Deeper Commentary
Song of Solomon 4:1
Lover
Behold, you are beautiful, my love. Behold, you are beautiful. Your eyes
are doves behind your veil-
Although :1-7 are Solomon praising the Shulamite, there is
still the possibility that these are her fantasies- imagining him praising
her. It has been observed that such praising of bride and groom by each
other was common in high profile weddings at the time; the parties sung or
recited a wasf praising the beauty of the bride or groom. This
still happens in some cultures today, notably Persian culture. So we must
entertain the possibility that this is still the woman imagining Solomon
praising her, reassuring herself of his love for her after the nightmare
of Song 3.
Parts of the Song are very sexually explicit once the fairly obvious
allusions are figured out. He's describing the vaginal lips of his
girlfriend, his intended spouse (Song 4:1,3,8 etc.); and
he has seen
"behind your veil", the symbol of her virginity. And yet he glorifies all
this in his song. Quite clearly, Solomon was guilty of fornication with
the one whom he wished to marry, although the ending of the Song seems to
imply the relationship somehow broke up. And this was all right at the
beginning of his reign. He seems to have assumed that if
he
thought his behaviour was OK, then it was. It's rather like how he
declared the middle court to be "holy" and a kind of extended altar (2
Chron. 7:7)- he doesn't ask God if God would sanctify it, he just decides
what is holy and what isn't- Solomon played God, and it led him into sin
and loss of faith in God.
I noted on Song 1:1 that the Shulamite acts as a prostitute, and there are many connections between her and the bad woman of Proverbs who is a prostitute. Prostitutes wore veils (as Tamar in Gen. 38:14,15, and this is the sense of Song 1:7 ISV "Why should I be considered a veiled woman beside the flocks of your companions?"). 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.
Solomon's various descriptions of the Shulamite throughout the Song paint her in the very language used to describe the "Daughters of Zion/ Jerusalem" in Is. 3:18-23: "The Lord will take away from the daughters of Jerusalem everything they are so proud of—the ornaments they wear on their ankles, on their heads, on their necks... their veils... the rings they wear on their fingers and in their noses; all their fine robes, gowns, cloaks... their revealing garments, their linen handkerchiefs, and the scarves and long veils they wear on their heads. Instead of using perfumes, they will stink... instead of having beautiful hair, they will be bald; instead of fine clothes, they will be dressed in rags; their beauty will be turned to shame!". We notice that their veils are twice mentioned; and the Shulamite's revealing veil is likewise twice observed by Solomon. Likewise her perfumes are often mentioned, just as they are in the description of the daughters of Jerusalem in Is. 3. Clearly the Shulamite has been prepared in the harem just as the daughters of Jerusalem. The clear parallels between them show that she was in one sense, one of them. Although a darker skinned foreigner and "prince's daughter" from another land. We are hereby confirmed in understanding her as a member of the harem of "daughters of Jerusalem" being prepared for their night with Solomon which would decide whether they would become a queen or be rejected to the status of concubine.
Your hair is as a flock of goats, that descend from Mount Gilead-
Weddings and pre-wedding celebrations typically featured the bridegroom
praising the bride or writing a poem about her beauty. That is what we
have here. "Budde says mount Gilead is the S. portion of the range called
now the Belqa, which is mostly pasture land. It lies within view of Judah
and Jerusalem". She has her hair down, a sign she was sexually available.
Time and again the imagery of the song is distinctly sexually selective
and without appropriate modesty in the contemporary culture. And Solomon
clearly likes it. Throughout the Song, Solomon describes her in Jewish terms, he likens her to many well-known places in Israel: the Heshbon fish
pools, the tower of Lebanon etc., seeing the way her hair draped over her
breasts as reminiscent of how Mount Gilead looked (Song 4:1,4). He wanted
to see her as an Israelite girl, and so that was how she
appeared to him. She even uses similar language in praise of him (Song
1:14).
Song of Solomon 4:2 Your teeth are like a newly shorn flock, which have
come up from the washing, where every one of them has twins. None is
bereaved among them-
Without dental science, missing teeth would have been common in those
days, even in youth. But she apparently had none missing. Here and :3
"your mouth is lovely" suggests they had already been involved in deep
kissing.
