Clueless
Shir HaShirim, Song of Songs, chapter 2, verse 4: . . . " v'diglo alai ahavah, and his banner over me was love."
You're 58 years old, you've been married for almost 30 years, and it took you this long to figure out what that meant?!
Shira, you idiot!
[Blush.]
(In my defense, some translations are just plain fabricated: ". . . he looks at me with love." Huh? Even I know (now) that "diglo" ("his banner") is a noun, not a verb! Cowards! Censorship!
You're 58 years old, you've been married for almost 30 years, and it took you this long to figure out what that meant?!
Shira, you idiot!
[Blush.]
(In my defense, some translations are just plain fabricated: ". . . he looks at me with love." Huh? Even I know (now) that "diglo" ("his banner") is a noun, not a verb! Cowards! Censorship!
posted by Shira Salamone at 5:59 PM
2 Comments:
OK, maybe I'm the one who's slow and/or naive, but what is there to blush about in this one? "Degel" in Hebrew generally implies "proclamation" or "sign", so I took this poetic line to simply mean that her lover proclaims his love for her. Am I missing something between the lines?
But don't get me started on the Artscroll version of Shir HaShirim that censors our all literal meaning, and thus all beauty, from the text! Just because it's a metaphor doesn't mean it can't have many layers of meaning.
Well, um, let's just say it occurred to me that the writer might have a different kind of sign of love in, er, mind.
A few months ago, I checked out a couple of Chamesh Megillot (Five "Scrolls") books with an eye toward possibly recommending them for purchase by my local shul. I think one was the Jewish Publication Society edition, and the other was ArtScroll. Well, the Artscroll had larger print, which would have been nice for my congregation of seniors, but when I saw their so-called "translation" of Shir HaShirim, I was fit to be tied. Talk about censoring! Back on the shelf it went.
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