follows the shifting flow of actual thought and feeling. The rapid shifts, the flashbacks, the lack of a clear progression—all these push us in the direction of reading the book as a collection of love lyrics.” When Song of Songs is interpreted literally as a unified song cycle, a recognizable purpose emerges. Song of Songs, in a manner evidenced only infrequently in the biblical text (cf. Prov. 5:15–19), extols the richness of human erotic love as a gift from God. Lacocque (1998) contends