Rashi on Song of Songs

Rashi begins his commentary on the Song of Songs by quoting a Talmudic principle:

^{רש"י שיר השירים הקדמה} אחת דבר אלהים, שתים זו שמענו^[1] (תהלים סב:יב) – מקרא אחד יוצא לכמה טעמים,

^{Rashi, Song of Songs, introduction} “One thing God has spoken; two things have we heard” (Psalms 62:12) – “One verse can have (lit. goes out to) a number of meanings” (b. Sanhedrin 34a).

The context for this quote is the Talmud’s discussion of a principle that if two judges vote to acquit, and they cite as their source two different biblical verses, one is discounted:

^{בבלי סנהדרין לד. [כת"י קרלסרוהה רוכלין 2]} מנא הני מילי? אמ[ר] אביי: דאמ[ר] קרא (תהלים סב:יב): "'אחת דיבר אלהים שתים זו שמענו'—מקרא אחד יוצ[א] לכמה טעמים ואין טעם [אחד] יוצא לכמה מקראות." ^[2]

^{b. San 34a} From where do we learn this? Abaye said: “For the verse states (Ps 62:12): ‘One thing God has spoken; two things have we heard’—one verse can have many meanings, but one meaning cannot be derived from many verses.”

In other words, the same halakha cannot be derived from two different verses, though two different halakhot can be derived from one verse. Rashi develops this idea further, claiming that a verse can be multivalent, holding more than one meaning. Rashi continues:

וסוף דבר אין לך מקרא יוצא מידי (פשוטו ו)משמעו.^[3]

But in the end, a biblical verse does not leave the realm of its (peshat and) literal sense (mashma).

This second quote appears several times in the Talmud, using the word peshat, which Rashi replaces here the closely related term mashma (literal sense). By combining the two principles, Rashi modified the vague talmudic notion of scriptural multivalence into a well-defined hierarchy of two distinct layers of meaning. The peshat of a verse must remain, even when an extra midrashic meaning is ascribed to it.^[4]

This two-pronged approach to exegesis characterizes Rashi’s Bible commentaries in general, which make heavy use of midrash while at the same time expressing a commitment to peshat.^[5] Rashi’s Song of Songs commentary demonstrates this dual objective clearly, and he explains his thinking in his uniquely detailed programmatic preface to the book, which is unusual in Ashkenazic commentaries, though it was the norm among those written by Jews in Muslim lands.^[6]

Allegory Must Fit with the Peshat

Rashi continues with a discussion of how sometimes scripture is written as an allegory (dugma):^[7] 

ואף על פי שדברו הנביאים דבריהם בדוגמא, צריך ליישב הדוגמא על אופנה ועל סדרה, כמו שהמקראות סדורין זה אחר זה.

Although the prophets uttered their words through allegory, one must fit (leyashev; lit. “settle”) the allegory on its basis and sequence, just as the verses are arranged one after the other.

For Rashi, verses can have aggadic (i.e., midrashic, symbolic rather than literal) meaning, but reading these verses together as a literary unit must paint a complete picture. He clarifies this requirement in his critique of other aggadic commentaries because they do not adhere to the sequence of the text, but rather interpret words and verses in isolation:

ראיתי לספר הזה כמה מדרשי אגדה: יש סדורים כל הספר במדרש אחד, ויש מפוזרים בכמה ספרי אגדה מקראות לבדם, ואינן מתיישבין על לשון המקרא וסדר המקראות.

I have seen many aggadic midrashim [i.e., interpretations] on this book. There are those arranged in one book of midrash, and there are those that are dispersed in several aggadic books on individual verses. But they do not conform to (“are not settled upon”; mityashevim ‘al) the language of Scripture and the sequence of the verses.

In contrast, Rashi commits himself to explicating the “literal” sense (mashma‘) through philological analysis, upon which he “settles” the allegorical sense—drawing from midrashic sources:

ואמרתי בלבי לתפוס משמע המקראות ליישב ביאורם על הסדר, והמדרשות רבותינו קבעום מדרש ומדרש במקומו.

