Song of Songs Commentary

The Song of Songs is romantic poetry at its best. It portrays two passionate lovers who revel in the emotional and physical pleasures of human intimacy. The book was misunderstood in the past as being only an allegory of the relationship between God and the church, but is now accepted as celebrating the profound love between a man and a woman, providing a refreshingly realistic and wholesome treatment of human sexuality without being a how-to manual. The book never mentions God, but it bears witness that the Creator has graciously provided his human creatures with the good gifts of sexuality and intimate love.

Setting

As a song of mutual human love, the Song of Songs is unique in the Bible. It is composed of the speeches of its characters, primarily an unnamed young man and an unnamed young woman. There is no narrator. Though the subject matter is not unique in the Old Testament, the intense and exclusive focus on it certainly is. Other ancient Near Eastern literature, primarily Egyptian, has similar songs of admiration and intense desire in which the lover’s physical attributes are extolled and direct invitations to enjoy them are given.

The Song of Songs is associated with Solomon, David’s son and the third king of Israel (see “Authorship” below; see also 1:1). Solomon is also mentioned in a few of the poems, both negatively and positively. The motivation of the author was apparently to celebrate God’s good gift of love and sexuality.

Authorship

The superscription (first line of text) calls the work, literally, “The Song of Songs of Solomon.” Many take this to mean that Solomon wrote the book in its entirety.

One difficulty with viewing Solomon as the only author is that some of the Hebrew words appear to be foreign loanwords from Aramaic and Persian, which would have presumably come from a later era than that of Solomon, when Persian culture was more widespread. However, it is possible that these words were in use during Solomon’s era. Solomon was the first truly cosmopolitan king of Israel, so it would not be surprising if he used foreign loanwords.

Another problem with accepting Solomon as the sole author is that he was not a good example of godly love—it was precisely his love for many foreign women that led him away from the Lord (1 Kgs 11:1-13). In fact, the only positive reference to Solomon in the Song is in Song 3:6-11; meanwhile, 8:11-12 presents him negatively and 1:5 is neutral. It is possible that Solomon did not compose the entire Song, but only part of it—especially if the Song is viewed as a poetic anthology. In this view, Solomon’s authorship of the Song might be similar to his authorship in the book of Proverbs and David’s authorship in the Psalms. On the other hand, Solomon might have written of himself in a self-deprecating tone.

Interpreting the Song

Serious study of the Song of Songs requires a humble, open spirit because of two very significant matters that are usually straightforward in other biblical books but are very obscure here: (1) It is difficult to find a story line in these eight chapters, and (2) if the Song is a story, it is not easy to identify the main characters and their relationships.

Early Interpretation (up to the 1800s). The earliest surviving comments on the Song, provided by Rabbi Aqiba around AD 100, demonstrate Judaism’s ambivalence about the message of the Song. The rabbi famously stated: “Whoever sings the Song of Songs with a tremulous voice in a banquet hall and [so] treats it as a sort of ditty has no share in the world to come.” Some people clearly understood the Song’s imagery as sexual. Aqiba censured this interpretation of the Song, even damning those who held it. Aqiba declared, “All the ages are not worth the day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel; for all the Writings are holy, but the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies.” Aqiba thus indicated his understanding of the book as an allegory. The man and the woman are not seen as a real man and woman, but as representing God and Israel. Likewise, the Aramaic Targum (interpretive paraphrase) of the Song presents it as the story of God’s relationship with Israel from the Exodus to the future reign of the Messiah.

This allegorical view represents the predominant Jewish and Christian interpretation of the Song from Aqiba’s time through the mid-1800s. Early Christian interpreters, such as Origen (AD 185–253) and Jerome (AD 347–420), adopted the allegorical interpretation but identified the man as Jesus Christ and the woman as the individual Christian or the church as a whole. Although the details regarding the individual elements within the book varied greatly among Jewish and Christian interpreters, allegorical interpretation was determinative. The allegorical interpretation of the Song is found in Catholic writers as well as in the writings of the Reformers, including John Calvin, John Wesley, and the Westminster Assembly.

