Introduction
Overview
Centuries of discussion have produced little consensus about Song of Songs, and significant disagreements remain about almost every aspect of the book. Many things contribute to the uncertainty, including its erotic language and themes, the fact that God is not mentioned in the book (with the possible exception of 8:6), the absence of anything relating to salvation history, and the fact that despite the erotic language there is no explicitly moral teaching in the book. Many have struggled with what is obviously love poetry in the canon of Scripture, and the appearance of such material in the canon also raises questions about how the material should be understood—is the primary purpose of the poetry to describe love between a man and a woman (in marriage?), or is the human relationship really intended as a metaphor for God’s love for his people (Israel, the church, or the individual believer)?
Conclusions about the kind of literature, the nature of the language and metaphors, the major points taught by the book, the story recounted in the book, and so on must, of course, result from a careful study of the text itself; but in the case of the Song of Songs, these decisions cannot be made entirely on that basis, since even the most careful study will leave us with several possibilities, which may be, rather than with one conclusion, which must be. But it is important to identify some of these issues and encourage careful consideration of these preliminary questions.
Literary Features and Methods of Interpretation
Song of Songs contains many words that are not known outside this book, though most are names of spices, plants, and the like, thus impacting only our understanding of details rather than the major flow of ideas. The point of many of the book’s metaphors is difficult to understand because of the great gulf between the original culture and the world of today’s readers. Comparing the girl’s hair to “a flock of goats streaming down Mount Gilead” (4:1) and her nose to a tower, while obviously compliments, fails to come across that way to most modern readers. Solomon’s relationship to the book and the events it describes is problematic as well, since the statement of 1 Kg 11:1–8 regarding his seven hundred wives and princesses and three hundred concubines seems to preclude the possibility of his being a role model for an ideal relationship between a man and a woman.
While some have suggested that the book is an allegory, the purpose of which is to describe God’s relationship with his people, others have argued that the author is relating historical events but still see the book’s primary purpose as describing God’s relationship with his people. Both of these approaches agree that the plain sense of the text is not its primary meaning and reflect the idea that human love, including its physical and sensual aspects, is not a topic worthy of inclusion in divinely inspired Scripture. While the popularity of this approach has diminished, this method was dominant throughout most of the history of the church. Few would argue that Song was written as an allegory, since it lacks the clues that an author normally provides to alert readers to such intentions in the piece. Often the allegorical interpretation was preferred to make it easier to deal with the erotic language and subject matter, and it may well reflect an interpretive method brought to the text rather than representing the original author’s intention.
The general consensus today is that the Song describes the love between a man and a woman, but this conclusion has not produced agreement about the purpose of the book or the story it tells. The book consists of a number of different poems, but these are not connected by a narrative framework that clearly tells the story of the lovers. Some conclude that there is no story; rather, it is an anthology of poems celebrating the beauty and virtue of human love written by various authors at different times. Some think these poems were used during wedding celebrations in ancient Israel, while others have proposed that the material had its ultimate origins in the fertility cults, which flourished in the ancient world and existed in Israel despite the condemnation of such practices in the Law and the Prophets.
Certain expressions and themes (e.g., daughters of Jerusalem) recur throughout the book and suggest its unity and the probability of a connected story. At the same time, it is not clear what that story is, and some have appropriately described the book as an impressionistic collage rather than a descriptive narrative. Ambiguity about who is speaking in the various dialogues adds uncertainty, and some have compared the book to a play that lacks stage directions. As a result of this vagueness, a number of assumptions must be made to construct a unified story from the poetry. Perhaps to a greater degree than with any other book of the Bible it is impossible to present a particular view of the book as the correct interpretation. [Song of Songs in the Broader Biblical Context]
Date, Authorship, and Structure
The Song of Songs begins with a statement that many believe identifies Solomon as the author (“The Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s,” 1:1). The Hebrew preposition used here (translated as “which is”) is a common way of indicating authorship, but the preposition could also mean “the Song of Songs about Solomon” or “for Solomon” or “commissioned by Solomon.” Thus a decision about authorship will have to be made on some basis other than this statement. The references in 1:5 and 8:11–12 do not necessarily connect Solomon with the poems, but those in 3:7, 9, and 11 do. The mention of Solomon in 1:1 also ties him in some way to the book, even if it does not identify him as the author. It is also possible that the book was not intended to tell a story about Solomon and that he functions more as a literary device than as a character in the story.
Solomon’s bad example as the husband of many wives is a major problem for Solomonic authorship. He was much better at originating and collecting wisdom than he was at applying it to his own life, though perhaps his Spirit-illuminated wisdom allowed him to describe an ideal relationship that he never experienced. Many interpreters conclude that the story involves Solomon’s relationship with a woman whom he truly loved, in contrast to wives he married for political expediency, and it is also possible that Solomon is describing what might have been had he lived according to the great wisdom and insight for which he was famous.
Others have suggested that Solomon is not the hero of the book and that there are three major characters rather than two (a view sometimes called the “shepherd hypothesis”). According to this view, a young girl, who is in love with a shepherd from her home town, has been taken to Jerusalem by Solomon to become a part of his harem. Despite the splendor of the court and the benefits she would enjoy as Solomon’s wife, the girl rejects his advances and is finally allowed to return to the shepherd, whom she truly loves.
Prior to the nineteenth century, the references to Solomon were understood as affirming Solomonic authorship. This would require a date near the mid-tenth century BC and would be consistent with what is known about his literary pursuits and interest in wisdom and the natural realm (cf. 1 Kg 4:32). Many today question the traditional date, largely because some linguistic evidence suggests a later date. At the same time, there are grammatical features characteristic of an early date, so the linguistic evidence is at best ambiguous.
Too much ambiguity exists to conclude with certainty that Solomon wrote the book, and we are left with little basis for determining the date or the authorship of this problematic book. The book includes descriptions of love and romance from a woman’s perspective, and some have suggested that it may have been composed, at least in part, by a woman. The Song of Deborah (Jdg 5), the prayer of Hannah (1 Sm 2:1–10), and the prayer of Mary (Lk 1:46–55) were likely composed by women, and given the lack of definitive indicators as to the author and date of the Song, this suggestion cannot be rejected out of hand. Fortunately, our understanding of the message of the book does not depend on an exact knowledge of authorship or date. It is even possible that the ambiguity regarding these matters is a deliberate part of the book’s design.
Solomon’s role in the book is also intertwined with issues concerning its unity and story. Those who view the book as an anthology of poems generally conclude that there is no story and that the separate poems were written by many different people over a long period of time. Those who conclude that the book consists of a unified story are greatly influenced in their understanding of the story by their conclusions about Solomon’s role in the book.
This commentary divides the book based largely on thought units and assumes that the book describes a relationship between one man and one woman (rather than the three-character view). The commentary also assumes that the book is about an ideal relationship rather than an actual one and that the characters are generic ones representative of all lovers. It is possible that the poem describes their relationship from courtship to marriage and beyond, but the poetry is not sufficiently precise to allow us to know where in their relationship a particular episode fits. This makes it difficult to argue that material prior to the marriage scene in 3:6–11 describes their courtship while the material after that deals with the period after their marriage. The poems are about love and romance and move back and forth with little concern for the chronology of the relationship.
Outline
1. Delight in Love (1:1–2:7)
2. Separation and Anticipation (2:8–3:5)
3. Wedding and Consummation (3:6–5:1)
4. Frustration and Pursuit (5:2–6:3)
5. Praise of Beauty (6:4–7:13)
6. The Power of Love (8:1–14)