volume 15, issue 2, 2023, pages 130-150

DOI: https://doi.org/10.64438/sbsBITE7026
Published online: 2023-12-01
Published in print: 2023-12-30

Abstract: Although the Song of Songs and Lamentations belong to the same subcategory of the Hebrew Bible, namely Ketuvim, and specifically Megilloth, the stark difference between the genre and Sitz im Leben of the respective books seem to preclude the possibility of reciprocal comparison. Nevertheless, a synoptic view of the unique description of the beloved male in the Song of Songs (5,9-16 MT) and the bereavement of despoiled Jerusalem in the first part of the fourth elegy in Lamentations (4,1-10 MT) reveals a very conspicuous lexical affinity between the two pericopes. Inspired and guided by the criteria of intertextuality proposed by Manfred Pfister, the present paper is an attempt to enter into the scholarly debate on this topic by providing a text-oriented view on the intertextual dialogue between the two biblical passages. The quantitative and qualitative assessment of the detected lexical contacts converges towards a proposal concerning the possible direction of dependence and outlines further exegetical implications, namely the possibility of the intrinsic allegorical message within the text.