Song of Solomon By J. W. Roberts

Outline

1. Introduction
   A. Difficulty of Interpretation
   B. PIace in the Canon
2. The Content of the Song
3. Major Interpretations
4. In Praise of Love
5. Conclusion: Emblem of Christ and the Church

Introduction

The assignment to deal with “Song of Songs” or the “Song of Solomon” is perhaps the most difficult of this lectureship. Had I been choosing a book of the Bible to speak on, it is perhaps the last book that would have been selected. This is not meant to be an apology beforehand for the attempt to be made, but it’s my way of calling attention to the fact that commentators of all ages have considered the book an enigma. Brother J. W. McGarvey once said that he had never seen an attempt to analyze the book which did not depend more on the imagination of the interpreter than on the thought of the original writer. He says, “I conclude, therefore, that whatever may be the plot which existed in the mind of the author, our interpreters can scarcely yet be confident that they have traced it out. Furthermore, if their theory of the song be correct, I should like for some of them to give a better reason than they have yet given for putting such a document into the sacred scriptures. They have not pointed out to me anything in it to edify men or to glorify God”.(1)

If McGarvey, the prince of exegetes, did not understand the book, I am made to wonder what I am doing attempting to expound its meaning. The truth is that after a good deal of study in the book and in books about it, my confidence in my conclusions about it is little stronger than that of the writer just quoted.

The title given to this little book of eight chapters in Hebrew is “The Song of Songs” or as we would interpret this in our idiom, “The Best of Songs”. To this, the inscription adds that the song belongs to Solomon. In the Hebrew Bible the book occupies a slightly different place in the sequence of books. It stands in the third division of the books in the sequence: Law, Prophets, and Psalms. This division was named after the longest book in it (the Psalms) and was the “catch-all” section of the canon. Within it five short books called “scrolls” were grouped together because they were traditionally associated with five festivals of the Jewish year and were to be read on these occasions. The Song of Songs was in this way associated with the keeping of the Passover.

Discussion

The Content of the Song

The song is a poetic representation of the sentiments of lovers, some of it quite frank in terms of intimate and erotic admiration for each other. It is quite plain from the change of person and number and especially from the change of the gender of the personal pronouns(2) and verb endings that the speakers shift from male to female and from the single male and female to a plurality of women termed in the text the “daughters of Jerusalem”. But beyond this there is little to aid in the interpretation of the song. There is no dramatis personae, and it cannot even be ascertained beyond doubt whether the principles in the song are two lovers or two lovers and a rival. Again the different song parts give only subtle hints as to the place where the scenes transpired. If the writer originally gave any hints to aid in the framework of the song, such notations have been lost or discarded in transcription. This fact is beyond McGarvey’s statement that the different attempts to divide the parts into its alternating divisions and to suggest the locale or setting for each must depend largely on the imagination of the interpreter. This is fascinating business, and perhaps the book has had more treatments since the beginning of the Protestant Reformation than any other single book.

The traditional view is that there are two single lovers, Solomon and a woman of Shulam, a town seemingly in northern Palestine. There have been attempts to see another person, a shepherd lover, in the action with Solomon, the intruder who tries to allure the rustic maiden from her country lover and to this end brings the girl to the capital, but in vain as she remains true to her lover. This view is argued in Driver’s Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, and the evidence in its favor is detailed there. Though there is some weight to some points, this view does not seem convincing to me, and it does not explain how the book could have been written by or even attributed to Solomon and have found a place in the canon.

For this reason, in surveying the contents of the book we shall interpret the song according to the traditional view that there are two lovers, Solomon and the Shulamite, and a chorus of women from Jerusalem. The action is usually thought to be divided into five scenes or settings.

Scene I:

1:2-2:8 – The Country Seat of the King near the home of the Shulamite – The woman has been brought into the chambers (1:4) of the King’s banqueting house (2:4).

1:2-4 – The chorus of damsels of Jerusalem celebrate the praises of the maiden. The person’s alternate between the singular and the plural. Some think it is a dialogue between the chorus and the woman; others that the chorus repeats the words of the maiden’s.
“Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth;
For your love is better than wine.
Your oils have a goodly fragrance;
Your name is as oil poured forth;
Therefore do the virgins love you.
Draw me; we will run after you;
The King has brought me into his chambers;
We will be glad and rejoice in you;
We will make mention of your love more than of wine;
Rightly do they love you.”

