Old Testament · Poetry and Wisdom · Book 22 of 66
Song of Solomon
Solomon’s song of a bride and her beloved king, sung in turns with the daughters of Jerusalem, whose love is “strong as death.”
- 8 chapters
- 117 verses
- About 12 minutes to read
The Song of Solomon is a love song in which a bride and her beloved speak in turn, and the daughters of Jerusalem answer them. There is no narrator: the speakers are known by what they say and by the Hebrew’s masculine and feminine forms. Its title, “The song of songs” (Song of Solomon 1:1), calls it the best of songs. It is the one book of Scripture given wholly to the love of bride and bridegroom, the love the prophets use for the LORD and his people: “as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee” (Isaiah 62:5).
Three times the bride charges the daughters of Jerusalem not to awaken love until it please (2:7; 3:5; 8:4), and each charge closes a movement. Three times “Who is this” or “Who is she” announces someone coming (3:6; 6:10; 8:5). Twice she seeks him by night (3:1–4; 5:2–8): the first time she finds him, the second time the watchmen smite her. The book’s one saying about love itself comes near its end: “love is strong as death” (8:6).
Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.
Before you read
- Who wrote it
- The title names Solomon: “The song of songs, which is Solomon’s” (1:1). His songs were “a thousand and five” (1 Kings 4:32). Origen wrote that
the churches of God have received three volumes written by Solomon
, this the third. - When it happens
- A king’s wedding: the daughters of Zion are called to “behold king Solomon with the crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals” (3:11). The bride is called “the Shulamite” (6:13) and is not otherwise named.
- Where
- Jerusalem and the king’s house, with images drawn from the whole land: Lebanon and Hermon in the north, Gilead and Heshbon beyond Jordan, Sharon, Carmel, and the vineyards of Engedi.
How Song of Solomon is laid out
6 movements · 27 passages · 117 verses
Brought into his chambers
1:1–2:7 · 24 verses
The bride longs for her beloved: “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.” The king has brought her into his chambers. She is “black, but comely,” darkened by the sun in the vineyards, and asks where he feeds his flock. They praise each other in turn, he brings her to the banqueting house, and she gives the first charge to the daughters of Jerusalem.
8 passages
- 1:1–4 The Song of Songs and the Bride's Yearning
- 1:5–6 Self-Awareness and Beauty
- 1:7–8 Where the Beloved Feeds His Flock
- 1:9–11 Praise of the Bride's Beauty
- 1:12–14 Mutual Delight and Affection
- 1:15–17 Mutual Admiration and a Home Built on Love
- 2:1–2 The Shulamite's Declaration of Love
- 2:3–7 The Beloved's Excellence
Rise up and come away
2:8–3:5 · 15 verses
Her beloved comes “leaping upon the mountains” and calls her out, for the winter is past and the flowers appear. He asks to see her face and hear her voice, and the little foxes must be taken from the vines. “My beloved is mine, and I am his.” By night she seeks him through the city, finds him, and will not let him go. The second charge follows.
The day of his espousals
3:6–5:1 · 23 verses
A procession comes out of the wilderness, Solomon’s bed with threescore valiant men about it, and the daughters of Zion are called to see the king crowned “in the day of his espousals.” He praises his bride, “there is no spot in thee,” calls her from Lebanon, and names her “a garden inclosed.” She bids him come into his garden, and he comes.
He knocks by night
5:2–6:3 · 18 verses
He knocks by night: “Open to me, my sister, my love.” She delays, and when she opens he has withdrawn. Searching the city, she is smitten by the watchmen. The daughters of Jerusalem ask what her beloved is more than another, and she describes him part by part: “he is altogether lovely.” He has gone down to his garden: “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.”
Return, O Shulamite
6:4–8:4 · 27 verses
He praises her again, “terrible as an army with banners,” one dove among threescore queens, and the queens praise her: “Who is she that looketh forth as the morning?” Voices call the Shulamite to return, and he praises her beauty from her feet upward. She answers, “I am my beloved’s, and his desire is toward me,” and calls him out to the fields. The third charge closes it.
Strong as death
8:5–14 · 10 verses
“Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved?” She asks to be set as a seal upon his heart, for love is strong as death, and many waters cannot quench it. “We have a little sister”: the bride says, “I am a wall.” Solomon lets out his vineyard at Baalhamon, but hers is her own. She bids her beloved make haste.
The words Song of Solomon turns on
She calls him beloved, and he calls her my love and fair. Spouse and garden meet at the book’s centre, and love is the word of her charge.
What Song of Solomon teaches
dôwd · beloved
Mine, and his
She calls him dôwd, “my beloved,” in almost every scene, and 32 of the 53 verses that hold the word in Scripture are in this book. Three times she says what they are to each other, and the order moves. First, “My beloved is mine, and I am his” (2:16). After the night he withdrew, “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine” (6:3). Last, “I am my beloved’s, and his desire is toward me” (7:10), and she no longer says that he is hers. The word for desire, teshûwqâh, stands elsewhere only in Genesis 3:16 and 4:7, where the woman is told, “thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” Here the desire is his, and it is toward her.
ʼahăbâh · love
Not before its time
Three times the bride charges the daughters of Jerusalem “that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please” (2:7; 3:5; 8:4). The word is ʼahăbâh, love itself, and it is not to be roused before its time. After the last charge the book says what love is: “love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave” (8:6). Floods cannot drown it, and it is not for sale: “if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned” (8:7). The little sister, too, is kept for “the day when she shall be spoken for” (8:8).
gan · garden
A garden inclosed
At the centre of the book the bridegroom calls his bride “a garden inclosed … a spring shut up, a fountain sealed” (4:12), planted with every spice. The garden is shut, and it is kept for one. She answers, “blow upon my garden … Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits” (4:16): in one verse her garden becomes his. He replies, “I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse” (5:1). The word kallâh, bride, which the KJV gives as “spouse,” stands in the Song only in these verses (4:8–12; 5:1), just after the king’s wedding day. Proverbs uses the same figure for faithful marriage: “Drink waters out of thine own cistern” (Proverbs 5:15).
