptian
sššn, “lotus” ( Immanuel Löw, Die Flora der Juden [Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1967],
2:165), and this identification is corroborated not only by that flower’s pres-
ence in Israel today, but also by frequent iconographic depictions on scarabs
(for instance, from Beth-shan, ca. 1400 BCE, and Beth-shemesh, ca. 1000–800
BCE, etc.), Othmar Keel, The Song of Songs: A Continental Commentary, trans.
Frederick J. Gaieser (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), 78–80; 112–13; cf.
Cairo Love Songs, group A, no. 20C; Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient
Egyptian Love Songs, 3; Harold Norman Möldenke, Plants of the Bible (Waltham,
MA: Chronica Botanica, 1952), 154–55.
47. Modern Bedouin shepherds are frequently girls, ages eight to fifteen, and bib-
lical stories sometimes employ the figure of the marriageable young woman
watching or watering the flocks (Gen 24:63–64; 29:6; Ex 2:16; see Borowski, Every
Living Thing, 48; Dalman, Arbeit und Sitte, VI: 258–64).
48. Hebrew ʾayyal can refer to three species of deer that inhabited Palestine: the red deer
(Cervus elaphus), which was driven to near extinction by deforestation throughout
Europe, Southwest Asia, and Africa; the fallow deer (Dama dama or Dama mesopo-
tamica), a small species (only ca. 3 feet in height). These first two species were the
most commonly represented in art (e.g., the black basalt obelisk of Shalmaneser III
of Assyria depicts a lion hunting a red deer stag, clearly identified by prominent ant-
lers). The third is the roe deer (L. Cervus capreolus; Cansdale, Animals of Bible Lands,
89–94). The imagery is flexible in terms of gender: the young woman’s breasts are
“twins of a gazelle” (4:5; 7:3; cf. Prov 5:18–19, a woman who is “a deer of love, a
graceful doe, may her breasts satisfy you all the time”).
49. Pope translates ṣəbî, “buck,” and ʾayyal, “stag” (Song of Songs, 390).
50. On swiftness (2 Sam 2:18; 1 Chron 12:9; Sir 27:20; Isa 35:6; Hab 3:19); secrecy
(Job 39:1–4). Gazelles and deer are commonly associated with love in the ancient
Near East; see Keel, The Song of Songs, 92; 96–98. The trope of the male lover as
gazelle becomes standard in later Hebrew poetry; see, e.g., Wine, Women, and
Notes 167
Death: Medieval Hebrew Poems on the Good Life, trans. Raymond P. Scheindlin

(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1986), 114–17; 81–82.
51. Papyrus Chester Beatty I, group B, no. 40; Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient
Egyptian Love Songs, 66–67.
52. Meir Malul, “The Woman-Earth Homology in Biblical Weltanschauung,” UF 32
(2000): 339–63; Knowledge, Control, and Sex: Studies in Biblical Thought, Culture,
and Worldview (Tel Aviv: Archaeological Center Publication, 2002).
53. P. Dumuzi-Inanna, “Inanna, The Watered Field Who Will Plow Her?” Sefati, Love
Songs in Sumerian Literature, 224–25. Cf. “The Bridal Sheets”; “My ‘Wool’ Being
Lettuce”; the Dumuzi text, “Vigorously He Sprouted,” see Thorkild Jacobsen,
The Harps That Once … : Sumerian Poetry in Translation (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1987); Leick, Sex and Eroticism, 90–97; Pirjo Lapinkivi, “The
Sumerian Sacred Marriage and Its Aftermath,” in Sacred Marriages: The Divine-
Human Sexual Metaphor from Sumer to Early Christianity, eds. Martti Nissinen
and Risto Uro (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2008), 3–15.
54. Jerrold S. Cooper, “Enki’s Member: Eros and Irrigation in Sumerian

Literature,” in DUMU- E2-
DUB- BA-A: Studies in Honor of Åke W. Sjöberg
(Philadelphia: University Museum, 1989), 87–89.
55. “Enki and Ninsikila/Ninhursaḡa,” Jacobsen, The Harps That Once …, 191–200.
56. Leick, Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian Literature, 21–29.
57. Siegfried Schott, Altägyptische Festdaten (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner Verlag, 1950), 56.
58. Shalom M. Paul, “A Lover’s Garden of Verse: Literal and Metaphorical Imagery
in Ancient Near Eastern Love Poetry,” in Tehillah le-Moshe: Biblical and Judaic
Studies in Honor of Moshe Greenberg, ed. Mordechai Cogan, Barry L. Eichler, and
Jeffrey Tigay (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1997), 99–110; Gillis Gerleman,
Ruth. Das Hohelied (BKAT 18; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1965),
222; Keel, The Song of Songs, 49; Pope, Song of Songs, 324.
59. Pace Athalya Brenner, who writes that the garden offers “a reassuring reference
to and reminder of easily obtainable birth control facilities” (“Plants, Aromatics,
and Perfumes,” in The Intercourse of Knowledge: on Gendering Desire and Sexuality
in the Hebrew Bible [BibInt; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997], 87–89).
60. On the term itself, see James A. Montmarquet, The Idea of Agrarianism: From
Hunter-Gatherer to Agrarian Radical in Western Culture (Moscow: University of
Idaho Press, 1989); on literary agrarianism in America, Eric T. Freyfogle, ed.,
The New Agrarianism: Land, Culture, and the Community of Life (Washington,
DC: Island Press, 2001); Norman Wirzba, ed., The Essential Agrarian Reader
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003).
61. Berry, in Ronald Jager, The Fate of Family Farming: Variations on an American Idea
(Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2004), 82.
62. Hillel, Natural History of the Bible, 22–23; Hopkins, The Highlands of Canaan, 115–23.
63. Wes Jackson and Jon Piper, “The Necessary Marriage between Ecology and
Agriculture,” Ecology 70 (1989): 1591–93.
168 Notes
64. See Walter Ebeling, The Fruited Plain: The Story of American Agriculture (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1979); cf. Jager, The Fate of Family Farming, 3–28, 55–84.
65. I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition (Repr. New York: Harper
& Row, 1962).
66. See Freyfogle, ed., The New Agrarianism; cf. “New Agrarian Writers,” in

Gene Logsdon, The Mother of All Arts: Agrarianism and the Creative Impulse
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007), 175–211.
67. Louis D. Rubin, Jr., “Introduction: A Statement of Principles,” I’ll Take My
Stand, xlvii.
68. Wendell Berry, What Are People For? (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1990), 145.
69. Ellen F. Davis, Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the
Bible (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1.
70. Cf. Theodore Hiebert, The Yahwist’s Landscape: Nature and Religion in Early Israel
(New York: Oxford, 1996).
71. Davis, Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture, 170–72.
72. Davis, Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture, 174.
74. See, e.g., Kenneth Hoglund, “The Achaemenid Imperial Context”; Oded

Lipschits, “Demographic Changes in Judah between the Seventh and the Fifth
Centuries b.c.e.” in Judah and Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period, ed. Oded
Lipschits and Joseph Blenkinsopp (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003); Israel
Finkelstein, “Jerusalem in the Persian (and Early Hellenistic) Period and the Wall
of Nehemiah,” JSOT 32 (2008): 501–20; David Ussishkin, “The Borders and De
Facto Size of Jerusalem in the Persian Period,” Judah and the Judeans in the Persian
Period, ed. Oded Lipschits and Manfred Oeming (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns,
2006), 147–66; Ephraim Stern, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible: The Assyrian,
Babylonian, and Persian Periods, 732–332 BCE (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 360;
Diana Vikander Edelman, The Origins of the “Second” Temple: Persian Imperial
Policy and the Rebuilding of Jerusalem (London: Equinox, 2005); Oded Lipschits
and Oren Tal, “The Settlement Archaeology of the Province of Judah: A Case
Study,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Fourth Century BCE, ed. Gary N.
Knoppers, Rainer Albertz, and Oded Lipschits (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns,
2007), 33–52; S. Applebaum, “Economic Life In Palestine,” in The Jewish People
in the First Century: Historical Geography, Political History, Social, Cultural and
Religious Life and Institutions, ed. S. Safrai and M. Stern (Philadelphia: Fortress
Press, 1976), 2:633; Daniel David Pioske, David’s Jerusalem: Between Memory and
History (New York: Routledge, 2015), 135–45.
76. J. David Schloen, The House of the Father as Fact and Symbol: Patrimonialism in
Ugarit and the Ancient Near East (Studies in the Archaeology and History of the
Levant 2; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2001, 143–47); Lawrence E. Stager,
“The Archaeology of the Family in Ancient Israel,” BASOR 260 (Fall 1985): 1–35.
Notes 169
77. Norman Wirzba, “The Challenge of Berry’s Agrarian Vision,” in The Art
of the Common- Place: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry (Washington,
DC: Counterpoint, 2002), xiii–xv.
78. Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There
(London: Oxford University Press, 1968), 204; cf., e.g., Norman Habel,
“Introducing Ecological Hermeneutics,” Exploring Ecological Hermeneutics, ed.
Norman Habel and Peter Trudinger (Atlanta: SBL, 2008), 1–8.
79. Berry, “Two Economies,” Home Economics (San Francisco: North Point, 1987), 73.
80. Berry, “From the Crest,” Collected Poems (San Francisco: North Point, 1984
[1977]), 189–95.
81. Berry, Remembering (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2008 [1988]), 102.
82. Berry, Hannah Coulter (New York: Counterpoint, 2004), 97.
83. Berry, “Two Economies,” Home Economics (San Francisco: North Point, 1987), 73.
84. See Fiona Black, The Artifice of Love: Grotesque Bodies in the Song of Songs
(LHBOTS 392 (London: T&T Clark, 2009), esp. 62–64.
85. Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture (3rd ed., San
Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1997), 124.
86. Berry, The Unsettling of America, 97.
87. Berry, The Unsettling of America, 124.
88. Berry, “From the Crest,” 191.
89. Cf. the nearly identical refrain, Song 6:11.
90. Hendrik Viviers, “Eco-Delight in the Song of Songs,” The Earth Story in Wisdom
Traditions (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 147.
91. Barbiero, Song of Songs, 92, cf. 413. Cf. Landy, Paradoxes of Paradise, 190;
André LaCocque, Romance, She Wrote: A Hermeneutical Essay on Song of Songs
(Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1998), 108; Stefan Fischer, Das
Hohelied Salomos zwischen Poesie und Erzählung: Erzähltextanalyse eines poe-
tischen Textes (Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 173–209; Yvonne Sophie Thöne,
Liebe zwischen Stadt und Feld: Raum und Geschlecht im Hohelied. (Exegesis in
unserer Zeit 22; Berlin: LIT, 2012), e.g., 419.
92. Deer and other grazing mammals can exist in symbiosis with heavily modified
environments, living in or at the edges of developed land (Cansdale, Animals
of Bible Lands, 93). Deer are extinct in Palestine, although their ancient pres-
ence is signified by zooarchaeological remains and they are attested in artwork
(Vilhelm Møller-Christensen, Encyclopedia of Bible Creatures [Philadelphia:
Fortress Press, 1965]).
93. Athalya Brenner, “The Food of Love: Gendered Food and Food Imagery in the
Song of Songs,” Semeia 86 (1999): 101–12.
94. Both of the most common types of wine press found in archaeological surveys
are located in the vineyards themselves. The first is the simple rock-cut tread-
ing installation, which includes a flat upper surface cut into the bedrock of
a slope for treading, and a lower collection vat (Shimon Dar, Landscape and
170 Notes
Pattern: An Archaeological Survey of Samaria 800 BCE–636 CE, 2 vols. [BARIS

308; Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1986], 2: fig. 48; Rafael Frankel,
Wine and Oil Production in Antiquity in Israel and Other Mediterranean Countries
[JSOT/ASOR Monographs10; Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999],
51). The second type is composed of three principal parts, with an additional
rectangular vat cut above and leading into the treading floor by an additional
small channel, which may represent “a more elaborate process of winemaking”
( Gösta Ahlström, “Wine Presses and Cup-Marks of the Jenin-Megiddo Survey,”
BASOR 213 [1978]: 41; cf. Dar, Landscape and Pattern, 2: fig. 88). This vineyard
locale for the wine press is reflected in biblical texts (e.g., Isa 5:2) and suggests
a close association between small-scale farmsteads and their on-site wine pro-
duction (Walsh, The Fruit of the Vine, 153).
95. Dalman, Arbeit Und Sitte in Pälastina, 2:301; Michael Zohary, Plants of the
Bible: A Complete Handbook to All the Plants with 200 Full-Color Plates Taken in the
Natural Habitat (London; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 190.
96. Dalman, Arbeit Und Sitte in Pälastina, 4:303. Löw, Die Flora Der Juden, 1:77.
97. Walsh, The Fruit of the Vine, 12–21.
98. Zohary, Plants of the Bible, 62; Oded Borowski, Daily Life in Biblical Times
(Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003).
99. Gen 30, esp. vv. 14–17. The identification as mandrake (L. Mandragora autum-
nalis) is based on the Aramaic translation of dûddāîm in Gen 30:14–15, and the
Mishnaic rendering of it as yavruḥim, which is still used in some Mediterranean
countries for wild mandrakes (Zohary, Plants of the Bible, 188). Mandrakes are
poisonous, and their bifurcated root is sometimes shaped strikingly like a
human form—their value is not as food but in their magical, aphrodisiac uses
(Dalman, Arbeit Und Sitte in Pälastina, 1:251).
100. They are looking for blossoms, which are an indication of a plant’s readiness
for fertilization, the stage prior to the ripening of grapes (Cf. Gen 40:10; Num
17:23; Isa 18:5).
101. Berry, A World Lost (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2008), 95.
102. Berry, A World Lost, 96.
103. Berry, “Family Work,” The Gift of Good Land, 155.
104. Berry, “A Jonquil for Mary Penn,” Fidelity: Five Stories (New York: Pantheon
Books, 1992), 79.
105. Hans-Peter Müller, Vergleich und Metapher im Hohenlied (OBO 56; Freiburg,
Schweiz: Universitätsverlag; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1984); and
especially “Travestien und geistige Landschaften Zum Hintergrund einiger
Motive bei Kohelet und im Hohenlied,” ZAW 109 (1997): 557–74.
106. Berry, “Poetry and Place,” Standing by Words: Essays (Berkeley: Counterpoint,
1983), 195.
107. The term “cultivation” has a problematic history, related to imperialistic uses of
the term “culture,” and I wish to acknowledge this problem while insisting the
Notes 171
term can be usefully recuperated to signify attentive land care and attentive and
responsible human relationships. Adam Kuper, Culture: The Anthropologists’
Account (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 23–â•‰46.
108. Berry, “Renewing Husbandry,” in The Way of Ignorance: And Other Essays
(Emeryville, CA: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2005), 97.
109. Berry, “Work Song,” Collected Poems, 188.
C h a p t er 3
1. Karel Čapek, The Gardener’s Year (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984),

13. The delimitation of the poem is based principally on the thematic of the gar-
den, and is traditionally understood as a unit, marked by the sətûmāʾ at 4:11
and 5:2 in the Leningrad Codex, and generally followed in the commentaries of
Budde, Gordis, Rudolph, Gerleman, Falk, Keel, Müller, et al. In a detailed study,
D. Philip Roberts reviews the proposals and sets this segment within the larger
unit of 4:8–â•‰5:1 ( Let Me See Your Form: Seeking Poetic Structure in the Song of Songs
[Studies in Judaism; Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2007], 178–â•‰98).
2. Philip S. Alexander, The Targum of Canticles: Introduction, Translation, Apparatus
and Notes (The Aramaic Bible: The Targums 17A; Wilmington, DE: M. Glazier/â•‰
T&T Clark International, 2003), 141.
3. Richard Frederick Littledale, A Commentary on the Song of Songs: From Ancient
and Medieval Sources (London: J. Masters, 1869), 187.
4. Northrup Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1971), 152.
5. Duane Garrett, Song of Songs (WBC 23B; Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson,
2004), 196; Gianni Barbiero, Song of Songs: A Close Reading, trans. Michael Tate
(VTSup 144; Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2011), 220; Tremper Longman, Song of Songs
(NICOT; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), 155.
6. Othmar Keel, The Song of Songs: A Continental Commentary, trans. Frederick J.
Gaiser (Continental Commentaries; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), 174.
7. J. Cheryl Exum, Song of Songs: A Commentary (OTL; Louisville, KY: Westminster
John Knox, 2005), 175; cf. Edwin M. Good, “Ezekiel’s Ship: Some Extended
Metaphors in the Old Testament,” Semitics 1 (1970): 79–â•‰103.
8. Fiona C. Black, The Artifice of Love: Grotesque Bodies in the Song of Songs
(LHBOTS 392; London: T&T Clark, 2009), 144.
9. Joan Goodnick Westenholz and Aage Westenholz, “The Old Akkadian Love
Incantation MAD V 8,” Or 46 (1977): 213.
10. Bendt Alster, “The Manchester Tammuz,” Acta Sumerologica 14 (1992); Gwendolyn
Leick, Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian Literature (London: Routledge, 1994), 73.
11. Jerrold S. Cooper, “New Cuneiform Parallels to the Song of Songs,” JBL
90 (1971): 157–â•‰62. These motifs are pervasive in the Dumuzi-â•‰Inanna texts,
e.g., “Inanna the Watered Field Who Will Plow Her?” (Yitzhak Sefati, Love
172 Notes
Songs in Sumerian Literature: Critical Edition of the Dumuzi-Inanna Songs [Bar-

Ilan Studies in Near Eastern Languages and Culture; Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan
University Press, 1998], 218–35). Note, though, that in DI B, the garden seems
to refer to the male: “My blossoming one, my blossoming one, /sweet is your
allure! /My blossoming garden of apples trees, /sweet is your allure! /My
fruitful garden of celtis-trees, /sweet is your allure! My “Dumuzi-abzu by his
own virtue,” /sweet is your allure!” Sefati goes on to comment that “prince”
is widely attested for “princess” in line 12. Disagreement about the gender
occurs in other poems of this corpus as well (cf. 128–31; 165–70). See also
Thorkild Jacobsen, The Harps That Once … : Sumerian Poetry in Translation
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), 94; Leick, Sex and Eroticism in
Mesopotamian Literature, 153–56.
12. Martti Nissinen, “Love Lyrics of Nabû and Tašmetu: An Assyrian Song of Songs?”
in “Und Mose schreib dieses Lied auf”: Studien zum Alten Testament und zum
Alten Orient: Festschrift für Oswald Loretz zur Vollendung seines 70. Lebensjahres
mit Beiträgen von Freunden, Schülern und Kollegen, ed. Oswald Loretz, Manfred
Dietrich, and Ingo Kottsieper (Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 1998), 590–91.
13. Johannes C. de Moor, An Anthology of Religious Texts from Ugarit (Nisaba 16;
Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1987), 141–45.
14. Michael V. Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs

(Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1985), 15, see esp. fn. m; 28, fn. b. The river
figures more prominently in Egyptian love poetry: Papyrus Harris 500, Group
A: no. 5; See also nos. 3, 4, 8; Cairo Love Songs, Group A: no. 20C, D, E; Papyrus
Chester Beatty I, Group A: no. 3; Group C: no. 45; Miscellanea: no 52. The gar-
den is predominantly a mortuary space in ancient Egypt; see Alix Wilkinson, The
Garden in Ancient Egypt (London: The Rubicon Press, 1998).
15. Shalom Paul, “A Lover’s Garden of Verse: Literal and Metaphorical Imagery
in Ancient Near Eastern Love Poetry,” in Tehillah le-Moshe: Biblical and Judaic
Studies in Honor of Moshe Greenberg, ed. Modechai Cogan, Barry L. Eichler, and
Jeffrey H. Tigay (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1997), 100.
16. Roland Boer, The Earthy Nature of the Bible: Fleshly Readings of Sex, Masculinity,
and Carnality (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 35.
17. Roland Murphy is one contemporary commentator who follows LXX and

Vulgate in preserving the syntactical openness: “A garden enclosed, my sister,
bride.” Murphy, The Song of Songs: A Commentary on the Book of Canticles or the
Song of Songs (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990), 154, 157.
18. Bruce K. Waltke and M. O’Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax
(Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990), 619.
19. Murphy, Song of Songs, 161.
20. E.g., Kyung-Jin Zoh, “Re-Inventing Gardens: A Study in Garden Theory” (Ph.D. diss.,
University of Pennsylvania, 1994); John Dixon Hunt, Greater Perfections: The
Practice of Garden Theory (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2000).
Notes 173
21. Pace Leick, Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian Literature, 73–74; cf. Christopher
Meredith, Journeys in the Songscape: Space in the Song of Songs (Sheffield,
UK: Sheffield Phoenix, 2013), esp. 108–9.
22. “Epistle to Burlington,” Alexander Pope, Poems: A One-Volume Edition of the
Twickenham Text, ed. John Butt (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1963).
23. Marc Treib, “Must Landscapes Mean?” in Theory in Landscape Architecture:

A Reader, ed. Simon Swaffield (Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture;
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania), 92.
24. Mara Miller, The Garden as an Art (Albany: State University of New York Press,
1993), 76.
25. David E. Cooper, “Garden, Art, Nature,” in Vista: The Culture and Politics of
Gardens, ed. Noël Kingsbury and Tim Richardson (London: Frances Lincoln,
2005), 7; cf. Malcolm Budd, The Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature: Essays on the
Aesthetics of Nature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002).
26. Yi-Fu Tuan, Dominance and Affection: The Making of Pets (New Haven, CT: Yale
27. Tuan, Dominance and Affection, 19.
28. E.g., Naomi Miller, “The Theater in the Garden,” Theatergarden Bestiarium, ed.
Chris Dercon (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990).
29. Zoh, “Re-inventing Gardens,” 30.
30. Hunt, Greater Perfections, 33.
31. Likely derived from the West Semitic root ʿ-d-n. A. R. Millard, “The Etymology of
Eden,” VT 34 (1984): 103–6. The root may also relate to fertility (Gen 18:12; cf. Isa 47:8).
33. Robert Pogue Harrison, Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2008), 7.
34. Nicholas Purcell, “Gardens,” in The Oxford Classical Dictionary, ed. Simon

Hornblower and Antony Spawforth (3rd ed.; Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1996), 624.
35. Zoh, “Re-inventing Gardens,” 16; 114–56.
36. Christopher Taylor, The Archaeology of Gardens (Aylesbury Bucks: Shire
Publications, 1983), 5; cf. Maureen Carroll, Earthly Paradises: Ancient Gardens in
History and Archaeology (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003); Wilkinson,
The Garden in Ancient Egypt, 6; Alison Burford, Land and Labor in the Greek World
(ASH; Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), e.g., 135–39.
37. Jane Renfrew, “Vegetables in the Ancient Near Eastern Diet,” CANE