1:5-8 – The Shulamite excuses herself. She is rustic, as dark and swarthy as the coarse canvas tents made of the black goats of Kedar. She asks the chorus not to look at her (in disdain) as she is suntanned from her duties imposed by her brothers as the keepers of the vineyard. However, she does not blush to admit her longing for her lover as she asks where he might be found.

1:9-2:7 – Solomon now enters the scene, and the two lovers vie with each other in describing the loveliness of each other. As a sample, the woman compares herself to the modest rose of the plain of Sharon and to the lily of the valley, but the king (1:12) turns the comparison into a compliment: “As a lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters” (2:1-2).

The section ends with the only recurring refrain of the song:
“I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
By the roes, or by the hinds of the field,
That you stir not up, nor awake my love
Until he pleases” (2:7) (see also 2:8-3:5).

Scene II

A scene in the bedroom of the house of the Shulamite’s mother (3:4) and in the street of the city. Since the language of 3:1 describes this action in the words “at night on my bed” these scenes are usually interpreted as a dream of the maiden in which she expresses her longing and searching for her lover.

2:8-17 – The lover comes to the home of the maiden:
“Behold, he stands behind our wall
He looks in at the windows; He glances through the lattice.”
The words of the man are then quoted which he had spoken; he complained that she is as inaccessible as a dove in the cliffs (2:14) although it is springtime (2:11-13). She replies in the famous figure of the little foxes (2:15) which spoiled the vineyard, that she had been detained from his companionship by her duties. She then related another scene when she saw him by night rising from her bed to seek him in the streets where she found him and brought him back to her mother’s house. The section again ends with the plea to the chorus not to waken the lover (3:5).

Scene III

3:6-5:1 – The city of Jerusalem – The Wedding Procession of King Solomon and his beloved borne on a litter.

3: 6-11 – The people of Jerusalem sing of the approach of the King and his bride.

4:1-5:1 – Songs of mutual endearment.
1st. The husband of the bride (see reference to veil, 4:3 and to the breasts, 4:5)
2nd. The bride interrupts the praise of her charm to long for the solitude until the cool of the evening (4:6).
3rd. The husband tells of the beauty of his spouse in tender and beautiful metaphors. (Note the word used here we are told always is used only of a bride.) He ends the quotation with a comparison of her to a fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and flowing streams from Lebanon (4:15).
4th. She closes the scene by the wish that this garden may prosper and that he may gather the fruit of it.

Scene IV

5:2-8:4 – The palace – Incidents of the wedding festival. New searchings and findings of the lovers.

5:2-8 – The Shulamite tells one chorus of a dream in which her lover again visited her room by night but disappeared when she arose to open for him. She sought him in the street and was wounded by the keepers of the wall.

5:9 – The chorus interrupts to ask why her lover is more desirable than any other lover.

5:10-16 – The bride answers, extolling her husband:
My beloved is white and ruddy
The chiefest among ten thousand;
His head is as the most fine gold
His locks are bushy and black as a raven.
Along with several other choice adjectives which make him to her “altogether lovely” (5:16).

6:1 – The chorus interrupts to ask where her lover has gone.

6:2-3 – The bride replies that he has gone to his garden to gather lilies.

6:4-9 – Solomon enters to sing her charms. He asks her not to look at him “for they (her eyes) have captivated him” (6:5); language, I think, which only a lover can appreciate.

6:10 – Dialogue between the chorus and bride.

7:1-5 – The chorus continues, singing the bride’s charms which have captivated the king.

7:6-9 – Solomon again enters and sings the praises of his beloved in very intimate terms.

7:10-8:4 – The bride in turn invites the lover to revisit the scene of her childhood home and the scene of their first love. She wishes that he were as her brother that she might show her affection before all without being despised. She closes with the recurring refrain.

Scene V

8:5-14 – The Shulamite’s home.

8:5 – The inhabitants ask, “Who comes?”

8:5 – The bridegroom recalls the first moment of mutual love under a tree, near where the girl had been born.