As for me, I decided to grasp the literal sense (mashma‘) of the verses [and] to settle their interpretation according to the sequence; and as for the midrashim, our Rabbis have arranged them, each one in its place.^[8]

Barry Walfish is correct in saying that for Rashi, “peshat is the handmaiden to the allegory, which drives the agenda of the commentary.”^[9] Yet there is much truth to Zachary Breiterman’s remark:

At no point does Rashi forget the scents and smells and look and feel of the sensual peshat. The strong link between peshat and allegory is beauty. This allows religious allegory in the commentary to meet up with the natural beauty evoked in the biblical Song of Songs, its pungent visual feel and fragrance.^[10]

In short, Rashi did not use the midrash to elucidate the peshat or “solve problems” in the text.^[11] Rather, he uses peshat as a baseline by which to create his own commentary in the spirit of the midrash—mostly (but not entirely) selected from rabbinic sources but in keeping with the literary structure of the text.

What Is the Allegory in the Song?

In keeping with his dual approach, Rashi systematically interprets the Song of Songs on two levels: first, he explains the human love story that emerges from a literal reading, and upon that, he builds his allegorical reading that depicts the mutual love expressed by God and the Jewish people.

Rashi not only interprets individual words and phrases on the peshat level; he also explains how the entire love story works from a literary perspective—its dramatis personae, and how they emerge in the allegory:

אומר אני: שראה שלמה ברוח הקדש שעתידין ישראל לגלות גולה אחר גולה, חורבן אחר חורבן, ולהתאונן בגלות זו על כבודם הראשון, ולזכור חבה ראשונה אשר היו סגלה מכל העמים...

It is my opinion that Solomon [the Song of Song’s author] saw with the Holy Spirit that Israel will be exiled, exile after exile, destruction after destruction, and will mourn in this exile over their original glory, and will remember the first love [of God toward them], which made them His chosen among all nations…

ויזכירו את חסדיו, ואת מעלם אשר מעלו, ואת הטובות אשר אמר לתת להם באחרית הימים.

And they will recall His kindness and their transgression, and the good things that He promised to bestow upon them at the end of days.

This allegorical reading of the Song is, of course, drawn from midrashic sources. But Rashi differs from the midrashic collections he knew in that he creates a single, linear allegorical reading that follows a clear historical storyline. As he remarks in his commentary on Song of Songs:

^{רש"י שיר השירים ב:ז} יש מדרשי אגדה רבים ואינם מתיישבין על סדר הדברים, כי רואה אני שנתנבא שלמה ודבר על יציאת מצרים ומתן תורה והמשכן וביאת הארץ ובית הבחירה וגלות בבל ובית שיני וחורבנו.

^{Rashi Song 2:7} There are many midrashic aggadot, but they are not settled upon (mityashevim ‘al) the sequence of the words (seder ha-devarim), for I maintain that Solomon prophesied and spoke about the exodus from Egypt, the giving of the Torah, the construction of the Tabernacle, entry into the Land, the Temple, the Babylonian exile, the Second Temple and its destruction.^[12]

Even more dramatically, from a methodological perspective, Rashi goes on in his introduction to show how his interpretation  is based on the human love story that emerges from his peshat reading:

וייסד הספר הזה ברוח הקדש, בלשון אשה צרורה אלמנות חיות,⁠ משתוקקת על בעלה, מתרפקת על דודה,⁠ מזכרת אהבת נעוריה אליו,⁠ גם דודה, צר לו בצרתה, ומזכיר חסדי נעוריה, ונוי יפייה, וכשרון פעלה, אשר נקשר עמה באהבה עזה, להודיעה... כי עוד היא אשתו והוא אישה.⁠

And [Solomon] composed (yissad) this book with the Holy Spirit in the language of a woman stuck in living widowhood, longing for her husband, pining over her lover, recalling to him the love of their youth, and admitting her sin. Likewise, her lover suffers over her pain, and recalls the goodness of her youth and her beauty, and the excellence of her deeds, through which he was tied to her in powerful love, to say to them that… she is still his wife and he is her husband, who will ultimately return to her.

As Sarah Kamin has shown, Rashi developed an innovative and sophisticated reading of the Song of Songs on the literal level, not as an expression of youthful love (as others interpreted it), but rather as a depiction of a love relationship in crisis, told by a woman separated from her husband in “living widowhood,”^[13] recalling, with her now-distant husband, the days of their youthful love, looking forward to their reunification.

