Lamentations, Song of Songs by Wilma Bailey

Author:Wilma Bailey [Bailey, Wilma Ann; Bucher, Christina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8361-9932-1
Publisher: Herald Press

1:7–8 A Dialogue about Her Lover’s Whereabouts

The love poems in this book have several primary settings: the royal court, the vineyard, and the pasture where shepherds graze their flocks. Thus far, the poetic dialogues have alluded to the royal court (with the references to Solomon in 1:4–5) and to the vineyard (1:6). The motif of shepherding a flock characterizes 1:7–8. The interconnected themes of presence and absence and searching and finding run throughout the book. The motif of searching for the beloved appears in this unit. Here the woman asks where her lover can be found. The reply, which comes most likely from her female companions, carries a tone of reproach. With their reply, the friends suggest that she should know the whereabouts of her lover, and if she doesn’t know, she should search for him.

It appears that the young woman continues to speak in 1:7; however, the identity of the speaker, or speakers, is not absolutely clear in 1:8. It seems likely that the women (the daughters of Jerusalem) respond (although we cannot absolutely rule out the possibility that verses 7–8 are a playful interchange between the man and woman). First, we observe that elsewhere in the book it is the women who address the young woman with the expression most beautiful of women (5:9; 6:1). This suggests that in 1:8 it is the women who speak, addressing the young woman as most beautiful of women. Second, the relative clause translated whom I love occurs here and again in 3:1–5, where the woman searches for her absent lover. Even though in 1:7 the young woman appears to address her lover directly (lit. tell me, whom I love, where you shepherd, where you cause to rest at midday), the use of the phrase whom I love suggests that he is absent in this poem, just as he is in 3:1–5. The woman speaks to her lover as if he could hear her, but he cannot.

Instead of NIV’s you whom I love in verse 7 some translations have you whom my soul loves (RSV, NRSV, NASB). The Hebrew nepeš, which appears in verse 7, is often translated by the English word “soul.” It is a difficult word to translate into English because it has many different meanings in the Hebrew Bible. It can refer to the inner person, but in some contexts, when used with the possessive pronoun “my,” it becomes a poetic synonym for the pronoun “I.” The NIV translators assume that this is the case here and translate this phrase simply, Tell me, you whom I love. The noun nepeš refers frequently to the “throat” and often occurs in contexts related to thirst, longing, and desire, which makes it especially appropriate in this context. We might translate the Hebrew as Tell me, you whom I fervently love in order to emphasize the desire for the beloved that underlies the choice to use nepeš in this expression. To end the poetic unit, the friends reply, perhaps somewhat mockingly, that if the young woman has lost her lover, she should simply let the sheep lead her to him.

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