Love's delight: the opening of the Song of Songs

The Song of Songs opens with the line 'This is Solomon's Song of Songs.' The phrase 'Song of Songs' is a Hebrew superlative, like 'Holy of Holies' or 'King of kings'. It means the best of songs, or a song above all others. The Hebrew preposition in 'Solomon's' can mean 'by', 'for' or 'about' Solomon. First Kings 4:32 says that Solomon composed 1,005 songs, and the Song names him several times (1:5; 3:7-11; 8:11-12). Tradition has taken him as the author.

Scholars disagree about the date. Some accept a Solomonic or tenth-century BC setting, which suits the royal court and the Egyptian chariots. Others point to Persian and possibly Greek loanwords, Aramaic-like forms and late spelling, and place the final composition after the exile, between about the fifth and third centuries BC. The book may preserve earlier material, and the class does not rest on the question. The poem is also compared to the love songs of ancient Egypt (from roughly the second millennium BC), which use similar images of gardens, fruit, gazelles and fragrance, so the form was known across the ancient Near East.

The Song consists of a series of poems of desire and delight between a woman and a man, with a chorus called the daughters of Jerusalem. It is not a story with a single plot, and scholars disagree about whether it is one long poem or an anthology. The woman speaks more than the man, which stands out among ancient love poetry. In Jewish tradition the Song is one of five scrolls (the Megillot) and is read at Passover. Its first audience was Israel, whose Scriptures also gave laws for marriage and warnings against misuse of sex (Proverbs 5 to 7). The Song supplies what those chapters assume: that married love is a delight and a gift.

The Song is lyric poetry made of metaphor. Its speakers are the woman, the man, whom she calls her beloved (dod), and the chorus of women. The change of speaker is not marked in the Hebrew, though the grammar of gender and number often shows who is talking. Comparisons to animals, fruit, gardens, spices and landscapes are not literal descriptions. Each image conveys a feeling, a quality or a delight. A neck compared to a tower (4:4) is not made of stone, and a beloved compared to a gazelle is graceful and swift.

The main interpretive question is what the book is about. Three approaches have been prominent. The allegorical reading, which dominated Jewish and Christian interpretation for centuries, holds that the Song is about God's love for Israel or Christ's love for the church or the soul. The literal reading holds that the Song is what it appears to be, a celebration of human love and marriage. The typological reading holds that the human love is real and is also a sign of God's love for his people. The Jewish sage Akiva is reported to have said that the Song is the Holy of Holies among the Writings (Mishnah, Yadayim 3:5), and Origen in the third century and Bernard of Clairvaux in the twelfth read the book at length as the soul's love for Christ. Modern scholarship commonly emphasises the literal sense. This class begins with the literal sense, since the first hearers would have taken it so, and then asks what the rest of the Bible says about married love and the bridegroom.

The Song is poetry about delight and desire, and it places the lovers firmly within mutual commitment ('My beloved is mine and I am his', 2:16).

Verses 1:2 to 4. The woman speaks first: 'Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is more delightful than wine.' The shift from 'him' to 'your' is deliberate, as if she addresses him in her thoughts and then in his presence. The word translated 'love' (dodim) is plural and denotes caresses and lovemaking. Wine is the standard comparison for joy. His name is 'like perfume poured out', and there may be a play on the Hebrew words for 'name' (shem) and 'oil' (shemen). The chorus of maidens adores him. 'Take me away with you.' She wishes to be brought to the king's chambers. The king may be the beloved addressed in royal terms, or Solomon in the literary setting of the poem. In either case the picture is of an intimate place of joy.

Chapter 1:5 and 6

'I am dark, yet lovely, O daughters of Jerusalem.' She compares herself to the dark tents of Kedar, the goat-hair tents of a nomadic people of the Arabian desert, and to the curtains of Solomon, probably splendid royal hangings. Her darkness came from the sun, since her brothers made her work as keeper of the vineyards. She says that she had no time to keep her own vineyard, which is a figure for herself. The verse is not an apology. It is a claim to beauty despite what others see.

Chapter 1:7 and 8

She asks her beloved where he pastures his flock and rests it at midday, so that she will not be like a veiled woman (or one who wanders) among his companions' flocks. The reply, 'follow the tracks of the flock', may come from the chorus or from him, and teases her gently.

Verses 9 to 11. He speaks: 'I compare you, my darling, to a mare among Pharaoh's chariots.' Egypt was known for fine horses (1 Kings 10:28-29). The image combines grace, strength and display. The word translated 'darling' (ra'yah) means companion, and he uses it again at 2:2, 10 and 13. He offers her gold ornaments with silver beads.