Song of Solomon 4:3 Your lips are like scarlet thread. Your mouth is
lovely. Your temples are like a piece of a pomegranate behind your veil-
When Solomon describes her painted lips as being like a thread of
scarlet, he uses two Hebrew words which only occur together in Josh. 2:18,
describing how the Gentile harlot Rahab hung the scarlet thread outside
her home in order to bring about the salvation of her mother and her
family. The people of Jericho may well have understood this scarlet thread
or rope as a sign of prostitution. Solomon wanted to justify his Egyptian
girlfriend by comparing her to Gentile Rahab. And such sophistry goes on
at the beginning of every relationship that leads to a marriage out of the
Faith.
Song of Solomon 4:4 Your neck is like David’s tower built for an armoury, whereon a
thousand shields hang, all the shields of the mighty men-
Solomon had made shields of gold which he hung for display on
a tower (1 Kings 10:16,17).
The idea is that David's tower was built in terraces, and this is how
her neck appeared, with her ornaments hanging on the string of her
necklace likened to shields. Solomon may be alluding to his 1000 other
wives; he is trying to convince her that she is better than them all. She
loves him because of his ointment, and he loves her because of her
jewellery (Song of Solomon 1:2,3,10; 4:4). 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.
"David's tower" is "The tower of the flock, the stronghold of Zion" (Mic. 4:8), the tower from which David surveyed the flock of his people (the tower by the king's high house of Neh. 3:25). It was the practice of the time to hang shields upon such towers (as in Ez. 27:11), and David sees her neck and coins upon it as like his tower.
Egyptian women wore their dowry coins on their necks, and long
necks were thought to be sexual. If she has her dowry displayed like that,
she was betrothed to another man. Just as she opens the Song by saying
that she has not kept her own vineyard, and her brothers were angry with
her because of it. She struts her immorality. But Solomon finds this
sexually attractive.
Song of Solomon 4:5 Your two breasts are like two fawns that are
twins of a roe, which feed among the lilies-
In verses 1 and 3 Solomon has mentioned her veil, but clearly
the rest of her body is exposed, quite possibly she is naked apart from
her veil. In this case, the veil is being used as sexualized clothing
rather than as any form of modesty and screening of the female body from
male view. We see again how spiritual things are being subverted for
carnal, sexual pleasure.
Breasts as twins means Solomon considered them, after much observation, to be perfectly identical- apparently something he found attractive. Clearly he had at this point explored her naked body, although not married to her. "The lilies" is likewise a sexual allusion; see on Song 2:16. He was ravished with this Egyptian girl, especially with her breasts (Song 4:5; 7:3). Yet at the same time he could confidently exhort in Prov. 5:18-20 AV: "Rejoice with the wife of thy youth. Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe (Song of Solomon language); let her breasts satisfy thee... be thou ravished always with her love... And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange (i.e. Gentile) woman?". How, indeed? But 999 women later, it was a different story for Solomon. Solomon writes in Prov. 5:18-20 as if it is of course unthinkable that he should have been ravished by a Gentile woman; but he had been. Beyond mere hypocrisy, this reveals how Solomon saw himself as somehow beyond his own wisdom and a free moral agent. This is a common temptation for those who think that mere possession of God's truth will somehow of itself justify them.
Song of Solomon 4:6 Until the day is cool, and the shadows flee away, I
will go to the mountain of myrrh, to the hill of frankincense-
The myrrh
and frankincense were being used as aphrodisiacs, which had their
desired effect upon Solomon (:16). And yet they are the language of the
temple sacrifices. At the very time Solomon was building the temple and
establishing the temple cult, he was using the very same items in his
illicit relationship with this Egyptian woman.
The mountain and hill are parallel with her breasts (:5), and
Solomon promises to make love to her all night "Until the day breaks and
the shadows flee away".
Song of Solomon 4:7 You are all beautiful, my love. There is no spot in
you-
This last phrase is alluded to in the New Testament concerning the
spotless nature of the bride of Christ (Eph. 5:27). But upon this has been
built the quite unsustainable position that the entire Song is an allegory
of the relationship between Christ and His bride. This is simply not
sustainable; the sexual allusions, and the final breakup of the
relationship after the unsatisfactory tensions between the two of them all
shout out against such an approach. The New Testament quotes the Old
Testament in the style of its day; whereby words or verses from scripture
were applied out of context to situations. It is simply not true that
every New Testament quotation of the Old reveals that the surrounding
context of the quotation is also relevant to the New Testament context.
