The Song of Songs: Textual Commentary and Theological Reflections

by Lawrence R. Farley

Fr Lawrence Farley brings his exegetical skills to bear on the Song of Songs, one of the shortest but richest and most difficult books of the Bible. This balanced, verse-by-verse commentary examines the text on two main levels: both as a beautiful image of the love and the bond shared between man and woman in marriage, and as an icon of the great mystery toward which human marriage points: Christ and the Church (Eph 5.32).

144 pages, Paperback

Published February 1, 2018

About the author

Father Lawrence, born in 1954, completed his M. Div. at Wycliffe College, Toronto School of Theology in 1979. After 6 years in pastoral ministry with the Anglican Church of Canada, he entered the Orthodox Church and completed a Certificate program at St. Tikhon’s Seminary in Pennsylvania and was ordained to the priesthood in 1986. Since 1987 he has served as the pastor St. Herman of Alaska Church in Langley BC, a missionary parish of the OCA (Archdiocese of Canada) founded by local laity, which has since grown to attain regular parish status and purchased its own building. Several priests, deacons, and lay members of new missions have emerged from the membership of St. Herman’s. Fr. Lawrence is the author of the Orthodox Bible Study Companion Series from Conciliar Press, and of a number of other books and articles, and appears in regular weekday podcasts on Ancient Faith Radio. He lives in Surrey B.C. with his family.

Reviews

[Mimi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Earlier this year, I read and found greatly valuable Father Lawrence's https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/175712.The_Gospel_of_John I thought that I'd find the same brilliance and help in this exploration of The Song of Songs. Perhaps it is due to the fact that the Song is less clear history than allegorical poetry, or that the breaks in the book did not align so wonderfully with chapter breaks, but it was not as profitable for me.

[Saint Katherine BookstoreVA · Rating 5 out of 5]

Song of Songs holds its own in an established tradition of exegesis on this love poem of the Old Testament. While giving a nod to patristic commentary, Fr. Farley freely puts forward his own thoughts, both critical and pastoral, as well as attempting to make the ancient text speak to the difficulties of our day concerning gender and marriage:

This ancient collection of erotic love poetry, canonized as Scripture by both synagogue and Church, contains truths we need to hear now more and ever, especially truths about gender. The biblical book was never simply a collection of erotic love poetry, but always much, much more. (11)

Farley takes the Scripture in sections, writing first of the plain meaning of the text – a poem of lovers admiring, wooing, losing one another, their reunion and consummated desire – never shying away from explaining the words that convey the depths and heights of male/female desire in the elevated images of the ancient Near East. He then does a reflection on the same section from a pastoral, spiritual point-of-view – that of the Church as the Bride of Christ and the longing of an individual soul seeking an intimate experience of God. He often effectively links the two meanings:

The woman in the Song wants to take her beloved to a place far from prying eyes, for she shares with him something that he gives to no one else but her. It is the same with the Church as the bride of Christ, for in the Eucharist she shares a life, a joy, and a gift of which the world outside knows nothing. (120)

Farley helps us understand the difficulties of translation, clarifying Hebrew words and Septuagint translations. He frequently references the thoughts of Church Fathers such as Gregory of Nyssa.
It is in laying out the “much, much more” mentioned above that Fr. Farley gets in the weeds. He opens and closes the book with strong statements on the modern political left on gender and marriage and the disaster that these opinions are bringing down on society. The book jacket itself speaks of Farley’s “vision of the biblical foundation for marriage.” His book in fact fails to fully address this point and its opening and closing feints against modernity. The spirit in the scripture itself overcomes the mire, as Farley shows us (and well) the more soaring revelations of human love and of the Church as the Bride of Christ, both visions replete with beauty, meaning, and importance.