Deeper Commentary
Song of Solomon 1:1 The Song of songs, which is Solomon’s-
The key to understanding the Song is to appreciate that we have
here
a set of dialogues- Solomon to his Egyptian girlfriend, the Egyptian girl
to him, words of the daughters of Jerusalem to the girl and the girl to
them. And sometimes the words of her brothers who disapprove of her
sleeping with Solomon and see themselves as the guardians of her
virginity. Breaking up the text into these sections isn't easy, as
sometimes the break can occur within a verse.
The division of the text between
the speakers is made yet more difficult when we consider that some of the
words of Solomon may be her imagination of him praising her. I have
discussed on Song 6:1,3 how Solomon as the author is thereby mocking her
naivety through putting words in her mouth.
The Song begins by the daughters of Jerusalem and the Egyptian girl
being in some kind of competition for Solomon; they both state their
desire for him, and both of them compare his love to wine (1:2, 4). Note
how the Song doesn't begin as a romance is supposed to- with the first
meeting, love at first sight scene. As early as 1:2 she comments that
"your lovemaking is more delightful than wine". Sex and sexual imagery and
allusion fills the song, making it almost verbal pornography in places.
This is all a subversion of the whole genre of romance. So the Song begins
with the relationship already advanced, or with the woman inappropriately
forward, and with intense rivalry between the girl and the "daughters of
Jerusalem". The Egyptian justifies her darker complexion to the Jerusalem
girls, and praises her own beauty: "I am black but comely, O daughters of
Jerusalem" (1:5). There's evident aggression from her to them: "Don't
stare at me because I am dark!" (1:6). Her despising of the Jerusalem
girls is perhaps reflected in 1:6,7, where she asks Solomon: "Where do you
rest your sheep during the midday heat? Tell me lest I wander around
beside the flocks of your companions!". His "companions" presumably were
the daughters of Jerusalem, and she didn't want to be anywhere near them.
She likewise yells at them not to sexually stimulate her lover, Solomon
(2:7). And I take "My beloved is
mine" (2:16) to be the same catty kind of defensiveness.
The
girl is jealous of how the daughters of Jerusalem admire Solomon, not
least because of his fame in Israelite circles: "your name is as ointment
poured forth; therefore do the virgins love you" (1:3); "How rightly the
young women adore you!" (1:4). "Where has your beloved gone, O most
beautiful among women? Where has your beloved turned? Tell us, that we may
seek him with you" (6:1) appears none less than sarcasm from the
daughters.
So often there's the sense of urgency and haste- perhaps rooted in the
girl's fear of competition from the daughters of Jerusalem: "Draw me after
you; let us hurry! May the king bring me into his bedroom chambers!"
(1:4). This would also explain the quite unabashed sexual seduction
practiced by the girl- she begs Solomon to take her to his bedroom right
here at the start of the Song (1:4), and later says things like "May my
beloved come into his garden and eat its delightful fruit!" (4:16). This
is all inappropriate for a romance, and in ancient Israel such forwardness
would have been greatly frowned upon. In Proverbs, Solomon often warns
against falling for the forwardness of the Gentile immoral woman; and yet
he falls for it himself.
Solomon clearly was aware of the tension between the Egyptian girl whom
he loved, and the daughters of Jerusalem- from whom he should've been
choosing a wife. The girl says she is merely a common "meadow flower from
Sharon", but Solomon responds that in his eyes, "like a lily among thorns,
so is my darling among the maidens" (2:1,2). He likens the Jerusalem girls
to thorns- he was besotted with this Gentile. Ironically enough, Num.
33:55 had warned that the Gentiles within the land promised to Abraham
would be "thorns" to Israel if they married them. And yet Solomon sees the
Israelite women as "thorns" and the Gentile as a lily amongst them... . He
likewise compares her to them in 6:8,9: "There may be sixty queens, and
eighty concubines, and young women without number. But she is unique...".
But despite this, the girl seems to always fear Solomon's attraction to
the Jerusalem girls. She challenges him: "Why do you gaze upon the Perfect
One [as Solomon called her] like the dance of the Mahanaim?" (6:13), the
dance of the two camps / lines. She suspects there may be two camps in
Solomon's mind.
It was because of the impossible tension between the Egyptian girl and the Jerusalem maidens that there's the constant theme of needing to hold meetings in secrecy, often in the countryside or mountains around Jerusalem ("in the clefts of the rock, in the hiding places of the mountain crags, let me see your face", 2:14), and to "go away" in order to be together- e.g. 2:13 "come away my darling; my beautiful one, come away with me!”. They appear to have slept together in the open air, beneath the trees: "The lush foliage is our canopied bed; the cedars are the beams of our bedroom chamber; the pines are the rafters of our bedroom" (1:16,17). The same impression of outdoors secret romance is to be found in 7:11 "Come, my beloved, let us go to the countryside; let us spend the night in the villages". 2:17 and 4:6 suggest they spent a night together in the hills, and then before dawn Solomon got back to Jerusalem. 5:2 has Solomon coming to her room secretly at night, wet with the night dew. I suggest that she was living in the harem, being prepared for her encounter with Solomon- yet she was already having sex with him and he was meeting her secretly.