8:6-7 – The bride responds with what is regarded as the theme of the whole book. She asks that she be sealed in her lover’s heart in an intimate and inviolable union; she speaks of the constancy of love:
“Set me as a seal upon your heart
As a seal upon your arms;
For love is as strong as death
Jealousy is cruel as Sheol;
The flashes thereof are flashes of fire
A very flame of Jehovah.
Many waters cannot quench love,
Neither can floods drown it;
If a man would give all the substance of his house for love,
He would utterly be condemned” (8:6-7).
(Jealousy here is intense love; it is hard [tenacious] as death [sheol]; like death it never lets the victim go. The one who would exchange love for treasure would be condemned or scorned).

8:8 – The bride’s brothers (to whom the betrothal pertained, Genesis 24:50) are introduced as originally objecting to her marriage, implying that she was undeveloped, (that is, immature for marriage).
If she be a wall (that is inaccessible),
We will decorate her with jewels.
If she be a door (ready to accept suitors),
We will enclose her (keep her in seclusion).

8:10-12 – She replied that she was (had been) a wall (kept to herself) and that this had won for her the peace of her lover (Note that both “Solomon” and the “Shulamite” are derived from the Hebrew word for peace). She again uses the analogy of Solomon’s vineyard let out for hire for a thousand pieces of silver.
My vineyard, which is mine, is before me;
You, O Solomon, shall have the thousand,
And those that keep the fruit (that is, the brothers who will be rewarded for protecting her)
Thereof the two hundred.

8:13 – Solomon asked her to sing.

8:14 – She repeats the song of 2:15-17, an invitation to love’s fulfillment:
Make haste, my beloved,
Be you like a roe or to a young hart
Upon the mountains of spices.

This is the song. This much is fairly plain, though some few details of the action might be seen slightly different by different reconstructions. There is fairly good agreement, I find, among those commentators who accept the idea that there are two characters and that they are Solomon and one of his wives.

Interpretations

The interpretation is quite a different matter. There have been many different theories as to the meaning and significance of the Song. The following is an outline of some of the more prominent of these:

1. The Allegorical Interpretation.
This is the dominant view of Jewish Rabbinical writings. The lovers are supposed to mean Jehovah and Israel. This view seems to account for the selection of the song as the scripture to be read at the Passover festival by later Judaism.

A variant of this theory was introduced into the early church by Origin and Hippolytus. Their idea was that the song had to do with Christ and His bride, the church. This view has been the most widely accepted view. It accounts for the interpretive chapter headings in the Authorized Version (that is Chapters 1-3, “The Mutual Love of Christ and His Church”). It is seen in the poetic adoptions in our songs such as “Jesus, Rose of Sharon” and “The Lily of the Valley”. Curiously enough, if the interpretation were carried through correctly, the church, not Christ, would be represented by these titles.

In expounding this theme “black” or “swarthy” (1:5) means black with sin, made beautiful by conversion; “between my breasts” (1:12) means between the covenants; and 5:1 has reference to the Lord’s Supper. The Roman Catholics of the Middle Ages went on from this to view certain phases of the book as pertaining to the Virgin Mary.(3)

In criticizing this view Young, the well-known conservative writer, says: “We must remark that there is a distinction between allegorical interpretation and the interpretation of allegory. There is no justification for allegorical interpretation unless there is first of all an allegory to be interpreted, and there is no evidence to show that The Song of Solomon is an allegory. In other words, the arguments generally used to support the allegorical interpretation are irrelevant”.(4) Along the same line, Brother McGarvey said: “I tried hard to see something prophetic in it, but I failed, and I have never yet succeeded. I am not surprised, therefore, that all very recent interpreters have abandoned the idea that the Shulamite in some way represents the church, and Solomon the Lord Jesus. There is no sustained allegory in any part of the song to anything connected with Christ or the church.”

2. The Dramatic View.
The view of Franz Delitzsch was that originally the poem was a drama in which the setting and the actions were supplied by pantomime or stage curtains. He saw the story as a love play in which Solomon’s love was purified from the sensual to pure love. The view of Ewald, Driver, and others (already alluded to) of the “shepherd hypothesis” also sees the poem as a drama. This view has been held too unlikely 1) because there is little evidence of drama among the Hebrews. As such it would appear unique. 2) There is no evidence in the poem itself of its being a drama any more than an allegory. Its canonization would be difficult to explain based upon this view.

