Message of the Song of Songs
The Lyrics Of Love
This item is in stock and will be dispatched within 48 hours.
2 units left in stock.
Paperback / softback
£12.99
QTY
Publisher: Inter-Varsity Press
ISBN: 9781789744439
Number of Pages: 272
Published: 17/08/2023
Width: 13.8 cm
Height: 21.6 cm
In unrivalled poetic language, the Song of Songs explores the whole range of emotions experienced by its two lovers as they work out their commitment to each other, consummated in marriage. The Song's powerful and unabashed affirmation of love, loyalty and earthy sexuality is urgently relevant today, when commercialised eroticism is in, and permanency in relationships is out.
Tom Gledhill argues that beauty, intimacy and sexual consummation are to be celebrated, but not as ends in themselves. Rather, the point to another world, another dimension, only occasionally and dimly perceived. God has chose the love of a man and a woman as an image of his own love of his people.
Contents
General preface ix
Author's preface xi
Chief abbreviations xiv
Select bibliography xv
An orientation to the Song 1
Part 1: The Song as a whole
1. An overview of the text of the Song of Songs 25
2. A literal translation of the Song 32
3. A free paraphrase of the Song 47
Part 2: An exposition of the Song
4. Title and attribution (1:1) 77 5. The first cycle: passionate longings (1:2 - 2:7) 80
6. The second cycle: springtime and showers (2:8 - 3:5) 119
7. The third cycle: the lovers' royal wedding (3:6 - 5:1) 135
8. The fourth cycle: lost and found (5:2 - 6:3) 164
9. The fifth cycle: beauty kindles desire (6:4 - 8:4) 177
10. The sixth cycle: the security of love (8:5-14) 205
For further thought 234