(New York: Scribner, 1995), 1:192.
38. Carroll, Earthly Paradises, esp. 21–39.
39. Taylor, The Archaeology of Gardens, 5.
40. Egypt is most famous for its mortuary gardens, although it is not alone this prac-
tice. See, e.g., Carroll, Earthly Paradises, 72–79; Wilkinson, The Garden in Ancient
Egypt, 63–118; Pope, Song of Songs, 210–29.
174 Notes
41. The temple garden is the archetypal sacred garden. For example, the temple gar-
dens in Egypt (Wilkinson, The Garden in Ancient Egypt, 119–44); and at Ugarit (
Jean Margueron, “A Stroll through The Palace,” NEA 63 [2000]: 205–7); Carroll,
Earthly Paradises, 60–71; Susan Lau, “Garden as a Symbol of Sacred Space”
(Ph.D. diss., Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 1981).
42. For an overview of and current essays on the “Sacred Marriage,” see Sacred
Marriages: The Divine-Human Sexual Metaphor from Sumer to Early Christianity,
ed. Martti Nissinen and Risto Uro (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2008).
43. Carroll, Earthly Paradises, 26; Karen Polinger Foster, “Gardens of Eden: Exotic
Flora and Fauna in the Ancient Near East,” Yale Forestry and Environmental
Studies Bulletin 103 (1998): 320. Cf. Ecc 2:4–6; P. T. Crocker, “I Made Gardens
and Parks … ,” Buried History: Quarterly Journal of the Australian Institute of
Archaeology 26 (1990): passim. In the Ammonite Tell Sīrān Bottle, the produce
of King ʿAmmīnadab includes “the vineyard and the gardens and the hollow”
( F. Zayadine, “Recent Excavations on the Citadel of Amman,” Annual of the
Department of Antiquities 18 [1973]: 17–35; Walter Emanuel Aufrecht, A Corpus
of Ammonite Inscriptions [Ancient Near Eastern Texts and Studies 4, Lewiston,
NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1989], 203). For a unique take on the link between
Persian pleasure gardens and violent imperial ideology, see Bruce Lincoln,
Religion, Empire, and Torture: The Case of Achaemenian Persia, with a Postscript on
Abu Ghraib (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), esp. 78–96.
44. Yi-Fu Tuan, Dominance and Affection, 19; Christopher Meredith, Journeys in the
Songscape, 74.
45. Meredith, Journeys in the Songscape, 72. Cf. Yuval Gadot, “Water Installations in
the Garden and the ‘Conspicuous Consumption’ of Water,” NEA 74 (2011): 26–29.
46. Tuan, Dominance and Affection, 1; 29.
48. The Infinite Image: Art, Time, and the Aesthetic Dimension in Antiquity
(London: Reaktion Books, 2014), 34.
49. Emphasis added. He also cites the work of George McKay, who identifies the
garden as a site of subversion and even revolution (Radical Gardening: Politics,
Idealism and Rebellion in the Garden [London: Frances Lincoln, 2011]; Meredith,
Journeys in the Songscape, 74–75).
50. LXX, Peshitta, and Vulgate read gan for MT gal; but such exact repetitions are
common in the Song: 1:15; 4:1, 8, 9, 10; 5:9; 6:1, 9; 7:1. Gal (“spring,” usually
a heap of stones, or waves of the sea) parallels maʿyān, as in gullōt māyîm, Josh
15:19; Judg 1:15). Pope cites a parallel with Ugaritic gl (“cup,” cf. Ecc 12:6) to
mean a cup-shaped pool (Song of Songs, 488).
51. See discussion, p. 74.
52. The meaning of “park, enclosure” is clear from its Old Persian derivation paira-
daēza and the Greek translation paradeisos (cf. only Ecc 2:5; Neh 2:8; the Greek
uses the term paradeisos also in Gen 2–3 and Ezek 28, 31). See Dobbs-Allsopp,
Notes 175
“Late Linguistic Features,” 65. I follow Fox in placing the line pause after pardes,
against the Masoretic accents, because the orchard described is full of all the
plants and spices that follow (Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love
Songs, 138).
53. Some interpreters take this repetition of n-r-d to be dittography, e.g., André
Robert and Raymond Jacques Tournay, Le Cantique Des Cantiques: Traduction
et Commentaire (EBib; Paris: Gabalda, 1963), 182; some emend to wrdym (“and
roses”), e.g., Barbiero, Song of Songs, 224, fn. 253. But exact repetitions are common
in the Song and link lines in other biblical poetry (ʿezrî/ʿezrî, Ps 121; hazzāqān/
zəqan, Ps 133, etc.)
54. Karkôm is a hapax, but is found in post-biblical literature. The Arabic term
kurkum can refer to either the crocus (L. crocus sativus, a Mediterranean plant
from which is derived saffron for eating and coloration), or turmeric (L. curcuma
longa, an exotic radish imported from Southeast Asia). Discussion in Immanuel
Löw, Die Flora Der Juden (4 vols; Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1967), 7–25.
55. I take the plural ganîm to be generalizing (“garden spring”); Murphy, The Song of
Songs, 157.
56. The only verbal forms are passive participles naʿûl (“locked,” v. 12 x 2); ḥatûm
(“sealed,” v. 12); and nōzəlîm (“flowing,” v. 15).
57. The genre and meaning(s) of Mesopotamian Listenwissenschaft is contended;
see, e.g., A. Leo Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 246– 49; A. Cavigneaux,
“Lexicalische Listen,” in Reallexikon der Assyriologie: unter Mitwirkung zahlreicher
Fachgelehrter, ed. Erich Ebeling, et al. (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1932), 609–41;
Wolfram von Soden, Sprache, Denken und Begriffsbildung im alten Orient (Mainz:
Verlag der Akademie der Wissenschaft und der Literatur: 1974); Jack Goody,
The Domestication of the Savage Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1977); Gonzalo Rubio, “Early Sumerian Literature: Enumerating the Whole,”
in De la Tablilla a la Inteligencia Artificial: Homenaje al Prof. Jesús-Luis Cunchillos
en su 65 Aniversario, ed. Antonio González Blanco, Juan Pablo Vita Barra, and
José Ángel Zamora Lopez (Zaragoza: Instituto de Estudios Islámicos y del
Oriente Próximo, 2003), 1:197–208; Dietz Otto Edzard, “Sumerisch-akkadische
Listenwissenschaft und andere Aspekte altmesopotamischer Rationalität,” in
Rationalitätstypen, ed. Karen Groy (Freiburg: Alber-Reihe Philosophie, 1999),
246–67. Lists also appear elsewhere in the Ancient Near East: among the
alphabetic cuneiform “Scribal Exercises” is a list of personal names beginning
with y- (CTU 5.1); and in Egyptian Onomastica (Alan Henderson Gardiner,
Ancient Egyptian Onomastica [London: Oxford University Press, 1947]). Several
fragmentary Aramaic name lists have been found, Bezalel Porten and Ada
Yardeni, eds., Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt (Texts and
Studies for Students; Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1986), 4:206–12. Cf. Peter
W. Coxon, “The ‘List’ Genre and Narrative Style in the Court Tales of Daniel,”
176 Notes
JSOT 35 (1986): 96. But lists did develop some aesthetic appeal as a literary
form, so, e.g., Job 4:10 ( Jürgen Ebach, “Naturerfahrung,” Sozialgeschichtliches
Wörterbuch zur Bibel, eds., Frank Crüsemann et al. [Gütersloh: Gütersloher
Verlagshaus, 2009], 422).
58. Anselm Hagedorn, “Space and Place in the Song of Songs,” ZAW 127 (2015): 213.
59. Margueron, “A Stroll through the Palace,” 206.
60. Oded Lipschits et al., “The 2006 and 2007 Excavation Seasons at Ramat

Raḥel: Preliminary Report,” IEJ 59 (2009): 9–10.
61. Such patterns figure prominently in New Kingdom tomb paintings; see

Wilkinson, The Garden in Ancient Egypt, 6–7; Cf. Jean-Claude Hugonot, Le jardin
dans l’Egypte ancienne (Frankfurt am Main; New York: Peter Lang, 1989), 9–20.
62. Wilkinson, The Garden in Ancient Egypt, 9, Plate XVI.
63. Gypsum wall relief from the North Palace of Ashurbanipal (Room H, nos. 7–9);
Ninevah (ca. 645–635 BCE). British Museum no. 124939, a.
64. Lawsonia inermis, a member of the willow herb family, still grows wild today in
the Jordan Valley and the coastal plain (Zohary, Plants of the Bible), 190.
65. Karkōm appears to be a homonym for two different plants: LXX translates as kro-
kos, the saffron crocus (Crocus sativus, Arb. kurkam), which could be grown easily
in Israel; Given its listing here with exotic spices, Löw takes it to be Indian turmeric
(Curcuma longa, Arabic kurkum; Löw, Die Flora Der Juden, 4:30). As we have already
seen, though, there is a mix of native and exotic species here. Alternatively, Zohary
proposes the native safflower (Carthamus tinctorius), an aromatic, high-oil-producing
native flower used for oil and for orange dye (Zohary, Plants of the Bible, 207).
66. Also a general term “spice” ( Sarah Malena, “Spice Roots in the Song of Songs,” in
Milk and Honey [Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007], 166, fn. 1). Commiphora
gileadensis, the balm tree of Judea, grew in fragrant groves remarked on by
ancient writers like Josephus, Pliny, Tacitus, and Dioscorides. Balsam grows
today in the Rift Valley (Zohary, Plants of the Bible, 198–99).
67. The word can refer to any number of aromatic grasses of the species Cymbopogon,
including palmerosa oil grass, camel grass, and lemon grass, one of which grows
wild in Israel (Zohary, Plants of the Bible, 196). It can also refer to an import,
e.g., Jer 6:20 identifies qaneh “from a far-away land” (cf. Pliny the Elder, Natural
History, trans. H. Rackham [LCL 370; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press],
4:48, 104, 106; Malena, “Spice Roots in the Song of Songs,” 167).
68. Nardostachys jatamansi is known in the Hebrew Bible only in Song 1:12; 4:13; 14.
Originally from Himalayas, cultivated in India, it may have come into Hebrew via
Mesopotamia ( Athalya Brenner, “Aromatics and Perfumes in the Song of Songs,”
JSOT 25 [1983]: 77). The root and plant yield essential oils, used in combination
with others in salves (cf. Mark 14:3; John 12:3; Zohary, Plants of the Bible, 205).
69. Cinnamomun zeylanicum is a tropical laurel tree whose bark yields the spice “cin-
namon,” imported originally from the island of Ceylon and the coasts of India
(Zohary, Plants of the Bible, 202).
Notes 177
70. Resin exudations of Boswellia sacra were imported from Arabia and Africa, and
are mentioned in temple offerings (Neh 13:5; Zohary, Plants of the Bible, 197).
71. Commiphora abyssinica is a thorny shrub or small tree native to Arabia, Ethiopia,
and Somalia. Its fragrant branches exude oily resin.
72. Aquillaria agallocha (also known as “agarwood”; Sanskrit aghal) was imported
from East Africa and Northern India for perfume (Malena, “Spice Roots in the
Song of Songs,” 167; Zohary, Plants of the Bible, 204).
74. Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs, 138.
75. Barbiero, Song of Songs, 226.
76. [“A utopian fantasy garden is described, which has very little to do with reality.”]
Gillis Gerleman, Ruth. Das Hohelied (BKAT 18; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener
Verlag, 1965), 159; Cf. Black, Artifice of Love, 150; Yehuda Feliks, Song of
Songs: Nature Epic and Allegory (Jerusalem: Israel Society for Biblical Research,
1983), 26; Garrett, Song of Songs, 198; Löw, Die Flora Der Juden, 4: 261; Murphy,
The Song of Songs, 161; Patrick Hunt, Poetry in the Song of Songs: A Literary Analysis
(StBibLit 96; New York: Peter Lang, 2008), 129; Anselm Hagedorn, “Place and
Space in the Song of Songs,” 214; Meredith, Journeys in the Songscape, esp. 108–9.
77. Michael Pollan, Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education (New York: Dell, 1991), 286.
78. Karen Polinger Foster, “Gardens of Eden: Exotic Flora and Fauna in the Ancient
Near East,” Yale Forestry and Environmental Studies Bulletin 103 (1998): 321; cf.
“A Taste for the Exotic,” Dais: The Aegean Feast, ed. Louise H. Hitchcock, Robert
Laffineur, and Janice Crowley (Liège: Aegaeum, 2008); “The Earliest Zoos and
Gardens,” Scientific American (July 1999): 48–55.
79. D. J. Wiseman, “Mesopotamian Gardens,” Anatolian Studies 33 (1983): 138.
80. Annals of the Kings of Assyria (London: British Museum, 1902), 91. Oppenheim
suggests that while the interest in gardens stems from Tiglath Pileser I, it shifts
to a more fully aestheticized practice under the Sardonids ( “On Royal Gardens
in Mesopotamia,” JNES 24 [1965]: 331). Several Sumerian texts describe gods
journeying to admire rare features of temple gardens (Foster, “Gardens of
Eden: Exotic Flora and Fauna in the Ancient Near East,” 322). Cf. The Babylonian
Laws, ed. G. R. Driver and John C. Miles (Ancient Codes and Laws of the Near
East; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), 2:9; ANET, 592–93.
81. Wiseman, “Mesopotamian Gardens,” 142.
82. Wiseman, “Mesopotamian Gardens,” 142.
83. Nathalie Beaux, Le cabinet de curiosités de Thoutmosis III: plantes et animaux du
“Jardin botanique” de Karnak (Orientalia Lovaniensia analecta 36; Leuven: Dép.
Oriëntalistiek: Uitgeverij Peeters, 1990), 39–40; cf. Wilkinson, The Garden in
Ancient Egypt, 138.
84. Wilkinson, The Garden in Ancient Egypt, 138.
85. Beaux, Le cabinet de curiosités de Thoutmosis III, 213.
86. See images in Hugonot, Le jardin dans l’Egypte ancienne.
178 Notes
87. Beaux, Le cabinet de curiosités de Thoutmosis III, 315.

88. Carroll, Earthly Paradises, 42–43; Wilkinson, The Garden in Ancient Egypt, 76;
Foster, “Gardens of Eden: Exotic Flora and Fauna in the Ancient Near East,” 327.
89. ARE 4:333; Carroll, Earthly Paradises, 43. In the Turin Love Song, the self-
description of the fig-sycamore includes the determinative for “foreign lands”
(ARE 4:333).
90. Overview in Oded Lipschits et al., “Palace and Village, Paradise and
Oblivion: Unraveling the Riddles of Ramat Raḥel,” NEA 74 (2011): 2–49; esp.
Gadot, “Water Installations,” 26–29; Oded Lipschits et al., “Ramat Raḥel 2005,”
IEJ 56 (2006): 227–35.
91. Boaz Gross, Yuval Gadot, and Oded Lipschits, “The Ancient Garden at
Ramat Raḥel and its Water Installation,” in Cura Aquarum in Israel II: Water
In Antiquity, ed. Christoph Ohlig and Tsvika Tsuk (Schriften der Deutschen
Wasserhistorischen Gessellschaft 21; Siegburg: Papierflieger, 2014), 93–114.
92. Dafna Langgut et al., “Fossil Pollen Reveals the Secrets of the Royal Persian
Garden at Ramat Rahel, Jerusalem,” Palynology 37 (2013): 115–29.
93. Langgut, “Fossil Pollen,” 120, 123–26.
94. Langgut, “Fossil Pollen,” 117; Lipschits, “Ramat Raḥel,” 59:12; Gross, “The
Ancient Garden at Ramat Raḥel,” 99.
95. Joan Goodnick Westenholz, “Love Lyrics from the Ancient Near East,” in CANE
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1995), 4:2480.
96. Cairo Love Songs Group B, no. 21E (Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient
Egyptian Love Songs, 40).
97. Clear identification of all of the plants is impeded by our ignorance of botanical
terminology (Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs, 40, fn.
e). My reading takes a cue from “every day.”
98. Zoh, Reinventing Gardens, 56.
99. Beaux emphasizes the importance of acclimation to Egypt (Beaux, Le cabinet de
curiosités de Thoutmosis III, 296–97).
100. Čapek, The Gardener’s Year, 34.
101. Wiseman, “Mesopotamian Gardens,” 33:143; Carroll, Earthly Paradises,

11; Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1973), 1:187; Hugonot, Le jardin dans l’Egypte ancienne, 249–50.
102. Pope, 490; Keel, 174–78; Boer appeals to the Vulgate (emissiones tuae) and Septuagint
(apostololai sou) for his rendering “ejaculation,” “Night Sprinkle(s): Pornography
and the Song of Songs,” in Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door: The Bible and Popular
Culture (London: Routledge, 1991), 53–70. For an excellent overview of genital
interpretations, see Black, The Artifice of Love, 147–49.
103. Barbiero, Song of Songs, 221. The same logic informs the proposed reading
šənê ləḥāyaik (“your two cheeks,” NEB), which presumably reads with 4:3 and
6:7, where the temple (raqqātēk) is likened to the pomegranate (Pope, Song of
Songs, 490).
Notes 179
104. Manfred Görg, “‘Kanäle’ oder ‘Zweige’ in Hld 4,13?” Biblische Notizen 72
(1993): 20–23; cf. Robert and Tournay, Le Cantique Des Cantiques, 181.
105. The reading “channels” (e.g., NRSV) is somewhat strained (only in Neh 3:15;
Ezek 31:4; Isa 8:6 is a proper name, šəlōaḥ). Keel has been most forceful in
defending “canals,” although the only pertinent example from his list is Job
33:18, where s-l-ḥ parallels s-ḥ-ṭ “pit.” The legal texts cited refer not to “female
genitalia,” but to the flow of menstrual blood (Lev 12:7; 20:18). The parallel with
Prov 5:15–19 (“Drink water from your own cistern”) is not insignificant, but the
metaphor is not localized at the woman’s vagina. One might add, at the level of
sense, how are “canals” (plural) like a “grove of pomegranates”? Keel, The Song
of Songs, 176; Paul Joüon, Le Cantique des Cantiques: Commentaire Philologique
et Exégétique (Paris: G. Beauchesne, 1909), 220–21; Pope, Song of Songs, 490.
107. The speaker is grammatically ambiguous. The rubrics in Codex Sinaiticus
ascribe the first lines to the man, the latter to the woman. This is followed by
Exum, Murphy, Pope, et al.; Roberts argues for the structural cohesion of a sin-
gle speech (Let Me See Your Form, 190).
108. Günter Krinetzki sees the wind as a fertility charm (Kommentar Zum Hohenlied:
Bildsprache Und Theologische Botschaft [BBET 16; Frankfurt am Main: Lang,
1981], 153–54).
109. Apostrophe is closely related to personification; see Luis Alonso Schökel, A
Manual of Hebrew Poetics (SubBi 11; Roma: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico,
1988), 154–55; Waltke and O’Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax,
570–73.
110. Following the trajectory, the Psalmist imagines that the winds are the breath
of God’s nostrils (Ps 18:15), one of the forces (like the sea and the storm) that
enact divine intervention by natural means, as at the Exodus (Ps 78:26; Cf. Exod
10:19; Jonah 1:4; Zech 9:14). But the desiccating sirocco, the East wind (Gen
41:6, 23, 27; Jonah 4:8) that brings destruction (Exod 10:13; Ps 48:8; cf. Job
27:21), is not in view here.
111. “Epic of Creation IV,” (Stephanie Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia [Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1989], 251).
112. “Anzu II” (Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia, 217).
113. CTU 1.5, col. 5, lines 6–7 (trans. Mark S. Smith; UNP, ed. Simon Parker
[Atlanta: SBL Scholars Press, 1997], 147).
114. “Epic of Creation,” (Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia, 185, cf. 212, 251).
115. On gardens and waterways, see Gen 2:10; 13:10; as a figure of blessing, see
Num 24:6; Isa 61:11; Isa 51:3; Jer 31:12; cf. Isa 1:30; Amos 4:9; Joel 2:3; Lam 2:6.
116. The word n-z-l (“flow”) occurs principally in poetic contexts to indicate stream-
ing or flooding water (Jer 18:4; also heavy dew, Deut 32:2; Isa 45:8; and floods,
Exod 15:8; Isa 44:3; 48:21; Ps 78:16, 44).
117. Roberts, Let Me See Your Form, 194–97.
180 Notes
118. On the waters and myth, Jill Munro, Spikenard and Saffron: The Imagery of the
Song of Songs (JSOTSup 203; Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995),
110–12; cf. Aren M. Wilson-Wright, “Love Conquers All: Song of Songs 8:6b–7a
as a Reflex of the Northwest Semitic Combat Myth,” JBL 134 (2015), 333–45.
119. Čapek, The Gardener’s Year, 82–83.
Press, 2002), 32.
(BLS 7; Sheffield, UK: Almond Press, 1983), 108.
122. Hagedorn, “Place and Space in the Song of Songs,” 214.
123. Black, Artifice of Love, 150.
124. Roland Boer, The Earthy Nature of the Bible, 9; cf. Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, 53–70.
125. Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry (New York: Basic Books, 1985); James
L. Kugel, The Idea of Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and Its History (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1981).
126. On the conjunction of honey and eroticism, Foster, Before the Muses, 160–61;
Sefati, Love Songs in Sumerian Literature, 165–70.
127. Stewart, Poetry and the Fate of the Senses, 32.
128. While Nietzsche sees lyric poetry as a generally Apolline art form, he permits
that it also has a peculiar relationship to music, as poetic language is included
with music in song, and so poetry can both participate with and imitate music
and therefore the Dionysiac spirit (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Birth of
Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music, ed. Michael Tanner; trans. Shaun Whiteside;
[London; New York: Penguin, 1993], 32–35).
129. Budd, The Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature, 7; Cooper, “Garden, Art, Nature,” 5–10.
130. Landy, Paradoxes of Paradise, 108.
131. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez, eds., The Collected Works of St. Teresa
of Avila (Washington, DC: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1976), 252. Cf.
Discussion in Black, Artifice of Love, 175–80.
132. Black, Artifice of Love, 235–36.
133. Susan Stewart, “Garden Agon,” Representations 62 (1998): 111.
134. Landy, Paradoxes of Paradise, 24; cf., e.g., Exum, Song of Songs, 2–3; Hagedorn,
Space and Place in the Song of Songs, 215; on funerary rituals, Pope, Song of
Songs, 210–29.
135. Michael Pollan, Second Nature, esp. “The Idea of a Garden,” 209–38.
C h a p t er 4
1. “The City in Which I Love You,” in The City in Which I Love You: Poems by Li-
Young Lee (Rochester, NY: BOA Editions, 1990), 51.
2. Francis Landy, Paradoxes of Paradise: Identity and Difference in the Song of
Songs (Sheffied, UK: The Almond Press, 1983), 121; cf. 1441–1145. Cf. Jill M.
Notes 181
Munro, Spikenard and Saffron: A Study in the Poetic Language of the Song of Songs
(JSOTSup 203; Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 133.
3. Sophie Thöne, Liebe Zwischen Stadt und Feld: Raum und Geschlecht im Hohelied
(Exegesis in unserer Zeit 22; Berlin: LIT, 2012), 419; cf. Stefan Fischer, Das
Hohelied Salomos zwischen Poesie und Erzählung: Erzähltextanalyse eines poe-
tischen Textes (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), esp. 190–94.
4. Gianni Barbiero, Song of Songs: A Close Reading (VTSup 144; Boston: Brill,
2011), 275.
5. Fiona Black, The Artifice of Love: Grotesque Bodies in the Song of Songs (LBHOTS
392; London: T&T Clark, 2009), 158.
6. Geographer Edward Soja notes how scholars have typically viewed cityspace in just
this way, as “fixed, dead, socially and politically ineffectual, little more than a con-
structed stage-set for dynamic social and historical processes that are not them-
selves inherently urban.” He argues instead that the city is a spatialization of social
relations, a “vibrantly alive, complexly dialectical … focus of human action, collec-
tive consciousness, social will, and critical interpretation,” Postmetropolis: Critical
Studies of Cities and Regions (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000), 9.
7. Ellen F. Davis, Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the
Bible (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 170.
10. Christopher Meredith, Journeys in the Songscape: Space in the Song of Songs
(Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Phoenix, 2013), 90.
13. Berquist, “Spaces of Jerusalem,” in Constructions of Space II: The Biblical City and
Other Imagined Spaces, eds., John L. Berquist and Claudia V. Camp (LHBOTS
490; London: T&T Clark, 2008), 47. Both Spiro Kostof and Gordon Childe offer
(influential but much criticized) criteria for defining urban life (Kostof, The
City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings through History [London: Thames
& Hudson, 1991]; Childe, “The Urban Revolution,” Town Planning Review 21
[1950], 3–17).
14. Michael Patrick O’Connor, “The Biblical Notion of the City,” Constructions of
Space II: The Biblical City and Other Imagined Spaces, eds. John L. Berquist and
Claudia V. Camp (LHBOTS 490; London: T&T Clark, 2008), 25; Avi Faust, The
Archaeology of Israelite Society in Iron Age II, trans. Ruth Ludlum (Winona Lake,
IN: Eisenbrauns, 2011), 39.
15. For even more modest population estimates, Hillel Geva, “Jerusalem’s