Verses 12 to 17. She speaks of perfume and of her beloved as a sachet of myrrh resting between her breasts, and as a cluster of henna blossoms in the vineyards of En-gedi, an oasis on the western shore of the Dead Sea. They exchange praise: 'How beautiful you are, my darling!... How handsome you are, my beloved!' Their bed is the soft grass, and their house has cedar beams and fir rafters. The setting is a bower both rustic and royal.

Chapter 2:1 to 7. 'I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valley.' The Hebrew flower names are uncertain, and she describes herself as an ordinary flower of the plain. He answers: 'Like a lily among the thorns is my darling among the maidens', and she replies with the apple tree among the trees of the forest. She sits in his shade and his fruit is sweet. In the 'house of wine', his banner over her is love. She is 'faint with love' and asks for raisins and apples. The scene closes with the first refrain, in which she charges the daughters of Jerusalem 'by the gazelles and does of the field' not to arouse or awaken love until the time is right (2:7; repeated at 3:5 and 8:4). It can be read as a caution not to force love before it is ready, or as a request not to disturb it while it rests. The first fits the Song's placing of love within commitment.

Verses 8 to 17. The beloved comes leaping across the mountains and bounding over the hills like a gazelle. He stands behind the wall, peering through the lattice, and calls: 'Arise, my darling. Come away with me, my beautiful one.' The winter rains are over. Flowers appear, the turtledoves coo, the fig tree ripens and the vines give fragrance. It is a well-known spring poem. She is his 'dove in the clefts of the rock', and he asks to see her face and hear her voice. Verse 15 seems to be a snatch of a song or riddle: 'Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, for our vineyards are in bloom.' The vineyards are a metaphor for love in bloom, and the small animals stand for the little things that can damage it. The chapter ends with the refrain that sums up their relation: 'My beloved is mine and I am his.'

The Song teaches, within the canon, that married love is a good gift of God. Genesis 2:18-25 had said that it was not good for the man to be alone, and ends with the man and woman naked and without shame. Proverbs 5:18-19 tells a husband to rejoice in the wife of his youth and to delight in her love. Ecclesiastes 9:9 tells the reader to enjoy life with the wife he loves. The Song fills out this theme with a fuller voice and never names God in the usual way (8:6 may contain a short form of the divine name). Its theology is carried by what it assumes: that love between husband and wife is a good, God-given part of the created world.

The poem also distinguishes desire from possession and keeps love within covenant. The refrain 'My beloved is mine and I am his' joins mutual belonging with delight. The adjuration to the daughters of Jerusalem teaches that love has its right time. Hebrews 13:4 later says that marriage is to be honoured by all.

The Song also contrasts with the Bible's narrative of sin. Genesis 3:16 speaks of strain between man and woman after the fall. In the Song the desire of the woman and man for each other is shown in its unspoiled form, as a glimpse of Eden. This is part of why the book is placed among the Writings, next to Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. Together they show wisdom in work, in death and in love.

The Song is not quoted in the New Testament, so any link to Christ must be drawn from the wider Bible with care. The strongest connection is the bridegroom image, which the Old Testament uses for the LORD and his people. Hosea 2:19-20 and Isaiah 54:5 speak of God as husband, and Ezekiel 16 tells the story of his covenant love as a marriage. The New Testament then applies the image to Christ. Jesus calls himself the bridegroom (Mark 2:19-20). John the Baptist speaks of himself as the friend who rejoices at the bridegroom's voice (John 3:29). Paul says that a husband's love for his wife is modeled on Christ's love for the church, quotes Genesis 2:24, and calls it a great mystery (Ephesians 5:25-32). Revelation speaks of the marriage supper of the Lamb and the bride who is the holy city (19:7-9; 21:2). These passages do not cite the Song, but they supply the biblical grounds on which the church has read it as a picture of Christ and his people.

The nature of the connection should be stated plainly. The Song is a promise and type only by extension: it describes human love, and the New Testament teaches that human marriage is itself a sign of Christ and the church. The Song's images of the lover who comes leaping over the mountains, calls to his beloved to come away, and is a shepherd (1:7) can be read as an echo of the Gospel's picture of the Shepherd who seeks his own (John 10). That is tentative and is offered as an echo only. The early readings by Origen and Bernard went further, and many details of their allegories are not supported by the New Testament.