Friday, September 30, 2016

Carole King's "Way over Yonder"

Last night I listened to Carole King's Tapestry, and I think I discovered a Biblical allusion in "Way over Yonder" that I hadn't noticed before.  The lines "Maybe tomorrow I'll find my way / To the land where the honey runs in rivers each day" seem to reference the Promised Land.  In Exodus 3:8, God tells Moses, "I have come down to deliver them [the people of Israel] out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey."

For what it's worth, I'd previously noticed the "coat of many colors" in "Tapestry," which has some resemblance (at least nominally) to Joseph's robe in Genesis 37:3.