She has nightmares, reflecting her fears. In chapter 3, the night after sleeping with Solomon she has a terrible vision of Solomon's kingly bed coming to Jerusalem- prepared for the daughters of Jerusalem and not her, and fiercely guarded by aggressive Israelite soldiers. Chapter 5 appears to tell of another dream she has, a nightmare actually, of how Solomon failed to turn up at a night time rendezvous in Jerusalem, and she distraught and desperate wanders around the city, is picked up by the night watchmen, but finally finds Solomon and drags him back to her mother's house [in Egypt]. I find the passage very powerful- it's so imaginable as a nightmare which a girl in her situation would have. Her deepest desire was to get Solomon back to Egypt, into her family... and thus she dreamt of it. And likewise her subconscious awareness of the tension between her and the people of Jerusalem comes out too; yet again she charges the daughters of Jerusalem not to stimulate Solomon.
The daughters of Jerusalem mock her for her nightmare of chapter
3 at the very end: "Who is this coming up from the desert, leaning on her
beloved?" (8:5). Solomon has another woman leaning upon him...
The allegorical interpretation falls down over the fact that there is no
wedding scene. All we have is her nightmares of Solomon marrying the
daughters of Jerusalem rather than herself. And the final scene in Song 8
where she faces the blind reality that he has married other women. Solomon
wrote the Song, and ends it with him as it were having the last laugh. Her
naivety, mocked by the daughters of Jerusalem, characters created by him
to mock her, is revealed before all.
We expect a romantic song to end with the wedding; but it
doesn't. It ends with the couple parting; and this dream wedding is no
more than the Egyptian girl fantasizing. The fact the wedding 'scene' or
dream comes in the middle of the song rather than at the end is again
a
subversion of the whole genre of romance. The climax is in the wrong
place. And this just indicates how unfulfilling are relationships which
flout Divine principles.
Because of all this, there is a sense of on-off relationship throughout
the Song. One moment she is sick of love (2:5), the next she claims
Solomon had caressed her head with one hand and fingered her with the
other (2:6). The very explicit language of 2:6 sits strangely if the Song
is intended to be some wonderful romance building up to the climax of
marriage. Another example is in 5:8, where after Solomon gives up on
visiting the girl one night, she angrily tells the daughters of Jerusalem
that as far as she's concerned, they can tell Solomon that she [too?] is
sick of love. But when they sarcastically call her "O most beautiful of
women" and enquire what she exactly loves about Solomon (5:9). she comes
out with a great speech of praise for him (5:10-16). The seeking and not
finding him of chapter 5 all suggests he had temporarily rejected her,
after she had been lazy to open the door to him (Song of Solomon 3:2; 5:6-
these passages are the basis of NT teaching about Christ’s rejection of
his unworthy bride).
The girl wants to see in Solomon one as dark and Egyptian-looking as
herself. Having said that she is "dark" in complexion (1:4,6), she later
comments in 5:11 that to her, Solomon is also "dark" [s.w.]. She says 5:11
to the daughters of Jerusalem, as if in defence of her relationship with
Solomon, and his choosing her rather than them. In the same way as he
tried to see in her an Israelite woman, "O daughter of my princely people"
(when she was the daughter of the Egyptian Pharaoh, 6:12 cp. 7:1),
comparing her body parts to various geographical places in Israel (e.g.
goats on Gilead, 4:1; the tower of David, 4:4; "as beautiful as Tirzah, as
lovely as Jerusalem" 6:4), so she tried to see him as an Egyptian. They
were trying to see each other as who they were not... and so the
relationship was doomed to failure. Right from the start, the girl feels
that Solomon isn't giving her the complete passion of his love: "Oh, how I
wish you would kiss me passionately! For your lovemaking is more
delightful than wine" (1:2).
The Song ends without the famous final scene which we expect in a
romance. The expectation of a wedding and walking off into the sunset is
subverted by the concluding songs. The girl laments how she can't kiss
Solomon publically or be with him without being despised; and longs to be
able to take him back to her mother in Egypt (8:1,2). She utters the final
warning to the daughters of Jerusalem not to stimulate Solomon, and then
breaks down with the lament that jealousy is cruel as death (8:6) and
unrequited love is impossible; Solomon's true love cannot be bought by
her. The daughters of Jerusalem then speak of how they have a younger
sister whose breasts aren't yet developed, but they will care for her
until she is ready for Solomon (8:8,9). The Egyptian girl then reminisces
in the past tense: "I was a wall, and my breasts were like fortress
towers. Then I found favor in his eyes" (8:10). Solomon throughout the
Songs has commented positively upon her breasts; and now she is left to
lament that that is all just how it was, it's all over now. She then makes
the enigmatic comment about how Solomon has a vineyard which he leases
out, and yet she is a vineyard which belongs to her alone: "My vineyard,
which belongs to me, is at my disposal alone". The Songs have likened her
and her sexuality to a vineyard (Song 2:13,15), and her romantic meetings
with Solomon appear to have sometimes been in a vineyard. Solomon spoke of
her breasts as grapes (7:7). But Solomon's vineyard, she says, was
associated with Baal-Hamon- Lord / husband of a multitude. She finally
realized that he was a womanizer, who would go on to have over 1000 women
in his life... Lord [or husband] of a multitude. Perhaps his 1000 wives
and concubines lay behind her reference to the 1000 shekels that Solomon
can have for his vineyard (8:12). But now she was splitting up with him,
her vineyard was hers alone, her grapes were now solely at her disposal
and were not his any more. The final couplet of the Song is one of bitter
sarcasm, typical of the worst order of romantic breakup. Solomon says that
his "companions"- the daughters of Jerusalem whom she had so hated- are
listening carefully to her, as he is. And she responds by telling him to
run away, whilst still calling him her "beloved"- for although jealousy is
cruel as the grave, her love for him was unquenchable by many waters. Or
perhaps this too is sarcasm. So the Song ends with Solomon in rather a bad
light- off to his next women, whilst the Egyptian girl walks off the scene
bitterly protesting her love for him and how she's a victim of
circumstance and jealousy. Yet Solomon, presumably, authored the Song. I
read it therefore in the same way as I do Ecclesiastes- his jaded
statement of how life has been for him, how he sought fulfilment of his
human lusts but it never worked out, leaving him with a tragic sense of
unfulfilment because he had not gone God's way.
