Deeper Commentary
Song of Solomon 5:1
Lover
I have come into my garden-
As noted on Song 4:16, this clearly means that he accepted her
invitation to sleep with her. The garden is the girl, as made
clear in Song 4:15 where he calls her a garden with fountains in it, and
she responds by asking him to enter the garden and eat from it. His entry
into her is therefore undoubtedly an allusion to sexual entry into her,
even though they are unmarried. They have sex before marriage and the
whole thing is so sensual and carnal- a major difficult for the
allegorical, "Christ and the church" approach.
My sister, my bride-
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).
I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb
with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk. Eat, friends! Drink,
yes, drink abundantly, beloved-
The idea may be that they hear some voice urging them as friends and
lovers to feast and get drunk on love. For clearly Solomon has entered the
closed garden of the previous verses, and they are having sex.
The invitation to drink abundantly is yet another indication of
an inappropriate liking of wine in the Song. "Beloved" is plural in: "Eat,
friends! Drink, yes, drink abundantly, beloved". Friends and lovers are
being invited to also eat and drink as Solomon has just done. Perhaps this
phrase is a voice which comes to the Shulamite in her nightmare; at this
voice, she awakes (:2) and recounts her nightmare. After Solomon
congratulates himself on sex with her, she hears a voice that invites
other lovers to do likewise. In this we see the voice of her inner complex
about the fact that Solomon is a polygamist and in fact has sex with other
women apart from her.
Song of Solomon 5:2 Beloved
I was asleep, but my heart was awake-
After the sex of :1, she again has a nightmare that he has left her,
as she does in chapter 3. This is true to life; it is psychologically
inevitable that a woman in her situation, with so many reasons to fear she
will lose him, will have such nightmares. And her dream
reflects her own complex about sex. Solomon has knocked on her closed door,
and she hasn't opened to him. She fears that he wanted sex but she didn't
give it to him. She fears that she had somehow failed him in the sex they
just had (see on :1).
It is the voice of my beloved who knocks-
See on :12 for "dove". At the same time as Solomon was having this romance, at the start of
his reign, he was writing up his Proverbs; including Prov. 8:34: "Blessed
is the man who hears me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at my door
posts". This may be an intentional contrast with the bad woman of Prov. 7,
who tempts men to furtively enter the doors and gates of her house at
night. And Solomon failed in this; for the Song of Solomon speaks of the
"gates" of his illicit Gentile girlfriend (Song 7:13), outside which
Solomon waited secretly at night (Song 5:2,4). He does precisely what he
condemns and warns others against. He failed to personalize wisdom,
apparently thinking that mere possession of such Divine truths was enough
to justify him, regardless of personal behaviour.
Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled; for my head
is filled with dew, and my hair with the dampness of the night-
She imagines that he calls her "my undefiled", ignoring the
fact she had admitted to not keeping her own vineyard / virginity.
He sees her as "undefiled" even though he has just slept with her
and she is no longer a closed garden (Song 4:16; 5;1). They both create
images of each other which are simply not true to reality, and fall in
love with those images rather than reality. In the dream, Solomon has been
out all night. We continue to get the impression of the secret, illicit
nature of their relationship, unable to be seen in public together (Song
8:1).
Song of Solomon 5:3 I have taken off my robe. Indeed, must I put it on? I have washed
my feet. Indeed, must I defile them?-
She is asleep and doesn't want to go and open the door immediately,
because she has no attractive robe on, and by walking over the dirt floor
to the door, her feet would become dirty. She is aware that Solomon's
praise of her has often been of her external adornment with jewellery and
clothing, and she fears to be seen by him without them. This is typical of
the whole nature of their relationship.
Song of Solomon 5:4 My beloved thrust his hand in through the latch
opening. My heart pounded for him-
He apparently spoke or called to her at this time (:6) but she made
no response because she was obsessed with putting on her make up.
It was
this focus upon externalities which cost her the relationship at that
point. Her nightmare reveals the inner truth of the situation and
relationship, which unconsciously she recognized. The language of
Solomon thrusting in his hand through a keyhole is clearly sexual. She
imagines him fingering her and her body responding as in :5. But she feels
she hasn't responded to this as she should have done and therefore he had
left her. In her nightmare, she is feeling guilt over sexual inadequacy.
