The new Eve

The Song of Songs - with its poetry - attests to the role of women in the plan of salvation: transmitting the Divine Blessing of Love to all generations.
"Under the apple tree I woke you up ... put me like a seal on your heart ... because love is as strong as death ..." (Ct 8,5). The apple tree, according to biblical tradition , is the tree of life, of love and it is there that the woman offers her being to the man of her heart, asking him to place her "as a seal on the heart": the seal, a sign of total belonging, in this case belonging love. The beloved desires to be guarded and defended, her love for her is as strong as death. Love and death: the two irresistible forces that collide to the end when death is overcome as proclaimed; “Her flames are flames of fire, a divine flare! A flame of God (8,6), (the only verse in which we find the divine name, albeit in the abbreviated form: Yah), the God of love who frees, as he freed his people from Egypt by guiding them to the Promised Land through the waters of the Red Sea and making them victorious over the mighty peoples. God frees his creature to fill her with his love for him. It seems that the author means that human love carries within itself - according to the original plan of the Creator - a divine force against death. Love is "the sacrament of life".

If we deepen the meaning of this ancient poem within the First Testament, we discover that it is in dialogue with the first pages of the Bible that begins with the images of the desert and the garden in whose center is the tree of life, of the knowledge of good and evil, which tradition has identified with the apple tree. With the dust of the desert man was created, then transported to the garden together with his woman, flesh of his flesh. A vital collaboration undermined by sin.
In the Song of Songs we find the woman "leaning" on the man: a sign that love has begun to flourish again in the human couple previously divided by sin. Under the apple tree the first man had "opened his eyes" (Gen 3: 7) after the woman had offered him the fruit and now, still under an apple tree, the woman offers the man the fruit of life, because his gesture is inspired by the "flame of the Lord" and not by the rebellion against him. Love goes back to being what the Lord dreamed of for man and woman.

The message of the Canticle is a message of hope and life, addressed to all couples. The love placed by the Creator in the heart of man and woman has been compromised by the lie. From that moment the couple looks for each other, but does not meet: "I sought him, but I did not find him" (3,1): they have unlearned the art of love hindered by the barrier of fears.
The promise of a divine flame, entrusted to the couple as a sword drawn against the usual adversary, will offer the possibility of dominating this fear and rediscovering that communion, the source of mutual self-giving. The new Eve relives the art of love and in the couple there is once again perfect reciprocity: "My beloved is mine and I belong to her" (3,1). It is love blessed by Sir.


Anna Maria Del Prete
NP October 2021