The blindness of Solomon is driven home time and again; he knew Divine truth, but the more he knew it, the more he lived the very opposite, failing to grasp the deeply personal relevance of truth to himself. A whole string of passages in Proverbs warn of the "strange" (AV) woman (Prov. 2:16; 5:20; 6:24; 7:5; 20:16; 23:27; 27:13). Yet the very same word (translated "outlandish", AV) is used in Neh. 13:26 concerning the women Solomon married. The antidote to succumbing to the wicked woman was to have wisdom- according to Proverbs. And Solomon apparently had wisdom. Yet he succumbed to the wicked woman. He was writing Song of Solomon at the same time as Proverbs. The reason for this must be that Solomon didn't really have wisdom. Yet we know that he was given it in abundance. The resolution of this seems to be that Solomon asked for wisdom in order to lead Israel rather than for himself, he used that wisdom to judge Israel and to educate the surrounding nations. But none of it percolated to himself. As custodians of true doctrine- for that is what we are- we are likely to suffer from over familiarity with it. We can become so accustomed to 'handling' it, as we strengthen each other, as we preach, that the personal bearing of the Truth becomes totally lost upon us, as it was totally lost upon Solomon. And the art of the Christian life is to have the word become flesh in us, as it did in the Lord. To personalize and personally experience the truths we hold. This is why people of low literacy or IQ can make huge sacrifices for their faith in the most simple building blocks of the Gospel which they have personalized and grasped.
The allegorical view [that Solomon is as the Lord Jesus and the girl as the church] puts the coarse flatteries and language of a seducer into the lips of "Christ", which seems to me inappropriate (especially Song 6:4-10,13; 7:9). Parts of the song are little more than verbal pornography, talking of the vagina, clitoris lips etc. To argue that this speaks of the intimacy of our relationship with the Lord seems simply inappropriate. The allegorical view likes to imagine that these are love songs between two people, the lover and the beloved. But there are many other speakers: (1) the Shulamite; (2) the daughters of Jerusalem; (3) Solomon: (4) the brothers of the Shulamite; (5) the watchmen; (6) the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And no allegorical interpretation has a place for these characters. Nor an explanation for how the song ends in acrimony and relationship breakup rather than marriage and family life together.
We may well enquire why Solomon wrote this song. "Love songs" so often dwell on the theme of how a relationship started well, but ended in break up. And that's what this song is about. But Solomon also has an agenda, of presenting himself as the attractive man who had his way with women and had women fawning over him. And his agenda is clear at the end- for in the final chapter he presents this woman whom he broke up with as rude, manipulative and poncing off to look for someone else. This break up is possibly reflected in how he at a later point built a separate house for his Egyptian wife, because his temple-palace complex was too "holy" for her. Even though after her, he took many other Gentile wives. So I would argue that this argument about 'holiness' was an excuse for expelling her from the temple-palace complex. This Song, along with Ecclesiastes, is part of the spiritual insight we are given into the psychology of those who turn away from God- as a warning to us all. It is preserved for us as a kind of autopsy into Solomon's spiritual death. Read this way, Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon are a unique insight into the mind of the flesh as it affects those who know God's Truth. Who wrote the Song of Solomon? Grammatically, verse 1 says that it is Solomon. But much of the Song is the dreamscape of the mind and fantasy and nightmare fears of his lover. Looking back, he read her mind. He saw the processes that were going on there. He saw his mental processes in response to hers, and how it led to disaster. He drew parallels between her and the bad Gentile woman he has described in Proverbs. He perceived how indeed he as the young Hebrew man had been drawn away to destruction. But as in Ecclesiastes he describes himself as the old and foolish king who would not be admonished, so he does nothing with the self understanding he arrives at through composing the Song of Solomon. But there is no hint of his repentance. 1 Kings 11 tells us that he died with his heart turned away by such women, away from God and unto their idols.
Pharaoh's daughter is listed as the one significant wife Solomon had, and we only read of her later- when we learn he moved her out of his palace and into a specially built house for her. So it seems logical to assume Solomon's song was about her.
The Gentile woman of Proverbs is the very picture of the Shulamite. She seeks and finds sexual partners (Prov. 7:26), just as the Shulamite does so openly in Song 1. She wanders the streets at night rather than staying at home, as the Shulamite does in her dreams. She wears sexualized clothing, speaks seductively, and is perfumed in order to sexually stimulate men (Prov. 2:16; 5:3; 7:5,9,11,12,17,21). The bad woman of Proverbs is a prostitute; and prostitutes wore veils (as Tamar in Gen. 38:14,15). Solomon's lover wears a veil (Song 4:1,3; 6:7) which the watchmen angrily pull off her to expose her for who she is (Song 5:7). The Shulamite acts like a very forward woman, if not a prostitute, and her veil may suggest that. And all this leads to the spiritual destruction of Hebrew young men (Prov. 5:5-23; 6:30-35; 7:26). The foreign women of Solomon, taken by him when a young man, led to his destruction. Yet he praises this particular foreign woman for having exactly the appearance of the bad woman he had written about and warned against in Proverbs. He clearly thought it would not happen to him. And the Song shows how in any case, the relationship came to nothing. We note that the woman of the Song and the good wife of Proverbs are both described by Solomon as a lovely deer and graceful doe; Solomon wanted to see something spiritual and good in this bad woman. The songs are an example of self deception and seeing what we want to see, when humility to God's word would guide our thinking otherwise.