Song of Solomon 5:5 I rose up to open for my beloved. My hands dripped
with myrrh, my fingers with liquid myrrh, on the handles of the lock-
The scene is true to psychological reality. She fears being seen by
him without her attractive clothing and makeup on; but then her love for
him gets the better of her. She has begun painting herself with myrrh, but
with the liquid still dripping off her fingers, she goes to the door and
fumbles with the lock with her slippery fingers. But it is too late. He's
gone (:6). The whole scene looks forward to the New Testament pictures of
the unworthy not opening immediately to the Lord Jesus when He knocks on
their door at His return. Like the foolish virgins, they want time to
prepare, rather than trusting in His love and realizing that no amount of
external religious preparation can qualify them for Him. Although I deny
that the Song is an allegory of Christ and His bride, at this point I
would say that this particular scene is indeed used as a parabolic
representation of the reaction of the unworthy to the Lord's return.
Unless we respond to His coming immediately, then we will not find Him
(Lk. 12:36). The immediacy of our response will be a function of our faith
in His love for us, and our love for Him- as well as our understanding
that we cannot make ourselves acceptable to Him by mere external
appearance and cosmetic adornment.
Song of Solomon 5:6 I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had left-
Presumably because he feared being spotted by the night watchmen on
patrol. We get the impression a curfew was in place in the city. There is
always the sense of fear that they would be caught together (Song 8:1).
See on :5. R.V. "My soul had failed me when he spake". This
situation is made sense of by understanding she was in the house of the
women, being prepared to meet Solomon, when he was meeting her secretly
and already sleeping with her. He was indeed obsessed with her to have
done that.
He had gone away. My heart went out when he spoke. I looked for
him, but I didn’t find him. I called him, but he didn’t answer-
Notice the sequence here:
While she sleeps at night, the bridegroom comes and knocks [unworthy
virgins sleeping instead of being awake; the Lord Jesus comes; Lk. 12:36
uses the same figure, of the Lord's return being like a knock]
She replies that she's not dressed properly, makes excuses about her feet,
she can't come and open [the unworthy don't respond immediately]
He tries to open the door from the outside, putting his hand through the
latch-hole [by grace, after the pattern of Lot being encouraged to leave
Sodom when he hesitated, the Lord will be patient even with sleepy virgins
in His desire for their salvation]
Her heart is moved with desire for him [the rejected still call Jesus
'Lord, Lord'; they love Him emotionally]
She starts dressing herself up, and then is overtaken by desire and rushes
to the door, her hands dripping all kinds of perfume and make up over the
lock as she opens it [cp. the virgins going to buy oil, the unworthy
trying to prepare themselves all too late, not trusting that their Lord
loves them as they are at the moment of His coming]
But he's gone , he
withdraws himself [all too late, the door is
shut, He never knew them]
Her soul fails [the shock of rejection]
She seeks him but doesn't find him, calls but he doesn't answer [Prov.
1:28; the rejected call, but aren't answered; they seek the Lord early,
but don't find Him. Hos. 5:6 is likewise relevant: "They shall go with
their flocks and with their herds to seek
the LORD; but they shall
not find him; he hath withdrawn himself from them"]
She feels tired of her relationship with him ("sick of love").
She is persecuted by the world around her ["condemned with the world"]
The basic point is that if we don't immediately respond to the Lord's
knock, we show ourselves to not love Him enough. If we don't open
immediately, it's as if we didn't open at all. The Lord wants us as we
are, bleary eyed and without our make up, but with a basic overriding love
of Him , and faith in the depth of His love, which will lead us to
immediately go out to meet Him . This will be the ultimate and crucial
divide- between those who believe in the Lord's love for us, who have
known the humanly unknowable love of Christ; and those who think they need
to prepare themselves to make themselves good enough for Him.
Solomon called to the girl through the keyhole: "...my undefiled...". But
she doesn't want to immediately come to Him because she doesn't want to
meet him with 'defiled' feet (Song 5:2,3). She couldn't believe his words,
that in his eyes, she was undefiled. And the enormity of the
passion of Christ for us is likewise so hard for us to accept. In Song 3:1
we find the girl again at night, dreaming of having Solomon with her. But
when one night he does actually come, she doesn't go to meet him
immediately. And there's a warning for us. Like Israel we may 'desire the
day of the Lord', study prophecy about it, write about it, enthuse about
it. But when He comes, to what end will it be to us? Will we
in a
moment drop everything and go to Him, believing that He loves us just
as we are? Or will we run off to buy oil, slap make up on...? The tragedy
of Solomon's girl was that she started putting her make up on, and then
her heart smote her and she opened the door, her hands dropping perfume
all over the bolt (Song 5:5 RV). She finally realized that he had loved
her for who she was, how she was. But it was tragically too late. He'd
gone. We need to learn that lesson now, to know the love of
Christ... so that in that moment when we know for sure 'He's back!', we
will without hesitation go to Him with that perfect / mature love,
that casts out fear.