Population in Antiquity: A Minimalist View,” Tel Aviv 41 (2014): 131–60. Cf.
Faust, The Archaeology of Israelite Society, esp. 39–117.
16. Tanis, ca. 177 hectares; Assur, ca. 120 hectares. Daniel David Pioske, David’s
Jerusalem: Between Memory and History (New York: Routledge, 2015), 197.
182 Notes
17. Not all ancient settlements prioritized housing (bureaucratic, industrial, and cer-
emonial cities would have privileged different uses of space), although human
habitation was a persistent and significant feature (O’Connor, “The Biblical
Notion of the City,” 31–32).
18. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. D. Nicholson- Smith
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1991).
19. Soja, Postmetropolis, 11. See James Flanagan, “Ancient Perceptions of Space/
Perceptions of Ancient Space,” Semeia 87 (1999): esp. 27–31; Jon L. Berquist,
“Critical Spatiality and the Construction of the Ancient World,” in ‘Imagining’
Biblical Worlds: Studies in Spatial, Social, and Historical Constructs in Honor of
James W. Flanagan, eds. David M. Gunn and Paula M. McNutt (JSOTSup 359;
Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic, 202), 14–38.
21. Mary E. Mills, Urban Imagination in Biblical Prophecy (New York; London: T&T
Clark International, 2012), x, 8. Mills draws heavily on the psycho-geograph-
ical work of Steven Pile, which seeks to uncover the collective conscious of
urban experience. While not dealing with literary texts, sociologist Martina
Löw addresses the “specific stocks of knowledge” that derive from communal
experience of the daily habits specific to particular cities. She calls this proc-
ess of relating the “intrinsic logic of cities,” (“The City as Experiential Space:
The Production of Shared Meaning,” International Journal of Urban and Regional
Research 37 [2013]: 894–908).
22. Soja, Postmetropolis, 11; Claudia V. Camp, “Introduction,” Constructions of Space
II: The Biblical City and Other Imagined Spaces, eds. Jon L. Berquist and Claudia
V. Camp (LHBOTS 490; London: T&T Clark, 2008), 3.
23. Mill, Urban Imagination in Biblical Prophecy, x.
24. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 170.
25. T. J. Gorringe, A Theology of the Built Environment: Justice, Empowerment,

Redemption (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 3.
26. Pioske, David’s Jerusalem, 206; but other established patterns of city use are
attested, e.g., Berquist, “Spaces of Jerusalem,” 47.
27. Philip King and Lawrence Stager, Life in Biblical Israel (LAI; Louisville,

KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 34; Pioske, David’s Jerusalem, 204–6;
Schloen, The House of the Father as Fact and Symbol: Patrimonialism in Ugarit
and the Ancient Near East (Studies in Archaeology and History of the Levant 2;
Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2001), 136–40.
28. Edward W. Soja, Postmetropolis, 6.
29. Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota, 1977), 19–50; Jon Berquist, “Critical Spatiality,” 28.
30. Vitruvius, The Ten Books of Architecture, trans. M. Morgan (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1914), 73.
Notes 183
31. Elizabeth Grosz, “Bodies-Cities,” The Blackwell City Reader, edited by Gary
Bridge and Sophie Watson (Malden; Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 299.
32. Schwarz, The Church Incarnate, trans. Cynthia Harris (Chicago: Chicago
33. Soja, Postmetropolis, 65; Mills, Urban Imagination in Biblical Prophecy, 9.
34. Grosz, “Bodies-Cities,” 300–301.
35. Brian P. Gault, “Body Concealed, Body Revealed: Shedding Comparative Light
on the Body in the Song of Songs,” Ph.D. diss., Hebrew Union College-Jewish
Institute of Religion (2012).
36. Shira Wolosky, The Art of Poetry: How to Read a Poem (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2001), 182–83.
37. Gorringe, Theology of the Built Environment, 140.
38. Mills, Urban Imagination in Biblical Prophecy, 9. Cf. Soja, Postmetropolis, 324.
39. Meredith uses Freud’s concept of Unheimlich to explain the way that the

city embodies both safety and danger; both home and threat (Journeys in the
Songscape, 106).
40. On narrative quality, esp. Exum, Song of Songs, 123; Tod Linafelt, “The Arithmetic
of Eros,” Interpretation 59 (2005): 244–58, esp. 251–52.
41. Munro, Spikenard and Saffron, 134–35; Exum, Song of Songs, 137.
42. On city plans, Faust, The Archaeology of Israelite Society, 109–10; cf. Schloen, The
House of the Father as Fact and Symbol, 110.
43. Anselm Hagedorn, “Place and Space in the Song of Songs,” ZAW 127 (2015): 209.
44. Landy writes, the city is an “oppressive weight” (Paradoxes of Paradise, 209);
Stefan Fischer writes, “Draussen ist Gefährdung, drinner ist Sicherheit” (Das
Hohelied Salomos zwischen Poesie und Erzählung [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010],
194). Marcia Falk is more diplomatic: “Of all the context of the Song, the pub-
lic domain of the city is the one least sympathetic to the lovers” (The Song of
Songs: A New Translation and Interpretation [HarperSanFrancisco, 1990], 142).
45. E.g., the city plans at Arad, Mizpah, and Tell Beit Misrim (Volkmar Fritz [The
City in Ancient Israel, Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic, 1995], 117); Faust, The
Archaeology of Israelite Society, e.g., 49.
46. See, e.g., C. H. J. de Geus, “The City of Women: Women’s Places in Ancient
Israelite Cities,” in Congress Volume: Paris 1991 (VTSup 61; Ledien; Boston: Brill,
1995), 83; on the divisions of space in multi-family households, Schloen, The
House of the Father as Fact and Symbol, 112–13.
47. Carol Meyers, “‘To Her Mother’s House’: Considering a Counterpart to the
Israelite bêt ʾāb,” The Bible and the Politics of Exegesis, ed. David Jobling, Peggy
Day, Gerald Shepherd (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 1991), 39– 51; on wom-
en’s contributions to the household, Meyers, “Material Remains and Social
Relations: Women’s Culture in Agrarian Households of the Iron Age,” Symbiosis,
Symbolism, and the Power of the Past: Canaan, Ancient Israel, and Their Neighbors
184 Notes
from the Late Bronze Age through Roman Palaestina, ed. William G. Dever and
Seymour Giltin (Winona Lake, IN: Eisebrauns, 2003), 425–44.
48. Terms proposed by O’Connor, “The Biblical Notion of the City,” 23–25.
49. Grosz, “Bodies-Cities,” 298.
50. Carol Meyers, Rediscovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2013), esp. 103–24.
51. Landy, Paradoxes of Paradise, 116; cf. Elie Assis, Flashes of Fire: A Literary Analysis
of the Song of Songs (LHBOTS 503; London: T&T Clark, 2009), 99.
53. Soja, Postmetropolis, 12.
54. The LXX notices this lack, and adds the same line to conform with 5:6.
55. Meredith helpfully describes the threshold as the boundary (Journeys in the
Songscape, 131–34). It is not necessary, however, to read this as a concretization of
sex itself, what he calls “Doorstep Sex”; rather, the threshold seems to signify desire.
56. Tod Linafelt, “The Arithmetic of Eros,” 244–58.
57. This may refer to a military force that would have doubled as an urban police
(Soja Postmetropolis, 58).
58. Middle Assyrian laws about the treatment of prostitutes are often adduced
here as an explanation for why she is beaten. Rashbam; Gordis, Song of Songs
(New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1954), 89; Pope, Song
of Songs, 527; Fox, Song of Songs, 142; Keel, Song of Songs, 195. Pace Tremper
Longman, Song of Songs (NICOT; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), 169;
Murphy, Song of Songs, 171. Others describe her lack of modesty, for going out in
the street at night: Yair Zakovitch, Das Hohelied (trans. Dafna Mach; HThKAT;
Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2004), 218. Exum calls this the woman’s willing-
ness to suffer for love (Song of Songs, 199). Ilana Pardes explains that this is the
woman punishing herself for forbidden desires (Countertraditions in the Bible
[Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992], 136–39); see also Günter
Krinetzki, Kommentar zum Hohenlied: Bildsprache und Theologische Botschaft
(BBET 16; Frankfurt Am Main: Lang, 1981), 183; Donald Polaski, “What Will
Ye See in the Shulammite? Women, Power, and Panopticism in the Song of
Songs,” BibInt 5 (1997): 78–79. According to the Azatiwada Inscription, the
safety of a lone woman is a signal of social order: “… a man feared to walk
the road. /But in my days, (especially) mine, /a woman can walk alone with
her spindles” (“The Azatiwada Inscription” [trans. K. Lawson Younger, Jr.; COS
2.31:148–50]). Going out at night can be construed as risky, and a time for
sexual encounter (Prov. 7.7–23; Ruth 3.6–14).
59. Perhaps evoking the larger biblical motif of the “terror of the night,” e.g., Ps 91:5.
60. The LXX notices this lack, adding “by the powers and forces of the field,” in
keeping with 2:7; 3:5.
61. Pioske, David’s Jerusalem, 79– 80; Yigael Yadin, The Art of Warfare in
Biblical Lands: In the Light of Archaeological Study, trans. M. Pearlman
Notes 185
(New York: McGraw-â•‰Hill, 1963), 20. Freestanding towers are also evidenced (Isa

5.2; 1 Chron 27.25; 2 Chron 26.10); Kyle Keimer, “Fortifications in the Bronze
and Iron Age,” The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Archaeology, ed. Daniel
M. Master (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) http://â•‰www.oxfordreference.
com/â•‰view/â•‰10.1093/â•‰acref:obso/â•‰9780199846535.001.0001/â•‰acref-â•‰9780199846535-â•‰
e-â•‰48?rskey=FLrjuY&result=5; cf. Carol Meyers, “Gender Imagery in the Song
of Songs,” in The Song of Songs: A Feminist Companion to the Song of Songs, ed.
Athalya Brenner (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic, 1993), 202.
62. The root d-â•‰g-â•‰l appears four times in the Song (2:4; 5:10; 6:4, 10). Numbers
describes the Israelites camping and marching under dəgālîm (“banners”; Num
1:52; 2:2, 3, 10, 17, 18, 25, 31, 34; 10:14, 18, 22, 25; cf. Ps 20:6 [20:5 Eng])—â•‰Song
2:4 evokes this military context by declaring “love is his banner over me.” The
Niphal participle, nidgālôt (here in 6:4 and in the identical phrase in 6:10), seems
to draw on this military sense as well (so LXX tetagmenai, “drawn up in order,”
and Vulgate Castrorum acies ordinate, “ordered line of battle camps”). Akkadian
dagâlu, “look, behold,” suggests visual distinction or conspicuousness, hence
Exum, “splendor,” Song of Songs, 212.
63. Munro, Spikenard and Saffron, 66–â•‰67.
64. Meyers, “Gender Imagery in the Song of Songs,” 204.
65. Frank S. Frick, The City in Ancient Israel (SBLDS 36; Missoula, MT: Scholars
Press, 1977), 11.
66. “The Inscription of King Mesha,” trans. K. A. D. Smelik (COS 2.23; 21b–â•‰25). Cf.
Urnanshe of Lagash: “The king built the temple and the walls, erected statues,
dug a canal, and filled the storehouse with grain” (Wolf Schneider, Überall ist
Babylon: die Stadt als Schicksal des Menschen von Ur bis Utopia [Düsseldorf: Econ
Verlag, 1960]), 35.
67. Mills, Urban Imaginary in Biblical Prophecy, 39–â•‰40.
68. Meyers, “Gender Imagery in the Song of Songs,” 204.
69. Fiona Black has also (rightly) critiqued Meyers for her “heavy reliance on what
seem to be modern stereotypes about masculinity and femininity” (Artifice of
Love, 51).
70. The literature on this motif is extensive. Christl Maier, Daughter Zion, Mother
Zion: Gender, Space, and the Sacred in Ancient Israel (Minneapolis: Fortress,
2008), esp. 60–â•‰140; Aloysius Fitzgerald, “The Mythological Background for the
Presentation of Jerusalem as a Queen and False Worship as Adultery in the
OT,” CBQ 34 (1972), 403–â•‰16; Carleen Mandolfo, Daughter Zion Talks Back to the
Prophets: A Dialogic Theology of the Book of Lamentations (SemeiaSt; Atlanta: SBL,
2007); Mark J. Boda et al., eds., Daughter Zion: Her Portrait, Her Response, ed. Mark
J. Boda, Carol J. Flesher, LeAnn Snow; AIL 13; Atlanta: SBL, 2012); Edith McEwan
Humphrey, The Ladies and the Cities: Transformation and Apocalyptic Identity in
Joseph and Aseneth, 4 Ezra, the Apocalypse and The Shepherd of Hermas (JSPSup
17; Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic, 1995); Mark E. Biddle, “The Figure of
186 Notes
Lady Jerusalem: Identification, Deification and Personification of Cities in the

Ancient Near East,” The Biblical Canon in Comparative Perspective: Scripture in
Context IV (Ancient Near Eastern Texts and Studies 11; Lewiston: Edwin Mellen,
1991). For a good overview, see Brad E. Kelle, “Wartime Rhetoric: Prophetic
Metaphorization of Cities as Female,” Writing and Reading War: Rhetoric, Gender,
and Ethics in Biblical and Modern Contexts, ed. Brad E. Kelle and Frank Ritchel
Ames (Atlanta: SBL, 2008), 95.
71. Maier, Daughter Zion, Mother Zion, e.g., 217; cf. “Daughter Zion as a Gendered
Space in the Book of Isaiah,” Constructions of Space II: The Biblical City and
Other Imagined Spaces, ed. John L. Berquist and Claudia V. Camp (LHBOTS 490;
London: T&T Clark, 2008), 112.
72. Christl Maier, “Daughter Zion as a Gendered Space,” 108. See, e.g., Isa 1:8; 22:4;
23:10, 12; 47:1, 5; 52:2; Jer 4:11, 31; 6:2, 23, 26; 8:11, 19, 21, 22, 23; 14:17; 31:22;
46:11, 19, 24; 48:18; 49:4; 50:42; 51:33; Mic 1:13; 4:10; Zeph 3:14; Ps 137:8; Lam
1:6, 15; 2:1, 2, 4, 8, 10, 13, 15, 18; 3:48; 4:3, 6, 10, 21, 22. Definitive exceptions
are few: Zech 2:11; Pss 9:15; 45:13 ( F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, “The Syntagma of bat
Followed by a Geographical Name in the Hebrew Bible: A Reconsideration of Its
Meaning and Grammar,” CBQ 57 [1995], 545).
73. Maier, “Daughter Zion as a Gendered Space,” 112.
74. Kelle, “Wartime Rhetoric,” 99–100.
75. Cynthia Chapman, The Gendered Language of Warfare in the Israelite-Assyrian
Encounter (HSM 62; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2004); Maier, Daughter
Zion, Mother Zion, 61–73.
76. Lament for Ur, 240–50; 369–73 (The Harps That Once … : Sumerian Poetry in
Translation, trans. Thorkild Jacobsen [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987],
447–74).
77. F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, Weep O Daughter Zion: A Study of the City-Lament Genre
in the Hebrew Bible (Rome: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1993); cf. Maier,
Daughter Zion, Mother Zion, esp. pp. 61–72; Elaine R. Follis, “The Holy City
as Daughter,” Directions in Biblical Hebrew Poetry, ed. Elaine Follis (Sheffield,
UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1987).
78. Maier, Daughter Zion, Mother Zion, 161–86; Pace Biddle, “The Figure of Lady
Jerusalem,” 173. The imagery of the city as the beloved woman is taken up in
later texts like Aseneth, 4 Ezra, the Apocalypse of John, and the Shepherd of
Hermas; see Humphrey, Ladies and the Cities, esp. 171.
79. Maier, “Daughter Zion as a Gendered Space,” 108.

80. Reading and translation follow B. Groneberg, “The ‘Faithful Lover’
Reconsidered: Towards Establishing a New Genre,” in Sex and Gender in the Ancient
Near East, ed. S. Parpola, R. M. Whiting (Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project,
2002), 165–83; Moshe Held, “A Faithful Lover in an Old Babylonian Dialogue,” JCS
15:1 (1961): 1–26; Nathan Wasserman, Style and Form in Old Babylonian Literary
Texts (Leiden; Boston: Brill; Styx, 2003) 265, www.seal.uni-leipzi.de.
Notes 187
81. Such an idea may also be in view in the Ugaritic epic of Kirta, where Kirta
marches his army on the city of Udum but discharges no weapons as he seeks
marriage with Lady Huraya (“Kirta,” translated by Edward L. Greenstein; UNP
[WAW 9; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997] 16–18).
82. The door would be part of the gate structure (Judg 16:3; Neh 3:3, 6, 13); doors can
be a metonym for the gate itself (Deut 3:5; Josh 6:26; Jer 49:31; Ezek 38:11).
83. A debate over parallelism has characterized much discussion of this passage,
namely, whether “if she is a wall” and “if she is a door” are meant to be synony-
mous (requiring the same kind of action), or whether they are meant to be anti-
thetical (for example, the first is an image of fortification, the second is an image
of breach). See discussion in R. Lansing Hicks, “The Door of Love,” in Love and
Death in the Ancient Near East: Essays in Honor of Marvin H. Pope, ed. John H.
Marks and Robert M. Good (Guilford, CT: Four Quarters, 1987), 153–58.
84. Pope, Song of Songs, 680–81. Cf. Longman, The Song of Songs, 217.
85. Gordis and Tur-Sinai argue that these are suitors (Gordis, The Song of Songs, 97).
86. Pope, Song of Songs, 680; Keel, Song of Songs, 279; Fox, Song of Songs, 173.
87. Cf. Duane Garrett, Song of Songs (WBC 23B; Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson,
2004), 260.
88. It is likely that they have in common the use of stones to delimit the camp: either
an actual wall, or a simple stone marker (Dalman, Arbeit und Sitte in Pälastina
[Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1987], 6:41).
89. Hayim Tawil has argued from cuneiform sources that decorating parapets and
battlements with precious metals was a practice in the ancient Near East. So, for
example, Sennacherib recounts that “I decorated their corbels, friezes, and all
their battlemented merlons with bricks glazed (the color of) obsidian and lapis
lazuli” (CAD N2:144a 2). Tawil, “Two Biblical Architectural Images in Light of
Cuneiform Sources (Lexicographical Note X),” BASOR 341 (2006): 42.
90. OIP II iii 27–30 ( Israel Ephʿal, The City Besieged: Siege and Its Manifestations in
the Ancient Near East [Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2009], 37).
91. Ephʿal, City Besieged, 52.
92. A “hermetic” approach to the siege; Ephʿal, City Besieged, 35–36.
93. Gordis, Song of Songs, 98.
94. Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature (Berkeley: University of California,
1973), 2:33; Ephʿal, City Besieged, 36.
95. “The Inscription of Zakkur, King of Hamath,” trans. Alan Millard (COS 2.35.1–17).
96. Ephʿal, City Besieged, 36. The Assyrian annals of Adad-nirari II describe two types
of siege walls: “I confined Nur-Adad the Temmanu in the city of Nisibis (and)
established several redoubts (ālānī) around it … I encircled his moat with my
warriors like a flame … (and) deprived him of grain” (Ephʿal, The City Besieged,
38). Such a wall is described with the root b-n-h (to build/construct)—the verb we
have here in the Song—as opposed to ramps intended to breach the walls, which
are described with the verb š-p-k (2 Sam 20:15; Ezek 4:2; 17:17; 21:27).
188 Notes
97. Yadin, Art of Warfare, 18.

98. Nippur resisted Nabopolassar for at least four months; Babylon was captured
after a fifteen-month siege by Sennacherib and a twenty-two-month siege by
Ashurbanpial; Barca by Amasis after nine months; Samos by the Athenians
after nine months; Megiddo by Thutmosis III after seven months; Tyre by
Alexander after seven months; Sanahuitta by Hattusili I after five months; and
Soloi by Persia after five months (Ephʿal, The City Besieged, 111–12).
99. Gordis, The Song of Songs, 75. Cf. Landy, Paradoxes of Paradise, 162.
100. The significant terms are “erecting a siege ramp” (wayyišpəkû sōləlāh), “ram-
part” (baḥēl), and “battering (mašḥîtim) the wall to make it fall (ləhapîl)” (2 Sam
20:15). Such use of battering rams and ramparts would have been a last resort, as
they were the most difficult of all methods of breakthrough; Ephʾal, esp. 68–96;
cf. Erika Bleibtreu, “Five Ways to Conquer a City,” BAR 16 (1990): 52–61, 75.
Such techniques of frontal assault were more effective and prevalent strate-
gies of larger professionalized armies such as Assyria, who had the time and
resources for constructing labor-and resource- intensive siege ramps. See
Wright, “Warfare and Wanton Destruction,” 431.
101. AEL, 3:74; Pnina Galpaz-Feller, “The Victory Stela of King Piye: The Biblical
Perspective on War and Peace,” RB 100 (1993): 399–414.
102. Cf. Pi(ankh)y’s appeal to Memphis: “Do not close (your gates), do not fight …
and I shall sail north in peace!” (AEL, 3:75); cf. 2 Sam 20:19–21; see Ephʿal, City
Besieged, 44–48.
103. Thöne, Liebe Zwischen Stadt und Feld, 241.
104. Sue Best, “Sexualizing Space,” in Sexy Bodies: The Strange Carnalities of