The tension with the "daughters of Jerusalem" is a major theme.
Their bitter sarcasm towards the Shulamite is in about every chapter.
Sarcasm is actually to be found all through the Song. Song 6:8 refers to
queens, concubines and virgins. The next verse speaks of queens,
concubines and "the daughters" (Song 6:9). These are surely "the daughters
of Jerusalem": "There are sixty queens, eighty concubines, and virgins
without number... The daughters saw her, and called her blessed; the
queens and the concubines, and they praised her". Harems were comprised of
virgins who were prepared for the king and once readied, they slept with
him. After this, some were chosen as queens. The others, no longer
virgins, were counted as "concubines" if they weren't chosen as queens.
The book of Esther describes just such a harem. "The daughters of
Jerusalem" would then refer to the virgins in Jerusalem who were being
prepared to go and sleep with Solomon, in order for him to choose whether
he wanted them as his queen or not. And they were "of Jerusalem", Hebrew
women. Hence their jealousy and spirit of bitter competition against this
foreigner who had come amongst them.
The Beloved
Song of Solomon 1:2 Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth; for your
lovemaking-
The Hebrew suggests the emphasis is upon the "me". He is
known for good love making, so she wishes he would love her. And in :3 she
recognizes that all the young women love him. She presents immediately as
not moral. For what decent woman seeks to attract to herself a man already
involved in other relationships, and who has other women in love with him.
Her tensions with those other women, the daughters of Jerusalem, will
become ever more apparent as the song progresses.
That the woman should take the initiative in opening the story with a request to be kissed and talking about sex... would have been shocking in contemporary society. It is a dramatic opening to what is supposed to be a romance; immediate talk by a very forward woman of deep kissing, wine and sex. Straight away we are to be shocked; this is not going to be a romance. We are prepared for something very carnal and fleshly, and that is what the book is about. It is in fact pornography in a written form. The symbolism is persistently sexual:
• Come in to – sexual intercourse.
• Embrace – the man caressing and hugging the woman, and possibly
penetrating her.
• Fountain, Spring, Well, and Water – the woman and her body.
• Fruit – yield, benefits, and food “choice fruits”- sexual
satisfaction.
• Garden – the woman’s body, beautiful, pleasant, and possessed by the
man.
• Gazelle or Young Stag – A virile male buck who chases down a doe.
• Hind or Doe – A female deer, and symbol for the female.
• Mountains and Hill – the high points on a woman’s body when she is lying
on her back, i.e. her breasts.
• Vineyard – the woman and her body, referring to her capability to
satisfy a man.
The Hebrew dodim specifically refers to sexual love. Song 5:1 is specific that they slept with each other. And she continues to be incredibly "forward" throughout the Songs, asking Solomon to sleep with her (Song 4:16; 7:13; 8:2). She proudly reflects: "I awakened you" (Song 8:5). This taking of the sexual initiative by the woman was an absolute deconstruction of the genre of romance songs. And she is presented as exactly the fulfilment of the loud and forward Gentile woman whom Solomon had warned against in the Proverbs. But he fell in love with her and slept with her whilst a young man, whilst writing such sober warnings against this. The purpose of Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon is to give us an insight into the psychology of the person who knows God's truth who falls into sin. These books are really an insight into depth psychology. They are a spiritual autopsy on Solomon; that is their abiding value. There's nothing else quite like it in the Bible. And we who likewise know God's truth, who are also tempted to sin, find in them therefore a profound insight into our own likely psychologies and paths of temptation.
"Lovemaking" is s.w. Prov. 7:18, where the bad Gentile woman invites the young Hebrew man to sleep with her undetected by others: "I have spread my couch with carpets of tapestry, with striped cloths of the yarn of Egypt. I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon. Come, let’s take our fill of loving until the morning. Let’s solace ourselves with loving". Solomon is beyond hypocritical; he appears to think that he can teach one thing and do precisely the opposite. It is beyond narcissism, but rather a kind of playing God to the extent of considering he had no possibility of personal failure and could act as he wished.
Is better than wine-
The criticism of Solomon for marrying foreign women also applies to
his first marriage with the daughter of Pharaoh;
besides marrying her, he married
the others too, and the criticisms which follow are spoken in the
context of both these actions. Yet Solomon married Pharaoh's daughter in
his early days, before he asked for wisdom. This is another indication
that Solomon did not start off well and then go wrong; right from the
beginning he had this incredible dualism in his spirituality. The Talmud
(Shabbath F, 56,2) records that “When Solomon married the
daughter of Pharaoh she brought to him 1000 kinds of musical instruments,
and taught him the chants to the various idols”. Even when Solomon was
young, he evidently loved wine (Song 1:2,4)- which was later to be
something he (temporarily) abandoned himself to. He had a child by an
Ammonite girl one year before he became king (1 Kings 14:21)- so his
relationships with foreign women cannot be put down to mere political
alliances. If the Song of Solomon is about her rather than the Egyptian
woman he married, one can only say that one early error, unrepented of,
paved the way for his later disasters with foreign women. The Song
suggests that he met the foreigner he married whilst walking alone in the
countryside- which again proves it was a love relationship rather than a
political alliance. The record later describes his building of store
cities in the very language used of Pharaoh’s using Hebrew labour to build
treasure cities (2 Chron. 8:4 cp. Ex. 1:11 Heb.). The influence of his
father-in-law was deep, and lasted a long time.