Recent Interpretations (1800s to the present). In the 1800s the allegorical interpretation began to lose followers. It became increasingly clear that the only reason to deny the Song’s obvious references to sexuality was the deep-seated but unbiblical idea that physical love and spiritual life are polar opposites. This idea came more from Greek philosophy than from the Bible itself. The Bible text itself never suggests that the images of the Song were intended as anything but sensual and romantic.

Furthermore, archaeology recovered much from the ancient cultures of Egypt and Mesopotamia. Egypt produced love poetry similar to the Song that could only be understood as human love poetry.

There was thus a decisive shift from allegorical interpretation to an understanding of the Song as love poetry. Today it is generally agreed that the Song speaks God’s wisdom into this important area of our lives as human beings: It affirms and celebrates God’s good gift of love and sexuality in the context of marriage.

The Song as a Love Story. Many scholars understand these poems as a drama telling a story, either about two lovers or about a woman and two men. If only a couple is present, the characters are usually understood to be King Solomon and a young woman, and the entire poem is their conversation with each other. If it is a triangle, there is a second man whom the woman loves. In this case, Solomon is trying to force the woman to leave her true lover and enter his harem, but she remains faithful and true to her lover.

The main drawbacks of the dramatic perspective are: (1) There is no narrator to guide the reading of the story, and (2) there are many different possible stories, and every interpreter seems to see a different story.

The Song as a Two-Character Drama. Some interpreters understand the Song as a drama of King Solomon’s love affair with a woman. According to this view, the entire poem is a conversation between Solomon and the woman he loves more than all of the other queens and concubines in his harem.

If there was a favored woman in Solomon’s life, the Scriptures suggest that she was Pharaoh’s daughter, whom he married very early (1 Kgs 3:1; 7:8; 9:24; 11:1), not the working woman from the king’s flocks and vineyards who is pictured in the Song. Furthermore, this song of true love is not very credible if the woman was one of the scores of Solomon’s women who are mentioned in Song 6:8. In other words, if this romance between Solomon and the woman was of such deep sincerity, why did Solomon add hundreds of other women to his harem?

The Song as a Three-Character Drama. Noting the difficulties with the two-character story line, several recent scholars have become convinced that the Song actually describes a three-character drama. This would suggest a more complicated plot: The woman actually loves a shepherd, not the king, but unfortunately she finds herself in Solomon’s harem as a concubine, probably because she is unable to pay a debt of one thousand pieces of silver, which she owes as caretaker of the king’s vineyards (8:11-12). She is unable to pay because her angry brothers have forced her to take care of vineyards other than her own (1:6). So even though she is in the very close and potentially intimate presence of the king in the city palace (1:12), her passionate thoughts are set intently on her love for a common shepherd in the countryside (1:7). This fervent affection drives her to escape with her true love into the country where they declare their mutual love to one another in marriage. Three separations of the couple are recounted in the song, and the agony of isolation from each other is just as intense as their ecstasy when together. After the woman escapes and lives with her shepherd husband, she is able to hire caretakers to harvest her crop and pay off the debt to Solomon. Now she and her beloved are forever free to continue living and loving together in the countryside (8:12-14).

The Song as an Anthology of Love Poetry. Some scholars have concluded that approaching the Song as a drama imposes a story on the book that is not really there. These interpreters believe that the Song of Songs is an anthology of love poems that do not tell a story, but rather evoke a mood. The poems use imagery to express the poets’ understanding of human sexuality. In this way, the Song is similar to the book of Psalms, except that all the poems have to do with love between a man and a woman.

From this perspective, the Song of Songs is composed of some twenty love poems that are bound together by consistency of characters, refrains, repeated images, and other poetic binding devices.

The main criticism of viewing the Song as merely a poetic anthology is that the Song exhibits a greater unity and development than is usual for such a collection. There is repetition and development of poetic themes, and there seems to be growth in the couple’s relationship. Those who view the Song as a story or drama would argue that the anthology view fails to take this into account. Even if the Song is not a story per se, it certainly seems to have a structure and coherence that transcends the individual stanzas of poetry. However, those who view it as an anthology rather than a story generally do take into account the unity and development in the Song. They view the Song like a concerto or symphony in which themes repeat and build without actually uncovering a narrative or plot.