Feminism, ed. E. Grosz and E. Probyn (London: Routledge, 1995), 183; cf.
Maier, “Daughter Zion as a Gendered Space,” 104.
105. On permeability, Black, The Artifice of Love, esp. 145–53.
106. James Corner, “Terra Fluxus,” in The Landscape Urbanism Reader, ed. Charles
Waldheim (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006).
107. Corner, “Terra Fluxus,” 29.
109. Charles Waldheim, “A Reference Manifesto,” The Landscape Urbanism Reader, 11.
110. Waldheim, “A Reference Manifesto,” 15.
114. Davis, Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture, 159; cf. Faust, The Archaeology of
Israelite Society, 39; Schloen, The House of the Father as Fact and Symbol, esp. 101;
139–40.
115. On the symbiosis of urban and “natural,” see Mills Urban Imagination in
Biblical Prophecy, 41.
Notes 189
C h a p t er 5
1. Akiko Motoyoshi Sumi, Description in Classical Arabic Poetry: Waṣf, Ekphrasis,

and Interarts Theory (Brill Studies in Middle Eastern Literatures 5; Leiden: Brill,
2004), 127; Yi- Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1977), 481.
2. The young man is also the subject of a descriptive poem in 5:10–16.
3. Günter Krinetzki identifies eleven Gattungen in the Song, one of which is the
Beschreibungslieder (“Songs of Description”), which, as he articulates it, is in-
clusive of, but broader than, the narrower genre of the Arabic-style waṣf: 3:6–
8, 9–10; 4:1–7, 8–9; 6:5c–7; 7:1–6; 8:5a–b (cf. 5:10–16; Krinetzki, Kommentar
Zum Hohenlied: Bildsprache und Theologische Botschaft [Beiträge zur biblischen
Exegese und Theologie 16; Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1981], 3–4). As with all
delimitation of units in the Song of Songs, there is no clear consensus (see, e.g.,
Friedrich Horst, “Die Formen des althebräischen Liebesliedes,” in Gottes Recht,
ed. Hans Walter Wolff [München: Kaiser Verlag, 1961], 176–202). For a defini-
tion of the waṣf, see Sumi, Description in Classical Arabic Poetry, 4–6.
(BLS 7; Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic, 1983), 76.
5. Roland Arthur Greene, Post-Petrarchism: Origins and Innovations of the Western
Lyric Sequence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 62.
6. J. Cheryl Exum, Song of Songs: A Commentary (OTL; Louisville, KY: Westminster
John Knox, 2005), 24.
7. S. R. Driver, An Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament (The Meridian
library; New York: Meridian Books, 1956), 448–49.
8. See pp. 3–4.
9. [In the following context, each feature of the description is based on a geograph-
ical particularity of the Holy Land …] André Robert and Raymond Jacques
Tournay, Le Cantique des cantiques: Traduction et commentaire (Ebib; Paris: J.
Gabalda, 1963), 257.
10. Robert and Tournay, Le Cantique des cantiques, 257.
11. Marvin H. Pope, Song of Songs (AB 7c; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977), 626.
12. Robert and Tournay, Le Cantique des cantiques, 234; 333–35.
of Wisconsin Press, 1998), 19.
14. Joseph S. Czestochowski, The American Landscape Tradition: A Study and Gallery
of Paintings (1st ed.; New York: E. P. Dutton, 1982), 12–18; cf. Cosgrove, Social
Formation and Symbolic Landscape, 161–88.
16. Bruce K. Waltke and Mark O’Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax
(Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990), 40.2.1, 675.
190 Notes
17. I follow Robert Kawashima’s description of represented consciousness, although

he, too, presumes an inherently visual aspect (Biblical Narrative and the Death of
the Rhapsode [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004], 93).
18. Hinnēh is repeated throughout the Song: 1:15, 16; 2:8, 9, 11; 3:7; 4:1. The NRSV
translates hinnēh as “Ah!” perhaps to reflect the emphatic sense underscored
by T. Muraoka (Emphatic Words and Structures in Biblical Hebrew [Boston: Brill,
1997]), but “Here,” maintains the deictic sense.
19. Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” (Screen 16 [1975]: 6–
18), following John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London; Harmondsworth: British
Broadcasting Corporation; Penguin, 1972). The critical literature on the sub-
ject is vast. See Elizabeth Grosz, “Voyeurism/ Exhibitionism/ The Gaze,” in
Feminism and Psychoanalysis: A Critical Dictionary, ed. Elizabeth Wright (Oxford;
Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992), 447–50.
20. David J. A. Clines, “Why Is There a Song of Songs and What Does It Do to You if
You Read It?” Jian Dao 1 (1994): 24; Donald C. Polaski, “What Will Ye See in the
Shulammite? Women, Power and Panopticism in the Song of Songs,” BibInt 5
(1997): 64–81; Virginia Burrus and Stephen D. Moore, “Unsafe Sex: Feminism,
Pornography, and the Song of Songs,” BibInt 11 (2003): 24–52; Athalya Brenner,
“Gazing Back at the Shulammite, Yet Again,” BibInt 11 (2003): 295–300. On the
“grotesque, perverse, erotic,” see Fiona C. Black, The Artifice of Love: Grotesque
Bodies in the Song of Songs (LHBOTS 392; London: T&T Clark, 2009), esp. 195–
204; and Roland Boer, “The Second Coming: Repetition and Insatiable Desire
in the Song of Songs,” The Earthy Nature of the Bible: Fleshly Readings of Sex,
Masculinity, and Carnality (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), esp. 24–25; on
space and the gaze, see Christopher Meredith, Journeys in the Songscape: Space
and the Song of Songs (Hebrew Bible Monographs 53; Sheffield, UK: Sheffield
Phoenix Press, 2013), 119–29. For a similar view to my own, see “Erotic Look or
Voyeuristic Gaze?” in Exum, Song of Songs, 22–24.
21. Catherine Nash, “Reclaiming Vision: Looking at Landscape and the Body,”
Gender, Place & Culture 3 (1996): 149–70.
22. The Gilgamesh Epic includes an invitation for the audience to view Gilgamesh
to see and confirm his physical beauty. Irene Winter, “Aesthetics in Ancient
Mesopotamian Art,” in CANE (New York: Scribner, 1995), 4:2578.
23. Nash, “Reclaiming Vision,” 3.
25. Michael V. Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs

(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 38.
26. Athalya Brenner, “‘Come Back, Come Back the Shulammite’ (Song of Songs
7.1–10): A Parody of the wasf Genre,” in A Feminist Companion to the Song of
Songs, ed. Athalya Brenner (The Feminist Companion to the Bible; Sheffield,
UK: JSOT, 1993), 250. Cf. Carey Ellen Walsh, Exquisite Desire: Religion, the Erotic,
and the Song of Songs (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 61; As invective, Scott
Notes 191
B. Noegel and Gary A. Rendsburg, Solomon’s Vineyard: Literary and Linguistic

Studies in the Song of Songs (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 129–69.
27. For an excellent overview of the history of interpretation from this perspective,
see Black, Artifice of Love, especially 24–62.
30. Brenner, “Gazing Back at the Shulammite, Yet Again,” 11:296. I do not take the
descriptive poems to be justifying the content of aesthetic value, but presenting
an experience of it. Cf. Winter, “Aesthetics in Ancient Mesopotamian Art,” 4; F.
W. Dobbs-Allsopp, “Beauty,” in NIDB (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2006).
31. F. W. Dobbs-
Allsopp, “The Delight of Beauty and Song of Songs 4:1– 7,”
Interpretation 59 (2005): 260– 77; Elaine Scarry, On Beauty and Being Just
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999).
32. Comparative examples of descriptive poetry also seem to be predicated largely
on appreciation. The description of Sarai in the Genesis Aprocryphon, for
example, is set in a narrative context in which hearing the description of her
beauty prompts the king’s desire for her (column 20.2– 9; Nahman Avigad
and Yigael Yadin, A Genesis Apocryphon: A Scroll from the Wilderness of Judaea,
trans. Sulamith Schwartz Nardi [Jerusalem: Magnes Press of the Hebrew
University, 1956], 43; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Genesis Apocryphon of Qumran
Cave 1 [1Q20]: A Commentary [3rd ed.; BibOr 18B; Roma: Editrice Pontificio
Istituto Biblico, 2004], 193–216). The tenor of appreciation seems to characterize
Egyptian love poetry: “One alone is (my) sister, having no peer: /More gracious
than all other women … Shining, precious, white of skin, /Lovely of eyes when
gazing. /Long of neck, white of breast, /Her hair true lapis lazuli … She has
captured my heart in her embrace …” (Chester Beatty I, group A, no. 31; Fox,
The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs, 52). The same seems to
be true of the Arabic waṣf tradition (Sumi, Description in Classical Arabic Poetry,
passim); as much is suggested by the fact that Brenner must interpret the Song
as a parody of the waṣf. In order to find a generic parallel in which ugliness and
invective are apropos, Noegel and Rendsburg reach forward to the ninth cen-
tury CE to the satirical Arabic Tašbīb and Hijāʾ forms (Noegel and Rendsburg,
Solomon’s Vineyard, 129–60).
33. Earlier interpreters took ṣammāh (“veil”) to mean “silence” (LXX, Arabic), or
locks of hair (Qimḥi, Rashi, LXX Codex Venetus). The word occurs also in Song
4:3, 6:7, and Isa 47:2 (Pope, Song of Songs, 457).
34. Šeggāləšû mêhar gilʿād. The meaning of the root g-l-š is opaque; it appears only
here and in Song 6:5. The verbal use of Ugaritic glṯ in PRU V (2001.1.5) in con-
nection with the cosmic waters (wtglt thmt) suggests the waving or flowing
motion of water (Exum, Song of Songs, 153).
35. I have translated haqqəṣûbôt as “shearling” to reflect the passive participle fem-
inine plural form, “shorn ones” (feminine). Murphy and others suggest that
192 Notes
lambs were washed before being shorn, this verb thus suggesting the sense of
being “ready to be shorn” (Murphy, The Song of Songs, 155).
36. Ûmidbārêk is a hapax from the root for speech, √d-b-r. Keel notes, “In the figura-
tive sense, ‘lips’ in Hebrew can also mean ‘language’ (Gen. 11:1, 6–7),” (Keel, The
Song of Songs, 143). Cf. Chester Beatty I, group A, no. 31, where the young man
praises the young woman’s speech as part of her catalog of physical attributes
(Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs, 52). To focus on the
organ, not the speech itself, wrongly assumes that there is not a synesthetic, or
multisensory quality to the description (pace Exum, Song of Songs, 153; Murphy,
The Song of Songs, 155).
37. Lətalpîôt is a hapax (discussion in Pope, Song of Songs, 465–68).
38. That ʾelep hammāgēn (“a thousand shields”) parallels kōl šilṭê (“all the šilṭê”)
suggests that šelet is another form of armament, although its exact nature is
unknown. Yigael Yadin suggests that it may have been a general term (The Scroll
of the War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness [trans. Batya Rabin and
Chaim Rabin; London: Oxford University Press, 1962], 133–34).
39. See, e.g., Edwin Long’s 1875 painting, The Babylonian Marriage Market (The
Bridgeman Art Library International Ltd.; discussion in Zainab Bahrani, Women of
Babylon: Gender and Representation in Mesopotamia [London: Routledge, 2001], 173).
40. E.g., Fadwa El Guindi, Veil: Modesty, Privacy, and Resistance (Oxford: Berg, 1999);
Jennifer Heath, ed., The Veil: Women Writers on Its History, Lore, and Politics
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008).
41. Pace Karel van der Toorn, “The Significance of the Veil in the Ancient Near
East,” in Pomegranates and Golden Bells (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1995),
327–39. Interpreters argue that the bride must have been veiled, or else how
could the switch between Leah and Rachel have taken place (Gen 29:21–25)?
However, the narrative selectively emphasizes the nighttime setting (vv. 23, 25),
suggesting that the cover of darkness had an instrumental role, while remaining
altogether silent about clothing (Pace Barbiero, Song of Songs, 177).
42. M. Stol, “Women in Mesopotamia,” JESHO 38 (1995): 124.
43. Stol, “Women in Mesopotamia,” 124.
45. Toorn, “The Significance of the Veil in the Ancient Near East.”
46. Ca. 700 BCE. British Museum 124907. See Keel, The Song of Songs, 191; cf., e.g.,
the later Greek statue Veil of Despoina, which features elaborate textile drapery;
Alan J. B. Wace, “The Veil of Despoina,” AJA 38 (1934): 107–11.
47. Winter, “Aesthetics in Ancient Mesopotamian Art”; Winter, On Art in the Ancient
Near East: Of the First Millennium b.c.e. (CHANE 34; Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2010),
2:272–90.
48. Jacobsen, The Harps That Once … , 205–32.
49. Bahrani, Women of Babylon, 158. Cf. Pirjo Lapinkivi, The Neo-Assyrian Myth of
Ištar’s Descent and Resurrection (The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project; SAA VI;
Notes 193
Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns), 55–57. Lapinkivi considers several theories and

decides the reason for Inanna/Ishtar’s undressing is unclear, although it does
function to leave her powerless.
51. The same effect obtains if the interpreter reads ləṣammātēk as “hair,” since it still
draws an obstruction between the viewer and the young woman’s face.
52. Falk, Love Lyrics from the Bible, 84.
54. The exception is 5:13, in which the young man’s lips are like lilies (śipṯôṯāyw
šôšannîm).
55. Denis Baly, The Geography of the Bible (rev. ed.; New York: Harper & Row,
1974), 226.
56. Baly, The Geography of the Bible, 227; John D. Currid, “The Deforestation of the
Foothills of Palestine,” PEQ 116 (1984): 1–11.
57. Baly, The Geography of the Bible, 228.
58. The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian literature, http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/
section5/tr551.htm. Cf. Gwendolyn Leick, Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian
Literature (London: Routledge, 2003), 153–56.
59. The natural imagery used is appropriate to a Mesopotamian landscape (Leick, Sex
and Eroticism in Mesopotamian Literature, esp. 11–20; cf. Leick, “The Erotisation
of Landscape,” in Landscapes: Territories, Frontiers, and Horizons in the Ancient
Near East, ed. Lucio Milano [3 vols.; HANE/M; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns,
1999], 3:79–82).
60. The tendency inheres in other descriptive poems, including the description of
Sarai (see n. 32); the Sumerian Dumuzi-Inanna texts ( Yitzhak Sefati, Love Songs
in Sumerian Literature: Critical Edition of the Dumuzi-Inanna Songs [Bar-Ilan
studies in Near Eastern Languages and Culture. Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University
Press, 1998], 224–25); an Egyptian descriptive text (Chester Beatty I, group A,
no. 31, [Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs, 52]). Other
descriptive texts include the Babylonian Göttertypentext ( Köcher, F., “Der bab-
ylonische Göttertypentext,” in Mitteilungen Des Instituts Für Orientforschung;
Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin [Berlin: Akademie- Verlag,
1953]); cf. Alasdair Livingstone, Mystical and Mythological Explanatory Works of
Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars [Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007], 95). In
the “Underworld Vision” (ANET 109), an Assyrian prince in a dream descends
into the underworld and sees Nergal with the members of his court, described
as theriomorphic monsters (F. A. M. Wiggermann, “Scenes from the Shadow
Side,” in Mesopotamian Poetic Language, ed. H. L. J. Vanstiphout [Groningen,
Netherlands: Styx, 1996], 219). From Ugarit, there is the brief description from
the Kirta epic: “give me maid Ḥurraya /the best young woman of your firstborn
offspring; … whose eyes are like alabaster bowls, /who is girded with ruby; /
that I might repose in the gaze of her eyes” (ANET 144, lines 144–49).
194 Notes
61. Martti Nissinen, “Love Lyrics of Nabû and Tašmetu: An Assyrian Song of Songs?”
in “Und Mose schreib dieses Lied auf”: Studien zum Alten Testament und zum
Alten Orient: Festschrift für Oswald Loretz zur Vollendung seines 70. Lebensjahres
mit Beiträgen von Freunden, Schülern und Kollegen, ed. Oswald Loretz, Manfried
Dietrich, Ingo Kottsieper (Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 1998), 613.
62. Nissinen, “Love Lyrics of Nabû and Tašmetu,” 589.
63. Nissinen, “Love lyrics of Nabû and Tašmetu,” 614.
64. E.g., Robert and Tournay, Le Cantique des cantiques, 163.
65. Yair Zakovitch, Das Hohelied, trans. Dafna Mach (HThKAT; Freiburg im
Breisgau: Herder, 2004), 187.
66. Stoddart and Zubrow (1999), cited in T. J. Wilkinson, Archaeological Landscapes of
the Near East (Tucson: University of Arizona, 2003), 7.
67. Various ancient versions did not understand this to be a place-name, so eudokia
(LXX), ṣebyānā (Syriac), suavis (Vulgate). There is no textual problem with tirṣâ,
and various ancient and modern emendations seem to stem from a discomfort
with the metaphor: “It is hard enough to explain the comparison of a beauti-
ful female, human or divine, to a city, even Jerusalem, but the city Tirzah is a
tougher problem” (Pope, Song of Songs, 558).
68. This form, kannidgālôt (the Niphal feminine plural participle of d-g-l) only occurs
here and in the identical phrase in the last line of this poem, at 6:10 (the root √d-
g-l also appears in Song 2:4; 5:10). Numbers describes the Israelites camping and
marching under degel (“banner”; Num 1:52; 2:2, 3, 10, 17, 18, 25, 31, 34; 10:14,
18, 22, 25; cf. Ps 20:6 [20:5 Eng])—Song 2:4 evokes this military context by declar-
ing “love is his banner over me.” The word seems to draw on this military sense
as well (so LXX tetagmenai, “drawn up in order,” and Vulgate Castrorum acies or-
dinate, “ordered line of battle camps”). Akkadian dagâlu, “look, behold,” suggests
visual distinction or conspicuousness, hence Exum, “splendor” (Song of Songs,
212).
69. Following the parallel passage (4:3), ancient interpreters, including LXX, Syriac,
Symmachus, Aquila, OL, the Syro-Hexapla, all include an additional line: “Like
a scarlet thread, your lips, /and your mouth is lovely,” assuming the copyist has
omitted the phrase (Exum, Song of Songs, 212). As I will note, however, the poem
is not fixated on exact repetition, but both adds and omits aspects from the pre-
vious description.
70. See note 68.
71. Repetitions are diagrammed by Hagedorn, “Die Frau des Hohenlieds zwischen
babylonisch-assyrischer Morphoskopie und Jacques Lacan (Teil I),” ZAW 122
(2010): 420–21.
72. Ariel Bloch and Chana Bloch, The Song of Songs: A New Translation with an
Introduction and Commentary (New York: Random House, 1995), 189.
73. See note 67.
Notes 195
74. Robert and Tournay, Le Cantique des cantiques, 232. There is no need to see the
reference to Tirzah as fixing a date for composition, except as a terminus a quo.
Pace Noegel and Rendsburg, Solomon’s Vineyard, 174.
75. Edmée Kingsmill, The Song of Songs and the Eros of God: A Study in Biblical
Intertextuality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 268.
76. Keel, The Song of Songs, 213.
77. Tod Linafelt, “The Arithmetic of Eros,” Interpretation 59 (2005), 59.
78. For further discussion, see Chapter 4.
79. This convention is well attested from finds at Khorsabad and Nimrud. Winter
notes parallels with ivory plaques from Samaria and Arslan Tash (Irene Winter,
“Is There a South Syrian Style of Ivory Carving?” in On Art in the Ancient Near
East, 1:300–303).
80. Other instances of this motif include: Michal looked out of the window and saw
David dancing (1 Chr 15:29); when Jehu came to Jezreel, Jezebel painted her eyes
and adorned her head and looked out of her window (2 Kgs 9:20). An Akkadian
love song includes the following line: “Do take your place at the window, /Go
on, catch up to my love!” (Benjamin Foster, Before the Muses: An Anthology of
Akkadian Literature [3rd ed.; Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 2005], 158); cf. Pirjo
Lapinkivi, The Sumerian Sacred Marriage in the Light of Comparative Evidence
(SAAS 15; Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2004), 232–40.
81. The relation to 7:1 is problematic (“Turn, turn, the Shulammite /turn, turn
and we will look upon you /what do you see in the Shulammite /like a dance
of Mahanaim?”) These lines are among the most opaque in the Song, along
with the immediately preceding verse, 6:12. See discussion, Roland Murphy,
“Dance and Death in the Song of Songs,” in Love and Death in the Ancient Near
East: Essays in Honor of Marvin H. Pope, ed. John H. Marks and Robert McClive
Good (Guilford, CT: Four Quarters, 1987), 117–19.
82. Ḥammûqê is a hapax legomenon, although it seems clearly related to ḥāmaq,
“turn,” which occurs in 5:6.
83. Ḥălāʾîm is a hapax legomenon. The singular ḥălî occurs in Prov 25:12, parallel to
“ring of gold”; and in Hos 2:15, it is another item of adornment. Both suggest a
meaning “jewelry.”
84. The form here, ʾāmmān ʾommân, is a hapax legomenon. The meaning is made by
way of the Akkadian ummânu and Aramaic ʾummân, meaning “artisan.” A var-
iant form, ʾāmôn, occurs in Jer 52:15 and Prov 8:30. In Jeremiah, it refers to the
craftsmen as a group; in Proverbs, to God’s creative power.
85. The translation of “umbilical cord” for šārərēk is early (LXX, Vulgate, Syriac),
following Ezek 16:4. Pope and others connect šōr to Arabic sirr, meaning “se-
cret,” suggestive of “vulva” (Murphy, The Song of Songs, 182). Keel notes a visual
overlap between navel and vulva in Syrian clay figurines of the female form
(Keel, The Song of Songs, 232).
196 Notes
86. Hassahar is also a hapax legomenon, likely specifying the kind or quality of the
bowl. LXX and Vulgate understood it to refer to artisanal crafting; they render
it as a “turned” bowl, translating it with the same word as for the young man’s
hands in 5:14, which are “turned gold.” Pope, Song of Songs, 618.
87. Mezeg is also a hapax legomenon. This is an Aramaism (mzîg, mzāgāʾ) for Heb.
mesek (Ps 75:9). It refers to mixed or diluted wine, the root becoming common in
Rabbinic Hebrew (F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, “Late Linguistic Features of the Song of
Songs,” in Perspectives on the Song of Songs, ed. Anselm Hagedorn [Berlin: Walter
de Gruyter, 2005], 57).
88. Taken as a geographical name, in keeping with the succession of final words in
these lines, although it was translated “daughter of many” by LXX (thygatros pol-
lon) and Vulgate (filiae multitudinis).
89. Wədallat; elsewhere only in Isa 38:12, dalāh refers to the loom. The noun derives
from d-l-l, “hang.”
90. Bārhāṭîm; the root r-h-ṭ in Aramaic and Syriac means “to run,” and in Gen 30:38,
41; Exod 2:16, the word refers to a course of flowing water, reflected by the LXX
en paradromais (“in courses”) and the Vulgate canalibus (“in canals”). The quality
of her flowing hair seems to be in view (Exum, Song of Songs, 214).
91. Parallels have been drawn to statuary veneration in Sumer and in Egypt (Hallo,
“The Cultic Setting of Sumerian Poetry,” 120; Köcher, “Der babylonische
Göttertypentext”; Gerleman, Ruth. Das Hohelied, 63–72; 174–78; Fox, The Song of
Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs, 273–74; Keel, The Song of Songs, 202).
Cf. Gilgamesh VIII.ii (Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia, 93).
92. “Whether or not the speaker pictures the beloved as naked or clothed or partially
clothed is a question that also arises in the woman’s description of the man in
5:10–16. It is a moot question to ask of the poem (which is a text, not a public
spectacle), since the body is clothed in metaphors that obscure as much as they
promise to reveal” (Exum, Song of Songs, 232).
93. Winter, “Aesthetics in Ancient Mesopotamian Art,” CANE. The work of hands
is an idiomatic way of speaking about fabrication (e.g., Lam 4:2; Deut 27:15; 2
Kgs 19:18). In the prophets, the distinction between the abhorrent idols that
are made by human hands is contrasted with the proper, good work of God’s
hands: Isa 2:8; 15:12. Also in the general sense of “daily work,” or “undertak-
ings”: Gen 5:29; Deut 2:7; 15:10; etc.
95. Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place, 471.
97. The city was eventually retaken by Moab, since Isaiah and Jeremiah both include
it in oracles against Moab (Isa 15:1–4; Jer 48).
98. Zakovitch, Das Hohelied, 247.
99. Denis Cosgrove, Geography and Vision: Seeing, Imagining and Representing the
World (London: I. B. Taurus, 2008), 155.
Notes 197
100. Jens Eichner and Andreas Georg Scherer, “ ‘Die “Teiche” von Hesbon’: eine
exegetisch-archäologische Glosse zu Cant 7,5ba,” Biblische Notizen 109
(2001): 10–14; Carol L. Meyers, “Gender Imagery in the Song of Songs,” in
A Feminist Companion to the Song of Songs, ed. Athalya Brenner (Sheffield,
UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 203.
101. Landy, Paradoxes of Paradise, 88; Barbiero, Song of Songs, 104. The liquidity of
the eyes is frequently invoked in Western literature: “O lovely eyes of azure,
/Clear as the waters of a brook that run /Limpid and laughing in the sum-
mer sun!” Henry Longfellow, cited in Frank Jenners Wilstach, A Dictionary of
Similes (new ed., rev. and enl.; Boston: Little, Brown, 1924).
102. [“The language of lovers is always a secret language, of which complete