Song of Solomon 1:3 Your oils have a pleasing fragrance. Your name is oil poured
forth-
We are baptized into the Name of Jesus, and bear that Name in the
eyes of men. The Hebrew concept of a name meant really a renown, an
understanding of the person. The Bride comments that “your name is as ointment poured forth” (Song
1:3 AV), likening the name to the smell of perfume. The “scent” of a nation is
likewise their reputation, the message they give out (Jer. 48:11; Hos.
14:7). We are the saviour of Christ (2 Cor. 2:16), we bear His Name, and
therefore anyone carrying the Name is thereby a witness to Him.
Therefore the virgins love you-
For all her self confidence and forwardness, the girl knows she is up
against strong competition from the daughters of Jerusalem. She is far
from positive that she as one Gentile girl can overcome that factor. And
she sees the only chance of her winning is to get Solomon right away from
them, and back to Egypt (:4).
Song of Solomon 1:4 Take me away with you. Let’s hurry. The king has brought me into
his rooms!-
I suggested on :4 that she considered getting Solomon away to Egypt
was her only chance of countering the attraction of the daughters of
Jerusalem. She imagines them leaving Jerusalem together in Song 2:10, and
at the end of the story, still this is her desire (Song 8:2). Nothing
changed. She was as she was. And yet she fantasizes that thereby she would
be Solomon's wife and therefore brought into his "chambers". But the word
literally means a hiding place, and we note the desire to be taken away,
to hurry as if they are under threat of discovery, rather than being on
the way to a wedding. Most of their encounters which we will read of are
in the open air, as their relationship is not approved of by others. And
so it may be better to read "rooms" as "hiding place", somewhere in the
countryside, to which they must "hurry".
She asks Solomon to take her away, and then in her mind "The king has brought me into his rooms!". This was her fantasy; and what makes interpreting the Song of Solomon difficult is that so much of what the woman says is fantasy, and also quite a bit of Solomon's responses. As we see here, changing from talking to Solomon to speaking of him in the third person, almost the whole thing is an insight into fantasy. It is a dreamscape rather than historical reality. They were falling in love with fantasies of each other and how things could be in the future, so strongly that they conclude that this is how things would actually be. Many of the words spoken apparently to Solomon are really the woman saying these things in her mind. We wonder how much of what we read in the Song of Songs actually happened, and how much was spoken face to face; so much is fantasy in the mind of the speakers. It is an amazing psychological insight into fleshly relationships. This is a very common problem with couples in the early stages of their relationship. They fall in love with images and imaginations they have superimposed upon the object of their 'love'. And then there is bitter disappointment when it becomes apparent that these fantasies are never going to be reality. He is going to be the knight in shining armour, surrogate for her father or her older brother... she is going to be surrogate for his mother, cook like her, care for him like she did... rather than loving the person for who they actually are, with above all a spiritual bond between them. But then love includes fantasy... this is the difficulty. And all this is true in non-romantic relationships too, e.g. often a newly attended church is thought to be the wonderful, ideal community the attender always dreamt of finding, the new dwelling moved into is laden with 'ideal home' expectations... until the neighbours turn out to be awful, the roof leaks, the heating system is found to be inadequate. So much human disillusion with things and relationships is due to investing them with their own images and fantasies. This is where the absolute Truth of Jesus Christ is so priceless. In Him alone we have Truth that will not disappoint and that will turn out more wonderful than our wildest dreams- and be experienced for eternity.
Daughters of Jerusalem
We will be glad and rejoice in you. We will praise your love more than
wine!-
The daughters of Jerusalem are immediately portrayed as not very
spiritually minded either. They know all about wine, which they praised,
but they praised Solomon's love for them more than that. This is tacit
admission that he did "love" them as well as the Egyptian girl. As becomes
apparent at the very end of the Song. "Glad and rejoice" is a phrase used
multiple times in the Psalms for how we should primarily be glad and
rejoice in Yahweh. But there is no spiritual aspect here in any of the
characters. This is demonstrated by the inspired record using terms which
are found elsewhere in scripture, and highlighting the lack of spiritual
perception of them by the characters.
We can take all of :4 as the words of the Shulamite. In this
case, as elsewhere, we see a parallel between "me" and "we". She accepts
she is part of a group of other women also in relationship with the lover.
She accepts Solomon already has a harem, the [other] virgins love him, she
says; but wants to be part of it.
Love "More than wine" suggests the women find wine attractive but
Solomon's love even more so. Immediately we get a low moral impression of
the young women involved, as wine drinkers. There is no spirituality in them,
never a mention of God in the book / relationship, no attraction to
Solomon's wisdom, and no mention of God or any spiritual dimension to the
relationship.
Beloved
They are right to love you-
For all her forwardness and self confidence, she recognizes that she
has major competition. At this point she knows this but is
'blind' to it on another level; and as the songs develop, we see her
bitterly hating Solomon for it later. So true to human relationships; we
can be blind to obvious weakness, and that refusal to engage with the
reality leads to relationship break up further down the line.