Conclusion. Each of these interpretive approaches has its challenges. The approach of the study notes here is (1) to point out different elements in the book that might contribute to a story line or to our understanding of its structure as an anthology and (2) to discuss the possible meaning of individual scenes and images.

Marriage in the Song

The man and woman in the Song of Songs speak in the most romantic terms, describing sensuous longings and alluding to an intimate physical relationship. However, they are never explicitly described as married, leading some readers to suggest that the Song is an example of unmarried love in the Bible. Such a reading ignores obvious allusions to the true marriage relationship between the man and the woman. The language of some of the passages clearly indicates that the couple is married. For example, the man occasionally refers to the woman as his “bride” (e.g., 4:8-12).

Even more importantly, viewing the couple as unmarried though sexually intimate does not take into account the context of the Song. In the context of ancient Israel, it is essentially unfathomable that this couple would not be married when engaged in such an intimate relationship. A study of Old Testament history (see Gen 39), law (see Exod 20:14), and wisdom literature (see Prov 5–7) makes it clear that sexual relations were only tolerated within the legal commitment of marriage. It would be quite strange for this book to be preserved alongside the other books of Jewish Scripture if it promoted sexual activity outside of marriage. Thus it is most natural to understand this couple as being married, at least in those passages where they are found in intimate embrace.

Meaning and Message

Many people have questioned whether the Song of Songs, with its overtly sensual imagery, belongs in Holy Scripture. But this poem is a wonderful celebration of one of God’s good and holy gifts. The Bible does not envision human beings as intangible souls temporarily encased in a body; rather, body and soul are interconnected aspects of a single entity. The body is important, and sexuality is sacred and good when enjoyed within marriage.

Human Intimacy. Intense love and the appropriateness of voicing that love in words of physical attraction and fulfillment is the central theme of the Song. Yet it is clear that the lovers’ relationship is not merely physical. While their relationship certainly includes the sensual enjoyment of each other, it also includes friendship and a desire to be with each other for more than sexual reasons.

As human love poetry, the Song plays a crucial role in the Bible. Love and its physical expression are major aspects of the human experience, and God has spoken through the Song to encourage us and warn us about the power of sexuality in our lives. Here we have wonderful wisdom from God describing the beauty of a wholesome sexual relationship between a woman and a man. According to the Song, sexual intimacy in marriage should be mutual, exclusive, complete, and beautiful. The book encourages intimate, passionate love between a man and a woman who have committed themselves to each other.

The Song of Solomon, called in the Vulgate and Septuagint, "The Song of Songs," from the opening words. This title denotes its superior excellence, according to the Hebrew idiom; so holy of holies, equivalent to "most holy" (Exo 29:37); the heaven of heavens, equivalent to the highest heavens (Deu 10:14). It is one of the five volumes (megilloth) placed immediately after the Pentateuch in manuscripts of the Jewish Scriptures. It is also fourth of the Hagiographa (Cetubim, writings) or the third division of the Old Testament, the other two being the Law and the Prophets. The Jewish enumeration of the Cetubim is Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Canticles, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra (including Nehemiah), and Chronicles. Its canonicity is certain; it is found in all Hebrew manuscripts of Scripture; also in the Greek Septuagint; in the catalogues of MELITO, bishop of Sardis, A.D. 170 (EUSEBIUS, Ecclesiastical History, 4.26), and of others of the ancient Church.