3. The Collection View.
Some scholars think that the book is not a unit, but that it is a collection of wedding songs such as were wont to be sung at wedding festivals in countries (that is, Damascus) even to comparatively recent times. Parallel collections have been made. The theory appealed to the German poet Goethe. But the poem does have a type of plot which develops throughout, and passages recur in a way hardly likely in the event they had been isolated poems collected together. Nor is it proved that the surrounding customs of marriage upon which the theory is based were current in Palestine.

4. A Modernist View.
T. J. Meek (see the “Introduction” of the book in the recent Interpreter’s Bible) has claimed that the song was borrowed from pagan religious surroundings. In this view the cult god died, and the goddess descended to Sheol to find him, typifying the dormant season of the year. Upon reunion of the god and goddess Spring returned. This reunion was celebrated in the temples by such a song as the one we are studying. The Song of Solomon according to this view gradually lost its identity with paganism and was taken over by Israel. This explanation is based upon finding a naturalistic origin for the song, and it hardly seems necessary to point out the unlikeliness of such borrowing for a biblical book.

5. The View of a Glorification of Pure Marriage Love.
Theodore of Mopsuestia, a 6th century commentator, was condemned by an early council for regarding the song as being concerned with the simple fidelity of the love of two married people. The Jewish Mishna had pronounced an anathema on anyone who would so interpret the song. Despite this opposition, the majority of modern conservative interpreters seem to have adopted this view. Schaff-Herzog says, “The theme is conjugal love, pure and simple.” Dr. Irvin in Irvine’s Bible Commentary says, “The simplest and most natural (interpretation) appears to be that which regards it as a poem or drama of pure wedded love.” Edward J. Young says: “The song does celebrate the dignity and purity of human love. This is a fact which has not always been stressed. The song, therefore, is didactic and moral in its purpose. It came to us in this world of sin, where lust and passion are on every hand, where fierce temptations assail us and try to turn us aside from the God-given standard of marriage. And it reminds us, in particularly beautiful fashion, how pure and noble true love is”(5).

There are some of us who are quite squeamish over any mention of favor towards such a view. For our generation still harbors a curious mixture of Puritan and Victorian notions by which marriage and its creative and conjugal aspect must not be mentioned on the one hand and a modern erotic and sensual exhibitionism which we accept without question in such things as advertising and appearance. Whether this is the only true interpretation or not, it is certainly not amiss to emphasize in our day the biblical view regarding marriage.

It was the Lord God Himself who said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make a help meet for (answering to, or complementing) him” (Genesis 2:18). It was the wisest man of all men who said, “Whoso finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor of Jehovah” (Proverbs 18:22). The same man said, “Houses and riches are an inheritance from fathers; but a prudent wife is from Jehovah” (Proverbs 19:14). This verse the translators of the Septuagint rendered, “Father’s divide wine and substance to children; but a woman is made ready for her husband by Jehovah.” Another proverb has it that one of the things too wonderful for comprehension is “the way of a man with a maiden.” The New Testament echoes the sentiment: “Marriage is honorable in all things, and the bed is undefiled, but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge” (Hebrews 13:4).

Our World

We need not tell this audience that something is happening to marriage in the home in our modern America and even in the church of Christ. Whereas a broken home, a divorce and remarriage, were practically unknown and uncondoned by the communities of our forefathers and unheard of in our churches, they are now not so rare. Preachers may well be (as many of them are in fact) alarmed at the number of couples who are having marital difficulties serious enough to warrant professional help. This has turned many preachers’ studies into counselors’ offices.

What is wrong and what is the remedy? Partially what is wrong is a general secularization of our society and the acceptance of ethical and moral standards based upon a naturalistic (modernistic) understanding of man. Sex is glorified, familiarity is invited, exposure is condoned, desecration and violation of sacred values are accepted as the usual.

But the trouble is deeper. Our Western Civilization has accepted a concept of romantic love which is not only foreign to the Bible (having roots in The Troubadour Era of the Middle Ages) but also one that breeds an unhealthy attitude toward marriage and, when brought into conflict with morals, a frequent neurosis.