Song of Solomon 1:5 I am dark, but lovely, you daughters of Jerusalem,
like Kadar's tents, like Solomon’s curtains-
She is very confident of her own beauty, as in Song 8:10. Her
claim to Solomon that she is a mere common lily (2:1) and her excuse that
she worked too much outdoors is therefore fake humility in order to woo
Solomon. She does herself down to him, but in her heart and in her self
presentation to the daughters of Jerusalem, she claims herself to be
attractive. As an
Egyptian she was darker skinned than the Jerusalem girls, and dark skin
also spoke of lower social class. But she insists that this is to be no
barrier to her winning of Solomon uniquely for herself. She
comes over as
bold, self justifying to her competitors (the "daughters of Jerusalem")
and ever on the initiative; she goes out looking for him (Song 3:1-5;
5:6,7), and propositions him for sex. She is the very fulfilment of
Solomon's 'bad woman' of the Proverbs. "Kedar" means "black", and she
likes to think that the famed curtains or tents of this Gentile place were
as good as any Jerusalem made curtains (Jer. 49:28,29). She never
perceives the unique nature of Jerusalem, seeing it as being as good as
any other Gentile city. Yet Solomon likes to call her the Shulamite, the
Jerusalem girl- counting her as who he wanted to see her as. This is the
value of this book; we have a unique insight, at the level of depth
psychology, into the mentality and thought processes of those who wish to
go against God's clearly stated will, because they perceive everything in
the light of the narrative they wish to believe and act according to. This
is the same essential process going on in the minds of all manner of
sexual perverts who on another hand know God's truth so well.
Song of Solomon 1:6 Don’t stare at me because I am dark, because the sun
has scorched me-
She is very self defensive. She says the sun has looked or stared at
her, and so they shouldn't look at her askance because of her darker skin.
This marked her as a Gentile, or a woman of lower social class.
She comes
over as anything but humble.
My mother’s sons were angry with me. They made me keeper of the
vineyards, but I haven’t kept my own vineyard-
If her vineyard refers to her virginity or sexuality (as in :14; Song
6:11; 7:13), this could mean that her brothers were angry with her for
sleeping with Solomon. Brothers were seen as guardians of their sister in
sexual terms (Gen. 34; 2 Sam. 13). The Song concludes, perhaps, with her
brothers considering her too young for marriage, and wanting to set her up
with a more appropriate husband than Solomon (8:8,9).
And yet the Song concludes with her claiming that her vineyard is her own; and as discussed on Song 8:10-12, keeping the vineyard meant admission into Solomon's harem and keeping the women within it. The connection between this vineyard imagery at the start and end of the song must surely be given due weight. Throughout the song, the vine and its fruit is used as a symbol for her body and sexuality. On this basis we could interpret this early statement of the Shulamite as meaning that she had been the keeper of Pharaoh's harem, a job she got because her brothers were angry with her. She had not kept her own vineyard might mean that she had not been within the harem herself, she was just the madame of the establishment. Or it could be an admission she had not kept her virginity, which is why her brothers were angry with her. Again, the Song opens as an inversion of all we might expect in a collection of love songs. It begins with deep kissing, sex and wine- and the girl isn't even a virgin. She therefore felt she might be seen by Solomon as too dark skinned, as it were, for him and his harem. But Solomon is not put off by her lack of virginity but rather instead attracted by her experience. His comments that she is 'sealed up' in Song 4 would only then mean that she had been locked up to him: "A garden locked is my sister, my bride, a rock-garden locked, a spring sealed up" (Song 4:12-15).
Or we can understand this as a typical trick of 'love'. She was clearly wealthy, the daughter of royalty, judging by her foreign perfume and gold jewellery. But she is playing the 'poor little rich girl' card, asking her lover to overlook her dark skin, pretending she had a complex about it. When in fact Solomon likely found attractive a skin colour different from that of the "daughters of Jerusalem". See on Song 2:1 for another example.
Song of Solomon 1:7 Tell me, you whom my soul loves, where you graze your flock, where
you rest them at noon; for why should I be as one who is veiled beside the
flocks of your companions?-
"Who is veiled" can as well be rendered "one who is lost", as LXX.
She complains she is just tagging along with the flocks of women
companions who were following Solomon as if he were their shepherd and
they the sheep; they are the "daughters of Jerusalem". He responds that
she should follow their tracks to him (:8), and she will find his special
love and attention (:9).
Yet she recognizes that he already has flocks of "companions". But as shepherds rested alone at noon from the midday sun, laying down to sleep somewhere, so she asks where that place is. The request to know where he feeds his flock at noon is perhaps a way of expressing her desire to find him alone and to come to him wherever that was. And with the implication that she wants to lay down next to him alone- a very bold move for a woman just opening her approach to a man. The reply of the daughters of Jerusalem in :8 is therefore mocking her- for they say that many flocks have followed Solomon wherever he is, so the Shulamite can just follow in the tracks many have followed. She wants to find him alone, but so have many others.
The references to the lover as a shepherd in Song 1:7; 6:2,3 have led some to think that the beloved is also in love with a shepherd. But this is to miss the clear connection in Hebrew thought between a king and a shepherd. David was to shepherd Israel (2 Sam. 5:2) and the seed of David likewise would be a shepherd over all Israel (Ez. 37:24).
Lover
Song of Solomon 1:8 If you don’t know, most beautiful among women, follow the tracks
of the sheep. Graze your young goats beside the shepherds’ tents-
We note how quickly the scenes change in the song- here from palace (:4) to vineyard (:6) to desert scrubland (:8). Likewise she sees herself as being invited to fly over the land of Palestine from its highest points... all of which suggests we are invited into a dreamscape, her imaginations and fantasies, rather than being presented with a narrative of scenes that actually occurred. Her fantasies move at ease and very quickly between various locations in the countryside, Solomon's banquet house, his bedroom, her bedroom, her mother's house, the streets of Jerusalem etc. Although that isn't to say that some of the things she speaks of didn't have some actual reality.
