route. song of songs Ecclesiastes. Esther Lamentations To modern readers, these five short books seem to pepper the Old Testament at random, like a handful of biblical vignettes. Wildly diverse in style and content, they seem to have little to do with each other or with the main flow of the biblical narrative.
However, they do share a few things in common. In the Hebrew arrangement of the Old Testament, they are grouped into a collection known as a megilloth, or five scrolls. in modern Judaism, they are read or sung in synagogues during various festivals and holidays in the Jewish calendar.
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At the same time, they are among the least read books of the bible, especially in Christian circles. they fly under the devotional radar and rarely appear in sermons. some biblical scholars find them puzzling or even embarrassing. at times its subject matter and interpretive challenges have led to questioning its place in the scriptural canon.
and yet there they are by the providence of god, a part of his inspired word that he has preserved through the centuries. They bring choice and savory morsels, some hot and some sweet, to the banquet of Bible truth. As such, they are worth knowing better and savoring as part of our spiritual diet.
ruth
ruth is read on shavuot, or pentecost, celebrating the wheat harvest and the entry of israel (and gentiles like ruth) into covenant with god.
Ruth, the best known of the five scrolls, is also one of the most compelling stories (and people) found in scripture. A young Moabite widow who had married into a Jewish family, Ruth expresses her fierce devotion to her mother-in-law Naomi, and to Naomi’s god, from the beginning:
don’t urge me to leave you or come back from following you. because where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. your people will be my people, and your god my god. where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. so be lord and add to me, if anything other than death separates me from you (ruth 1:16-17).
ruth’s faith empowers her to care for her bitter mother-in-law, even in the worst of circumstances. He leads her to marry Boaz and become an ancestor of King David and eventually Jesus the Messiah. In the end, the other women in the story characterize her as better for Naomi than seven sons.
The Book of Ruth is often described as a pastoral romance, not least because it is beautiful and dramatic. its dominant theme is goodness – from ruth to naomi, from boaz to ruth, from god to them all. Still, he posed a problem for some Jewish scholars by presenting an immigrant Moabite woman as the ancestor of David and Christ. And yet, in spite of everything, it offers a concrete representation of the heart of God towards widows and foreigners, and of his adoptive and redemptive love that cannot help but overflow towards others.
song of songs
The Song of Songs is read during Pesach, or Passover, recalling the Exodus from Egypt and the relationship between God and his people.
If there is one book in the Bible that throws commentators, whether Jewish or Christian, into tantrums, it is the Song of Songs. The book is notable for never mentioning God, as well as for its racy language about sexual desire between young King Solomon and his new bride. Older writers tend to reduce it to a symbol of the relationship between God and his people, or between Christ and his church, while ignoring all suggestive metaphors. one can almost feel the pages of his comments blush.
This approach, however, does little justice to the song’s evocative poetic imagery, with its gardens, fruits and spices, and its longings in the middle of the night. poetry should be allowed to sing with its own voice, as a resounding endorsement of sexuality as a beautiful gift from god.
At the same time, it is not a carte blanche for unrestrained sexual expression. the context is limited to the relationship between the bride and groom. this is underlined three times in the bride’s warning to her single female friends:
I conjure you, oh daughters of Jerusalem, not to provoke or arouse love until it pleases (song 8,4; cf. 2,7; 3,5).
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Without a doubt, the song of songs is also a metaphor of the love between God and his people, between Christ and his church. but this is not a cold, prosaic, almost platonic relationship, as some people of faith have imagined it. according to the song, it’s a bond marked by the highest possible levels of intimacy, passion, and delight.
ecclesiastes
Ecclesiastes is read during Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles, which symbolizes the ephemeral and transient nature of life on earth.
With its existential reflections on the meaning of life, or lack thereof, Ecclesiastes reflects a remarkably modern mindset. King Solomon, writing his memoirs as an old man, has done it all. he has explored all that life has to offer. he has lived wisely and foolishly, given himself to work and pleasure, ticked off various lists of worthwhile experiences.
your conclusion? from a strictly human perspective (life “under the sun”) everything is meaningless, a fleeting vapor without purpose. whether good or bad, they all die the same way, just like animals. there is nothing new or original in the world. all that has been will be again. And long after you’re gone, no one will remember you or anything you’ve done. lather, rinse, repeat.
Not the best of books, no doubt. and yet there are fragments of light in the existential gloom. everything has its time, and everything that is loved under heaven has its hour. enjoy the simple things, eating and drinking, family and work, as good gifts from god. And remember, God is in heaven, and you are not. The bottom line: fear God and keep his commandments, because that is the duty of mankind.