Going through all the quotations and allusions, it is obvious that this is
just not the case. And it seems to me that this idea that the Song is an
allegory is a desperate attempt to whitewash Solomon, despite the clear
Biblical condemnations of him.
As he sees her as so entirely beautiful, so she sees him (Song 4:7; 5:16). This mutuality of praise is indeed part of the "in love" period. But it was all a matter of external observation of each other, and because of that, the relationship fell apart.
"No spot" is the language of the sacrifices which were to be "without blemish". Perhaps Solomon hints that she is acceptable to God- but that was only his judgment and not God's.
Song of Solomon 4:8 Come with me from Lebanon, my bride, with me from
Lebanon. Look from the top of Amana, from the top of Senir and Hermon,
from the lions’ dens, from the mountains of the leopards-
The Song is largely a dreamscape, and invitations to come
here or go there cannot be taken literally. This reference to Lebanon must
be seen in the context of how the Song describes the entire land of
Israel, over which the Shulamite was to become queen. From Damascus and
mount Lebanon in the north to En Gedi in the south, and from Gilead and
Heshbon of Moab in the east to Mount Carmel in the west (Song 1:14; 4:1,8;
6:5; 7:5,6).
The Song has several references to Solomon and the woman as it were leaping around the country of Israel. This is not to be taken literally, it is part of the dreamscape. She dreams of Solomon giving her an aerial view of Israel, dancing upon its highest mountain peaks, looking down upon what was to become her land if she married Solomon. Doubtless her father Pharaoh had this intention in mind as an outcome of the marriage. So it is out of context to insist that "Come with me from Lebanon" implies the girl was in Lebanon literally. Solomon is saying he will take the girl out from the mountain dens of lions and leopards which seem so inaccessible; perhaps implying that although it may seem impossible for her to get out of the inaccessible harem, he will all the same magically get her out.
These northern mountain ranges, forming the northern border of the land, were famed for their inaccessibility. Perhaps the idea is that although so much was against their relationship, Solomon vows to somehow get her from the most inaccessible point... into his kingly bed in Jerusalem. This is perhaps his answer to her desire that he be like a mountain deer, and jump over the mountains of division, out of Jerusalem and back with her to Egypt (see on Song 2:17).
Or we can understand that Solomon takes her on a tour of Israel, enthusing about the sights, speaking of them as the things of "our land" (Song of Solomon 2:10-13). He wanted her to be an Israelite, and he spoke to her as if she was, assuming that he could psychologically and spiritually dominate her so that he could have a little of both- his own carnal fulfilment coupled with spiritual satisfaction. How many times has this been worked out in the experience of a spiritual brother enthusing about the beauty of the Truth and spiritual Israel to an Egyptian girl, who only superficially shares his enthusiasm, longing in her heart to have him with her in Egypt.
Song of Solomon 4:9 You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride-
Even though her heart was far away in Egypt, she described
herself in Jewish terms because that was how he saw her;
he calls her his
"sister", as if she was actually Jewish- whereas she wanted him to be her
Egyptian “brother”. The relationship was doomed from the start. We note
that "sister" is a term of endearment used in Egyptian love poetry.
Solomon clearly was well versed in the thinking and language of Egypt.
Everything points to him being spiritually rotten from his youth.
The blindness of Solomon is driven home time and again. He warned the typical young man about being captivated by the eyelids of the Gentile woman (Prov. 6:25); yet it was the eyes of Miss Egypt that he openly admitted stole his heart (Song 4:9; 6:5).
You have ravished
my heart with one of your eyes, with one chain of your neck-
In Prov. 25:11,12, especially in the LXX, Solomon likens wise
words to beautiful jewellery and necklaces; they are (LXX) set "in a
necklace of sardius". But Solomon was blown away by the jewellery of his
illicit Gentile girlfriend; he looked on the external, rather than on the
internal, despite teaching the value and beauty of the internal. "The
necklace you are wearing has stolen my heart" (Song 4:9 GNB). And indeed
gentile women did steal his heart away from Yahweh.
The general contrast with Solomon's warnings is marked. Thus
Prov.
5:19 "A loving doe and a graceful deer- let her breasts satisfy you at all
times. Be captivated always with her love".