I suggested on :7 that Solomon was not a literal shepherd, but he is
here responding to the metaphor she uses in :7. Although he is indeed like
a shepherd leading a flock of women, the daughters of Jerusalem, he says
that she should follow their tracks to him, and she will find his special
love and attention (:9). He encourages her that he finds her the most
beautiful amongst all those other women or sheep. She is to come near to
his tent, and graze her goats there- perhaps some sexual reference.
"Beautiful woman" is the term used by Solomon in Prov. 11:22 "Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout, so is a beautiful woman who lacks discretion". It is the term sarcastically used about her by Israelite competitors (Song 5:9; 6:1). Seeing Solomon's wives were idolaters, they lacked discretion; and yet Solomon loved them and married them. He behaved with women completely opposite to his own teachings. And we have in the Song an invaluable exploration of the psychology and mental processes behind this feature of human nature.
Song of Solomon 1:9 I have compared you, my love, to a steed in Pharaoh’s
chariots-
Heb. "I count you as...". Again we have an insight into the
psychology of a man in love. He sees her as... whatever. He is in love
with an image of his own creation, rather than her character. The Song of
Solomon is the record of Solomon's romance with Pharaoh's
daughter. Of course, this was an explicit breach of the crystal clear
commandment not to marry women from Egypt. He should have admired
neither the horses nor the women of Egypt; yet he begins his Song with an
unashamed breach of the command not to desire either of these
things. The unashamedness of Solomon coupled with his spirituality
indicates that at this time he was genuinely convinced that what he was
doing was deeply spiritual; when in fact it was completely carnal. He
totally ignored his own advice about choosing a spiritual woman as a wife.
And worse, he encourages her that although he is like a shepherd leading a
flock of women, the daughters of Jerusalem, she is in fact his one special
one. She is a beautiful mare, in his eyes, amongst all Pharaoh's chariot
horses. He thus likens the daughters of Jerusalem to Pharaoh's chariot
horses- which were destroyed at the Red Sea. But Solomon doesn't care
about this obvious negative connection. See on Song 2:2, where he likens
her to a lily amongst the thorns of the daughters of Jerusalem. See on
Song 2:12.
But the Hebrew is feminine, a mare, a female horse. Chariots were pulled by male horses, stallions. He is likening her to a female horse harnessed to Pharaoh's chariots, with the other stallions interested in her. Mares were sometimes put amongst the stallions pulling a chariot to inspire the stallions to pull and run faster. Indeed the GNB interprets just like this: "You, my love, excite men as a mare excites the stallions of Pharaoh's chariots". The imagery presupposes her familiarity with Pharaoh's horses, hinting at her Egyptian origin. This may be his response to her comment that all the [other] virgins love Solomon, and she wants to as well. His response is that all the male stallions will also all be interested in her. So the song opens with the strong hint that neither are committed to monogamous relationship. He was fine with this to the end, but the final scenes show her deeply upset that he in fact has other women in his life.
Song of Solomon 1:10 Your cheeks are beautiful with earrings, your neck
with strings of jewels-
She loves him because of his ointment, and he loves her because of
her jewellery (Song 1:2,3,10; 4:4). He says that deep kissing with her
gives the same after effect as drinking enough wine that you talk in your
sleep afterwards (Song of Solomon 7:9). It’s all very human and carnal,
based upon the external and not the internal. But this is what Solomon was
like. He sees wisdom, even in Proverbs and certainly in Ecclesiastes, as
only helpful in that it gives a person a good name and image in this life.
The woman wears expensive jewellery. The style of jewellery and adornment described is distinctly Egyptian. She is no shepherd girl, but a princess- the daughter of Pharaoh. She is specifically called "daughter of the prince" (Song 7:1). She was no peasant girl. Egypt turned against Solomon, harbouring his adversaries even from the time of David and then attacking Judah just five years after Solomon's death, ransacking the temple-palace complex. The relationship with this girl was unwise in every sense, and quite possibly she was sent to Jerusalem by her father in order to lure Solomon into the relationship.
Song of Solomon 1:11 We will make you earrings of gold, with studs of silver-
The speaker of :11 is unclear. Possibly the daughters of Jerusalem are saying that they would have the job of making the earrings of gold that would need to be paid for her dowry- we recall those given for Rebekah. The "we" make us think it could be the daughters of Jerusalem, and they make similar sarcastic comments on the woman's jewellery in chapter 8. Quite possibly they are sarcastically saying that they could make her look even finer, by adding some things to her- specifically by adding the Hebrew borders [Heb.] on her clothes. The Song is shot through with allusion to the Law and tabernacle rituals; he speaks of making her borders [NEV "earrings"] on her clothes, probably alluding to the borders of blue to be worn by the faithful Israelite. Solomon wanted her to look externally like a spiritual woman, and he was going to make her one; many a preacher, teacher, husband, wife, father, mother, child, boyfriend has had to learn the impossibility of this. He wanted to see her as a spiritual woman, and eventually he became persuaded that she was just this. See on Song 3:10.
Beloved
Song of Solomon 1:12 While the king sat at his table, my perfume spread
its fragrance-
The girl is not a shepherd girl, she is a prince's daughter from
Egypt (Song 7:1), and so she has access to the Jerusalem palace and sees
the king sitting at his table. She seems to be secretly boasting that
after being intimate with each other, the smell of her perfume can be
smelt exuding from him. When she was just one of the many
young women being prepared in the harem for their night to sleep with
Solomon, after which he would decide whether she became a wife or a
concubine.
