The Month of Elul
Israel Journal III: "I Am My Beloved's"
As I meandered the stony vales of the Old City, hemmed in on all sides by edifices of quarried limestone, images of a newer Jerusalem permeated my thoughts. Ancient stairways ribboned throughout, opening to glens of mercantile wares as blue horizons peeked between her peaks.
Here, in Jerusalem, the Highland is holy, and the greener grass is weathered cobble.
Then many peoples will go and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of Adonai, to the House of the God of Jacob! Then He will teach us His ways, and we will walk in His paths.” Isa. 2:3 TLV
My thoughts shifted to the love letter, Song of Songs—fitting for the month of Elul. Elul is the month in which each Hebrew letter serves as an acronym for the Hebrew phrase: “Ani L’Dodi V’Dodi Li” (Song of Songs 6:3a). In English, “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine,” but the English transliteration doesn’t reveal the connection between the month of Elul and this phrase. I will show you the following:
אלול (Elul) corresponds to אני לדודי ודודי לי. Reading right to left, the first letter of each word in Hebrew spells out “Elul,” the month that spans August to September. So, while I was in Jerusalem during Elul and feeling the Holy Spirit’s prompting to walk and pray, the supposed Solomonic love letter, Song of Songs, came to mind.
In my context, the love letter became an intimate correspondence between God and Jerusalem; I became grossly aware of this role. I walked her ramparts, reading aloud the union between her and her betrothed. Mingling among the crowds at several city squares, I mouthed the text, reminding God of his beloved’s desire for him. Engrossed, I stepped into her role, seeking my beloved throughout the city.
“Upon my couch at night I sought the one I love—I sought, but found him not. I must rise and roam the town. Through the streets and through the squares, I must seek the one I love. I sought but found him not” (Song of Songs 3:1-2 JSB).
The Song of Songs is mostly a dialogue between two lovers, functioning as an allegory for God’s relationship to Israel—His “bride”—a label in the text. I envisioned the city as a sumptuous woman whose hills and valleys enfolded God’s representative letter, ש, for Shaddai. Her ramparts, the curves of her frame, surround Moriah, the core of her being. And spreading beyond are the products of her fruitfulness, a people terraced along hillsides and engaged in life.
Much like my walk with God, marked by seasons of ecstatic love and devotion or distant longing, Jerusalem’s fidelity to God’s ways wavered. Yet, God returns to receive her time and again. “Oh Jerusalem,” as Yeshua cried during Passion Week, “how often have I longed to gather your children together…” (Matt. 23:37). In Yeshua’s words, I hear the lover’s plea for his beloved. Did he, in this impassioned moment, recall the lover’s petition: “Arise, my darling, my fair one, come away” (Song 2:10 JSB)?
After her ramparts, I returned to modern Jerusalem, visiting the Mamilla outdoor shopping mall for their caffeinated concoction of slurpy-style iced coffee, a delicacy they seemed to take for granted and one for which I came to love and yearn. I also began to reconsider the Song of Songs, not from a blushed-cheek voyeuristic perspective, but as a wordless longing for unity among and within God’s people.
Blessings—