The idea is "don't be ravished with the breasts of a Gentile and
don't have many wives; be content with your first wife
Despite his ravishment with Pharaoh's daughter as outlined in the Song, she never fulfilled him; indeed, none of his women did. In the Song he speaks of how he was ravished with this Egyptian girl, especially with her breasts (Song 2:7; 3:5; 4:9; 8:14). Alluding to this he could confidently exhort in Prov. 5:18-20 AV: "Rejoice with the wife of thy youth. Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe (Song of Solomon language); let her breasts satisfy thee... be thou ravished always with her love... And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange (i.e. Gentile) woman?". How, indeed? But 999 women later, it was a different story for Solomon. Solomon writes in Prov. 5:18-20 as if it is of course unthinkable that he should have been ravished by a Gentile woman; but he had been. He spoke to others with absolutely no thought as to whether his words had an application to himself. Effectively he was kidding himself, on a deeply internal level, that he hadn't married out of the faith. The obviousness of all this is in order to drum the warning home to us. How tragic that Solomon should go on to comment that such a person would die for want of instruction (Prov. 5:23). Solomon had all the instruction he could wish for; but he didn't allow it to really sink home one little bit. He hit out on the search for an ultimately satisfying woman, but out of the 1000 he had he never found one (Ecc. 7:28), even when he sat down and analyzed each of them. And even politically, his marriages with all those Gentile women didn't seem to achieve him the support he desired from their home countries; Egypt gave refuge to Jeroboam, Solomon's main rival (1 Kings 11:40), even though he always acquiesced to his wives and even in his very old age he still didn’t destroy the idol temples he built for them (2 Kings 23:13).
Song of Solomon 4:10 How beautiful is your love, my sister, my bride! How much better
is your love than wine! The fragrance of your perfumes than all kinds of
spices!-
His praise of her is her praise of him in Song 1:2,3. There is a
mutuality in the falling in love process, and we see it clearly expressed
here. The whole document has every indication that it is indeed a real,
historical description of an actual relationship Solomon had.
Here Solomon does the very opposite of what he says in Prov. 27:16; for here he also uses the word for "oil" or "perfumes" about the perfume of his illicit Gentile girlfriend, which he found so attractive. Yet in Prov. 27:16 he warns that a bad woman has such oil; but he falls for her. He utterly failed to personalize his wisdom, it flowed through his mouth and mind without taking any personal lodgment within him. And we must be warned by this ability of human nature.
"Spices" occur often in the Song (Song 4:10,14,16; 5:13; 6:2 and see on Song 8:14). The same word is used in Esther 2:10 of how the virgins in the house of the women, awaiting their night with the king, were prepared with "spices".
Song of Solomon 4:11 Your lips, my bride, drip like the honeycomb. Honey and milk are
under your tongue. The smell of your garments is like the smell of
Lebanon-
The strange woman has words like a honeycomb (Prov. 5:3);
the same words are used: "The lips of the strange [Gentile] woman drop
honey". And
this is exactly how Solomon found his woman's words (Song 4:11). He
refused his own wisdom of Prov. 7:21: "With the flattering her lips,
she seduced him".
Solomon in Prov. 7:5 argues as if mere intellectual assent to the truths he
was teaching would keep a man safe from sexual temptation and the flattery
of bad women. But Solomon himself possessed all this truth and failed
miserably in this area. The Hebrew literally refers to the smoothness of
her lips; and Solomon admired the smoothness of the lips of his illicit
Gentile girlfriend (s.w. Song 4:3,11; 7:9). Again we see Solomon doing the
exact opposite of the wisdom and theoretical truth he was blessed with.
Song of Solomon 4:12 A locked up garden is my sister, my bride-
I discussed on Song 1:6 how these figures of being closed up
may mean she was so far closed to Solomon, but not a virgin. And yet he has
in the previous verses been talking of sex with her and she appears to be
naked before him as he praises her. So he may be rejoicing that she is a
closed garden to every other man apart from himself- when he himself was a
polygamist.
