WORD STUDY JESUS LOVES ME עלמות אחבוכ Song of Solomon 1:3: Therefore do the virgins love thee. Gilda Radner told a story in her book It s Always Something about a family in her neighborhood who had a dog that was pregnant. A few weeks before the dog was to deliver her puppies she was hit by a car. The family rushed their pet to the veterinarian who said that the puppies were ok but their dog s rear legs were paralyzed. She would never walk normally again. The family took their dog home and would you believe that within a few days that dog learned to walk all over again. She would pull herself forward with her two front paw and then swing her rear body up, pull herself forward with her two front paws and swing her rear body up. In this way she got around. Well, her puppies were born, five perfectly normal and healthy puppies. She feed them, cared for them, weened them and when they learned to walk they all walked just like her. We live in a scientific society where there is only one answer
to 2+2 and therefore only one interpretation to Scripture. We find our teachers who teach the interpretation we like and then just shut our minds to anything else and walk in lock step with our favorite teachers and walk just like they do even copying all their flaws. Yet to say that the Song of Solomon has only one interpretation is to say that Jonathan Swift s Gulliver s Travels or George Orwell s Animal Farm are just simple children stories with no deeper meanings. Allegory or satire flows through all great literature in history, including the Bible. Song of Solomon 1:3 is a very good example of multiple interpretation. Sure the virgins love Solomon, it fit s the context. But something else also fit s the context, if we see more than just a love story between Solomon and the Shulamite woman. Our strict scientific approach to the Bible and the Hebrew language will forbid us from seeing something very important in this verse. Now I am going to do something with the Classical Hebrew that would be absolutely forbidden in most Bible Colleges and Seminaries, but would be perfectly acceptable within the rabbinical teachings. In fact this is not my own revelation, I am drawing this from the Jewish Talmud. Taking the phrase Therefore do the virgins love thee we find the word for virgin to be alamoth. This is spelled Aleph, Lamed, Mem, Vav and Taw. In the original Classical Hebrew, in which this was written, there were no vowels and no separations between words. If you were to try to read the phrase Therefore do the virgins love thee in English without the vowels it would appear like this: thrfrdthbrgnslbth. There were no commas, spaces, period etc. Now if you were to try and
figure this phrase out by inserting whatever vowels you deem to be correct, you might come up with an entirely different phrase. In a way this would explain why there are great disputes as we try to translate the Hebrew Bible into modern English with all our relatively modern Hebrew understandings. The first Hebrew grammar book to be written is only a few hundred years old and there has been revisions since that time. So let s take this word for virgin or alamoth. Who is to say that it should not be ala moth? Does that little space between the a and m make a difference? It does indeed for now it becomes not virgin but over death. So what is rendered in all our modern Christian translations as Therefore do the virgins love thee now becomes, according to the Jewish sages: Therefore does the one who conqueror s death love thee. So which rendering is correct? Contextually, it would have to be rendered as virgin. Yet within the marvelous work of God in giving us His Word, why would He not give us a double meaning? I mean why not a play on words as we find in so many works of great literature? I mean, really, are you trying to tell me God is not as clever a writer as Jonathan Swift or George Orwell? So let s say we have a deeper, secondary meaning which might talk about the One who conquerors death. I know of only one person who could make that rendering viable and that is of course Jesus Christ. This is not an isolated example of the multiple meanings behind words. Such word plays are found throughout the Old Testament. I am constantly finding pictures and references to Jesus buried in many Old Testament words like this. To say that we should assume both interpretations or renderings are correct would fly in the face of our
scientific and modern linguistical culture which teaches only one answer to 2+2. But the Bible was not written for a scientific modern linguistical culture. Besides, what is so bad about searching for a dual or multiple meaning for one s own pleasure, like doing a crossword puzzle. Now if I were to slap maybe a few dozen of these word plays together and selfpublish them in a book without a peer review to make some money and wow the brethren, then maybe I have crossed a line. But posting it on my website from which I get no monetary gain and just present it for you to kick around, no harm done. Besides what would be so wrong with a dual or multiple interpretation? I mean, seriously this probably is just a coincidence that there is this hidden meaning behind the word alamoth which could be rendered ala moth giving a hidden, secret reference to Jesus. That would require the work of an absolute genius. Especially when the writer makes a reference to an event that has yet to take place. Could such a writer of such skill exist? Considering the author, maybe it would be within the realm of possibility. But still, you won t find Chaim Bentorah publishing a book with all these little hidden secrets and double meanings. I mean I need to keep some sense of dignity. But you know, every time I run into one of these little play on words, secondary meanings or hidden meanings, I cannot help but think that when David penned the Psalms and was just about to use a certain word or letter the Holy Spirit whispered in David s ear: No use an Ayin rather than an Aleph some Bozo name named Chaim Bentorah will be around in 2015 AD and it will just drive him crazy. So you see, I am not falling for it. I do not come up with any new revelation. But you know if someone pulls out their KJV and points to a verse in the Old Testament and says: This is
what the Bible says you can t deny it. Well, what is to keep me from saying that a version two thousand years older that the KJV could also say not saying the KJV is wrong just pointing out that that there are other possibilities of what it could say and once more it probably says them all. So what do I conclude about Song of Solomon 1:3 which says the virgins love thee, but it also says: Therefore does the one who conqueror s death love thee or in modern English: Jesus loves me this I know? Putting it bluntly, I could care less whether the virgins loved Solomon or not. But I do care a great deal that the one who conquered death actually loves me. So for me personally, I am going to read it my way. I will read it my way, you read it your way, everybody happy.