A truly sublime means of communication is the way by which the human person can give itself to another in love. This is a further point to be made regarding the theology of the body in view of the drive by various entities in this area. Contemporary culture considers the human body as separate from the whole human person and, thus, as an object that can be possessed and out of which one is free to extract whatever one wants. Christianity, on the other hand, never ceases to view the body as of intrinsic value.
The human body was created to be "for", to be given! Biblical anthropology does not acknowledge the concept of the person having a body, but rather "it is a body", or worded better: the body is the visible expression of the whole person. Viewed in this way, the biblical vision of the human person becomes a vision of relationships: that of mankind with the world, and that of a human person with humanity as a whole. Within such a perspective, the beauty and value of the human body - both female and male - is a living image of the beauty of all creation.
In this biblical theological framework, the Song of Songs - a Jewish love-song, probably written in the third century BCE - becomes a eulogy of human love. It is only in chapter 7 (the Song of Songs has only eight chapters) that we come to know the name of the bride. Here the bridegroom sings rapturously of the beauty of 10 parts of her body. The author does not mention other parts, even though they have much to do with the language of love, and which had already been mentioned earlier in the poem. No mention is made of the colour of her skin, though it had been mentioned in 1, 5-6, nor her facial features (1, 10; 2, 6; 4, 3), her arms (2, 6), her lips (4, 3), or her teeth (4, 2.6). The author intentionally mentions only those 10 parts in 7, 1-9, because 10 is the number of completeness in the Bible.
The Hebrew language makes use of the letters of the alphabet to signify numbers. The number 10 is written with the letter Yud. But the same letter begins the Holy Name of Yahweh, the name of the City of Jerusalem, the name of the People of Israel, and even the word "Hebrew". To say "beauty", one says yòfi, which too begins with the letter Yud! As can be clearly seen above, whatever is most dear to any Jew begins with the letter Yud, the letter for the number 10, thus completing the picture of perfection.
The bride's name is Shûlammît, a pluri-symbolic name. Being a Semitic language, Hebrew is based on consonants. The consonants that make up this name are the same consonants of the name Shlomo (Song 3, 7). And King Solomon was Israel's most eminent representative at the height of his wisdom, when Israel was at the peak of its political, religious, economic and social glory.
The bride's name carries also the same consonants of Shalôm, complete well-being, peace - the most precious gift that God can give to his people, and indeed to every human person.
The lovers' beauty is compared to the beauty of nature, since it forms part of a more eminent beauty, namely that of the whole of creation, as it is depicted at the beginning of the Book of Genesis. This implies that when the Bible wants to speak about any kind of beauty, it always does so with reference to the precise vision of the world and its relationship with the rest of creation that is found in Genesis 1. There God himself looked upon beauty as tôb me'od, superbly good.
A very interesting note that has to do with relationships and that dots the whole Song is a note we find in 7, 11: "I am my beloved's, and his desire is for me" (2, 16; 6, 3). The Hebrew word for "desire" (texû'ah) immediately reminds us of the text in Genesis 3, 16 and 4, 7: "your desire shall be for your husband, but he shall rule over you". In their love since the Fall, the woman desires her husband, but because of disorderly passion, as a consequence of sin, their relationship turns into submission of the woman on the part of the male. On the contrary, in the Song, the woman's desire for the man is no more a submissive attraction but one of communion and true reciprocal love and communion.
Fr Sciberras lectures New Testament studies at the University of Malta.