The Hidden Lessons of The Song of Solomon

On an unexpected literary journey, moving from teenage confusion to timeless truths

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

Breasts like pomegranates-that’s how it begins.

It was maybe 2010-a reasonable guess, going back memory lane-when I stumbled on that phrase during a Latin exam in school. No. Surely, it can’t be? Flipping through my dictionary, mentally willing a different answer into being, I found, once more, the entries for ‘breasts’ and ‘pomegranates’.

We’d translated lofty bits of philosophy until then, grand defences (Cicero v Catilina) and extracts from mythology (The Metamorphoses). I’d banked on something sufficiently epic and heroic, feverishly brushing up on my Latin grammar and vocabulary, translating passages from stories that appeared likely to become exam material.

But that midday, I was left blindsided, quite literally stranded amidst stanzas, that, in my muddled mind, equated sheep with love and breasts. (Please excuse me for butchering one of the most profound examples of love poetry in world literature-those first few minutes, I really wasn’t thinking clearly!).

This was my first encounter with the Song of Solomon.

A book from the Old Testament of the Bible, the poem celebrates the love and longing an…