AV "my sister, my spouse". Solomon's assumption that he was Messiah,
the promised seed of David, presumably led him to assume that he was
likewise the promised seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
No less that four
times he calls his Egyptian girlfriend "my sister, my spouse" (Song
4:9,10,12; 5:1). This repeated emphasis seems to me to be an allusion to the
way in which the patriarchs called their wives their sisters (Gen. 12:10-20;
20:1-18; 26:6-11). And yet clearly enough, these incidents were lapses of
faith for which they were rebuked. Yet Solomon didn't want to see it like
that; they did it, therefore he could. David his father had horses and many
wives; therefore he could. His sense of morality, of right and wrong, was
controlled by the precedents set by his worthy ancestors. And so often we
see this in supposedly Christian lives- the weak elements of our fathers we
tend to feel are perfectly acceptable for us too. We do just what Paul says
we should not do- we compare ourselves amongst and against ourselves, rather
than against the Lord Jesus (2 Cor. 10:12).
A locked up spring, a sealed fountain-
The imagery of water, well and cistern in a sexual context is found
on Solomon's lips in Prov. 5:15,18 about the ideal, spiritually
minded, Hebrew wife. He likens her both to the wicked Gentile woman of
Prov. 7 and also to the idea Hebrew woman of Prov. 5. He wants to see in
her a little of both; and that desire for a little of both was his
destruction. Just as he calls her his "sister", counting
her as a Hebrew when she clearly was not. Having written all that, he now
uses these terms about his illicit Gentile girlfriend. Solomon saw her as
a “paradise”, a garden with rivers and exotic fruits, surrounded by a
wall- exactly the language of Eden. And she was a fount of “living waters”
(Song 4:12,13,15 RVmg.), the language of Messiah. He saw her as the
Kingdom / Eden personified. And yet her response to being described in
this way is inappropriate- for she invites him to come and eat the fruit
of the garden (4:16), exactly after the pattern of Eve destroying Adam.
Yet Solomon didn’t want to see this connection; she was the Kingdom to
him, just as so many have felt that having their new partner means that
nothing,
not even the Kingdom, is meaningful any more. Although he had slept with
her, he considers her locked up and sealed. Again we see how Solomon was
in love with an image of this woman which he had in his own mind, and
which just didn't correspond to reality.
Song of Solomon 4:13 Your shoots are an orchard of pomegranates, with
precious fruits: henna with spikenard plants-
The non Hebrew word here used for "orchard" suggests that Solomon
really had a relationship with this woman and spoke to her in terms she
understood. This failed, illicit romance really happened. Her "shoots" and
"fruits" are clearly allusions to her sexuality.
Song of Solomon 4:14 spikenard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with
every kind of incense tree; myrrh and aloes, with all the best spices-
He presents her as the garden of Eden. And yet he totally fails to
take the allusion further, and perceive that by breaking divine law in
'eating' of her in sex, he was setting himself up for a catastrophic fall
which would affect not only him but all Israel. 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). But they are
listed together with the fruit of the "incense tree" (Song 4:13), and
incense usually has connotations of idolatry. She smelt like pagan
incense- and Solomon loved it. Solomon's wives offered pagan incense to
their gods (1 Kings 11:8 "his foreign wives, who burnt incense and
sacrificed to their gods").
See on "nard" Song 1:12.
Song of Solomon 4:15 a fountain of gardens, a spring of living waters,
flowing streams from Lebanon-
It seems likely that Solomon wrote down his inspired Proverbs (a
result of the wisdom God gave him) and the Song about the same time.
In
Proverbs he uses the figure of a well of living water to describe
spiritual words and thinking (Prov. 10:11; 13:14; 14:27; 16:22). Yet
this is the very figure which he uses concerning his worldly bride
(Song of Solomon 4:15). He wanted to see her how she wasn't. He sees her
as the garden of Eden, and yet 'eats' in her in defiance of Divine law.
Beloved
Song of Solomon 4:16 Awake, north wind; and come, you south! Blow on my garden, that its
spices may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and taste his
precious fruits-
This is an open invitation to Solomon to have sex with her. She sees
herself as a living aphrodisiac. She doesn't wish to be a closed garden to
him (:14). She is the very fulfilment of the bad Gentile woman of Prov. 7,
and yet Solomon refuses to see the connections. He was the young man being
led astray, and down to the grave by this woman. She likens
her body to her garden which she says is now his; and this is the backdrop
for her final statements at the end of the Song that her vineyard is now
hers alone, Solomon can have 1000 [women], but her vineyard is now hers
and closed to him. This abrupt ending of the Song is surely enough
evidence that this is not at all a 'romance for eternity' nor an allegory
of the love of Christ and the church.
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