decoding is impossible,”] Hagedorn, “Die Frau des Hohenlieds zwischen
babylonisch-assyrischer Morphoskopie und Jacques Lacan (Teil I),” 425.
103. Either a mountain itself, or a structure on a mountain; either reading is possi-
ble (Pope, Song of Songs, 626–27).
104. Cited in Pope, Song of Songs, 627.
105. This fits into his larger conceptualization of the young woman as a goddess
(Pope, Song of Songs, 627).
106. It may have briefly come under Israelite control (2 Sam 8:5–6; Wayne Pitard,
“Damascus,” ABD [New York: Doubleday, 1992], 2:5–7; cf. Meyers, “Gender
Imagery in the Song of Songs,” 203).
107. Examples include pənê -hāʾădāmāh, Gen 2:6; 4:14; 7:4; Ps 104:30; pənê kol-
hāʾāreṣ, Gen 1:29; 7:3; 8:9; 11:4, 8, 9; 19:28; Isa 24:1.
109. Seton Lloyd, The Art of the Ancient Near East (London: Thames & Hudson,
1961), 165.
110. The Peshitta understands beter to be a type of spice (cf. JPS “hills of spices”;
Exum, Song of Songs, 132).
111. Black, The Artifice of Love, 155.
112. Black, The Artifice of Love, 156.
113. Arthur Coleman Danto, “Picasso and the Portrait,” The Nation (1996): 31–.
Educators Reference Complete (accessed September 26, 2016).
114. Danto, “Picasso and the Portrait.”
Press, 2002), 108.
116. Barbara Bender, “Subverting the Western Gaze: Mapping Alternative Worlds,”
in The Archaeology and Anthropology of Landscape: Shaping your Landscape,
ed. Peter J. Ucko and Robert Layton (One World Archaeology 30; London;
New York: Routledge, 1999), 31.
117. Bender, “Subverting the Western Gaze,” 37.
118. Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape
(New York: Scribner, 1986), 274.
198 Notes
119. A phrase I have borrowed from Diane Kelsey McColley, Poetry and Ecology in the
Age of Milton and Marvell (Literary and Scientific Cultures of Early Modernity;
Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007).
120. Lopez, Arctic Dreams, 295.
121. Lopez, Arctic Dreams, 254.
C h a p t er 6
1. Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked, trans. John Weightman and Doreen
Weightman (Introduction to a Science of Mythology 1; Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1983), 270.
of Wisconsin Press, 1998), xvii.
3. For one example, see Kennth Hoglund, “The Achaemenid Imperial Context,”
Second Temple Studies 1, ed. Philip R. Davies et al. (JSOTSup 117; Sheffield,
UK: JSOT Press, 1991).
4. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982); Virginia Held, The Ethics
of Care: Personal, Political, and Global (Oxford; New York: Oxford University
Press, 2006); Selma Sevenhuijsen, Citizenship and the Ethics of Care: Feminist
Considerations on Justice, Morality, and Politics (London; New York: Routledge,
1998); Ruth E. Groenhout, Connected Lives: Human Nature and an Ethics of
Care (Feminist Constructions; Lanham, MD; Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield,
2004); Sherilyn MacGregor, Beyond Mothering Earth: Ecological Citizenship and
the Politics of Care (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006); Robert C. Fuller, Ecology of
Care: An Interdisciplinary Analysis of the Self and Moral Obligation (Louisville,
KY: John Knox Press, 1992).
Bibliography
Aharoni, Yohanan. The Land of the Bible: A Historical Geography. Revised and enlarged
edition. Translated from the Hebrew and edited by A. F. Rainey. Philadelphia: The
Westminster Press, 1967.
Ahlström, Gösta W. “Wine Presses and Cup-Marks of the Jenin-Megiddo Survey.”
BASOR 231 (1978): 19–49.
Alexander, Philip S. The Targum of Canticles: Introduction, Translation, Apparatus
and Notes. Volume 17A. The Aramaic Bible: The Targums. Wilmington,
DE: M. Glazier/T&T Clark International, 2003.
Alster, Bendt. “The Manchester Tammuz.” Acta Sumerologica 14 (1992): 1–46.
Alter, Robert. The Art of Biblical Poetry. New York: Basic Books, 1985.
Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. Edited by James B. Pritchard.
3rd edition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969.
Ancient Records of Egypt. Edited by James Henry Breasted. 5 volumes.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1906–1907. Repr., New York: Russell &
Russell, 1962.
Annals of the Kings of Assyria: The Cuneiform Texts with Translations, Transliterations,
etc., from the Original Documents in the British Museum. London: Trustees of the
British Museum, 1902.
Applebaum, S. “Economic Life In Palestine.” Pages 631–700 in The Jewish People
in the First Century: Historical Geography, Political History, Social, Cultural and
Religious Life and Institutions. Edited by S. Safrai and M. Stern. Volume 2.
Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976.
Assis, Eliyahu. Flashes of Fire: A Literary Analysis of the Song of Songs. New York: T&T
Clark, 2009.
Astell, Ann W. The Song of Songs in the Middle Ages. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1990.
Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature.
Translated by Willard R. Trask. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1953.
200 Bibliography
Aufrecht, Walter Emanuel. A Corpus of Ammonite Inscriptions. Ancient Near Eastern

Texts and Studies 4. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1989.
Avigad, Nahman, and Yigael Yadin. A Genesis Apocryphon: A Scroll from the Wilderness
of Judaea. Translated by Sulamith Schwartz Nardi. Jerusalem: Magnes Press of
the Hebrew University, 1956.
Avitsur, Shmuel. Daily Life in Eretz Israel in the Nineteenth Century [Heb.]. Tel Aviv: Am
ha-Sefer, 1972.
Bahrani, Zainab. The Infinite Image: Art, Time, and the Aesthetic Dimension in
Antiquity. London: Reaktion Books, 2014.
Bahrani, Zainab. Women of Babylon: Gender and Representation in Mesopotamia.
London: Routledge, 2001.
Baly, Denis. The Geography of the Bible. New and revised edition. New York: Harper
& Row, 1974.
Barbiero, Gianni. Song of Songs: A Close Reading. Translated by Michael Tate. VTSup
144. Boston: Brill, 2011.
Beaux, Nathalie. Le cabinet de curiosités de Thoutmosis III: Plantes et animaux du “Jardin
botanique” de Karnak. Orientalia Lovaniensis analecta 36. Leuven: Département
Oriëntalistiek: Uitgeverij Peeters, 1990.
Bender, Barbara. “Subverting the Western Gaze: Mapping Alternative Worlds.” Pages
31–45 in The Archaeology and Anthropology of Landscape: Shaping Your Landscape.
Edited by Peter J. Ucko and Robert Layton. One World Archaeology 30. London;
New York: Routledge, 1999.
Bender, Barbara, and Margot Winer, eds. Contested Landscapes: Movement, Exile and
Place. Oxford; New York: Berg, 2001.
Bergant, Dianne. The Song of Songs. Berit Olam, Studies in Hebrew Narrative &
Poetry. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2001.
Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London; Harmondsworth: British Broadcasting
Corporation; Penguin, 1972.
Bernard of Clairvaux. On The Song of Songs III. Translated by Kilian Walsh and Irene
M. Edmonds. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1979.
Bernstein, Ellen. “The Natural Intelligence of the Song of Songs.” Pages 94–103 in
The Gift of Creation: Images from Scripture and Earth. Edited by Norman Wirzba
and Thomas G. Barnes. Morley, MO: Acclaim Press, 2009.
Bernstein, Ellen. The Splendor of Creation: A Biblical Ecology. Cleveland: Pilgrim
Press, 2005.
Berque, Augustin. “Beyond the Modern Landscape.” Architectural Association Files
25 (summer 1993): 33–37.
Berquist, Jon L. “Critical Spatiality.” Pages 14–29 in “Imagining” Biblical Worlds: Studies
in Spatial, Social and Historical Constructs in Honor of James W. Flanagan. Edited
by David M. Gunn and Paula M. McNutt. JSOTSupp 359. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield
Academic Press, 2002.
Bibliography 201
Berquist, Jon L. “Introduction: Critical Spatiality and The Uses of Theory.” Pages
1–14 in Constructions of Space I: Theory, Geography, and Narrative. Edited by Jon L.
Berquist and Claudia V. Camp. London: T&T Clark, 2007.
Berquist, Jon L. “Spaces of Jerusalem.” Pages 40–52 in Constructions of Space II: The
Biblical City and Other Imagined Spaces. Edited by John L. Berquist and Claudia V.
Camp. LHBOTS 490. London: T&T Clark, 2008.
Berry, Wendell. A World Lost. Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2008.
Berry, Wendell. Collected Poems. San Francisco: North Point, 1984 [1977].
Berry, Wendell. Fidelity: Five Stories. New York: Pantheon Books, 1992.
Berry, Wendell. The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural and Agricultural.
Berkeley: Counterpoint, 1981.
Berry, Wendell. Hannah Coulter. New York: Counterpoint, 2004.
Berry, Wendell. Home Economics. San Francisco: North Point, 1987.
Berry, Wendell. Remembering. Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2008 (1988).
Berry, Wendell. “Renewing Husbandry.” Pages 91–104 in The Way of Ignorance: And
Other Essays. Emeryville, CA: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2005.
Berry, Wendell. Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community: Eight Essays. New York:
Pantheon Books, 1993.
Berry, Wendell. Standing by Words: Essays. Berkeley: Counterpoint, 1983.
Berry, Wendell. The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture. 3rd edition. San
Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1997.
Berry, Wendell. What Are People For? San Francisco: North Point Press, 1990.
Best, Sue. “Sexualizing Space.” Pages 181–94 in Sexy Bodies: The Strange Carnalities
of Feminism. Edited by E. Grosz and E. Probyn. London: Routledge, 1995.
Biddle, Mark E. “The Figure of Lady Jerusalem: Identification, Deification and
Personification of Cities in the Ancient Near East.” Pages 173–94 in The Biblical
Canon in Comparative Perspective: Scripture in Context IV. Edited by K. L. Younger,
Jr., W. Hallo, and B. Batto. Ancient Near Eastern Texts and Studies 11. Lewiston,
MT: Edwin Mellen, 1991.
Black, Fiona C. The Artifice of Love: Grotesque Bodies in the Song of Songs. LHBOTS
392. London: T&T Clark, 2009.
Black, Jeremy. “The Sumerians in Their Landscape.” Pages 41–61 in Riches Hidden in
Secret Places: Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Memory of Thorkild Jacobsen. Edited
by I. Tzvi Abusch. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2002.
Bleibtreu, Erika. “Five Ways to Conquer a City.” BAR 16 (1990): 37–44.
Bloch, Ariel, and Chana Bloch. The Song of Songs: A New Translation with an
Introduction and Commentary. 1st edition. New York: Random House, 1995.
Bloom, Harold, ed. The Song of Songs. Modern Critical Interpretations.
New York: Chelsea House, 1988.
Boda, Mark J., Carol J. Flesher, LeAnn Snow, eds. Daughter Zion: Her Portrait, Her
Response. AIL 13. Atlanta: SBL, 2012.
202 Bibliography
Bodenheimer, F. S. Animal and Man in Bible Lands. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1960.

Bodenheimer, F. S. Animal Life in Palestine: An Introduction to the Problems of Animal
Ecology and Zoogeography. Jerusalem: L. Mayer, 1935.
Boer, Roland. The Earthy Nature of the Bible: Fleshly Readings of Sex, Masculinity, and
Carnality. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Boer, Roland. Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door: The Bible and Popular Culture.
Boer, Roland. “The Second Coming: Repetition and Insatiable Desire in the Song of
Songs.” BibInt 8 (2000): 276–301.
Borowski, Oded. Agriculture in Iron Age Israel. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1987.
Borowski, Oded. Daily Life in Biblical Times. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003.
Borowski, Oded. Every Living Thing: Daily Use of Animals in Ancient Israel. Walnut
Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 1998.
Brenner, Athalya. “Aromatics and Perfumes in the Song of Songs.” JSOT 25
(1983): 75–81.
Brenner, Athalya. “‘Come Back, Come Back the Shulammite’ (Song of Songs 7.1–
10): A Parody of the wasf Genre.” Pages 234–57 in A Feminist Companion to the
Song of Songs. Edited by Athalya Brenner. The Feminist Companion to the Bible.
Sheffield: JSOT, 1993.
Brenner, Athalya. “The Food of Love: Gendered Food and Food Imagery in the Song
of Songs.” Semeia 86 (1999): 101–12.
Brenner, Athalya. “Gazing Back at the Shulammite, Yet Again.” BibInt 11 (2003): 295–300.
Brenner, Athalya. The Intercourse of Knowledge: On Gendering Desire and “Sexuality” in
the Hebrew Bible. Biblical Interpretation Series. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997.
Brooks, Cleanth. The Well- Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry.
New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World, 1947.
Brown, William P. The Seven Pillars of Creation: The Bible, Science, and the Ecology of
Wonder. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Budd, Malcolm. The Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature: Essays on the Aesthetics of Nature.
Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press, 2002.
Budde, Karl. “Das Hohelied.” Pages I–XXIV and 1–48 in Die fünf Megillot. Edited
by K. Budde, Alfred Bertholet, and D. G. Wildeboer. KHC 17/1. Freiburg: Mohr
Siebeck, 1898.
Budde, Karl. “The Song of Solomon.” New World 3 (1894): 56–77.
Burford, Alison. Land and Labor in the Greek World. ASH. Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1993.
Burrus, Virginia, and Stephen D. Moore. “Unsafe Sex: Feminism, Pornography, and
the Song of Songs.” BibInt 11 (2003): 24–52.
Byrne, Ryan. “Statecraft in Early Israel.” Ph.D. dissertation. The Johns Hopkins
University, 2002.
Camp, Claudia V. “Introduction.” Pages 1–17 in Constructions of Space II: The Biblical
City and Other Imagined Spaces. Edited by Jon L. Berquist and Claudia V. Camp.
LHBOTS 490. London: T&T Clark, 2008.
Bibliography 203
Cansdale, George Soper. Animals of Bible Lands. Exeter: The Paternoster Press, 1970.

Čapek, Karel. The Gardener’s Year. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984.
Carr, David. The Erotic Word: Sexuality, Spirituality, and the Bible. New York: Oxford
University, 2005.
Carroll, Maureen. Earthly Paradises: Ancient Gardens in History and Archaeology. Los
Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003.
Cavigneaux, A. “Lexicalische Listen.” Pages 609–41 in Reallexikon der Assyriologie:
unter Mitwirkung zahlreicher Fachgelehrter. Edited by Erich Ebeling, et al. Berlin:
Walter de Gruyter, 1932.
Cazeaux, Jacques. Le Cantique des Cantiques: des Pourpres de Salomon à l’Anémone des
Champs. LD 222. Paris: Cerf, 2008.
Chapman, Cynthia. The Gendered Language of Warfare in the Israelite- Assyrian
Encounter. HSM 62. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2004.
Childe, Gordon. “The Urban Revolution.” Town Planning Review 21 (1950): 3–17.
Cicero, Marcus Tullius. De natura deorum: Academica. Translated by Harris Rackham.
LCL 268. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967.
Civil, Miguel. The Farmer’s Instructions: A Sumerian Agricultural Manual. Aula orien-
talis 5. Barcelona: Editorial Ausa, 1994.
Clines, David J. A. “Why Is There a Song of Songs and What Does It Do to You if You
Read It?” Jian Dao 1 (1994): 3–27.
Cohen, Ralph. “History and Genre.” New Literary History 17 (1986): 203–18.
Cooper, David E. “Garden, Art, Nature.” Pages 5–10 in Vista: The Culture and Politics
of Gardens. Edited by Noël Kingsbury and Tim Richardson. London: Frances
Lincoln, 2005.
Cooper, Jerrold S. “Enki’s Member: Eros and Irrigation in Sumerian Literature.”
Pages 87–89 in DUMU-E2-DUB-BA-A: Studies in Honor of Åke Sjöberg. Edited by
Hermann Behrens, Darlene Loding, and Martha T. Roth. Philadelphia: University
Museum, 1989.
Cooper, Jerrold S. “New Cuneiform Parallels to the Song of Songs.” JBL 90 (1971): 157–62.
Corner, James. “The Hermeneutic Landscape.” Pages 130– 31 in Theory in
Landscape Architecture: A Reader. Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.
Corner, James. “Terra Fluxus.” Pages 21–34 in The Landscape Urbanism Reader.
Edited by Charles Waldheim. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006.
Corner, James, ed. Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape
Architecture. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999.
Cosgrove, Denis E. Geography and Vision: Seeing, Imagining and Representing the
World. International Library of Human Geography 12. London; New York: I.
B. Tauris; Palgrave MacMillan, 2008.
Cosgrove, Denis E. “Place, Landscape, and the Dialectics of Cultural Geography.”
Canadian Geography 22 (1978): 66–72.
Cosgrove, Denis E. Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape. Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1998.
204 Bibliography
Cosgrove, Denis E., and Stephen Daniels, eds. The Iconography of Landscape: Essays
on the Symbolic Representation, Design, and Use of Past Environments. Cambridge
Studies in Historical Geography 9. Cambridge [England]; New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1988.
Coxon, Peter W. “The ‘List’ Genre and Narrative Style in the Court Tales of Daniel.”
JSOT 35 (1986): 95–121.
Crocker, P. T. “I Made Gardens and Parks….” BurH 26 (1990): 20–23.
Cross, Frank Moore. Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the
Religion of Israel. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973.
Cross, Frank Moore. Early Hebrew Orthography: A Study of the Epigraphic Evidence.
American Oriental Series 36. New Haven, CT: American Oriental Society, 1952.
Culler, Jonathan. “Genre: Lyric.” Paragraphs 21–60 in The Work of Genre: Selected
Essays from the English Institute. Edited by Robyn Warhol. Cambridge, MA: The
English Institute, 2011.
The Cuneiform Alphabetic Texts from Ugarit, Ras Ibn Hani, and Other Places.
Edited by Manfried Dietrich, Oswald Loretz, and Joaquín Sanmartín.
Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 1995
Cuomo, Chris J. Feminism and Ecological Communities: An Ethic of Flourishing.
Currid, John D. “The Deforestation of the Foothills of Palestine.” PEQ 116 (1984): 1–11.
Czestochowski, Joseph S. The American Landscape Tradition: A Study and Gallery of
Paintings. 1st edition. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1982.
Dalley, Stephanie. Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others.
Revised edition. Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Dalman, Gustaf. Arbeit Und Sitte in Pälastina. 7 volumes. Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1987.
Danto, Arthur Coleman. “Picasso and the Portrait.” The Nation (1996): 31–. Educators
Reference Complete. Web. Accessed September 26, 2016.
Dar, Shimon. Landscape and Pattern: An Archaeological Survey of Samaria 800
b.c.e.–636 c.e. BARIS 308. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1986.
Davis, Ellen F. “Romance of the Land in the Song of Songs.” AThR 80 (1998): 533–46.
Davis, Ellen F. “Reading the Song Iconographically.” Pages 172– 84 in Scrolls
of Love: Ruth and the Song of Songs. Edited by Peter S. Hawkins and Lesleigh
Cushing Stahlberg. New York: Fordham University Press, 2006.
Davis, Ellen F. Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Delitzsch, Franz. Biblischer Commentar über die poetischen Bücher des alten Testaments.
Volume 4: Hoheslied und Koheleth. Leipzig: Dörffling und Franke, 1875.
Dobbs-Allsopp, F. W. “Beauty.” In The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible 1.
Edited by Katharine Doob Sakenfeld. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2006.
Dobbs-Allsopp, F. W. “Daughter Zion.” Pages 125–34 in Thus Says the Lord: Essays
on the Former and Latter Prophets in Honor of Robert R. Wilson. Edited by John
J. Ahn and Stephen L. Cook. T&T Clark Library of Biblical Studies. New York;
London: T&T Clark, 2009.
Bibliography 205
Dobbs-Allsopp, F. W. “The Delight of Beauty and Song of Songs 4:1–7.” Interpretation

59 (2005): 260–77.
Dobbs-Allsopp, F. W. “‘I Am Black and Beautiful’: The Song, Cixous, and Écriture
Féminine.” Pages 128–40 in Engaging the Bible in a Gendered World. Edited by
Linda Day and Carolyn Pressler. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2006.
Dobbs-Allsopp, F. W. “Late Linguistic Features in the Song of Songs.” Pages
27–77 in Perspectives on the Song of Songs = Perspektiven der Hoheliedauslegung.
Edited by Anselm C. Hagedorn. BZAW 346. Berlin; New York: Walter de
Gruyter, 2005.
Dobbs-Allsopp, F. W. On Biblical Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Dobbs-Allsopp, F. W. “The Syntagma of bat Followed by a Geographical Name in
the Hebrew Bible: A Reconsideration of Its Meaning and Grammar.” CBQ 57
(1995): 451–70.
Dobbs-Allsopp, F. W. Weep O Daughter Zion: A Study of the City-Lament Genre in the
Hebrew Bible. Rome: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1993.
Dobbs-Allsopp, F. W., J. J. M. Roberts, C.-L. Seow, and R. E. Whitaker, eds. Hebrew
Inscriptions: Texts from the Biblical Period of the Monarchy with Concordance. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005.
Driver, G. R., and John C. Miles, ed. The Babylonian Laws. Ancient Codes and Laws
of the Near East. Oxford: Clarendon, 1952.
Driver, S. R. An Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament. The Meridian
Library. New York: Meridian Books, 1956.
Ebach, Jürgen. “Naturerfahrung.” In Sozialgeschichtliches Wörterbuch Zur Bibel.
Edited by Frank Crüsemann. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlaghaus, 2009.
Ebeling, Walter. The Fruited Plain: The Story of American Agriculture. Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1979.
Edelman, Diana Vikander. The Origins of the “Second” Temple: Persian Imperial Policy
and the Rebuilding of Jerusalem. London: Equinox, 2005.
Edzard, Dietz Otto. “Sumerisch-akkadische Listenwssenschaft und andere Aspekte
altmesopotamischer Rationalität.” Pages 246–67 in Rationalitätstypen. Edited by
Karen Groy. Alber-Reihe Philosophie [ formerly: Alber-Broschur Philosophie].
Freiburg: Alber, 1999.
Eichner, Jens, and Andreas Georg Scherer. “ ‘Die “Teiche” von Hesbon’: eine exegetisch-
archäologische Glosse zu Cant 7,5ba.” Biblische Notizen 109 (2001): 10–14.
Eichrodt, Walther. Theology of the Old Testament. Translated by J. A. Baker. OTL.
Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1933.
Ephʿal, Israel. The City Besieged: Siege and Its Manifestations in the Ancient Near East.
Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2009.
Exum, J. Cheryl. “Asseverative ʾal in Canticles 1:6?” Bib 62 (1981): 416–19.
Exum, J. Cheryl. “Developing Strategies of Feminist Criticism/Developing Strategies
for Commentating on the Song of Songs.” Pages 206–49 in Auguries: The Jubilee
Volume of the Sheffield Department of Biblical Studies. Edited by David J. A. Clines
and Stephen D. Moore. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998.
206 Bibliography
Exum, J. Cheryl. “How Does the Song of Songs Mean? On Reading the Poetry of
Desire.” SEÅ 64 (1999): 47–63.
Exum, J. Cheryl. “In the Eye of the Beholder: Wishing, Dreaming, and double
entendre in the Song of Songs.” Pages 71–86 in The Labour of Reading: Desire,
Alienation, and Biblical Interpretation. Edited by Fiona C. Black, Roland Boer, and
Erin Runions. Semeia Studies. Atlanta: SBL, 1999.
Exum, J. Cheryl. “A Literary and Structural Analysis of the Song of Songs.” ZAW 85
(1973): 47–79.
Exum, J. Cheryl. “The Little Sister and Solomon’s Vineyard: Song of Songs 8:8–12 as a
Lovers’ Dialogue.” Pages 269–82 in Seeking Out the Wisdom of the Ancients: Essays
Offered to Honor Michael V. Fox on the Occasion of His Sxity-Fifth Birthday. Edited
by Ronald L. Troxel, Kelvin G. Friebel, and Dennis R. Magary. Winona Lake,
IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005.
Exum, J. Cheryl. “The Poetic Genius of the Song of Songs.” Pages 141–52 in
Perspectives on the Song of Songs = Perspektiven der Hoheliedauslegung. Edited by
Anselm Hagedorn. BZAW 346. Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2005.
Exum, J. Cheryl. “Seeing Solomon’s Palanquin (Song of Songs 3:6–11).” BibInt 11
(2003): 301–16.
Exum, J. Cheryl. Song of Songs: A Commentary. OTL. Louisville, KY: Westminster
John Knox Press, 2005.
Exum, J. Cheryl. “‘The Voice of My Lover’: Double Voice and Poetic Illusion in Song
of Songs 2.8–3.5.” In Reading from Right to Left: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in
Honor of David J. A. Clines. Edited by J. Cheryl Exum and H. G. M. Williamson.
JSOTSup. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003.
Eyre, Christopher J. “The Agricultural Cycle, Farming, and Water Management in
the Ancient Near East.” Pages 175–89 in CANE. Edited by Jack M. Sasson. 4 vol-
umes. New York: Scribner, 1995.
Falk, Marcia. Love Lyrics from the Bible: A Translation and Literary Study of the Song of
Songs. BLS 4. Sheffield, UK: Almond Press, 1982.
Faust, Avi. The Archaeology of Israelite Society in Iron Age II. Translated by Ruth
Ludlum. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2011.
Feliks, Yehuda. Nature and Man in the Bible: Chapters in Biblical Ecology. London;
New York: Soncino Press, 1981.
Feliks, Yehuda. Song of Songs: Nature Epic and Allegory. Jerusalem: Israel Society for
Biblical Research, 1983.
Finkelstein, Israel. “Jerusalem in the Persian (and Early Hellenistic) Period and the
Wall of Nehemiah.” JSOT 32 (2008): 501–20.
Fischer, Stefan. Das Hohelied Salomos zwischen Poesie und Erzählung: Erzähltextanalyse
eines poetischen Textes. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010.
Fischer, Stefan. “The Foxes That Ruin The Vineyards: A Literal Interpretation of
Song of Songs 2:15.” AcT 23 (2003): 76.
Bibliography 207
Fitzgerald, Aloysius. “The Mythological Background for the Presentation of Jerusalem