This romantic notion teaches our children that they must “marry for love”. “Love” here defined is the thrilling captivation of the unsuspecting by a knight in shining armor who leads the maiden away to castles in the air where life will be one romantic honeymoon – “they lived happily ever after.” A few years ago a gospel preacher in our state actually wrote a book in which he developed the thesis that if a couple had not married for love, they were not really married “in the sight of the Lord” and might divorce each other and remarry someone else (he neglected to say just what the status of the children born to such a union is). One of “our” publishing firms actually published this treatise.

It does little good to teach young people that marriage is indissolvable, that it is “till death do us part”, when their psychological conditioning does not prepare them to accept its realities and its responsibilities. A consciousness that an unbearable situation is unbreakable leads to emotional conflict and even neurosis.

Rebecca had never been courted by Isaac with the romantic ideal when she mounted the camel for the long ride across the desert which was to end in marriage to him. In fact, she had never even seen him, when at the end of the journey she veiled her face at his approach!

But she had been nurtured in a tradition that in this union of two people on a God-given, heaven-sanctioned experience of creative self-giving she was fulfilling the destiny for which God had made her. In this nurture she had been taught that she was to accept her husband as “lord” (1 Peter 3:1-6), that is, except his leadership and reverence his person to understand that neither the husband nor the wife had power over his own body (Exodus 21:10; 1 Corinthians 7:4). She understood that she would bear and rear his children and be the ruler over his household (Proverbs 31:10ff; 1 Timothy 5:14).

She knew that she need not fear this strange man whose tent she would share, for he too had been taught to accept the wife as his own counterpart (Genesis 2:18), to protect her as the weaker vessel, to regard her, not as his hireling or merely as his mistress, but as a co-heir of eternal life. Is it any wonder that the Bible tells us that: “Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah’s tent, and took Rebecca, and she became his wife; and he loved her; and Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death” (Genesis 24:67)?

It is not to be supposed, one would think, that they did not have problems of “adjustment,” but, then, it probably did not occur to them that they would not in the fear of God make that adjustment.

Conclusion

This feeling of divine purpose, of fulfillment, of finality is the kind of feeling toward the marriage relationship that we need to try to recapture; it is the kind of feeling toward married love that the Song of Songs seemingly seeks to magnify.
“Set me as a seal upon your heart
As a seal upon your arm;
For love is a strong as death
Jealousy is cruel as Sheol;
The flashes thereof are flashes of fire,
A very flame of Jehovah.
Many waters cannot quench love,
Neither can floods drown it;
If a man would give all the substance of his house for love,
He would utterly be condemned” (8:6-7).
No wonder that in the mystery of the relation of Christ to His church the ideal illustration is that of husband and wife. To this speaker, such is the message of what was to the Old Testament the Song of Songs.

Footnotes

1. Christian Standard, January 15, 1898; reprinted in Biblical Criticism. (Cincinnati, Standard Pub. Co., 1910), pp. 266-268.
2. For instance in 3:6 (“who is this, etc.”) the Hebrew words translated “this and perfumed” are feminine and refer to the bride.
3. Compare Edward J. Young, An Introduction to the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, Erdman’s, 1950), pp. 324-327, upon which this summary part of the lesson has been based.
4. Ibid., p. 325.
5. Ibid., p. 327.

Questions for Class Discussion

1. What is the meaning of the title Song of Songs?
2. To what portion of the Hebrew Bible does it belong?
3. How many persons are concerned in the action of the song?
4. Give the story of the five main “settings” of the song.
5. Name the five main interpretations of the meaning of the song.
6. What are some of the results of the allegorical interpretation?
7. What failings does the theory have?
8. Give evidence for rejecting other of the theories about the poem.
9. What presently represents the majority opinion of conservative expositors of the poem?
10. Emphasize some of the Bible passages which speak of the sanctity of marriage.
11. How do the modern ideas of love differ from ancient preparation for marriage?
12. Discuss the biblical helps for working out “difficulties” among married people.
13. Discuss the appropriateness of marriage as an illustration for the relation of Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:23ff).