Having established this literal reading, Rashi could assert that King Solomon’s intention was to foretell the crisis of the Jewish people in exile in his own time, seemingly abandoned by God, recalling their ancient glory with the divine presence in their midst in the Holy Land, longing for salvation and reunification with God.^[14] Following this framework, Rashi interprets the episodes of the Song either about the present, i.e., the woman in “living widowhood,” or recollecting her past, her youthful love.

Remembering Spring/Remembering the Exodus

An example of how Rashi envisions the woman thinking back to better times is beautifully illustrated in Rashi’s commentary on a description by the beloved of an invitation extended by her lover:

^{שיר השירים ב:י} עָנָה דוֹדִי וְאָמַר לִי קוּמִי לָךְ רַעְיָתִי יָפָתִי וּלְכִי לָךְ. ^ב:יא כִּי הִנֵּה הסתו [הַסְּתָיו] עָבָר הַגֶּשֶׁם חָלַף הָלַךְ לוֹ. ^ב:יב הַנִּצָּנִים נִרְאוּ בָאָרֶץ עֵת הַזָּמִיר הִגִּיעַ וְקוֹל הַתּוֹר נִשְׁמַע בְּאַרְצֵנוּ. ^ב:יג הַתְּאֵנָה חָנְטָה פַגֶּיהָ וְהַגְּפָנִים סְמָדַר נָתְנוּ רֵיחַ קוּמִי (לכי) [לָךְ] רַעְיָתִי יָפָתִי וּלְכִי לָךְ.

^{Song 2:10} My beloved answered and said to me, “Arise, my darling; my fair one, come away! ^2:11 For now the winter is past, the rains are over and gone. ^2:12 The blossoms have appeared in the land, the time of pruning has come; the song of the turtledove is heard in our land. ^2:13 The green figs form on the fig tree; the vines in blossom give off fragrance. Arise, my darling; my fair one, come away!”

Rashi first reads this section continuously—on the peshat level—as part of the love story within the Song of Songs, vividly explaining each element: the pretty flowers, the pleasant fragrances, and cheerful sounds that emerge in the springtime, all of which beckon the lovers to unite. Then he summarizes:

^{רש"י שיר השירים ב:יג} כל העיניין הזה לפי פשוטו: לשון חבת פתוי שבחור מרצה את ארוסתו לילך אחריו, כך עשה לי דודי.

^{Rashi Song 2:13} This entire matter, according to its peshat, is an expression of loving enticement that a young man uses to gain favor with his betrothed to accompany him. This is what my beloved did for me.

Only at this point does Rashi return to the beginning of these four verses to interpret each allegorically, as a reference to the exodus from Egypt, which took place in the springtime:

ענה דודי – על ידי משה. ואמר לי – על ידי אהרן.

“My beloved answered”—through Moses. “And said to me”—through Aaron.

קומי לך – זרזי עצמך: וישאלו איש מאת רעהו (שמות יא:ב).

“Arise”—hurry up (Exod 11:2) “and borrow each man from his fellow...”.

כי הנה הסתיו עבר – אילו ארבע מאות שנה דילגתים....

“For the winter has passed”—these are the four hundred years….

Understanding this springtime love poem as a reference to the springtime exodus from Egypt is a clear example of what Rashi means by “the prophets uttered their words through allegory (dugma).”

Rashi uses the rabbinic notion that Solomon wrote the Song of Songs aided by the “Holy Spirit” to justify his allegorical-midrashic interpretation and to coordinate it with his novel explication of peshuto shel miqra, namely, that the peshat is closely linked with midrash, which is “settled” upon the language and sequence of the text.

For Rashi, then, his allegorical reading of the Song of Songs is not simply one of many possible interpretations that emerge from the text. Rather, it is the single correct construal of King Solomon’s prophetic intention through the Holy Spirit.^[15]

Rashi’s Polemic with Christian Exegesis

As Sarah Kamin argued, Rashi’s commentary on the Song of Songs is an implicit rebuttal of the Christian reading of the Song as an expression of the love between Christ and his “bride,” who is the Church.^[16] This reading, put forth powerfully by the early Church Father Origen, was adopted by a number of important medieval Latin interpreters, including Gregory the Great (sixth century) and Haimo of Auxerre (d. 855), whose commentaries on the Song of Songs circulated widely in the tenth and eleventh centuries.