as a Queen and False Worship as Adultery in the OT.” CBQ 34 (1972): 403–16.
Fitzmyer, Joseph A. The Genesis Apocryphon of Qumran Cave 1 (1Q20): A Commentary.
3rd edition. BibOr 18B. Roma: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 2004.
Flanagan, James. “Ancient Perceptions of Space/Perceptions of Ancient Space.”
Semeia 87 (1999): 15–43.
Flanagan, James. “Space.” Pages 323– 27 in Handbook of Postmodern Biblical
Interpretation. Edited by A. K. M. Adam. St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2000.
Follis, Elaine R. “The Holy City as Daughter.” Directions in Biblical Hebrew Poetry.
Edited by Elaine Follis. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1987.
Fontaine, Carole. “‘Go Forth into the Fields’: An Earth-Centered Reading of the
Song of Songs.” Pages 126–44 in The Earth Story in the Wisdom Traditions. Edited
by Norman Habel and Shirley Wurst. Earth Bible 3. Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim
Press, 2001.
Foster, Benjamin R. Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature. 3rd edi-
tion. Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 2005.
Foster, Karen Polinger. “The Earliest Zoos and Gardens.” Scientific American (July
1999): 48–55.
Foster, Karen Polinger. “Gardens of Eden: Exotic Flora and Fauna in the Ancient
Near East.” Yale Forestry and Environmental Studies Bulletin 103 (1998): 320–29.
Foster, Karen Polinger. “A Taste for the Exotic.” Pages 327–38 in Dais: The Aegean
Feast. Edited by Louise H. Hitchcock, Robert Laffineur, and Janice Crowley.
Liège: Aegaeum, 2008.
Fox, Michael V. The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs.
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985.
Frankel, Rafael. Wine and Oil Production in Antiquity in Israel and Other Mediterranean
Countries. JSOT/ ASOR Monograph 10. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic
Press, 1999.
Freedman, Harry, and Maurice Simon, eds. Midrash Rabbah, Translated into English
with Notes, Glossary and Indices. London: Soncino Press, 1939.
Freyfogle, Eric T., ed. The New Agrarianism: Land, Culture, and the Community of Life.
Washington, DC: Island Press, 2001.
Frick, Frank S. The City in Ancient Israel. SBLDS 36. Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1977.
Fritz, Volkmar. The City in Ancient Israel. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic, 1995.
Frye, Northrup. Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971.
Fuller, Robert C. Ecology of Care: An Interdisciplinary Analysis of the Self and Moral
Obligation. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1992.
Gadot, Yuval. “Water Installations in the Garden and the ‘Conspicuous Consumption’
of Water.” NEA 74 (2011): 26–29.
Galpaz-Feller, Pnina. “The Victory Stela of King Piye: The Biblical Perspective on War
and Peace.” RB 100 (1993): 399–414.
208 Bibliography
Gardiner, Alan Henderson. Ancient Egyptian Onomastica. Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1947.
Garrett, Duane A. Song of Songs. WBC 23B. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2004.
Gault, Brian P. “Body Concealed, Body Revealed: Shedding Comparative Light on the
Body in the Song of Songs.” Ph.D. dissertation. Hebrew Union College-Jewish
Institute of Religion, Cincinnati, 2012.
Geller, Stephen A. “Wisdom, Nature, and Piety in Some Biblical Psalms.” Pages 101–
21 in Riches Hidden in Secret Places: Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Memory of
Thorkild Jacobsen. Edited by I. Tzvi Abusch. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2002.
Genette, Gérard. The Architext. Translated by Jane E. Lewin. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1992 [1979].
Gerleman, Gillis. Ruth. Das Hohelied. BKAT 18. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener
Verlag, 1965.
Geus, C. H. J. de. “The City of Women: Women’s Places in Ancient Israelite
Cities.” Congress Volume: Paris 1991. Edited by J. A. Emerton. VTSup 61. Leiden;
Boston: Brill, 1995.
Geus, C. H. J. de. “Importance of Archaeological Research into the Palestinian
Agricultural Terraces, with an Excursus on the Hebrew Word Gbī.” PEQ 107
(January 1, 1975): 65–74.
Geva, Hillel. “Jerusalem’s Population in Antiquity: A Minimalist View.” Tel Aviv 41
(2014): 131–60.
Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982.
Ginsburg, Christian D. The Song of Songs and Coheleth (Commonly called the Book of
Ecclesiastes), Translated from the Original Hebrew, with a Commentary, Historical
and Critical. The Library of Biblical Studies. Edited by Harry M. Orlinsky.
New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1970.
Good, Edwin M. “Ezekiel’s Ship: Some Extended Metaphors in the Old Testament.”
Semitics 1 (1970): 79–103.
Goody, Jack. The Domestication of the Savage Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1977.
Gordis, Robert. The Song of Songs and Lamentations; A Study, Modern Translation
and Commentary. Revised and augmented edition. New York: Ktav Publishing
House, 1974.
Görg, Manfred. “‘Kanäle’ oder ‘Zweige’ in Hld 4,13?” Biblische Notizen 72 (1993): 20–23.
Gorringe, T. J. A Theology of the Built Environment: Justice, Empowerment, Redemption.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Graetz, Heinrich. Schir Ha-Schirim, oder, Das salomonische Hohelied übersetzt und kri-
tisch erläutert. Wien: W. Braumüller, 1871.
Gray-Hildenbrand, Jenna. “The Veil: Women Writers on Its History, Lore, and
Politics.” Journal of Law & Religion 25 (2009): 265–67.
Greene, Roland Arthur. Post-Petrarchism: Origins and Innovations of the Western Lyric
Sequence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991.
Bibliography 209
Groenhout, Ruth E. Connected Lives: Human Nature and an Ethics of Care. Feminist

Constructions. Lanham, MD; Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004.
Groneberg, B. “The ‘Faithful Lover’ Reconsidered: Towards Establishing a New
Genre.” Pages 165–83 in Sex and Gender in the Ancient Near East. Edited by S.
Parpola and R. M. Whiting. Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2002.
Gross, Boaz, Yuval Gadot, and Oded Lipschits. “The Ancient Garden at Ramat Raḥel
and Its Water Installation.” Pages 93–114 in Cura Aquarum in Israel II: Water in
Antiquity. Edited by Christoph Ohlig and Tsvika Tsuk. Schriften der Deutschen
Wasserhistorischen Gessellschaft 21. Siegburg: Papierflieger, 2014.
Grossberg, Daniel. Centripetal and Centrifugal Structures in Biblical Poetry. SBLMS 39.
Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989.
Grossberg, Daniel. “Nature, Humanity, and Love in Song of Songs.” Interpretation
59 (2005): 229–42.
Grosz, E. “Voyeurism/Exhibitionism/The Gaze.” Pages 447–50 In Feminism and
Psychoanalysis: A Critical Dictionary. Edited by Elizabeth Wright. Blackwell
Reference. Oxford, UK; Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992.
Grosz, E. “Bodies-Cities.” Pages 241–52 in The Blackwell City Reader. Edited by Gary
Bridge and Sophie Watson. Malden, MA; Oxford: Blackwell, 2002.
Groth, Paul, and Chris Wilson. “The Polyphony of Cultural Landscape Study.” Pages
1–22 in Everyday America: Cultural Landscape Studies after J. B. Jackson. Edited
by Paul Groth and Chris Wilson. Berkeley; Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 2003.
Guindi, Fadwa El. Veil: Modesty, Privacy, and Resistance. Oxford: Berg, 1999.
Gunkel, Hermann. Schöpfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit: eine religionsgeschich-
tliche Untersuchung über Gen 1 und Ap Joh 12. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und
Ruprecht, 1895.
Habel, Norman C. “Introducing the Earth Bible.” Pages 25–37 in Readings from
the Perspective of Earth. Earth Bible 1. Edited by Norman C. Habel. Cleveland;
Sheffield, UK: Pilgrim Press; Sheffield Academic Press, 2000.
Habel, Norman C., and Peter Trudinger, eds. Exploring Ecological Hermeneutics.
Atlanta: SBL, 2008.
Habel, Norman C., and Shirley Wurst, eds. The Earth Story in Wisdom Traditions.
Earth Bible 3. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001.
Hagedorn, Anselm C. “Die Frau des Hohenlieds zwischen babylonisch-assyrischer
Morphoskopie und Jacques Lacan (Teil I).” ZAW 122 (2010): 417–30.
Hagedorn, Anselm C. “Of Foxes and Vineyards: Greek Perspectives on the Song of
Songs.” VT 53 (2003): 337–52.
Hagedorn, Anselm C. “Space and Place in the Song of Songs.” ZAW 127 (2015):
207–23.
Hallo, William W. “The Cultic Setting of Sumerian Poetry.” Pages 116–34 in Actes
de la 17e Recontre Assyriologique Internationale. Ham-Sur-Heure, Belgium: Com
Belge de Recherches en Mesopotamie, 1970.
Hallo, William W., ed. The Context of Scripture. 3 volumes. Leiden: Brill, 1997.
210 Bibliography
Hardy, Barbara. The Advantage of Lyric: Essays on Feeling in Poetry. Bloomington: Indiana

Harrison, Robert Pogue. Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
Hartshorne, Richard. The Nature of Geography: A Critical Survey of Current Thought in
the Light of the Past. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976.
Hawkins, Peter S., and Lesliegh Cushing Stahlberg, eds. Scrolls of Love: Ruth and the
Song of Songs. New York: Fordham University Press, 2006.
Heath, Jennifer, ed. The Veil: Women Writers on Its History, Lore, and Politics.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.
Held, Moshe. “A Faithful Lover in an Old Babylonian Dialogue.” JCS 15 (1961): 1–26.
Held, Virginia. The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global. Oxford;
New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Hengel, Martin. Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in Their Encounter in Palestine dur-
ing the Early Hellenistic Period. 2nd one-volume edition. Minneapolis: Fortress
Press, 1991.
Hesse, Brian. “Animal Husbandry and Human Diet in the Ancient Near
East.” Pages 203– 23 in CANE. Edited by Jack Sasson. Volume 1. Peabody,
MA: Hendrickson, 1995.
Hicks, R. Lansing. “The Door of Love.” Pages 153–58 in Love and Death in the Ancient
Near East: Essays in Honor of Marvin H. Pope. Edited by John H. Marks and Robert
M. Good. Guilford, CT: Four Quarters, 1987.
Hiebert, Theodore. The Yahwist’s Landscape: Nature and Religion in Early Israel.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Hillel, Daniel. The Natural History of the Bible: An Environmental Exploration of the
Hebrew Scriptures. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.
Hoglund, Kenneth. “The Achaemenid Imperial Context.” Pages 51–72 in Second
Temple Studies 1. Persian Period. JSOTSup 117. Edited by Philip R. Davies, Tamara
C. Eskenazi, Kent Harold Richards, and John M. Halligan. Sheffield, UK: JSOT
Press, 1991.
Hopkins, David C. The Highlands of Canaan: Agricultural Life in the Early Iron Age.
SWBA 3. Sheffield, UK: Almond Press, 1985.
Horst, Friedrich. “Die Formen des althebräischen Liebesliedes.” Pages 176–202 in
Gottes Recht. Edited by Hans Walter Wolff. München: Kaiser Verlag, 1961.
Hugonot, Jean-Claude. Le jardin dans l’Egypte ancienne. Frankfurt am Main;
New York: Peter Lang, 1989.
Humphrey, Edith McEwan. The Ladies and the Cities: Transformation and Apocalyptic
Identity in Joseph and Aseneth, 4 Ezra, the Apocalypse and The Shepherd of Hermas.
JSPSupp 17. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic, 1995
Hunt, John Dixon. Greater Perfections: The Practice of Garden Theory. Penn Studies in
Landscape Architecture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
Bibliography 211
Hunt, Patrick. Poetry in the Song of Songs: A Literary Analysis. StBibLit 96.
New York: Peter Lang, 2008.
Hunter, Richard. “‘Sweet Talk’: Song of Songs and the Traditions of Greek Poetry.”
Pages 228–44 in Perspectives on the Song of Songs = Perspektiven der Hoheliedauslegung.
Edited by Anselm C. Hagedorn. Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2005.
Hutton, Jeremy Michael. The Transjordanian Palimpsest: The Overwritten Texts of
Personal Exile and Transformation in the Deuteronomistic History. BZAW 396.
Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2009.
I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition. New York: Harper and
Row, 1962.
Jackson, John Brinckerhoff. “How to Study Landscape.” Pages 113–26 in The Necessity
for Ruins, and Other Topics. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1980.
Jackson, Wes, and Jon Piper. “The Necessary Marriage between Ecology and
Agriculture.” Ecology 70 (1989): 1591–93.
Jacobsen, Thorkild. The Harps That Once… : Sumerian Poetry in Translation. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987.
Jackson, Virginia. Dickinson’s Misery: A Theory of Lyric Reading. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.
Jager, Ronald. The Fate of Family Farming: Variations on an American Idea. Hanover,
NH: University Press of New England, 2004.
Johnson, W. R. The Idea of Lyric: Lyric Modes in Ancient and Modern Poetry.
Berkeley: California, 1982.
Joüon, Paul. Le Cantique des Cantiques: Commentaire Philologique et Exégétique.
Paris: G. Beauchesne, 1909.
Kantor, Helene J. “Landscape in Akkadian Art.” JNES 25 (1966): 145–52.
Kavanaugh, Kieran, and Otilio Rodriguez, eds. The Collected Works of St. Teresa of
Avila. Washington: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1976.
Kawashima, Robert. Biblical Narrative and the Death of the Rhapsode.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.
Keel, Othmar. The Song of Songs: A Continental Commentary. Translated by Frederick
J. Gaiser. 1st Fortress Press edition. Continental Commentaries. Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 1994.
Keimer, Kyle. “Fortifications in the Bronze and Iron Age.” In The Oxford Encyclopedia
of the Bible and Archaeology. Edited by Daniel M. Master. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2013.
Kelle, Brad E. “Wartime Rhetoric: Prophetic Metaphorization of Cities as Female.”
Pages 95– 112 in Writing and Reading War: Rhetoric, Gender, and Ethics in
Biblical and Modern Contexts. Edited by Brad E. Kelle and Frank Ritchel Ames.
Atlanta: SBL, 2008.
King, Philip J., and Lawrence E. Stager. Life in Biblical Israel. LAI. Louisville,
KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001.
212 Bibliography
Kingsmill, Edmée. The Song of Songs and the Eros of God: A Study in Biblical
Intertextuality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Klauck, Hans-Josef, Volker Leppin, Bernard McGinn, Choon-Leong Seow, Hermann
Spieckermann, Barry Dov Walfish, et al., eds. “Allegory.” In Encyclopedia of the
Bible and Its Reception. Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2009.
Knauf, Ernst Axel. “Kedar.” Pages 9–11 in ABD, Volume 4. New York: Doubleday, 1992.
Köcher, F. “Der babylonische Göttertypentext.” Mitteilungen Des Instituts Für
Orientforschung. Edited by Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin.
Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1954.
Kort, Wesley A. “Sacred/Profane and an Adequate Theory of Human Place-Relations.”
Pages 32–50 in Constructions of Space I: Theory, Geography, and Narrative. Edited
by Jon L. Berquist and Claudia V. Camp. LHBOTS 481. London: T&T Clark, 2007.
Kostof, Spiro. The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings through History.
London: Thames & Hudson, 1991.
Kramer, Samuel Noah. The Sacred Marriage Rite: Aspects of Faith, Myth, and Ritual in
Ancient Sumer. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969.
Krauss, Samuel. “Die ‘Landscaft’ im bliblischen Hohenliede.” MGWJ 78 (1934): 81–97.
Krinetzki, Günter. Kommentar Zum Hohenlied: Bildsprache und Theologische Botschaft.
BBET 16. Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1981.
Kugel, James L. The Idea of Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and Its History. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1981.
Kuper, Adam. Culture: The Anthropologists’ Account. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
LaCocque, André. Romance, She Wrote: A Hermeneutical Essay on Song of Songs.
Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1998.
Landy, Francis. Paradoxes of Paradise: Identity and Difference in the Song of Songs. BLS
7. Sheffield, UK: Almond Press, 1983.
Landy, Francis. “The Literary Unity of the Canticle.” Biblica 72 (1991): 570–72.
Langgut, Dafna, Yuval Gadot, Naomi Porat, and Oded Lipschits, “Fossil Pollen
Reveals the Secrets of the Royal Persian Garden at Ramat Rahel, Jerusalem.”
Palynology 37 (2013): 115–29.
Lapinkivi, Pirjo. The Neo- Assyrian Myth of Ištar’s Descent and Resurrection. The
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project. State Archives of Assyria Cuneiform Texts.
Volume VI. Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project. Winona Lake,
Lapinkivi, Pirjo. “The Sumerian Sacred Marriage and Its Aftermath.” Pages 7–41
in Sacred Marriages: The Divine-Human Sexual Metaphor from Sumer to Early
Christianity. Edited by Martti Nissinen and Risto Uro. Winona Lake, IN:
Eisenbrauns, 2008.
Lapinkivi, Pirjo. The Sumerian Sacred Marriage in the Light of Comparative Evidence.
SAA 15. Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2004.
Lau, Susan. “Garden as a Symbol of Sacred Space.” Ph.D. dissertation. University of
Pittsburgh, 1981.
Bibliography 213
Lee, Li-Young. The City in Which I Love You: Poems by Li-Young Lee. Rochester,
NY: BOA Editions, 1990.
Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith.
Oxford: Blackwell, 1991 [1974].
Leick, Gwendolyn. “The Erotisation of Landscape in Mesopotamian Literature.”
Pages 79–82 in Landscapes: Territories, Frontiers, and Horizons in the Ancient Near
East. Volume 3. HANE/M. Padova: Sargon, 1999.
Leick, Gwendolyn. Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian Literature. London: Routledge,
2003.
Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There. Oxford: Oxford
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. The Raw and the Cooked. Translated by John Weightman and
Doreen Weightman. Introduction to a Science of Mythology 1. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1983.
Lichtheim, Miriam. Ancient Egyptian Literature: A Book of Readings. Volume
1. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973.
Linafelt, Tod. “The Arithmetic of Eros.” Interpretation 59 (2005): 244–58.
Linafelt, Tod. “Biblical Love Poetry (… and God).” JAAR 70 (2002): 323–45.
Linafelt, Tod. “Lyrical Theology: The Song of Songs and the Advantage of Poetry.”
Pages 291–305 in Toward a Theology of Eros: Transfiguring Passion at the Limits of the
Discipline. Edited by Virginia Burrus and Catherine Keller. Bronx, NY: Fordham
Linafelt, Tod. “On Biblical Style.” The St. John’s Review 54 (2012): 17–42.
Linafelt, Tod. Song of Songs. Bible Briefs. Virginia Theological Seminary and Forward
Movement Publications, 2010. http://www.vts.edu/biblebriefs?rc=0.
Lincoln, Bruce. Religion, Empire, and Torture: The Case of Achaemenian Persia, with a
Postscript on Abu Ghraib. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.
Lipinski, Edward, et al. “Allegory.” EncJud 1 (2007): 665–67.
Lipschits, Oded. “Achaemenid Imperial Policy, Settlement Processes in Palestine,
and the Status of Jerusalem in the Middle of the Fifth Century b.c.e.” Pages
19–52 in Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period. Edited by Oded Lipschits
and Manfred Oeming. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006.
Lipschits, Oded. “Demographic Changes in Judah between the Seventh and the
Fifth Centuries b.c.e.” Pages 323–76 in Judah and Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian
Period. Edited by Oded Lipschits and Joseph Blenkinsopp. Winona Lake,
Lipschits, Oded. “Rahel, Ramat.” Edited by Katharine Doob Sakenfeld. New
Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2009.
Lipschits, Oded, Yuval Gadot, Manfred Oeming, and Benjamin Arubas. “The 2006 and
2007 Excavation Seasons at Ramat Raḥel: Preliminary Report.” IEJ 59 (2009): 1–20.
Lipschits, Oded, Yuval Gadot, Manfred Oeming, and Benjamin Arubas. “Palace and
Village, Paradise and Oblivion: Unraveling the Riddles of Ramat Raḥel.” NEA 74
(2011): 2–49
214 Bibliography
Lipschits, Oded, Yuval Gadot, Manfred Oeming, and Benjamin Arubas. “Ramat
Raḥel 2005.” IEJ 56 (2006): 227–35.
Lipschits, Oded, and Oren Tal. “The Settlement Archaeology of the Province of
Judah: A Case Study.” Pages 33–52 in Judah and the Judeans in the Fourth Century
bce. Edited by Gary N. Knoppers, Rainer Albertz, and Oded Lipschits. Winona
Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007.
Littledale, Richard Frederick. A Commentary on the Song of Songs: From Ancient and
Medieval Sources. London: J. Masters, 1869.
Liverani, Mario. “Reconstructing the Rural Landscape of the Ancient Near East.”
JESHO 39 (1996): 1–41.
Livingstone, Alasdair. Mystical and Mythological Explanatory Works of Assyrian and
Babylonian Scholars. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007.
Lloyd, Seton. The Art of the Ancient Near East. London: Thames & Hudson, 1961.
Logsdon, Gene. The Mother of All Arts: Agrarianism and the Creative Impulse.
Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007.
Longman, Tremper. Song of Songs. NICOT. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans,
2001.
Lopez, Barry Holstun. Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape.
New York: Scribner, 1986.
Löw, Immanuel. Die Flora Der Juden. 4 volumes. Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1967.
Löw, Martina. “The City as Experiential Space: The Production of Shared Meaning.”
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 37 (2013): 894–908.
MacGregor, Sherilyn. Beyond Mothering Earth: Ecological Citizenship and the Politics of
Care. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2006.
Maeir, Aren M., Shimʻon Dar, and Zeev Safrai, eds. The Rural Landscape of Ancient
Israel. BAR International Series 1121. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2003.
Maier, Christl. “Daughter Zion as a Gendered Space.” Pages 102–18 in Constructions
of Space II: The Biblical City and Other Imagined Spaces. Edited by John L. Berquist
and Claudia V. Camp. LHBOTS 490. London: T&T Clark, 2008.
Maier, Christl. Daughter Zion, Mother Zion: Gender, Space, and the Sacred in Ancient
Israel. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008.
Malena, Sarah. “Spice Roots in the Song of Songs.” Pages 165–84 in Milk and
Honey: Essays on Ancient Israel and the Bible in Appreciation of the Judaic Studies
Program at the University of California. Edited by Sarah Malena and David Miano.
Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007.
Malul, Meir. Knowledge, Control, and Sex: Studies in Biblical Thought, Culture, and
Worldview (Tel Aviv: Archaeological Center Publication, 2002).
Malul, Meir. “The Woman-Earth Homology in Biblical Weltanschauung.” UF 32
(2000): 339–63.
Mandolfo, Carleen. Daughter Zion Talks Back to the Prophets: A Dialogic Theology of the
Book of Lamentations. SemeiaSt 58. Atlanta: SBL, 2007.
Margueron, Jean. “A Stroll through the Palace.” NEA 63 (2000): 205–7.
Bibliography 215
Matter, E. Anne. The Voice of My Beloved: The Song of Songs in Western Medieval
Christianity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvannia, 1990.
May, Herbert G. “Some Cosmic Connotations of Mayim Rabbim, ‘Many Waters.’”
JBL 74 (1955): 9–21.
McColley, Diane Kelsey. Poetry and Ecology in the Age of Milton and Marvell. Literary
and Scientific Cultures of Early Modernity. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007.
McKay, George. Radical Gardening: Politics, Idealism and Rebellion in the Garden.
London: Frances Lincoln, 2011.
Meiggs, Russell. Trees and Timber in the Ancient Mediterranean World.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982.
Meredith, Christopher. Journeys in the Songscape: Space and the Song of Songs.
Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2013.
Meyers, Carol L. “Gender Imagery in the Song of Songs.” Pages 197–212 in A
Feminist Companion to the Song of Songs. Edited by Athalya Brenner. Sheffield,
UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993.
Meyers, Carol L. “Material Remains and Social Relations: Women’s Culture in
Agrarian Households of the Iron Age.” Pages 424–94 in Symbiosis, Symbolism,
and the Power of the Past: Canaan, Ancient Israel, and Their Neighbors from the Late
Bronze Age through Roman Palaestina. Edited by William G. Dever and Seymour
Giltin. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003.
Meyers, Carol L. Rediscovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context.
Meyers, Carol L. “‘To Her Mother’s House’: Considering a Counterpart to the Israelite
bêt ‘āb.” Pages 39–51 in The Bible and the Politics of Exegesis. Edited by David
Jobling, Gerald T. Sheppard, and Peggy L. Day. Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 1991.
Mikesell, Marvin W. “The Deforestation of Mount Lebanon.” Geographical Review 59
(1969): 1–28.
Milano, Lucio, S. de Martino, F. M. Fales, and G. B. Lanfranchi, eds. Landscapes: Territories,
Frontiers and Horizons in the Ancient Near East: Papers Presented to the XLIV Rencontre
Assyriologique Internationale, Venezia, 7–11 July 1997. HANE 3. Padova: Sargon, 1999.
Millard, A. R., and Pierre Bordreuil. “A Statue from Syria with Assyrian and Aramaic
Inscriptions.” Biblical Archaeologist 45 (1982): 135–41.
Millard, A. R. “The Etymology of Eden.” VT 34 (1984): 103–6.
Miller, Mara. The Garden as an Art. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993.
Miller, Naomi Frances. “Down the Garden Path: How Plant and Animal Husbandry
Came Together in the Ancient Near East.” NEA 64 (2001): 4–7.
Miller, Naomi. “The Theater in the Garden.” Theatergarden Bestiarium. Edited by
Chris Dercon. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990.
Miller, Naomi R., and Kathryn L. Gleason, eds. The Archaeology of Garden and Field.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994.
Mills, Mary. Urban Imagination in Biblical Prophecy. LBS. New York; London: T&T
Clark International, 2012.
216 Bibliography
Möldenke, Harold Norman. Plants of the Bible. Waltham, MA: Chronica Botanica, 1952.

