Chapters
Introduction
The Song of Solomon (also called the Song of Songs) is beautiful love poetry. It describes a man and a woman who deeply enjoy their love for each other. Their love includes both emotional closeness and physical desire.
In the past, many people understood the book mainly as an allegory, or a symbolic picture, of the relationship between God and the church. Today, many people also see it as a celebration of faithful love between a man and a woman. It speaks about human sexuality in a clear and healthy way, but it is not a guidebook about sex.
The book does not mention God directly. Even so, it shows that the Creator has kindly given people the good gifts of sexual love and close personal love.
Setting
As a song about mutual human love, Song of Solomon is unique in the Bible. The book is made up of speeches from its characters. These speakers are mainly an unnamed young man and an unnamed young woman. There is no narrator.
The subject of human love appears in other parts of the Old Testament. But Song of Solomon gives it a much stronger and more focused place. Some ancient Near Eastern writings, especially Egyptian love songs, are similar. They praise the beauty of the loved one and include direct invitations to enjoy love together.
The Song of Solomon is connected with Solomon, David’s son and the third king of Israel. The book’s title verse makes this connection (see 1:1). Some poems also mention Solomon. They speak about him in both positive and negative ways.
The author’s purpose seems to be to celebrate love and sexuality as good gifts from God.
Author
The superscription, or first line of the book, gives the title as “This is Solomon's Song of Songs.” Many people understand this to mean that Solomon wrote the whole book.
One problem with seeing Solomon as the only author is that some Hebrew words in the book may be foreign loanwords. A loanword is a word taken from another language. These words may come from Aramaic and Persian. This may point to a time after Solomon, when Persian culture was more common.
However, these words may also have been used during Solomon’s time. Solomon was Israel’s first king to have many international connections. So it would not be surprising if he used words from other languages.
Another issue with considering Solomon as the only author is that was not a good example of love as God intended. His love for many foreign women led him to worship false gods (1 Kings 11:1–13). In fact, the only positive mention of Solomon in the Song of Solomon is in 3:6–11. Meanwhile, 8:11–12 speaks about him in a negative way, and 1:5 is neutral.
Because of this, Solomon may not have written the whole book. He may have written only part of it, especially if Song of Solomon is a collection of poems. In this view, Solomon’s role in Song of Solomon may be similar to his role in Proverbs. It may also be similar to David’s role in Psalms. On the other hand, Solomon may have written about himself in a humble and self-critical way.
Interpreting the Song
Careful study of Song of Solomon requires humility and an open mind. Two important matters are unclear in this book, though they are usually clear in other biblical books:
It is difficult to find a storyline in these eight chapters, and
if Song of Solomon tells a story, it is not easy to identify the main characters or understand how they are related to each other.
Early Interpretation (up to the 1800s)
The earliest surviving comments on Song of Solomon come from Rabbi Aqiba around AD 100. His comments show that Jewish people had mixed views about the book’s message.
Aqiba warned against treating Song of Solomon as a simple love song for entertainment. He said that anyone who sang it at a feast as a common song “has no share in the world to come.” This shows that some people understood the book’s images as sexual. Aqiba strongly rejected that view.
Aqiba also said that the day Song of Solomon was given to Israel was greater than all other days. He said that all the Writings were holy, but Song of Solomon was “the Holy of Holies.” By this, Aqiba showed that he understood the book as an allegory, or a story in which people and events stand for something else. In this view, the man and woman are not mainly a real man and woman. They represent God and Israel.
In the same way, the Aramaic Targum of Song of Solomon interprets the book as a story of God’s relationship with Israel. A Targum is an interpretive paraphrase, or a translation that also explains the text. This Targum tells the story from the exodus, when God brought Israel out of Egypt, to the future reign of the Messiah, God’s promised king.
This allegorical view was the main Jewish and Christian way of interpreting Song of Solomon from Aqiba’s time until the mid-1800s. Early Christian interpreters also used this allegorical interpretation. Origen, who lived from AD 185 to 253, and Jerome, who lived from AD 347 to 420, are two examples.
These Christian interpreters understood the man to represent Jesus Christ. They understood the woman to represent either each Christian or the whole church. Jewish and Christian interpreters differed greatly on many details in the book. Still, allegory shaped the main interpretation.
This allegorical interpretation appears in Catholic writers. It also appears in the writings of Reformers such as John Calvin and John Wesley, and in the work of the Westminster Assembly.
Recent Interpretations (1800s to the Present)
In the 1800s, fewer people accepted the allegorical interpretation of Song of Solomon. It became clearer that the book speaks openly about sexual love.
Some people had denied this because they believed physical love and spiritual life were complete opposites. But this idea does not come mainly from the Bible. It comes more from Greek philosophy. The Bible itself does not suggest that the images in Song of Solomon should be read only as symbols. Instead, the book presents them as sensual and romantic images.
Archaeology also helped scholars learn more about the ancient cultures of Egypt and Mesopotamia. In Egypt, scholars found love poetry that is similar to Song of Solomon. These poems can only be understood as poems about human love.
So, there was a clear move away from allegorical interpretation. More people began to understand Song of Solomon as love poetry.
Today, many scholars agree that Song of Solomon speaks God’s wisdom into this important part of human life. It affirms and celebrates love and sexuality as good gifts from God, within the context of marriage.
The Song as a Love Story
Many scholars understand these poems as a drama, or a story told through speech and action. Some think the story is about two lovers. Others think it is about one woman and two men.
If the story has only one couple, the characters are usually understood as King Solomon and a young woman. In this view, the whole poem is their conversation with each other.
