The secular reading of The Song of Songs identifies it not only as a great love poem, but indeed as an erotic poem. From its first passages it uses both frank and euphemistic language to describe the attraction between the two enamored speakers. This, of course, presents a problem for the allegorical religious reading. The sages and many scholars since have attempted to coax a more chaste meaning from the poem and they have done so by noting The Song's frequent references to the natural beauty of the land of Israel. If Shir Ha'Shirim is indeed a metaphor for the love between God and Israel, that love is depicted as no less intimate, exclusive and sacred than the love between a husband and wife.
I have decided to apply some of my own translations to this reading of The Song of Songs, as some of the older translations (as is typical) lose some of the meaning in their attempts to adhere to certain conventions. Most namely, there is a tendency in Hebrew to English translation to add verbs that are not present in the text to compensate for the difficulties of making English phrases out of Hebrew words in the past and future tenses. For example, the poem begins with a purely sensual line that is often translated, "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth" when in the Hebrew line there is no mention of the word "let" or "allow" or any other command verb. It is simply a future-tense version of the verb "to kiss". A more accurate translation is, "Would that his mouth kisses me- your adoration is better than wine".
This first line, excluding the title line, sets the tone for the rest of the poem. It is a luxurious piece that goes to great lengths to include multiple references to all kinds of finery. The lovers compare one another to wine, royal textiles, grand chariots and treasured spices. It almost feels like a precursor to a modern rapper bragging about how fine his girlfriend is. What's really interesting is that neither of the two loves in The Song of Songs are particularly wealthy. At best, they would be considered middle class. The male speaker is a shepherd and the female a worker in her family's vineyard. She even comments with some embarrassment about how dark her complexion is for having worked out in the sun all her life. For our purposes, I will be referring to the two speakers as Dodi (the man) and Rayati (the woman) from now on, as that is how they refer to one another.
At the beginning of the romance when Dodi and Rayati are first flirting, it is during a period of social awakening for Rayati. She has just been called into the company of the king, invited to "sit at his table" as the saying goes. It is never entirely clear whether this means Solomon has taken her as a concubine or not, though that always looms as a distinct possibility. As of the first chapter, things seem fairly innocent between the king and Rayati. Taken from her hard life as the last and least privileged child of her family and shown luxury, Rayati begins to want more for herself. She describes being forced through disrespect and malice to tend her brothers' vineyards and says, "But my own vineyard, I have not tended." This image of vineyards pops up elsewhere in the poem and is a clear symbol of personal prosperity, happiness and pleasure.
Rayati sits at the king's table, pondering her own fulfillment and how it relates to the young shepherd she calls Dodi. As she contemplates organizing a meeting with him she says, Nirdi natav rekho, "My spikenard (or possibly lavender) sent out its fragrance". The term Nird refers to a flower, most likely the spikenard, aka the muskroot, a plant that at that time would have been associated with India (it is not native to the Levant) and was used to make a perfume but also had some use as a prenatal health herb. It is very easy to read a sexual undertone in this line, especially since the lines that follow also more overtly reference body parts. For those looking for the religious reading, Dodi closes the chapter by referring to various features of the Israeli countryside as the couch and house he shares with Rayati. Plainly, if God and Israel are husband and wife, then the land itself is their home and bedchamber.