Song of Solomon 5:7 The watchmen who go about the city found me. They beat
me. They bruised me. The keepers of the walls took my cloak away from me-
Her difficulty with "the watchmen" and their anger with her
is understandable if she was in the "house of the women", guarded within
the harem- and yet had escaped from it to have a tryst with the king for
whom she was being prepared. "The walls" may be the walls of the harem
house rather than of Jerusalem. Walls are used in a more figurative sense
in Song 8:10 "I was a wall, and my breasts were like towers". The keepers
of the walls were therefore the guards of the harem and of the virginity
of the candidates within it. And she had sneaked out of it to sleep with
the king for whom she was being formally prepared.
The word for "cloak" is only used about the inappropriate clothing of Jerusalem's wanton women (Is. 3:23). She had previously met these men in her previous dream of Song 3, and it's as if they had then given her a warning. But now they beat and bruised her. She lives in constant fear that soldiers guard Solomon's bed from her, and the night watchmen are after her. AV "took away my veil from me" could imply that these men raped her. Then we would read "bruised" in the sense of rape as in Ez. 23:3,8.
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.
Song of Solomon 5:8 I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my
beloved, that you tell him that I am faint with love-
Her worst nightmare on that night of losing her beloved is that she
would then bump into the daughters of Jerusalem, in her bedraggled and
bruised state (:7). And so it happens in her dream. Her words here could
be read as saying that she is "sick of love" (AV), that she is over it,
it's all too much for her, and they need not fear her competition any
more. Or, it can be read as "faint with love", as if she defiantly tells
them that he is still her beloved, and she is passionately in love with
him. The ambiguity is perhaps intentional, to show us the understandable
but contradictory feelings within her.
Daughters of Jerusalem
Song of Solomon 5:9 How is your beloved better than another beloved, you fairest among
women? How is your beloved better than another beloved, that you so adjure
us?-
The daughters of Jerusalem mock her as "fairest among women",
repeating Solomon's term of endearment to her. They were clearly aware of
his relationship with her. And there she was, without her make up, bruised
and bedraggled after being raped (see on :7).
So they are being deeply
sarcastic. The daughters of Jerusalem seem to be implying she has other
"beloveds" and they mock her claims to see anything uniquely wonderful in
her beloved Solomon; bear in mind that his Hebrew name meant "beloved".
"What kind of a love is your love?" (Heb.) suggests them mocking
her belief that she is foolish to think she and Solomon have a unique
relationship. Or "What is your beloved before another (beloved)?" may
suggest she has had other men before [as she admits when she says she
hasn't kept her own vineyard] and will go on to love other men [as she
seems to say she will at the end of Song 8, declaring her vineyard as her
own to give to others and she wafts away].
Beloved
Song of Solomon 5:10 My beloved is white and ruddy. The best among ten
thousand-
David had been described as the chiefest among ten thousand (2 Sam.
18:3), and yet this is how Solomon’s illegal girlfriend describes him. He
had clearly told her all about his father David- and she evidently pleased
Solomon by describing him as being like his father, even though she
probably had never known David. He sought a wife who would be a surrogate
parent rather than a help-meet. Perhaps she has in view Solomon's 1000 wives. She may imply that he is better and more
worthy than them all, and she is his special one. So she naively believes;
for all her manipulation and hard headed self confidence, she is a fool to
believe this.
We must continually remember that Solomon is the author of the Song. Here he is putting words in the Shulamite's mouth. She describes him as if he is an erotic statue, everything about him is perfect. Whilst this may indeed have been how she saw him, there lacks not vanity in Solomon constructing these descriptions of himself. We note how few verbs there are in her description of him in :10-17. It's all about external appearances, things, nouns, not who the person was or what they did. Solomon describes her likewise in Song 7:2-8.
NEV "best" translates the word for 'banner'- he has the greatest banner among 10,000. She has earlier boasted that "his banner" [s.w.] over me is love" (Song 2:4). Even if Solomon had 10,000 women, she likes to think that his banner for her was the greatest. We see again an insight into human psychology when 'in love'. The most obvious realities- in this case, that he had many other women whom he loved- are recognized but not really engaged with, because of the narrative believed. Which in this case was that Solomon had a special love for her that was unique and greater than what he had for any of his other women. This feature of human psychology explains why people get involved with all manner of damaging situations- entering relationships with addicts, believing against all evidence that their child is in fact an innocent victim when the evidence is all the other way. This feature of our psychology is to be harnessed positively- Abraham hoped against hope, against all the reasons not to hope, and his hope / faith was rewarded. What matters is choosing the right narrative to believe, and the only ultimately true narrative is the saving love of God in His Son.