ORIGEN and JEROME tell us that the Jews forbade it to be read by any until he was thirty years old. It certainly needs a degree of spiritual maturity to enter aright into the holy mystery of love which it allegorically sets forth. To such as have attained this maturity, of whatever age they be, the Song of Songs is one of the most edifying of the sacred writings. ROSENMULLER justly says, The sudden transitions of the bride from the court to the grove are inexplicable, on the supposition that it describes merely human love. Had it been the latter, it would have been positively objectionable, and never would have been inserted in the holy canon. The allusion to "Pharaoh's chariots" (Sol 1:9) has been made a ground for conjecturing that the love of Solomon and Pharaoh's daughter is the subject of the Song. But this passage alludes to a remarkable event in the history of the Old Testament Church, the deliverance from the hosts and chariots of Pharaoh at the Red Sea. (However, see on Sol 1:9). The other allusions are quite opposed to the notion; the bride is represented at times as a shepherdess (Sol 1:7), "an abomination to the Egyptians" (Gen 46:34); so also Sol 1:6; Sol 3:4; Sol 4:8; Sol 5:7 are at variance with it. The Christian fathers, ORIGEN and THEODORET, compared the teachings of Solomon to a ladder with three steps; Ecclesiastes, natural (the nature of sensible things, vain); Proverbs, moral; Canticles, mystical (figuring the union of Christ and the Church). The Jews compared Proverbs to the outer court of Solomon's temple, Ecclesiastes to the holy place, and Canticles to the holy of holies. Understood allegorically, the Song is cleared of all difficulty. "Shulamith" (Sol 6:13), the bride, is thus an appropriate name, Daughter of Peace being the feminine of Solomon, equivalent to the Prince of Peace. She by turns is a vinedresser, shepherdess, midnight inquirer, and prince's consort and daughter, and He a suppliant drenched with night dews, and a king in His palace, in harmony with the various relations of the Church and Christ. As Ecclesiastes sets forth the vanity of love of the creature, Canticles sets forth the fullness of the love which joins believers and the Saviour. The entire economy of salvation, says HARRIS, aims at restoring to the world the lost spirit of love. God is love, and Christ is the embodiment of the love of God. As the other books of Scripture present severally their own aspects of divine truth, so Canticles furnishes the believer with language of holy love, wherewith his heart can commune with his Lord; and it portrays the intensity of Christ's love to him; the affection of love was created in man to be a transcript of the divine love, and the Song clothes the latter in words; were it not for this, we should be at a loss for language, having the divine warrant, wherewith to express, without presumption, the fervor of the love between Christ and us. The image of a bride, a bridegroom, and a marriage, to represent this spiritual union, has the sanction of Scripture throughout; nay, the spiritual union was the original fact in the mind of God, of which marriage is the transcript (Isa 54:5; Isa 62:5; Jer 3:1, &c.; Eze. 16:1-63; Eze. 23:1-49; Mat 9:15; Mat 22:2; Mat 25:1, &c.; Joh 3:29; Co2 11:2; Eph 5:23-32, where Paul does not go from the marriage relation to the union of Christ and the Church as if the former were the first; but comes down from the latter as the first and best recognized fact on which the relation of marriage is based; Rev 19:7; Rev 21:2; Rev 22:17). Above all, the Song seems to correspond to, and form a trilogy with, Psalms 45 and 72, which contain the same imagery; just as Psalm 37 answers to Proverbs, and the Psalms 39 and 73 to Job. Love to Christ is the strongest, as it is the purest, of human passions, and therefore needs the strongest language to express it: to the pure in heart the phraseology, drawn from the rich imagery of Oriental poetry, will not only appear not indelicate or exaggerated, but even below the reality. A single emblem is a type; the actual rites, incidents, and persons of the Old Testament were appointed types of truths afterwards to be revealed. But the allegory is a continued metaphor, in which the circumstances are palpably often purely imagery, while the thing signified is altogether real. The clue to the meaning of the Song is not to be looked for in the allegory itself, but in other parts of Scripture. "It lies in the casket of revelation an exquisite gem, engraved with emblematical characters, with nothing literal thereon to break the consistency of their beauty" [BURROWES]. This accounts for the name of God not occurring in it. Whereas in the parable the writer narrates, in the allegory he never does so. The Song throughout consists of immediate addresses either of Christ to the soul, or of the soul to Christ. "The experimental knowledge of Christ's loveliness and the believer's love is the best commentary on the whole of this allegorical Song" [LEIGHTON]. Like the curiously wrought Oriental lamps, which do not reveal the beauty of their transparent emblems until lighted up within, so the types and allegories of Scripture, "the lantern to our path" [Psa 119:105], need the inner light of the Holy Spirit of Jesus to reveal their significance. The details of the allegory are not to be too minutely pressed. In the Song, with an Oriental profusion of imagery, numbers of lovely, sensible objects are aggregated not strictly congruous, but portraying jointly by their very diversity the thousand various and seemingly opposite beauties which meet together in Christ.

