by
Damien F. Mackey
Given King Solomon’s special love for “Pharaoh’s daughter”,
it would figure that she was the same as the beautiful “Shunammite” of the Song
of Solomon (6:13).
Victor Sasson has come to this same conclusion, that the
“Pharaoh’s daughter” was the desirable lady of the Song of Solomon (“King
Solomon and the Dark Lady in the Song of Songs”, Vetus Testamentum, Vol. 39, Fasc. 4, Oct.,
1989, pp. 407-414). Sasson describes her as being “Dark”, but I have already
argued that this was due to her exposure to the sun, as she herself attested
(Song 1:6), and not to her ethnicity – and were Egyptian women necessarily
darker than Israelite ones, anyway?
On. p. 413, though,
Sasson will make the point that: “In the Song the lady’s explanation … is best
interpreted … to mean that her skin complexion was not black but that it was to
a great extent the result of too much exposure to the sun. ...”.
Sasson begins on pp.
1-2:
One of the
mysteries in the Song of Songs that have roused my curiosity for some time is the identity - or, rather, the poetic identity - of the lady who calls
herself šěḥôrâ and šěḥarḥōret in i 5-6. Increasingly, I
have come to conclude that the woman in question was Pharaoh's daughter whom Solomon loved and took for a wife. Since the Song has elicited so much amount
of published discussion over the ages,
I was not greatly surprised when I discovered that this theory was already put forward a long time ago by Theodore of
Mopsuestia (5th century C.E.). ….
…
The Bible credits Solomon with being a great lover of women. The following verses from the books of Kings deserve to be quoted and examined. ….
Now King
Solomon loved many foreign women: the
daughter of Pharaoh, and Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian,
and Hittite women. ….
Solomon clung to these in love.
Revised Standard Version, 1 Kgs xi 1-2). ….
What is of significance here is that, while other foreign women whom Solomon loved are lumped together,
Pharaoh's daughter is specially singled out.
The importance of Pharaoh's daughter in the personal history of
Solomon is indicated by the fact that
she is mentioned four times in 1 Kings
(iii 1, vii 8, ix 24, xi 1-2).
In 1 Kgs iii 1 we are told
of Solomon's marriage to her.
The part of the verse that is of
relevance here is: wybyʼh ʼl ‘yr
dwd, “He brought her to the City of David”. (New English Bible). The significant element is, more specifically, the word wybyʼh. In the Song i 4 we read: "The King
has brought me (hbyʼ ny) into
his chambers”. (RSV). The occurrence of the verb hbyʼ cannot be merely coincidental. In fact, the verb is one of a number of literary
links to the story of Solomon’s love for Pharaoh’s daughter (cf Song ii 4).
‘yr dwd mentioned in 1 Kings iii 1 is, of course, Jerusalem. In the Song the lady frequently addresses bnwt
yrwšlm ("the daughters of Jerusalem") and they, in turn, address
her or respond to her. This may be interpreted may
be interpreted to mean that the woman
was not a native of. Jerusalem. She appears to have been a
foreigner, probably Pharaoh’s daughter whom Solomon brought to ‘yr dwd (Jerusalem). ….
The “Shunammite”
I have
multi-identified her:
Abishag: “… a beautiful young woman … a Shunammite” (I
Kings 1:3).
Tamar: “Now David’s
son Absalom had a beautiful sister named Tamar” (2 Samuel 13:1).
Shunammite: “… fairest among women” (Song of Solomon 1:8).
Queen of Sheba: “King Solomon
gave the queen of Sheba all she desired and asked for …” (I Kings 10:13).
Pharaoh’s Daughter: “Solomon made an alliance with
Pharaoh king of Egypt and married his daughter” (I Kings 3:1).
Hatshepsut: Whose name means “foremost of noble
women”.
Israel and Egypt
were now united as one, with vast cultural exchanges occurring between the two.
Victor
Sasson, whose article deserves to be read in its entirety, will make another
point most relevant I think (from a geographical point of view) to my view that
the Shunammite would become, for a period of time, the Queen of (Beer)sheba, of
the southern kingdom of Geshur fronting on Egypt (p. 409, my emphasis):
In the
Song iii 6 we read:
Who is this coming
from the wilderness,
like a column of
smoke,
perfumed with
myrrh and frankincense,
with all the fragrant
powders of the merchant? ….
The
word midbār in the present context appears
to be the major wilderness in the southern
part of Palestine adjoining Egypt. Pharaoh’s daughter [the Queen of Sheba at
this stage] would then be poetically visualized as emerging from the desert …
on her way to the fragrant pastures of Palestine, to meet her lover, Solomon.
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