If the story has three main characters, the woman loves a second man. In this view, Solomon tries to make the woman leave her true lover and join his harem, or group of wives and concubines. But the woman remains faithful to the man she loves.
The dramatic view has two main problems:
There is no narrator to guide people through the story, and
people can understand the story in many different ways.
Different interpreters often see different stories in the same poems.
The Song as a Two-Character Drama
Some interpreters understand Song of Solomon as a drama about King Solomon’s love for a woman. In this view, the whole poem is a conversation between Solomon and the woman he loves more than all the other queens and concubines in his harem. A concubine was a woman who had a recognized relationship with a man but did not have the full status of a wife.
If Solomon had a favorite woman, Scripture suggests that she was Pharaoh’s daughter. Solomon married her early in his reign (1 Kings 3:1; 7:8; 9:24; 11:1). She was not the working woman connected with the king’s flocks and vineyards in Song of Solomon.
Also, it is difficult to see Song of Solomon as a song of true love if the woman was one of Solomon’s many women mentioned in Song 6:8. If Solomon’s love for this woman was so deep and sincere, why did he later add hundreds of other women to his harem?
The Song as a Three-Character Drama
Some recent scholars see problems with the two-character story. Because of this, they think Song of Solomon describes a drama with three main characters.
In this view, the woman loves a shepherd, not the king. But she has been brought into Solomon’s harem as a concubine. This may have happened because she could not pay a debt of one thousand pieces of silver. She owed this debt as the caretaker of the king’s vineyards (8:11–12).
The woman could not pay because her angry brothers had forced her to care for other vineyards instead of her own (1:6). So, even though she is near the king in the city palace (1:12), her thoughts are fixed on the shepherd she loves in the countryside (1:7).
Her strong love leads her to escape with her true love into the countryside. There, they speak their love for each other in marriage.
The song describes three times when the couple is separated. Their pain when they are apart is as strong as their joy when they are together.
After the woman escapes and lives with her shepherd husband, she is able to hire workers to harvest her crop. Then she can pay her debt to Solomon. Now she and her beloved are free to live and love together in the countryside (8:12–14).
The Song as a Collection of Love Poems
Some scholars believe that interpreting Song of Solomon as a drama adds a story that is not really in the book. These scholars believe that Song of Solomon is a collection of love poems.
In this view, the poems do not tell one clear story. Instead, they create a feeling or mood. The poems use images to express ideas about human sexuality. In this way, Song of Solomon is similar to Psalms. The difference is that all the poems in Song of Solomon are about love between a man and a woman.
From this perspective, the Song of Songs consists of about 20 love poems. These poems are connected by the same characters, repeated lines, repeated images, and other poetic patterns.
The main criticism of seeing Song of Solomon only as a collection of poems is that the book has more unity and development than most collections like this. The book repeats and develops poetic themes. The couple’s relationship also seems to grow.
Scholars who see Song of Solomon as a story or drama say the collection view does not give enough attention to this unity. Even if Song of Solomon is not a story in the strict sense, it still has a clear structure. Its parts fit together in ways that go beyond the individual poems.
However, scholars who see it as a collection usually do notice this unity and development. They understand Song of Solomon as being like a concerto or symphony. In music like this, themes repeat and grow, even when there is no story or plot.
Conclusion
Each way of interpreting Song of Solomon has its own challenges. These study notes take two main approaches.
They point out parts of the book that may help explain its storyline or its structure as a collection of poems, and
they discuss the possible meaning of individual scenes and images.
Marriage in the Song of Solomon
The man and woman in the Song of Solomon speak in deeply romantic language. They describe strong physical desire and suggest an intimate physical relationship.
However, the book never directly says that they are married. Because of this, some people think Song of Solomon gives an example of unmarried love in the Bible. But this view misses clear hints that the man and woman have a true marriage relationship.
Some passages clearly show that the couple is married. For example, the man sometimes calls the woman his “bride” (for example, 4:8–12).
It is even more important to see this relationship in its ancient Israelite setting. In that setting, it is very hard to imagine this couple as sexually intimate but not married. Old Testament history, law, and wisdom literature show that sexual relations belonged within the legal commitment of marriage (see Genesis 39; see Exodus 20:14; see Proverbs 5–7). Because of this, it would be strange for Song of Solomon to be kept with the other books of Jewish Scripture if it supported sexual activity outside marriage. So, it is most natural to understand the couple as married, at least in the passages where they are shown in an intimate embrace.
Meaning and Message
Many people have asked whether Song of Solomon belongs in Holy Scripture because it uses clear sensual images. But this poem celebrates one of God’s good and holy gifts.
The Bible does not present human beings as invisible souls living for a short time inside bodies. Instead, body and soul are joined together as parts of one whole person. The body matters. Sexuality is sacred and good when it is enjoyed within marriage.
Human Intimacy
The main theme of Song of Solomon is deep love. The book shows that it is right to speak about this love with words of physical attraction and joy.
But the lovers’ relationship is not only physical. They enjoy each other’s bodies, but they also share friendship. They want to be together for reasons that go beyond sexual desire.
As human love poetry, Song of Solomon has an important role in the Bible. Love and physical intimacy are major parts of human life. Through this book, God gives wisdom about the beauty and power of sexuality.
Song of Solomon describes a healthy sexual relationship between a woman and a man. In marriage, sexual intimacy should be shared, faithful, complete, and beautiful. The book encourages deep and passionate love between a man and a woman who have committed themselves to each other.