The unity of subject throughout, and the recurrence of the same expressions (Sol 2:6-7; Sol 3:5; Sol 8:3-4; Sol 2:16; Sol 6:3; Sol 7:10; Sol 3:6; Sol 6:10; Sol 8:5), prove the unity of the poem, in opposition to those who make it consist of a number of separate erotic songs. The sudden transitions (for example, from the midnight knocking at a humble cottage to a glorious description of the King) accord with the alternations in the believer's experience. However various the divisions assigned be, most commentators have observed four breaks (whatever more they have imagined), followed by four abrupt beginnings (Sol 2:7; Sol 3:5; Sol 5:1; Sol 8:4). Thus there result five parts, all alike ending in full repose and refreshment. We read (Kg1 4:32) that Solomon's songs were "a thousand and five." The odd number five added over the complete thousand makes it not unlikely that the "five" refers to the Song of songs, consisting of five parts.

It answers to the idyllic poetry of other nations. The Jews explain it of the union of Jehovah and ancient Israel; the allusions to the temple and the wilderness accord with this; some Christians of Christ and the Church; others of Christ and the individual believer. All these are true; for the Church is one in all ages, the ancient typifying the modern Church, and its history answering to that of each individual soul in it. Jesus "sees all, as if that all were one, loves one, as if that one were all." "The time suited the manner of this revelation; because types and allegories belonged to the old dispensation, which reached its ripeness under Solomon, when the temple was built" [MOODY STUART]. "The daughter of Zion at that time was openly married to Jehovah"; for it is thenceforth that the prophets, in reproving Israel's subsequent sin, speak of it as a breach of her marriage covenant. The songs heretofore sung by her were the preparatory hymns of her childhood; "the last and crowning 'Song of Songs' was prepared for the now mature maiden against the day of her marriage to the King of kings" [ORIGEN]. Solomon was peculiarly fitted to clothe this holy mystery with the lovely natural imagery with which the Song abounds; for "he spake of trees, from the cedar in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall" (Kg1 4:33). A higher qualification was his knowledge of the eternal Wisdom or Word of God (Pro. 8:1-36), the heavenly bridegroom. David, his father, had prepared the way, in Psalms 45 and 72; the son perfected the allegory. It seems to have been written in early life, long before his declension; for after it a song of holy gladness would hardly be appropriate. It was the song of his first love, in the kindness of his youthful espousals to Jehovah. Like other inspired books, its sense is not to be restricted to that local and temporary one in which the writer may have understood it; it extends to all ages, and shadows forth everlasting truth (Pe1 1:11-12; Pe2 1:20-21).

"Oh that I knew how all thy lights combine, and the configurations of their glorie,

Seeing not only how each verse doth shine, but all the constellations of the storie."—HERBERT.

Three notes of time occur [MOODY STUART]: (1) The Jewish Church speaks of the Gentile Church (Sol 8:8) towards the end; (2) Christ speaks to the apostles (Sol 5:1) in the middle; (3) The Church speaks of the coming of Christ (Sol 1:2) at the beginning. Thus we have, in direct order, Christ about to come, and the cry for the advent; Christ finishing His work on earth, and the last supper; Christ ascended, and the call of the Gentiles. In another aspect we have: (1) In the individual soul the longing for the manifestation of Christ to it, and the various alternations in its experience (Sol 1:2, Sol 1:4; Sol 2:8; Sol 3:1, Sol 3:4, Sol 3:6-7) of His manifestation; (2) The abundant enjoyment of His sensible consolations, which is soon withdrawn through the bride's carelessness (Sol 5:1-3, &c.), and her longings after Him, and reconciliation (Sol 5:8-16; Sol 6:3, &c.; Sol 7:1, &c.); (3) Effects of Christ's manifestation on the believer; namely, assurance, labors of love, anxiety for the salvation of the impenitent, eagerness for the Lord's second coming (Sol 7:10, Sol 7:12; Sol 8:8-10, Sol 8:14).

Next: Song of Solomon (Canticles) Chapter 1