How Christians have read it
Faithful readers have differed; each reading is given with its grounds
Christ and his church
The bridegroom is Christ and the bride is his church, and in her each believing soul. Theodoret wrote, Let us, therefore, understand the church as the bride, and Christ as the bridegroom
, and Origen allowed both: The bride is either the soul of man, which enters into marriage with Christ, or the church.
Paul calls marriage a mystery “concerning Christ and the church” (Ephesians 5:32).
Grounds Ephesians 5:25–32Theodoret of Cyrus 458 · Commentary On The Song Of Songs, PrefaceOrigen of Alexandria 253 · Fragments On Luke 186Ambrose of Milan 397 · Letter 62, To His SisterCyril of Alexandria 444 · Commentary On Luke, Homily 95
The LORD and Israel
The Song sings the covenant love of the LORD for his people, which the prophets describe as a marriage: “thy Maker is thine husband” (Isaiah 54:5), and “I will betroth thee unto me for ever” (Hosea 2:19). The LORD remembers “the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness” (Jeremiah 2:2), and the bride of the Song comes up from the wilderness leaning upon her beloved.
Marriage as God made it
The Song is first what it says: the love of a bridegroom and his bride, given by God from the beginning, when the two were “one flesh” and “were not ashamed” (Genesis 2:24–25). Solomon’s proverbs use the same figures: “rejoice with the wife of thy youth” (Proverbs 5:18). Read this way, the book sings what Hebrews says plainly: “Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled” (Hebrews 13:4).
Christ in Song of Solomon
The New Testament does not quote the Song, but it takes up its figure of the bridegroom. John the Baptist says of Jesus, “He that hath the bride is the bridegroom” (John 3:29), and Jesus calls himself the bridegroom with whom the children of the bridechamber cannot mourn (Matthew 9:15). Paul writes that Christ “loved the church, and gave himself for it,” to present it “not having spot” (Ephesians 5:25–27), as the king says of his bride, “there is no spot in thee” (Song of Solomon 4:7). Of husband and wife made one flesh he writes, “This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church” (Ephesians 5:32). Scripture closes on “the marriage of the Lamb” (Revelation 19:7).
The king of the Song is Solomon, son of David, and Jesus said, “a greater than Solomon is here” (Matthew 12:42). Gregory of Nyssa read the title so: Another Solomon is signified here: one who is also descended from the seed of David according to the flesh, one whose name means peace, the true king of Israel and builder of God’s temple.
People
By how many verses name them
Places
16 named
- JerusalemHome of the daughters of Jerusalem, whom the bride charges8
- LebanonWood of Solomon’s chariot; the heights he calls her from6
- GileadMount Gilead, whose flocks of goats picture her hair2
- AmanaA northern peak, named with Shenir and Hermon1
- Baal-hamonWhere Solomon lets out his vineyard to keepers1
- Bath-rabbimA gate of Heshbon, by its fishpools1
- CarmelHer head is likened to it1
- DamascusThe tower of Lebanon looks toward it1
Where Song of Solomon reaches
The passages it leans on, and the ones that lean on it
Song of Solomon 5:2 Revelation 3:20
The beloved knocks by night and asks to be let in; the risen Christ stands at the door and knocks.
Song of Solomon 4:7 Ephesians 5:27
“There is no spot in thee”: Christ presents the church to himself “not having spot.”
Song of Solomon 3:11 Isaiah 62:5
The king’s day of espousals, and the LORD rejoicing over his people “as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride.”
Song of Solomon 4:12 Proverbs 5:15
The fountain kept for one: the husband is told to drink from his own cistern and his own well.
Song of Solomon 5:10 Psalms 45:2
The bride praises her king above ten thousand; the king’s wedding psalm calls him “fairer than the children of men.”
Books Song of Solomon links to most
The Church Fathers on Song of Solomon
551 quotations from 33 writers before AD 800 · the ten most quoted, in date order
Origen read the book as a marriage song written in the form of a drama.
This book seems to me to be an epithalamium, that is, a marriage song, written by Solomon in the style of a drama, which he sang like a bride who is getting married and burning with a heavenly love toward her husband, which is the Word of God.
Hippolytus, in his treatise on the Song, saw Christ in Solomon’s procession.
“Behold the litter of Solomon surrounded by sixty mighty men from the powerful of Israel, each one equipped with a sword and trained for battle.” O blessed sight! O litter of sabbath rest! For Solomon’s litter reveals nothing other than Christ himself.
Jerome heard in the bridegroom’s spring call the passing of the old law’s shadow.
Then the bridegroom makes answer to the bride and teaches her that the shadow of the old law has passed away and the truth of the gospel has come. “Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away, for lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.” … “The voice of the turtle [dove] is heard in our land.” The turtle [dove], the most chaste of birds, always dwelling in lofty places, is a type of the Savior.
Cyril of Jerusalem heard the Lord’s burial in a garden in the bridegroom’s myrrh and spices.
The place of his burial was a garden.… What is he going to say who was buried in the garden? “I gather my myrrh, and my spices”; and again, “Myrrh and aloes with all the finest spices.” These were the tokens of his burial, and in the Gospels it is said, “The women came to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared,” and “there also came Nicodemus, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes.”
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