The Shulamite is a classic case of cognitive dissonance. On one hand she believes Solomon's protestations of love, on the other, she sees ample evidence that he has many other women in his life. And this creates mental disturbance, as witnessed by her nightmares about Solomon marrying other women. Typically in such a case, the person will try to reduce the inconsistency or contradiction by changing their cognitions to cause greater alignment between them so as to reduce the dissonance. Coping with the contradictory information or ideas is stressful and we seek to avoid or reduce this. They may simply avoid any information that increases the dissonance (confirmation bias) and an 'in love' person will often do this. No amount of facts, figures nor logical argument will mean anything- not even Solomon having hundreds of wives but still claiming to love this new one. Just as a man only watches media that confirms his political views, disregarding other media as biased and untruthful, so the 'in love' person will see only what they want to see and will be aggressive towards any other source of information; and that perfectly explains the tension between the Shulamite and the Daughters of Jerusalem.
Cognitive dissonance is typically experienced as psychological stress when persons participate in an action that goes against one or more of the contradictory cognitions or bits of information they are receiving. In her case, she has to either decide Solomon is a liar in what he is telling her; or somehow reinterpret his love for many other women. His love for those other women, and theirs for him, is a given that she began recognizing was a simple, observable fact. So she has to go the way she does at the end of the Song- removing herself from him, declaring him a liar, being sarcastic to him, telling him to clear off, and looking elsewhere for love. More observations on the Shulamite's cognitive dissonance on Song 6:3.
Song of Solomon 5:11 His head is like the purest gold. His hair is
bushy, black as a raven-
The description of him as having a head of gold and then proceeding
down his body in description to his feet... all recalls the picture of the
idol image seen in Daniel 2. Constantly we have hints that when compared
with other scripture, this woman and this relationship are absolutely
spiritually fake.
His head like gold may refer to the gold crown Solomon wore
in the nightmare she had of him wearing a gold crown, given to him by his
mother, on the day he married many other women (Song 3:10). But now she
sees that as something dashing and beautiful; and we see how selective we
can be in our interpretation of imagery, seeing only what we want to see.
Her praise of his thick black hair reflects her lack of awareness that his
brother Absalom had the same kind of hair, which he was proud of- but it
was the cause of his death.
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.]
Song of Solomon 5:12 His eyes are like doves beside the water brooks,
washed with milk, mounted like jewels-
Solomon sees her as a dove with dove's eyes (Song 1:15, also Song
5:2), and she then says here 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.
Song of Solomon 5:13 His cheeks are like a bed of spices with towers of
perfumes. His lips are like lilies, dropping liquid myrrh-
She has just tried to make herself pretty with liquid myrrh and
perfume. She had delayed opening the door to him because of it, and landed
herself in so much trouble (:5). She fails to see that attraction is not
based on external things like myrrh. But actually they have had no other
basis for their relationship. Even she is without her perfume and myrrh
and a bedraggled rape victim (:7), she can only think in terms of
externalities. For that is all these two have between them.
Song of Solomon 5:14 His hands are like rings of gold set with beryl. His
body is like ivory work overlaid with sapphires-
She seems to claim she knows his naked body. But she praises his
hands not for the hands in themselves, but because of all the gold rings
with jewels which he wears, giving the impression his hands /
fingers are gold. Even in her distraught state, she can only think of him
in terms of externalities; for that was the sole basis of their
relationship.
Song of Solomon 5:15 His legs are like pillars of marble set on sockets of
fine gold. His appearance is like Lebanon, excellent as the cedars-
As noted on :14, even in her desperate situation,
she can only praise
Solomon for his external appearance. There is no implication that she
praises him for his personality or character.
Song of Solomon 5:16 His mouth is sweetness; yes, he is altogether lovely-
She hereby boasts that she has experienced deep kissing with him. She
no longer wishes to keep the relationship secret. 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.
This is my
beloved, and this is my friend, daughters of Jerusalem-
She seems to boast to them that he loves her, he is her friend. She clings
on even in her desperation to the myth he had got her to believe, that he
loved her uniquely and not the daughters of Jerusalem, whom he disparaged
to her as "thorns" compared to her as a lily (Song 2:1-3). Solomon ought
to have considered wisdom his sister and friend (Prov. 7:4), as he had
exhorted others; but instead he considers this Egyptian woman to be both
those things.
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