William Durand-Poole

When I speak of the ancient Near East, I always include Egypt in it.

You know, I think it is part of that world.

The zeitgeist is there.

And we really see it in things like Song of Songs in the Hebrew Bible and ancient Egyptian love songs drawn the same parallels all the time.

Oh, my sister, you know, your hair is like a flock of sheep.

Your breasts are like twin gazelles.

Pomegranates.

Exactly the same.

Pomegranates, necks of the Tower of Ivory.

It's exactly the same imagery that's shared, and I don't find that difficult at all.

But I do find it puzzling, and I can't answer really why the structure is the same.

Here's the difference.

And it's in the difference that's fundamental.

The great hymn treats the darkness, the absence of the sun, as the enemy, as death, as nothingness.

Whereas the psalm treats darkness as God's creation as well.

It is still God's.

God is still there.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and earth, and he said that there'd be light, and he divided the darkness from the day.

And he called the light day, and he called the darkness night.

So dark, in Hebrew thought, is still part of God's world.