Møller-Christensen, Vilhelm. Encyclopedia of Bible Creatures. Philadelphia: Fortress
Press, 1965.
Montmarquet, James A. The Idea of Agrarianism: From Hunter-Gatherer to Agrarian
Radical in Western Culture. Moscow: University of Idaho Press, 1989.
Moor, Johannes C. de. An Anthology of Religious Texts from Ugarit. Nisaba 16. Edited
by M. S. H. G. Heerma van Voss, J. Knappert, R. P. Kramers, B. A. van Proosdij,
J. D. J. Waardenburg, R. A. M. van Zantwijk. Leiden: Brill, 1987.
Müller, Hans-Peter. “Die lyrische Reproduktion des Mythischen im Hohelied.” ZTK
73 (1976): 23–41.
Müller, Hans-Peter. “Travestien und geistige Landschaften Zum Hintergrund einiger
Motive bei Kohelet und im Hohenlied.” ZAW 109 (1997): 557–74.
Müller, Hans-Peter. Vergleich und Metapher im Hohenlied. OBO 56.
Schweiz: Universitätsverlag; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1984.
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16 (1975): 6–18.
Munro, Jill M. Spikenard and Saffron: The Imagery of the Song of Songs. JSOTSup 203.
Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995.
Muraoka, T. Emphatic Words and Structures in Biblical Hebrew. Boston: Brill, 1997.
Murphy, Roland. “Dance and Death in the Song of Songs.” Pages 117–19 in Love and
Death in the Ancient Near East: Essays in Honor of Marvin H. Pope. Edited by John
H. Marks and Robert McClive Good. Guilford, CT: Four Quarters, 1987.
Murphy, Roland. The Song of Songs: A Commentary on the Book of Canticles or the Song
of Songs. Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990.
Nash, Catherine. “Reclaiming Vision: Looking at Landscape and the Body.” Gender,
Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 3 (1996): 149–70.
Neusner, Jacob. Song of Songs Rabbah: An Analytical Translation. BJS 197– 198.
Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989.
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music.
Edited by Michael Tanner. Translated by Shaun Whiteside. London;
New York: Penguin, 1993.
Nissinen, Martti. “Love Lyrics of Nabû and Tašmetu: An Assyrian Song of Songs?”
Pages 585–634 in “Und Mose schreib dieses Lied auf”: Studien zum Alten Testament
und zum Alten Orient: Festschrift für Oswald Loretz zur Vollendung seines 70.
Lebensjahres mit Beiträgen von Freunden, Schülern, und Kollegen. Edited by Oswald
Loretz, Manfried Dietrich, and Ingo Kottsieper. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 1998.
Nissinen, Martti. “Song of Songs and Sacred Marriage.” Pages 173–218 in Sacred
Marriages: The Divine–Human Sexual Metaphor from Sumer to Early Christianity.
Edited by Martti Nissinen and Risto Uro. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2008.
Nissinen, Martti, and Risto Uro, eds. Sacred Marriages: The Divine-Human Sexual
Metaphor from Sumer to Early Christianity. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2008.
Noegel, Scott B., and Gary A. Rendsburg. Solomon’s Vineyard: Literary and Linguistic
Studies in the Song of Songs. Leiden: Brill, 2009.
Bibliography 217
O’Connor, Michael Patrick.”The Biblical Notion of the City.” Pages 18– 39 in

Constructions of Space II: The Biblical City and Other Imagined Spaces. Edited by
John L. Berquist and Claudia V. Camp. LHBOTS 490. London: T&T Clark, 2008.
Olwig, Kenneth R. “Recovering the Substantive Nature of Landscape.” Annals of the
Association of American Geographers 86 (1996): 630–53.
Oppenheim, A. Leo. Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964.
Oppenheim, A. Leo. “On Royal Gardens in Mesopotamia.” JNES 24 (1965): 328–33.
Origen. The Song of Songs: Commentary and Homilies. Translated by R. P. Lawson.
ACW 26. Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1957.
Pardes, Ilana. Countertraditions in the Bible. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1992.
Parker, Simon B., ed. Ugaritic Narrative Poetry. WAW 9. Atlanta: SBL Scholars
Press, 1997.
Paul, Shalom M. “A Lover’s Garden of Verse: Literal and Metaphorical Imagery in
Ancient Near Eastern Love Poetry.” Pages 99–110 in Tehillah le-Moshe: Biblical
and Judaic Studies in Honor of Moshe Greenberg. Edited by Mordechai Cogan,
Barry L. Eichler, and Jeffrey H. Tigay. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1997.
Phipps, William E. “The Plight of the Song of Songs.” Pages 5–23 in The Song of Songs.
Edited by Harold Bloom. Modern Critical Interpretation. New York: Chelsea
House, 1988.
Pioske, Daniel David. David’s Jerusalem: Between Memory and History. New York:
Routledge, 2015.
Pitard, Wayne. “Damascus.” Pages 5–7 in ABD. Volume 2. New York: Doubleday, 1992.
Pliny the Elder. Natural History. Translated by H. Rackham et al. 10 volumes. LCL.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1938–1963.
Polaski, Donald C. “What Will Ye See in the Shulammite? Women, Power and
Panopticism in the Song of Songs.” BibInt 5 (1997): 64–81.
Pollan, Michael. Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education. New York: Dell, 1991.
Pope, Alexander. Poems: A One-Volume Edition of the Twickenham Text, with Selected
Annotations. Edited by John Butt. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1963.
Pope, Marvin H. Song of Songs. AB 7C. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977.
Porten, Bezalel, and Ada Yardeni, eds. Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient
Egypt. Volume 4. Texts and Studies for Students. Jerusalem: Hebrew University.
Distributed by Eisenbrauns, 1986.
Preucel, Robert W., and Ian Hodder, eds. Contemporary Archaeology in Theory: A Reader.
Social Archaeology. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996.
Preucel, Robert W., and Ian Hodder, eds. Gibeon, Where the Sun Stood Still: The
Discovery of the Biblical City. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962.
Purcell, Nicholas. “Gardens.” The Oxford Classical Dictionary. Edited by Simon
Hornblower and Antony Spawforth. 3rd edition. Oxford; New York: Oxford
218 Bibliography
Rad, Gerhard von. “Aspekte alttestamentlichen Weltverständnisses.” Evangelische

Theologie 24 (1964): 57–73.
Rad, Gerhard von. “The Theological Problem of the Doctrine of Creation.” Pages
177–86 in From Genesis to Chronicles: Explorations in Old Testament Theology.
Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005.
Renfrew, Jane. “Vegetables in the Ancient Near Eastern Diet.” Pages 191–202 in
CANE. Edited by Jack M. Sasson. Volume 1. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995.
Robert, André, and Raymond Jacques Tournay. Le Cantique des cantiques: Traduction
et commentaire. EBib. Paris: J. Gabalda, 1963.
Roberts, David. The Holy Land: Yesterday and Today; Lithographs and Diaries.
New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1996.
Roberts, Donald Phillip. Let Me See Your Form: Seeking Poetic Structure in the Song
of Songs. Studies in Judaism. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2007.
Rosenberg, A. J., trans. The Five Megilloth: A New English Translation. Judaica Books
of the Hagiographa: The Holy Writings. New York: Judaica Press, 1992.
Rowley, Harold Henry. “The Interpretation of the Song of Songs.” Pages 189–234 in
The Servant of the Lord, and Other Essays on the Old Testament. London: Lutterworth
Press, 1952.
Rubio, G. “Early Sumerian Literature: Enumerating the Whole.” Pages 197–208 in
De la Tablilla a la Inteligencia Artificial: Homenaje al Prof. Jesús-Luis Cunchillos en
su 65 Aniversario. Edited by Antonio González Blanco, Juan Pablo Vita Barra, and
José Ángel Zamora Lopez. Volume 1. Zaragoza: Instituto de Estudios Islámicos
y del Oriente Próximo, 2003.
Santayana, George. Scepticism and Animal Faith: Introduction to a System of Philosophy.
New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1924.
Sarver, Stephanie. “Environmentalism and Literary Studies.” Rocky Mountain Review
of Language and Literature 49 (1995): 106–12.
Sauer, Carl Ortwin. “The Morphology of Landscape.” Pages 315–50 in Land and
Life: A Selection from the Writings of Carl Ortwin Sauer. Edited by John Leighly.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969.
Scarry, Elaine. On Beauty and Being Just. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.
Schama, Simon. Landscape and Memory. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995.
Scheindlin, Raymond, ed. and trans. Wine, Women, & Death: Medieval Hebrew Poems
on the Good Life. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1986.
Schloen, J. David. The House of the Father as Fact and Symbol: Patrimonialism in Ugarit
and the Ancient Near East. Studies in the Archaeology and History of the Levant
2. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2001.
Schneider, Wolf. Überall ist Babylon: die Stadt als Schicksal des Menschen von Ur bis
Utopia. Düsseldorf: Econ Verlag, 1960.
Schott, Siegfried. Altägyptische Festdaten. Wiesbaden: F. Steiner Verlag, 1950.
Schwartz, Rudolf. The Church Incarnate. Translated by Cynthia Harris. Chicago:
Chicago University Press, 1958.
Bibliography 219
Sefati, Yitzhak. Love Songs in Sumerian Literature: Critical Edition of the Dumuzi-
Inanna Songs. Bar-Ilan Studies in Near Eastern Languages and Culture. Ramat
Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1998.
Seow, Choon-Leong. “The Social World of Ecclesiastes.” Pages 189–217 in Scribes,
Sages, and Seers: The Sage in the Eastern Mediterranean World. Edited by Leo
G. Perdue. Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen
Testaments 219. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008.
Sevenhuijsen, Selma. Citizenship and the Ethics of Care: Feminist Considerations on
Justice, Morality, and Politics. London; New York: Routledge, 1998.
Schökel, Luis Alonso. A Manual of Hebrew Poetics. SubBi 11. Roma: Editrice Pontificio
Istituto Biblico, 1988.
Shuve, Karl. The Song of Songs and the Fashioning of Identity in Early Latin Christianity.
Sideris, Lisa H. Environmental Ethics, Ecological Theology, and Natural Selection.
Columbia Series in Science and Religion. New York: Columbia University
Press, 2003.
Simkins, Ronald. Creator and Creation: Nature in the Worldview of Ancient Israel.
Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994.
Skolnik, Fred, and Michael Berenbaum, eds. Encyclopaedia Judaica. Volume 15. 2nd
edition. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA in association with Keter, 2007.
Smith, Barbara Herrnstein. Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End.
Chicago: University of Chicago, 1968.
Smith, Henry Nash. Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1970.
Soden, Wolfram von. Sprache, Denken und Begriffsbildung im alten Orient.
Mainz: Akademie der Wissenschaft und der Literatur, 1974.
Soja, Edward. Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions. Malden,
MA: Blackwell, 2000.
Stadelmann, Luis I. J. Love and Politics: A New Commentary on the Song of Songs.
New York: Paulist Press, 1992.
Stager, Lawrence E. “The Archaeology of the East Slope of Jerusalem and the Terraces
of the Kidron.” JNES 41 (1982): 111–21.
Stager, Lawrence E. “The Archaeology of the Family in Ancient Israel.” BASOR 260
(1985): 1–35.
Stahlberg, Lesleigh Cushing. “Time, Memory, and Recital: Religion and Literature in
Exodus 12.” Religion & Literature 46 (2014): 75–94.
Stern, Ephraim. Archaeology of the Land of the Bible: The Assyrian, Babylonian, and
Persian Periods, 732–332 bce. AYBRL. New York: Doubleday, 2001.
Stern, Ephraim. Material Culture of the Land of the Bible in the Persian Period, 538–332
b.c. Warminster, Wiltshire, UK: Aris & Phillips, 1982.
Stewart, Anne W. Poetic Ethics in Proverbs: Wisdom Literature and the Shaping of the
Moral Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
220 Bibliography
Stewart, Susan. “Garden Agon.” Representations 62 (1998): 111–43.

Stewart, Susan. Poetry and the Fate of the Senses. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2002.
Stol, M. “Women in Mesopotamia.” JESHO 38 (1995): 123–44.
Sumi, Akiko Motoyoshi. Description in Classical Arabic Poetry: Waṣf, Ekphrasis, and Interarts
Theory. Brill Studies in Middle Eastern Literatures 25. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2004.
Swaffield, Simon, ed. Theory in Landscape Architecture: A Reader. Penn Studies in
Landscape Architecture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.
Tanner, J. Paul. “The History of Interpretation of the Song of Songs.” BSac 154
(1997): 23–46.
Tawil, Hayim. “Two Biblical Architectural Images in Light of Cuneiform Sources
(Lexicographical Note X).” BASOR 341 (2006): 37–52.
Taylor, Christopher. The Archaeology of Gardens. Aylesbury Bucks, UK: Shire
Publications, 1983.
The Madaba Map Centenary, 1897–1997: Travelling through the Byzantine Umayyad
Period = Al-Dhikrá Al-Miʾawīyah Li-Khāriṭat Mādabā: Khilāla Al-ʻaṣr Al-Umawī
Al-Bīzanṭī: Proceedings of the International Conference Held in Amman, 7–9 April
1997. Collectio maior n. 40. Jerusalem: Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, 1999.
Thöne, Sophie. Liebe zwischen Stadt und Feld: Raum und Geschlecht im Hohelied.
Exegesis in unserer Zeit 22. Berlin: LIT, 2012.
Tilley, Christopher. Metaphor and Material Culture. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999.
Toorn, Karel van der. “The Significance of the Veil in the Ancient Near East.” Pages
327–39 in Pomegranates and Golden Bells: Studies in Biblical, Jewish, and Near Eastern
Ritual, Law, and Literature in Honor of Jacob Milgrom. Edited by David P. Wright,
David Noel Freedman, and Avi Hurvitz. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1995.
Treib, Marc. “Must Landscapes Mean?” Pages 89– 101 in Theory in Landscape
Architecture: A Reader. Edited by Simon Swaffield. Penn Studies in Landscape
Architecture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.
Trible, Phyllis. God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978.
Tromp, Nicholas J. Primitive Conceptions of Death and the Nether World in the Old
Testament. Biblica et Orientalia. Rome: Pontificio Inst Biblico, 1969.
Trublet, Jacques. “Peut-on parler de nature dans l’Ancien Testament?” Recherches de
science religieuse 98 (2010): 193–215.
Tuan, Yi-Fu. Dominance and Affection: The Making of Pets. New Haven, CT: Yale
Tuan, Yi-Fu. Man and Nature. Association of American Geographers. Commission
on College Geography. Resource paper no. 10. Washington, DC: Association of
American Geographers, Commission on College Geography, 1971.
Tuan, Yi-Fu. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1977.
Bibliography 221
Tuan, Yi-Fu. Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values.

Morningside edition. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990.
Turkowski, L. “Peasant Agriculture in the Judean Hills.” PEQ 101 (1969): 21–33,
101–12.
Turner, Frederick. “Cultivating the American Garden.” Pages 40– 51 in The
Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Edited by Cheryll Glotfelty and
Harold Fromm. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996.
Ussishkin, David. “The Borders and De Facto Size of Jerusalem in the Persian
Period.” Pages 147–66 in Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period. Edited by
Oded Lipschitz and Manfred Oeming. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006.
Vendler, Helen. Poems, Poets, Poetry. 2d edition. New York: Bedford; St. Martins, 2002.
Vitruvius. The Ten Books of Architecture. Translated by M. Morgan. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1914.
Viviers, Hendrik. “Eco-Delight in the Song of Songs.” Pages 143–54 in The Earth
Story in Wisdom Traditions. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001.
Wace, Alan J. B. “The Veil of Despoina.” AJA 38 (1934): 107–11.
Waldheim, Charles, ed. The Landscape Urbanism Reader. New York: Princeton
Architectural Press, 2006.
Walker, Winifred. All the Plants of the Bible. New York: Harper, 1957.
Walsh, Carey Ellen. The Fruit of the Vine: Viticulture in Ancient Israel. HSM 60. Winona
Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2000.
Walsh, Carey Ellen. Exquisite Desire: Religion, the Erotic, and the Song of Songs.
Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000.
Waltke, Bruce K., and M. O’Connor. An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax.
Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990.
Wasserman, Nathan. Style and Form in Old Babylonian Literary Texts. Leiden,
Boston: Brill; Styx, 2003.
Watson, Rebecca Sally. Chaos Uncreated: A Reassessment of the Theme of “Chaos” in the
Hebrew Bible. BZAW 341. Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2005.
Watson, W. G. E. “Fixed Pairs in Ugaritic and Isaiah.” VT 22 (1972): 460–68.
Weems, Renita. “Song of Songs.” NIB. Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2001.
Wellhausen, Julius. Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels. Berlin: G. Reimer, 1905.
Westenholz, Joan Goodnick. “Love Lyrics from the Ancient Near East.” Pages 2471–
84 in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, Volume 4. Edited by Jack M. Sasson.
New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1995.
Westenholz, Joan Goodnick, ed. Sacred Bounty Sacred Land: The Seven Species of the
Land of Israel. Jerusalem: Bible Lands Museum, 1998.
Westenholz, Joan Goodnick, and Aage Westenholz. “The Old Akkadian Love
Incantation MAD V 8.” Or 46 (1977): 198–219.
Wetzstein, J. G. “Die syrische Dreschtafel,” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 5 (1873): 270–302.
222 Bibliography
White, John Bradley. A Study of the Language of Love in the Song of Songs and Ancient
Egyptian Poetry. Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1978.
Wiggermann, F. A. M. “Scenes from the Shadow Side.” Pages 207– 30 in
Mesopotamian Poetic Language. Edited by H. L. J. Vanstiphout. Groningen,
Netherlands: Styx, 1996.
Wilkinson, Alix. The Garden in Ancient Egypt. London: Rubicon Press, 1998.
Wilkinson, T. J. Archaeological Landscapes of the Near East. Tucson: University of
Arizona Press, 2003.
Wilson-Wright, Aren M. “Love Conquers All: Song of Songs 8:6b–7a as a Reflex of
the Northwest Semitic Combat Myth.” JBL 134 (2015): 333–45.
Wilstach, Frank Jenners. A Dictionary of Similes. New edition, revised and enlarged.
Boston: Little, Brown, 1924.
Winter, Irene. “Aesthetics in Ancient Mesopotamian Art.” Pages 2569–80 in CANE,
Volume 4. Edited by Jack M. Sasson. New York: Scribner, 1995.
Winter, Irene. “Is There a South Syrian Style of Ivory Carving?” Pages 279–333 in On
Art in the Ancient Near East. Volume 1: Of the First Millennium b.c.e. CHANE 34.
Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2010.
Winter, Irene. On Art in the Ancient Near East, 2 volumes. CHANE 34. Leiden;
Boston: Brill, 2010.
Winter, Irene. “Tree(s) on the Mountain: Landscape and Territory on the Victory Stele
of Naram-Sîn of Agade.” Pages 109–31 in On Art in the Ancient Near East. Volume
2: From the Third Millennium b.c.e. CHANE 34. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2010.
Wirzba, Norman, ed. The Essential Agrarian Reader: The Future of Culture, Community,
and the Land. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2003.
Wirzba, Norman, ed. The Art of the Common-Place: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell
Berry. Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 2002.
Wiseman, D. J. “Mesopotamian Gardens.” Anatolian Studies 33 (1983): 137–44.
Wolosky, Shira. The Art of Poetry: How to Read a Poem. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2001.
Wright, George Ernest. The Old Testament against Its Environment. SBT
2. London: SCM Press, 1950.
Wright, Jacob L. “Warfare and Wanton Destruction: A Reexamination of Deuteronomy
20:19–20 in Relation to Ancient Siegecraft.” JBL 127 (2008): 423–58.
Yadin, Yigael. The Art of Warfare in Biblical Lands: In the Light of Archaeological Study.
Translated by M. Pearlman. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963.
Yadin, Yigael. The Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness.
Translated by Batya Rabin and Chaim Rabin. London: Oxford University
Press, 1962.
Zakovitch, Yair. Das Hohelied. HThKAT. Translated by Dafna Mach. Freiburg im
Breisgau: Herder, 2004.
Zayadine, F. “Recent Excavations on the Citadel of Amman.” Annual of the Department
of Antiquities 18 (1973): 17–35.
Bibliography 223
Zhang, Sarah. I, You, and the Word “God”: Finding Meaning in the Song of Songs.
Siphrut 20. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2016.
Zoh, Kyung-Jin. “Re-Inventing Gardens: A Study in Garden Theory.” Ph.D. disserta-
tion. University of Pennsylvania, 1994.
Zohary, Michael. Plants of the Bible: A Complete Handbook to All the Plants with 200
Full-Color Plates Taken in the Natural Habitat. London; New York: Cambridge