It is thus plausible that Rashi would have known—and thus could have been responding to—the (Origen-influenced) Christian reading of the Song of Songs in his claim that the Song of Songs is about God and Israel, not Christ and the Church. Moreover, Rashi apparently saw it as his role to take up the mantle and offer a response. As Kamin writes:

Rashi found a way, anchored in ‘the peshat of Scripture’ as he conceived it, to express the distress of his generation and to address it. In this way, Rashi met the strict methodological demands he placed upon himself as an exegete and fulfilled his obligations as the spiritual leader of his generation.^[17]

In his commentary on וְיִהְיוּ נָא שָׁדַיִךְ כְּאֶשְׁכְּלוֹת הַגֶּפֶן “May your breasts be like clusters of grapes” (Song 7:9,) Rashi takes these words—which he construes as an exhortation by God to Israel—as a directive to Jewish spiritual leaders of all generations, including his own:

^{רש"י שיר השירים ז:ט} ועתה הַאְמִיתִֿי את דברי, שלא תתפתי אחר האומות, ויהיו הטובים והחכמים שביך עומדים באומנם להשיב דברים למפתים אותך, שילמדו מהם הקטנים שבהם.

^{Rashi Song 7:9} And now, prove my words true, that you will not be seduced by other nations. The good and wise among you must stand firm in their faith to rebut those who entice you, so that the uneducated among the people should learn from them.

Rashi’s commentary on this verse appears to be self-reflective, encapsulating what the sage of Troyes regarded as the central mission of rabbinic leadership in his day: to equip the Jewish people with an education that would enable them to “stand firm” in their Jewish faith in the face of Christian missionizing efforts (“those who entice you”).^[18]

Why the New Interest in Peshuto Shel Miqra?

Returning to our initial point: Rashi is critical of the traditional midrashic interpretations of the Song of Songs and set up a new standard of adherence to peshuto shel miqra through a judicious selection of midrashic interpretations that fit the language and sequence of the text. The question we must ask, though, is why? Why did Rashi, a product of the talmudically oriented rabbinic academies of Maintz and Worms, take the unexpected step of rejecting the venerated rabbinic tradition of midrashic interpretation to engage in what was essentially a new type of exegesis? Part of the answer has to do with how Christians read the Song in particular and the Bible in general.

The pervasive Christian reading of the Song of Songs as the marriage of Christ and the Church is an illustration of a larger phenomenon: Christological exegesis of the Old Testament as a prefiguration of the New Testament, or, more broadly, the history of Christ and the Church. In Rashi’s time, a new methodology emerged, as manifested in the Psalms commentary of Saint Bruno the Carthusian, who used a grammatical method to critically select from among the Patristic Christological readings those that correspond to the sequence of the text.

Eleazar Touitou asked the question:

What happened at the end of the 11th century which stimulated the change in the educational curriculum of Franco-German Jewry? What… new needs… [did] Rashi’s commentary… meet… that were not satisfied by the existing curriculum?^[19] 

Bruno’s commentary suggests an answer. It is conceivable that Bruno’s novel exegetical method came to Rashi’s attention, in which case he would have understood the threat that it could pose to Jews equipped solely with midrashic interpretation—which does not adhere to the language or sequence of the text. This could have motivated him to develop a new and more cogent methodology to demonstrate the superiority of the Jewish reading of Scripture.

In the Song of Songs this is especially important, since Rashi’s interpretation—modeled fundamentally after the midrashic reading—is allegorical, just like the Christological reading. Since neither reading really reflects the plain sense of the text, how can Rashi claim that the Jewish reading is the true intention of Scripture, and not simply an artificial projection onto the text, any more than the Christological reading?

The answer, according to Rashi, is that his reading is anchored in the literal sense of the text, the peshat. And thus, Rashi’s peshat-conscious method is a powerful weapon in his arsenal that he used to defend the Jewish faith, one that is especially evident in his Song of Songs commentary.^[20]