Song  of Solomon 2:4  “He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me [was] love.”

 

I remember back in the eighties we would sing a little song using this verse. We would sing it over and over and everyone would put their arms over their heads and form a little tent to symbolize a banner. Everyone but me.  You see I was apparently the only one who did not have the foggiest idea what this passage of Scripture was all about.  I’ve preached in it, I have even written a couple studies on it that are posted on this blog, but I was still unsettled with my conclusions. I just did not feel this verse is only saying that God takes us to a table at a banquet and there is a banner over us that says love.

 

Some people wonder if I really do spend a minimum of four hours a day and sometimes up to six to eight hours a day studying the Word of God, meditating on the word and in prayer. If you wonder how you can spend so much time in the Word of God then take a couple words from a verse like this, trace them back to their Semitic roots, examine the word as it is used throughout Scripture and in extra Biblical literature such as the Talmud and the Rabbah. Then go through you archive of religious and Archaeological journals to get some historical and cultural background and I guarantee if you sit down at five o’clock and in the blink of an eye it will 10:00 or 11:00 and you will go to bed  thinking about it all. Then you will get up at 4:00 in the morning and spend another three hours on it and you will still not understand the passage so you meet with your study partner and explain all your research and in five minutes she tells you what it all means.

 

Ok, so just let me share with you the results of my research on this in as few words as possible.  In the Hebrew the banqueting house is byith hayain which is literally translated as house of wine.  Well, a banquet is where wine is served so logically it must be a banquet hall or house. Hey, it works for the majority of translations, I’ve no problem with it, except I just have that nagging feeling in my spirit that there is more, much more. Let’s leave it as a house of wine or a wine chamber.  Byith can mean house, dwelling, storage area, bedroom, warehouse, chamber etc. etc.  The trick is to figure out which one of those words fit this passage.

 

We would not translate this as house of wine because why would Solomon take his beloved to a wine cellar, if not to make a little whoopee?  I read something interesting in one of my Archaeological journals where they recently dug up a wine chamber located next to a banquet hall. If the Shulamite woman meant a banquet hall way not say that in Hebrew, why emphasize the wine part?  Well, this article went on to say that up until the Greek empire wine was basically a drink served only to royalty. The analyzed the remains of old wine jars and found that the contents of the wine was nothing like our modern wine.  Now I don’t drink wine so I am sort of winging it here, but from what this article said the wine served in ancient times was filled with all sorts of herbs and spices and made from various types of fruit, not just grapes.  The ancients had  little understanding of the body chemistry and thus the euphoric feeling they felt after drinking wine was attributed to either magic or dappling in something that belonged to the gods.  Thus, if you wanted to really be a holy man, you would get bombed out of your mind and if it happened to be the goddess Aphrodite that you worshipped, well whoopee, if you get my carnal drift. Suffice it to say in Solomon’s time wine was used only for ceremonial purposes and was the drink of royalty.  When the Shulamite woman said that the king brought her to his wine chamber she was declaring that he was making her a princess conferring royalty on her.  It gives her a chance to say: “Take that you ladies in waiting. I get to drink the wine specifically chosen by the king himself. That shows I am his main woman around here.”

 

Yet, that is not what she is saying.  All our translations say: “and his banner…” Ah the wonders of the Classical Hebrew because I could also translate that conjunction as: “but his banner…”  it is only the context that will tell you which conjunction to use and I say the context calls for a but not an and. That changes the whole thing.  The word banner in Hebrew is dagal.  Everywhere I found this word throughout the Semitic languages it was a reference to a military standard or flag. This flag would often carry the name of the general, the king or the nation. It was a rallying point for the army and, in fact, would sometimes direct an army by the various movements of this standard or banner.  The banner would declare where your loyalties lie, it would declare what or who you were willing to fight and die for.

 

From here I will defer to my study partner who claims to know more about how a woman thinks than I do, just because she is a woman. Anyway, she did point out to me what this likely means is that when the Shulamite woman said that her beloved takes her to the house of wine, she is saying that he is going to confer royalty upon her, just a mere peasant woman. Think Cinderella.  A poor dirt farming woman engaged to a poor, struggling shepherd is suddenly beloved by the king of the most powerful and richest kingdom in the world and he is offering her the position at his side as his wife.  That poor slob of a shepherd didn’t stand a chance.

 

Yet what this Shulamite woman is saying, “Forget the royalty, the riches, the fame, I carry the banner of his love.  It is his love that I will fight and die for. I love this old boy not because he is a king or rich, I just love him… not because.”

 

You know I can’t help but think that the reason the translators put an and and not a but in that passage is because they just can’t help but think, “Come on, she’s marrying the guy for his money and power.”  But you know what?  This is supposed to be a picture of our relationship with God,  Too many of us say just that: “He brought me to the wine house to bestow royalty upon me, Yippee and, by the way He also loves me.”  How many of us can say, I love Him, royalty or no royalty, rich or poor.  The banner I serve under does not say: “Because I escape hell” “Because I get heaven”  or “because he is rich and will make me rich.”   “My banner has only one word – love. I serve and will fight and die for His love.”

 

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