On the last day of Pesah (in Israel) this year we read Shir HaShirim.
It occurred to me that the opposition to sacrificial worship that I expressed in my posts of 16 April 2018 and 3 May 2018 may have an ancient antecedent. But I will get to that at the end. I will start with a more general interpretation of the agenda of the unknown author (not King Shlomo) of Shir HaShirim.
(There is lots of linguistic evidence that Shir HaShirim was written in Second Temple times. For what I add at the end of this post, it has to be early Second Temple times. But still Second Temple. So the author can't be King Shlomo.)
I accept that the author's agenda is a metaphorical presentation of the relationship of Israel and God. I disagree with the standard presentation of that relationship. The author's intent is to reject institutional religion as the true way to relate to God, and to advocate personal relationships.
The structure of the book is a multi-speaker dialogue. The back story is that a girl in her early teens has been recruited to join a king's harem in Jerusalem. Unfortunately, she is already in love with a young shepherd.
The speakers are:
The girl
The shepherd (as imagined by the girl)
The girl's family (as imagined by the girl)
Other girls in Jerusalem
The king
Now I will divide the book by chapter and verse, according to who is speaking. I won't interpret any of the verses in detail, other than to note that Chapter 3 verses 9-11 are dripping with sarcasm.
Chapter 1 verse 1: the author
Chapter 1 verses 2-7: the girl
Chapter 1 verse 8: the other girls
Chapter 1 verses 9-11: the king
Chapter 1 verses 12-13: the girl
Chapter 1 verse 14: the shepherd
Chapter 1 verse 15 - Chapter 2 verse 1: the girl
Chapter 2 verse 2: the shepherd
Chapter 2 verses 3-13: the girl
Chapter 2 verse 14: the shepherd
Chapter 2 verse 15 - Chapter 3 verse 5: the girl
Chapter 3 verses 6-8: the king
Chapter 3 verses 9-11: the girl
Chapter 4 verse 1 - Chapter 5 verse 1: the king
Chapter 5 verses 2-8: the girl
Chapter 5 verse 9: the other girls
Chapter 5 verses 10-16: the girl
Chapter 6 verse 1: the other girls
Chapter 6 verses 2-3: the girl
Chapter 6 verses 4-10: the king
Chapter 6 verse 11-12 the girl
Chapter 7 verses 1-11 : the king (except that second half of verse 1 is spoken by the girl)
Chapter 7 verse 12 - Chapter 8 verse 4: the girl
Chapter 8 verse 5: the shepherd
Chapter 8 verses 6-7: the girl
Chapter 8 verses 8-9: the girl's family
Chapter 8 verses 10-12: the girl
Chapter 8 verse 13: the shepherd
Chapter 8 verse 14: the girl
I follow the standard interpretation of the metaphor, that the girl is Israel and that both the shepherd and the king are God, except that the girl loves only the shepherd and wishes she could escape the king and return to the shepherd. Institutionalized religiosity ("love" of the king) is bad. Personal religiosity (love of the shepherd) is good.
Now as to why this can be interpreted as objecting to rebuilding the Temple. The king is specifically Shlomo, who built the First Temple. "Love" of Shlomo represents centralized sacrificial worship. That is rejected in favor of unique personal relationships with God.
Of course, that is not the only possible interpretation. For example, the author may have been living in Bavel, and may have been rejecting the idea of returning from Bavel to Israel. The "love" of the king represents a collective relationship with God in an ethnically defined territory. The love of the shepherd represents individual relationships with God anywhere.
