Day 195. Song of Solomon 1-4

There are two things to keep in mind about the Song of Solomon right from the beginning. First, it was not written by Solomon. It comes from a much later time and was attributed to him. Why?--because he had so many wives—numbering in the hundreds according to scripture—so he was naturally assumed to be a great lover. Solomon was also a poet, or so we are informed by 1 Kings 4:32. But he did not write this love poem--and that is the second thing to keep in mind, that the Song of Solomon is a love poem—or a series of loosely linked love poems of a frankly sexual and nature. So why is it in the Bible?
Because it was ascribed to King Solomon, we suppose. The Christian Church, finding it among the writings it inherited from the Jewish scriptures and embarrassed by the sensual nature of its content, treated it otherwise—notably, as an allegory of the love of Christ for his bride the Church, and the Church's longing for its Lord. But it is really not that. It is, however, about love. And it does imply that human love in its most passionate forms is a shadow of the "steadfast love" of God, who is himself love and the source of love. "Rightly do they love you," the bride tells the bride-groom, speaking of her maidens. And rightly do we love God for who he is. But the Song itself is a struggle to express in poetical metaphors the depth of the physical love—coupled with friendship and mutual respect--that can exist between a man and women. And that is how we should treat it—as a pastoral love poem of the highest order.
Although a world apart in feeling and subject matter and not by the same writer, there are thematic parallels between Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon. Both exult in the enjoyment of the pleasures of the flesh—though the writer of Ecclesiastes is more interested in the pleasures of the table, while the Song of Solomon, sometimes called the Song of Songs, is passionately concerned with the pleasures of sexual love. "I am faint with love," the bride says at one point (1:5). And there is a breathless quality to the poem. (The poem is a pastoral colloquy—a pattern of assertion and reply among the bride, the bridegroom--who is sometimes called a shepherd--and a chorus of friends.)
The Song of Solomon is a series of poems about the reconciliation of things that are radically different—male and female, the shepherd (1:7) and the keeper of the vineyards (1:6), the "rose" (2:1) and "the apple tree" (2:3). Love brings opposites together and reconciles them, and for that reason it reminds us of God and humanity, reconciled by love. But that reconciliation is achieved only through a struggle, which also reminds us of the history of God's dealings with humanity as well—a struggle to understand each other, to live together in harmony and mutual respect, to fulfill each other's deepest needs, to truly "'know" each other. And that is what the Bible is, the story of that long love-struggle.