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Monday, October 21, 2013

little evangelical kids singing R-rated lyrics in Sunday School: "and his banner over me is love"

Ever heard this song?: 
Uh, read this:
He hath brought me to the banqueting table, and his banner over me is love.Prepare yourself for little old ladies with pitchforks and rolling pins to protest these truths, after all they teach little children to sing this verse without any idea what it really means.  This is one of those verses that has been purposely mistranslated.  No, that isn’t quite the word for it, misconstrued?  Inaccurate?  Fiddled with?  Misrepresented?  Oh pick one!  Literally it is explicit, “He brought me to his wine house (we would say cellar), and covered me with his standard”, which is a euphemism for sexual relations.  So without getting too explicit, He brings her to where the wine is kept and they have a VERY good time.  linkThe Song of Songs: Life in the Harem of God by Laurel F Anthenat
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From RP Nettlehorst:,
",,,and his banner over me is love." (2:1-4)
The passage begins with the woman speaking. Oddly the first two lines have been used in a Christian hymn which applied them to Jesus. Why would a song do that? It comes from the popular, though obviously mistaken, view that the Song of Songs is the story of Jesus’ love for the church. Even so, it remains very peculiar that the popular hymn would misapply the words, since it rather obvious that it is the woman who is describing herself here.
Unsurprisingly, I do not like that song at all. It annoys me. The woman is a rose, and a lily, here. The man then reacts agreeably, telling her that she is very special, more wonderful than any of the other women in his life. Remember, again, that the content of this poem is taking place in a polygamous setting.
Notice how this whole section transitions very nicely from what we looked at in chapter one:the two lovers are on the grass, beneath the cedar and fir (or alternatively, the woman is the grass and the man is the cedar covering her with his shade). After he responds to her self-description as a rose or lily, she speaks up again in the last six lines of this section. Notice that just as he recognizes her as special among all the women in his life, she too, is not inexperienced or naive: she finds him to be special compared to all the other men she knows.
And then she returns to double entendres: she delights to sit in his shade, his fruit is sweet to her taste, he has “taken me to his banquet table.” It is possible, I think, that she is talking about oral sex.
The passage also maintains the theme of the covering of the cedar and fir, of course, which has heavy sexual overtones. And then this segment ends with “his banner over me is love.” Of course that phrase shows up in another Christian song. I don’t think it really fits with the song so well, since it seems to be in the context of this woman giving her lover a blow job. I doubt that’s the picture the old Christian song was going for.
- link

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And  Carrie Miles

‘I’m my beloved’s and he is mine – his banner over me is love,’
‘He sits me at his banqueting table – the banner of the Lord is love.’
These are phrases from the Song of Songs.
But as you read the Song itself, you will find it difficult to understand how it can be only about God’s love for his people. It is just too sensual. For example, in all my years at camp, we never sang another of the Song’s phrases, ‘Your breasts are like two fawns that are twins– his banner over me is love.’ Nevertheless, only in the last several decades has scholars been willing to consider that the Song is about human, not divine, love.  link

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Related:

Drawing from Song of Solomon, Russell Willingham, wrote a  great steamy article about steamy marital sex for a localChristian magazine, Salt Fresno  (March 2012,  pp, 42 issue, read it here as p. 42 or as a PDF here).

Russ is one of our best teachers on sex, a real prophetic sexpert.

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