Nard [Heb.] was the perfume of the wealthy; we recall the extreme cost of the card in Mk. 14:5. This wealthy outsider of different skin colour was surely a Gentile princess, hence her wealth. The spices of Song 4:13,14 which the Shulamite uses in her perfumes are largely not native to Israel. Again we have the impression of a wealthy foreign princess. Such spices had to be imported by Solomon (1 Kings 10:10); nard / spikenard came from India and was not native to Israel. But they are listed together with the fruit of the "incense tree" (Song 4:13), and incense usually has connotations of idolatry. Solomon's wives offered pagan incense to their gods (1 Kings 11:8 "his foreign wives, who burnt incense and sacrificed to their gods"). She smelt like pagan incense- and Solomon loved it.
Song of Solomon 1:13 My beloved is to me a sachet of myrrh, that lies
between my breasts-
AV "lies all night" implies they had slept together already at this
early stage. Again we note that the entire genre of romance is subverted,
consciously so. Sex and marriage are not the climax of the romance, but
rather it all starts with inappropriate intimacy. "Is to me" here
and in :14 could as well be rendered "is mine"- she is claiming that she
has Solomon's heart, and he is not therefore 'theirs'. Love, or lust, or
plain obsession with 'getting' Solomon on some level, has blinded her to
the fact he has other women already. This idea of "me", "mine...", is a
common one with the woman. The whole song opens with her desiring him to
kiss me, and I mentioned that the Hebrew suggests 'me rather than
you / others'. She can hardly express her ownership of Solomon without
some defensive or snide comment about the competitors amongst the
daughters of Jerusalem.
Song of Solomon 1:14 My beloved is to me a cluster of henna blossoms from
the vineyards of En Gedi-
She again seems to associate vineyards with her breasts or sexuality
(:13; see on :6). She seems to associate Solomon as a person with the
aphrodisiacs she was using. In this we see her complete focus upon the
external, seeing Solomon as a person as only as good as the aphrodisiacs.
This collapsing of identity between the person and the external
illustrates the degree to which the issue of character and spirituality is
so sadly absent in the relationship.
Lover
Song of Solomon 1:15 Behold, you are beautiful, my love. Behold, you are
beautiful. Your eyes are doves-
Solomon sees her as a dove (also Song 5:2), and she then says that he
has dove's eyes (Song 5:12). They tend to praise each other in the same
language. Indeed this is an accurate record of a romance. But the praise
is all of externalities, no attention is paid to the character, and there
is absolutely no spiritual dimension to the relationship. This says so
much about Solomon. This lack of attention to true spirituality means that
his love of Divine wisdom at the time was purely of an intellectual,
theoretical nature. And this is the warning for us. For he was writing
this love song in his youth when he married foreign women, and it was then
that he received Divine wisdom and wrote it up in the book of Proverbs.
Or more accurately, he is writing up this Song as a description of
his feelings for her in his youth.
Beloved
Song of Solomon 1:16 Behold, you are beautiful, my beloved, yes, pleasant; and our
couch is verdant-
The "verdant" bed they would sleep on may be assumed to be of
leaves, in the open air bower they would construct in :17. The
Gentile
woman invites Solomon, the young Hebrew male, to her bed in the same way
as the woman he warns against in Prov. 7:17 "I have perfumed my bed with
myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon". The Proverbs so frequently refer to the dangers of the house
of the
Gentile woman; yet the Song shows the Egyptian girl dearly wishing that
Solomon would come with her into her bed. And Solomon, just like the
foolish young man he wrote about, went right ahead down the road to
spiritual disaster he so often warned others about. He warns the young man
of the dangers of the Egyptian woman who perfumes her bed with myrrh
(Prov. 7:16,17)- and then falls for just such a woman (Ps. 45:8).
The young woman has just introduced herself to Solomon, he likes her- and straight away starts talking of their bed. She pushes herself upon him, and he falls for her. The whole thing breathes superficially and sensuality. It really recalls the classic scene of the pushy, forward young woman who pushes herself upon the young, handsome wealthy man. They soon talk and do sex, and then break up in acrimony.
Lover
Song of Solomon 1:17 The beams of our house are cedars. Our rafters are firs-
The house can be taken as a bower made of cedar and fir trees, the
location of their tryst in the countryside. This continues the idea of
:16. So whilst Solomon was still building the temple of cedars and firs,
he was making a bower out of such trees in which to secretly sleep with
his Egyptian, Gentile girlfriend. This is more that duplicitous hypocrisy,
it is the behaviour of a man who has not at all personalized God's truths
for himself. The path to this tryst has been hinted at in :7,8. That the
king of Israel should need to act in this deceptive manner has much to say
about him. He was worried about his image, and wished to give an
appearance of interest in the daughters of Jerusalem. Or it could
be that Solomon alludes to the house of the forest of Lebanon, Solomon's
summer house, which was constructed of so much cedar that it would have
required literally the felling of a forest in Lebanon. In which case, this
is an invitation to her to come and sleep with him in his summer house
beneath the famed "paneled ceilings" (LXX, NEV "rafters").
If these words are the woman's, then she may be fantasizing about a house that Solomon will build for her and the materials used to make it. Solomon did indeed build a house for his Egyptian wife and the use of cedar was typical of his building style as recorded in 1 Kings.
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