25
Index
agrarianism, 40–46, 53, 92 body, 36, 50, 56, 57, 67, 73, 74, 82, 84,
agriculture, 16, 25–54, 61, 62, 82, 91, 88, 91, 92, 93, 97, 99, 100, 113–114,
116, 133, 140 115, 118–150
allegory, 3–5, 82, 89, 120, 135 Boer, Roland, 57, 82
Ambrose, 56 Bonfadio, Jacopo, 61
Amos Budde, Karl, 5
4:13, 76
Anzu epic, 77 Čapek, Karel, 55, 73, 80
apostrophe, 76 care, ethics of, 27, 36, 37, 53–54, 74, 152
Aqhat epic, 30 Carmel, 120, 138, 143
Assurbanipal, 85 Cassiodorus, 4
Auerbach, Erich, 7 1 Chronicles
6:80, 130
Bahrani, Zainab, 64 6:81, 141
Barbiero, Gianni, 47, 68, 89 14:6, 103
Bath-Rabbim, 103, 138, 141, 142 18–20, 102
beauty, 37, 51, 102, 124–126, 133, 134, 135, 20:1, 111
137, 139, 147 2 Chronicles
bedroom, 93, 95, 98 27:26, 47
Bender, Barbara, 148 city, 88–117
Benjamin, Walter, 90, 115 ancient, 90–92, 96, 103, 116
Bernard of Clairvaux, 4 architecture of, 92, 96, 99,
Bernstein, Ellen, 21 102–104, 109
Berque, Augustin, 13, 14 gate, 99, 102, 103, 104, 108, 112
Berry, Wendell, 25, 41–46, 51, 52, 53 as labyrinth, 90, 115
Best, Sue, 114 personified as a woman, 104–107,
Black, Fiona, 82, 89, 124, 125, 146, 147, 148 108, 109, 112, 135
26
226 In d e x
city (contd.) 14:21, 76

theory of, 90–93 14:21–29, 10
wall, 96, 100, 101, 103, 104, 108, 109, 15:8, 11, 78
110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 117 22:4, 25
Clines, David J. A., 123 exoticism, 27, 62, 65, 67, 68, 69–72, 73,
Cole, Thomas, 121 74, 75, 83, 141
Corner, James, 21, 115 Exum, J. Cheryl, 5, 31, 56, 68, 119,
Cosgrove, Denis, 121 122–123, 124
Ezekiel
da Vinci, Leonardo, 92 13:4, 22
Damascus, 120, 141, 142, 143 16, 135
Daniel 16:3, 102
1:1, 111 16:8–23, 105
Danto, Arthur, 147 17:10, 30, 76
Davis, Ellen, 42, 43, 89, 116 17:24, 47
Delitzsch, Franz, 142 19:12, 76
descriptive poems, 74, 88, 101–103, 108, 25:4, 110
118–150 26:9, 102
desire, 33, 36, 40, 46, 50, 51, 62, 83, 87, 27:21, 27
95, 100, 117, 125, 151 27:26, 76
Deuteronomy 28:13, 61
1:7, 141 31:4–5, 47
3:5, 103 31:5, 74
11:24, 141 32:7–8, 27
20:10–12, 113 37:9, 76
20:12, 111 38:11, 103
20:19, 111 46:23, 110
32:10–14, 9 Ezra
32:32, 25 3:3, 102
Dobbs-Allsopp, F. W., 6, 106
Donald, James, 90 Falk, Marcia, 22
Dumuzi, 34, 39 fertility, 38, 40, 45, 51, 63, 80,
96, 140
Ecclesiastes 1:6, 76 field, 9, 12, 31, 39, 47, 51, 94, 97, 116
ecology, 1, 21, 91, 114–115, 116–117 food, 28, 36, 42, 51, 53, 61, 62,
Egypt, 38, 39, 57, 67, 72, 86, 91, 105, 80–83, 84–85
107, 111, 112, 124, 144 Foster, Karen Polinger, 69
gardens of, 62, 63, 70–71, 73 Fox, Michael, 68
Ein-Gedi, 3, 120, 141
ekphrasis, 67, 83 garden, 55–87
Esther 1:5, 64 aesthetics, 61, 63, 66, 70, 83
Exodus biblical, 60, 61, 63, 67
10:5, 47 Egyptian (see Egypt)

27
Index 227
fantasy, 68–69, 74 Hagedorn, Anselm, 82, 142

gardener, 60, 73, 74, 82 Hebrews
Mesopotamian (see Mesopotamia) 12:22–23, 135
Ras Shamra (see Ugarit) Heshbon, 141–142
and royal ideology, 63, 64, 86 hinnēh, 19, 122–123, 124, 125, 190n18
as sexual metaphor, 56, 74 Hosea
in the Song of Songs, 55–56, 65–67 2:21–22, 105
theory of, 59–65, 78 4:5, 105
gaze, 121, 122–126, 128, 136, 138, 141, 142, 13:5, 76
145–150 house, of mother, 95, 96
gazelle, 18–19, 38, 39, 47, 95, 101, 129
gender, 15, 19, 37–40, 88, 100, 101, 104, Inanna, 34, 39
106, 114, 123, 135, 148 Isaiah
Genesis 1:8, 105
1:2, 76 1:29, 61
2:7, 76 5:1–7, 30
2:9, 61 5:2, 48, 102
2:15, 60 5:6, 30
2:16, 61 16:8, 25, 74
3:1, 61 21:16–17, 27
3:8, 76 22:9–11, 113
3:24, 67 23:12, 105
4, 31, 47 26:16–18, 105
15:18, 141 27:3, 30
24:65, 127 27:8, 76
25:16, 110 29:3, 111
26:19, 78 33:18, 102
31:38–41, 32 34–35, 10
38:14, 127 36:15–16, 113
38:19, 127 37:22, 135
41:1, 142 41:11, 30
41:48, 47 45:24, 30
Gerleman, Gillis, 68 47:1–2, 135
Gezer inscription, 30 47:1–3, 105
Gordis, Robert, 112 47:2, 127
Gorringe, T. J., 93 47:3, 127
Greene, Roland, 118 48:21, 78
Grossberg, Daniel, 2, 21 52:1–2, 135
Gruen, Victor, 114 54:4–8, 107
54:11–12, 107
Habakkuk 55:12, 47
1:7, 102 60:7, 27
3:17, 25 61:11, 61
28
228 In d e x
Isaiah (contd.) 38:24, 76

66:7–11, 105, 107 38–41, 10
Ishtar, 34, 128 39:19–25, 10
39:20–21, 102
Jeremiah Joel
2:10, 27 2:10, 27
3:19–20, 105 Joshua
4:28, 27 1:4, 141
4:31, 105 2:9, 102
6:2, 135 9:15, 113
6:22–23, 105 11:19, 113
7:20, 47 12:24, 135
8:28, 27 13:15–23, 141
10:3–9, 139 17:3, 135
17:8, 74 21:38, 130
17:13, 78 21:39, 141
18:7, 76 Judges
21:4, 111 4–5, 7–8
21:9, 111 5:20–22, 8
26:18, 47 5:28, 136
29:5, 61 6:3–6, 31
29:28, 61 9:27, 47
31:12, 61 9:52, 102
32:2, 111 14:18, 39
37:5, 111 15:3–5, 31
39:1–2, 112 16:4, 22
39:4, 63, 67 16:27, 29
46:11–19, 105 19, 146
48:18, 105 19:22, 100
49, 27 20:3, 100
49:28–29, 27
50:42, 105 Keel, Othmar, 56
51:33, 105 Kelle, Brad, 106
52:4–7, 112 1 Kings
52:7, 63, 67 4:13, 103
Jerusalem, 3, 4, 42, 88, 89, 90, 92, 4:32–33, 10
105–107, 110, 112, 116, 120, 134, 135 6:36, 110
daughters of, 27, 33–34, 43, 95 7:12, 110
Job 14:17, 135
12:7–9, 10 15:6, 135
24:6, 47 15:16, 135
36:28, 78 15:27, 111

29
Index 229
16:17, 111, 135 15:13, 78

16:23, 135 25:3–4, 25, 30
18:45, 27 25:31, 47
21:1–16, 63 25:34, 47
2 Kings Linafelt, Tod, 7, 11
3:5, 31 Lopez, Barry, 149
6:24–25, 111 Love Lyrics of Nabû and Tašmetu, 57, 130
9:17, 102 lyric, 152
16:5, 111 interiority, 7–8
17:5, 111 landscape as a feature of biblical lyric
17:5–6, 112 style, 7–12
17:9, 102 readings, history of
18:9, 111, 112 interpretation, 5–6
18:31–32, 113 song as lyric, 6–7
21:18, 63
21:26, 63 Maier, Christl, 105
24:11, 111 map, 16, 91, 118–120, 141, 144, 146,
25:1–4, 112 148–150
25:4, 67 Meredith, Christopher, 15, 21, 63, 64,
Kingsmill, Edmée, 134 89, 90, 115
Mesopotamia, 39, 41, 57, 77, 85, 91, 107,
Lachish, 127 127, 128
Lament for Ur, 106 city laments of, 106, 107
Lamentations gardens of, 62, 67, 69–70, 85–86
1:1, 135 Message of Lu-dingira to His
2:8, 105 Mother, 130
2:15, 135 metaphor, 16, 20, 35–37, 53, 56–59, 74,
5:18, 22 93, 100, 104–107, 108, 109, 112, 113,
landscape, 1–24, 48, 55, 77, 83, 92, 96, 120, 129
113–117, 119–122, 129, 145–150 Meyers, Carol, 103, 104
definition of, 14 Micah
theory, 12–16, 35, 59–63, 113–115, 119–122 3:12, 47
urbanism, 113–117 7, 104
Landy, Francis, 5, 81, 85, 86, 89, 140 7:14, 130
Lebanon, 79, 128 military, 31, 101–104, 105–107, 108–109,
Lee, Li-Young, 88 111–113, 116, 117
Lefebvre, Henri, 15, 91 Miller, Mara, 60
Leopold, Aldo, 44 Mills, Mary, 91, 104
Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 151 Müller, Hans-Peter, 53
Leviticus Mulvey, Laura, 123
14:5–6, 78 Munro, Jill, 6
14:50–52, 78 Murphy, Roland, 59
230
230 In d e x
Nahum Psalm
3:12, 104 23:4, 32
Nash, Catherine, 124 48:3, 135
nature, 2, 10, 18, 43, 61, 62, 67, 152 63:11, 22
-culture dichotomy, 5, 21, 47, 48, 79, 65:13–14, 9
89, 114, 151 69:25, 110
“second nature,” 25 80:12, 74
“third nature,” 59, 61, 75, 83 80:14, 29
Nehemiah 102:4, 30
3:25–27, 131 104:15, 26
3:35, 22 107:37, 47
5:11, 25 120:5, 27
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 84 147:18, 78
Nissinen, Martti, 12, 131 148, 9
Numbers
19:17, 78 Ramat Raḥel, 67, 71–72
21:21–25, 141 Rashi, 4
26:33, 135 repetition, 33, 50, 66, 79, 94, 95, 98,
27:1, 135 99, 132, 133
31:10, 110 Revelation
32:1, 130 21:2–22:5, 135
36:11, 135 Robert, André, and Jacques Tournay,
120, 134, 148
O’Connor, Michael Patrick, 90 Rūmī, Ibn al-, 118
Origen, 4 Ruth, 38
2:2, 47
parallelism, 33, 47, 49, 83, 95, 98 2:14, 29
pastoral, 52–53, 152
Paul, Shalom, 57 1 Samuel
Picasso, Pablo, 146, 147 1:9, 29
place, 15–16, 35, 60 8:14, 25
Pollan, Michael, 69 17, 102
Pollio, Marcus Vitruvius, 92 17:34, 32
pomegranate, 48, 66, 68 17:49, 32
Pope, Alexander, 59–60 18:5–7, 102
Pope, Marvin, 31, 109, 120, 142 23:8, 111
Proverbs 2 Samuel
25:23, 79 5:7, 131
30:25, 10 5:9, 131
31:6, 47 11:1, 111
31:16, 28 14:30, 116

231
Index 231
Sauer, Carl, 13 3:1, 7, 93, 94

Schwarz, Rudolf, 92 3:1–2, 98
shepherding, 31–35, 36–37 3:1–5, 88, 93, 94–98, 137
siege, 101, 107–108, 110, 111, 112, 113, 117 3:2, 7, 93, 94
Soja, Edward, 15, 91, 92, 98 3:3, 7, 95, 122
Song of Deborah, 8, 136 3:4, 7, 25, 26, 97
Song of Songs 3:5, 2, 3, 7, 25, 47
1:1, 11, 28 3:6, 2, 79
1:2, 28, 51, 82, 85 3:9, 3, 78
1:4, 16, 43, 51 3:10, 3, 7
1:5, 3, 16, 27, 33, 43 3:11, 26, 122
1:5–8, 26–37 4:1, 123, 129, 133, 134
1:6, 2, 16, 25, 26, 27, 28, 35, 54, 122 4:1–2, 25
1:7, 7, 27, 31, 33, 34, 36 4:1–6, 101
1:7–8, 2, 25, 31, 110 4:1–7, 74, 118, 122, 126–132
1:8, 16, 27, 33, 37, 38, 43 4:2, 129, 133
1:9, 2, 17 4:3, 133
1:10, 128 4:4, 88, 102, 128
1:12, 43 4:5, 2, 37, 129, 133, 140
1:13, 2 4:6, 2, 145
1:14, 2, 3, 25, 120, 141 4:7, 135
1:15, 2, 134 4:8, 3, 23, 32, 58, 78, 79, 129
1:16, 17 4:9, 58, 109, 123, 128
1:17, 2, 43, 52 4:10, 51, 58, 82, 85, 109
2:1, 2, 3, 37, 129 4:11, 3, 58, 78, 79, 82, 85, 128
2:2, 2, 37, 129 4:12, 55, 58, 62, 67, 77, 109
2:3, 2, 32, 82, 85, 110 4:12–5:1, 2, 17, 55, 68, 74
2:4, 7, 25, 51 4:12–15, 65–66
2:5, 2, 7, 85 4:13, 25, 68, 82, 83
2:6, 18 4:13–15, 56, 62
2:7, 2, 3, 7, 18, 25, 47 4:14, 2, 68, 79
2:8–9, 2, 18 4:15, 58, 62, 67, 77, 78, 79
2:8–17, 16–24 4:16, 75, 81, 82, 83
2:9, 128 4:16–5:1, 62
2:10–13, 17 5:1, 2, 43, 51, 58, 81, 82, 83, 85, 109
2:12, 122 5:2, 51, 58, 99, 101, 109, 112
2:14, 2, 122, 128, 145 5:2–3, 93
2:15, 2, 22, 25, 29, 36, 110 5:2–8, 88, 93, 98–101, 117, 137
2:16, 2, 37, 129 5:3, 97, 98
2:16–17, 31 5:4, 98, 99
2:17, 17 5:4–5, 51
23
232 In d e x
Song of Songs (contd.) 7:10, 51, 82, 85, 97

5:5, 2, 98, 99, 112 7:11, 50
5:5–6, 51 7:11–12, 25
5:6, 7, 98, 99, 112 7:11–14, 46–52
5:7, 23, 88, 93, 98, 114 7:12, 2, 16, 25, 36, 49, 50, 54, 112
5:8, 3, 7, 99, 101 7:13, 2, 25, 48, 49, 51, 85, 98, 122
5:9, 33, 43 7:14, 49, 50, 51
5:10–16, 74, 122, 123, 138 8:1, 26, 109
5:13, 2, 88 8:1–2, 16
5:15, 3, 78 8:2, 25, 26, 51, 85
5:16, 3, 82 8:4, 3, 7
6:1, 33, 43 8:5, 2, 26, 32, 79, 98
6:1–3, 110 8:6, 7, 86
6:2, 2, 37, 129, 133 8:7, 7, 43
6:2–3, 31 8:8–10, 88, 109–113
6:3, 2, 37, 129 8:9, 111, 114
6:4, 3, 88, 102, 120, 133 8:9–10, 88
6:4–7, 74, 118, 122, 132–137 8:10, 88
6:4–9, 101 8:11, 25, 43
6:5, 120, 123, 129, 133, 134 8:12, 25, 43
6:5–6, 25 8:13, 2
6:6, 129, 133 8:14, 2, 11, 145
6:7, 127, 133 history of interpretation, 3–6
6:8–10, 135 soundplay, 8, 28, 66, 76, 79, 132
6:9, 26, 43, 122, 133, 136 space, 15, 16, 21–22, 69, 91–92, 95, 115
6:9–10, 43 Stewart, Susan, 11, 81, 86, 147
6:10, 134 Stilgoe, John, 12
6:11, 2, 31, 122
6:13, 122 Targum Song of Songs, 3–4, 56
7:1, 128 Teresa of Avila, 85
7:1–5, 122 Theodoret, 4
7:1–7, 74, 118, 145 Thöne, Sophie, 15, 89
7:2, 25, 85, 129 Tiglath-Pileser III, 110
7:2–7, 101, 137–145 Tilley, Christopher, 35
7:3, 2 Tirzah, 3, 88, 120, 134, 135
7:4, 103, 120, 129, 140 tower of David, 131, 135
7:5, 3, 78, 88, 120, 141, 143 Tuan, Yi-Fu, 1–2, 15, 16, 60, 63, 64,
7:6, 7 118, 140
7:7–8, 129
7:8, 36 Ugarit, 30, 40, 57, 67, 71, 77
7:9, 2, 85 urban theory. See city, theory of

23
Index 233
veil, 125, 127–128, 132, 137, 139 woman-as-landscape, 38–40, 49, 50,

vineyard, 16, 22, 27–31, 35–36, 38, 43, 56, 118–119, 143, 145, 151
47–49, 53 wordplay, 18, 30, 47, 49–50, 143
Viviers, Hendrik, 47 Wright, G. E., 1
vulnerability, 29, 36, 53, 88, 101, 107,
108, 109, 113, 116, 117 Yadin, Yigael, 111
waṣf. See descriptive poems Zakkur inscription, 111

watchmen, 23, 88, 94, 95, 96, 97, Zakovitch, Yair, 141
100, 114, 122 Zechariah
water, 77–78 2:6, 76
wildness, 65, 75–83, 86, 87, 133 14:8, 78
wind, 76–77
wine, 16, 29, 36, 40, 51, 53, 83, 85
Winter, Irene, 128
woman at the window, 19, 136, 137
234

235
236

James, Elaine T - Landscapes of The Song of Songs - Poetry and Place-Oxford University Press (2017)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

James, Elaine T - Landscapes of The Song of Songs - Poetry and Place-Oxford University Press (2017)

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

James, Elaine T - Landscapes of The Song of Songs - Poetry and Place-Oxford University Press (2017)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Landscapes of the Song of Songs

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

© Oxford University Press 2017

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

You must not circulate this work in any other form

CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress

1. Introduction: Landscape and Lyric 1

Theological Seminary and the Twin Cities Bible Colloquium in Minnesota

BibInt Biblical Interpretation

JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

UNP Ugaritic Narrative Poetry. Edited by Simon B. Parker. WAW

humans in natural landscapes, and draws parallels between those land-

Landscape in the Song’s History

lily of the valleys”) takes the geographical specificity of Sharon to signify

natural imagery in favor of spiritual and tropological meanings directed

hyperbolic, and fanciful.30 Jill Munro, who attends to natural features

Lyric Poetry and Landscape

in contrast to biblical narrative. As Tod Linafelt has cogently argued, if bib-

Biblical poetic style—​especially when taken in contrast to biblical narrative

The stars fought from heaven,

He found him in a desert land,

The poem gives a “bird’s-​eye view” of the howling wilderness waste—​

The wild pastures drip

This particular poem even seems self-​conscious of minimizing the role

But ask the beasts, and they will teach you

At the blast of your nostrils the waters piled up

Describing experiences in landscapes, it seems, is one of the unique

Made Things: Landscape in Theory

Landscape as experience takes into account the degree to which the

The texts offer a window into “landscape as experience”: how humans

O that you were like a brother to me

I would lead you, I would bring you

Reading for Landscape in Song 2:8–â•‰17

Arise, my dear, my beauty, and come.

Here we see clearly the poem’s grounding in a material reality of land.

The voice of my lover! Here! he is coming

initial frame is complemented by a second frame: the young man’s speech

This structural embeddedness that I have noted—​the voice of the land

is a re-​performance of the textualities by which spaces comes into being.

A number of questions present themselves: Who is speaking? Who is

The Agrarian Landscape

The poem plays with shifting landscapes. It is composed structurally of

The Materiality of the Vineyard

Dark I am, but14 lovely,

process of “retrospective patterning.”17 Through the temporal experience

Do not look at me because I am dark,18

The Materiality of Shepherding

This easy transition is a feature of the Song’s poetic style, as well as a

is compared to a king’s leisure on his couch (1:12) and to resting in the

His (melodramatic) complaint points to the potential difficulties faced

If you do not know for yourself,

The Daughters of Jerusalem, who have been listening to the young

to pasture. One reason the domestication of flocks is so appealing as part

He leads his cattle, one after another,

The salient aspect here is the keen perceptiveness of the shepherd to

Agriculture and Metaphor

for lovemaking, as scholars have often noted.43 This is elaborated through-

grazing animal. “Tell me … where do you pasture?” imagines the young

Go out in the tracks of the flock

Biblical poetic style—especially when taken in contrast to biblical narrative

The poem gives a “bird’s-eye view” of the howling wilderness waste—

This particular poem even seems self-conscious of minimizing the role

This structural embeddedness that I have noted—the voice of the land

is a re-performance of the textualities by which spaces comes into being.

The fields and vineyards—and the plants described therein—denote spaces

claims about human love in one-sentence statements, then qualifies them

The love-fruits give off their scent,

Song. Hans-Peter Müller, for example, emphasizes the Song as a form

The canal-water came flowing down from above to the gardens: the

Thutmosis III (ca. 1479–1425 BCE) at Karnak render in exceptional detail

as a specialized profession is well-known throughout the ancient Near

love!” (5:1). Intoxication represents not merely satiation, but over-fulfill-