Beyond all this, Solomon also offers the key to grapple with the mystery of existence and to understand what drives the hopes, fears and longings of life in an uncertain world:
[god] has made everything beautiful in its time. Furthermore, he has put eternity in the heart of man, but he cannot know what God has done from beginning to end (Ecclesiastes 3:11).Humans are unique in all of creation. we appreciate beauty, ponder the meaning of life, and yearn for something beyond that is beyond our reach. In doing so, we demonstrate that we are not mindless flesh puppets, but divine image bearers, created by God with courage and purpose. like c.s. lewis argued:
creatures are not born with desires unless there is satisfaction for those desires. a baby is hungry: well, there is such a thing as food. a little duck wants to swim: well, there is water. men feel sexual desire: well, there is sex. if I find in myself a desire that no experience in this world can satisfy, the most likely explanation is that I was created for another world.
lamentations
lamentations is read on tisha b’av, the fast day for the destruction of the two temples by the Babylonians and the Romans.
unlike the dark reflections of ecclesiastes, the lamentations are an impassioned elegy, a dirge for the destruction of jerusalem. And in contrast to the vibrant bride of the Song of Songs, Jerusalem is personified as an abandoned widow bereft of her children who have been killed or sold into slavery.
The tone of the book is marked by unrelenting pain, punctuated by graphic descriptions of the horrors of a besieged city. children ask their mothers for bread, but instead are devoured by them for lack of food. but despite the somber subject matter, the lamentations are not simply a spontaneous outpouring of raw emotion. rather it is an ingenious set of five highly structured acrostic poems, the lines or stanzas of each poem beginning with successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet.
The author, Jeremiah, acknowledges that God’s just judgment has fallen on the city because of the persistent sin of the people. He acknowledges that God is the author of both welfare and calamity, and that the Babylonians are an instrument of judgment in his hands. he further calls for his punishment for his cruelty and disrespect for god and his people.
yet, at the literal and figurative heart of the book, the central poem asserts hard-earned hope in the midst of disaster:
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Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall! my soul continually remembers it and leans within me. but this I remember, and for this I have hope: the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never end; they are new every morning; great is your fidelity. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him” (Lamentations 3:19-24).
Sin and judgment are not popular topics today, neither in the church nor in the general culture. we tend to ignore them or allow them to drive us to despair. But Lamentations presents a third alternative, a life of repentance in light of God’s faithful and ever-present mercies. It resonates with the words God often says to sinful people when convicted of His holiness: “Fear not.”
esther
Esther is read on Purim, the festival instituted as a memorial to Esther and Mordecai saving the Jewish people from extermination.
along with ruth, esther is the only other book in the bible named after a woman. both books take the form of dramatic narratives with a strong female lead at the center.
but that’s where the similarities end. While Ruth is a pastoral romance set in the grain fields of rural Israel, Esther is a story of courtly intrigue set in the capital of Achaemenid Persia, one of the greatest land empires in history. both women are foreigners in a strange land, but the opposite of each other. Ruth is a Gentile who has joined Israel, while Esther is an exiled Jewess among the Gentiles. In particular, while Ruth is brimming with expressions of faith in God, Esther doesn’t mention God at all, the only biblical book (other than the Song of Songs) that doesn’t.
For this reason, esther’s place in the canon of scripture has been questioned more than any other book in the old testament. And yet God’s fingerprints are everywhere in this remarkable narrative. his hand is behind all the events: the chance encounters, the dinners, the exciting changes, orchestrating the liberation of his people and ensuring that his messiah finally comes into the world.
The closest the book comes to acknowledging divine agency is in Mordecai’s admonition to Esther, after she showed reluctance to appear before the king uninvited:
do not think that in the king’s palace you will escape more than all the other Jews. because if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews of another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. and who knows if for such an hour as this you have not come to the kingdom? (Esther 4:13-14)
That’s sage advice for all people of faith, at all times. We may not understand what is going on in the world, or even in our own lives, but we know that God is sovereign, working all things for the good of his people. he simply calls us to remain faithful and trust him.
conclusion
When approaching the bible, there is always the risk of creating a canon within the canon, of choosing favorite books while ignoring the rest as of secondary importance. there is also the opposite risk of homogenizing the writings, of treating every word of every book as if it had the same weight.
The five short, eclectic books that make up the megilloth challenge both perceptions. no one would suggest that they are at the center of the biblical narrative, but they are an essential part of it. its unconventional tone and content reveal angles and insights that push the boundaries of our theology. they are a reminder that truth and beauty don’t always come in the forms we expect or feel comfortable with.
at least, the five scrolls demonstrate that god is so much bigger than our conception of him, that he doesn’t fit neatly into our theological boxes. And they underscore the fact that God loves wonderful variety, and has woven it everywhere into his created order, even in his written word.
Indeed, these little books are like five colorful and diverse threads in the larger tapestry of divine revelation. They invite us to savor and enjoy their stories and their art, as well as the god they reveal, each in their own way. we honor the lord and feed our souls when we accept that invitation.
subby szterszky is the managing editor of focus on faith and culture, an electronic newsletter produced by focus on the family canada.
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