We usually call the Song of Solomon, Canticles; this means, ‘little song.’ But the author of it calls it ‘the Song of Songs,’ or ‘Ballad of Ballads’; this, in some sense, means that it is rather large. He defines the song in the first verse: “The song of songs, which is Solomon’s.” It is a bold move, to say the least, for a person to give his song an ambitious title like that. Unless we knew that he titled the book under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, we might call it a presumptuous move. This title seems even less audacious if we consider that he called this ‘the song of songs’ among the one thousand and five that he wrote (1 Kings 4.32.) Since the Bible sometimes rounds off to the number thousand, as when it tells us that Solomon amassed, during his lifetime, one thousand women (1 Kings 11.3), it is not farfetched to guess that he might have written a song for each one of his women, up to the number one thousand and five.
Though the song is about love between King Solomon and the Shulamite, it is a book of love for Man and Woman. It has also been treated as an allegory of love between God and Israel or between Christ and his Church. A. B. Simpson penned an excellent exposition of it with this kind of interpretation in mind. That allegory is called, The Love Life of the Lord. It is interesting that ancient Jewish authorities discouraged the reading of Solomon’s Canticles among the youth on the basis that a person could be inflamed with lust by the reading of it. This book of Scripture was not intended, then, if its subject matter is so obviously sexual, as an allegory and nothing else, as many commentators contend. Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661) used it allegorically to describe the ‘joy of the Holy Ghost’ that he was the recipient of, especially when a prisoner. In his letters, he calls this joy the ‘love-kisses’ of Jesus, the ‘kisses of his mouth,’ and even his ‘soft and sweet kisses,’ obviously on the basis of Solomon’s Canticles (Samuel Rutherford, Letters of Samuel Rutherford, pp. 171, 71, 132.) He was made fun of by some vulgar persons for speaking like this of his experiences with the Lord; but holy experiences can make their beneficiaries startlingly familiar in speech. By the Lord’s acceptance of this vernacular by the holy Rutherford, we know that God honors the allegorical use of this portion of Scripture. And this is what we should expect in light of the expressions used elsewhere in the Bible to depict the relationship of Jehovah with Israel and of the Lord with his Church (Hosea 2.19; Ephesians 5.22-33.) I nevertheless agree with Adam Clarke (1762-1832), in his commentary, that when it comes to exposition, the Song of Solomon is meant to be exposited literally, not allegorically. To allegorize content that so plainly and thoroughly narrates the practice of romance comes too close to perpetrating and encouraging the unsound hermeneutical method that we find in the writings of Origen. In Solomon’s Song: the woman’s breasts are like young deer, her neck is like ivory, her belly is like wheat highlighted by lilies; and the man is white and ruddy, his head has the bearing of gold, and his lips drop sweetness. What does all of this basically and literally signify but a princely man and a bonny woman?
The Song of Songs is most basically intended as an incentive, or aphrodisiac, for Man and Wife, and for exploratory discovery. This nuptial song has been appreciated for thousands of years. It is an ancient text; but it is shockingly up to date with what we are only now discovering, or discovering anew, about physical intimacy. There are revelations in it that are best kept between married lovers. If a person were to study it closely, that person would be jolted into realizing how up to date it is. There are things in it that could have knocked even a man like Sigmund Freud over. And this has nothing to do with, for example, that term of endearment: ‘my sister, my spouse’ (Song of Songs 4.10.) The soap operas and movies get love wrong when they show a man and woman fumbling breathlessly for buttons and zippers while knocking each other against the wall as if their wills are possessed. Right after Solomon tells us what the song is in the very first verse of it, he jumps right in with words from his lover in verse 2: “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.” What do wine tasters do? They ‘savour’ (verse 3.) The lovers in the Song savor the wine, the smells, the kisses, and the mouth; they linger instead of lust. They aren’t possessed; they want possession. “I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, that ye stir not up, nor awake love, until he please” (8.4.) “Let me have you!” they seem to say. “Let me have you for days and nights together! Don’t disturb us tonight; and don’t wake us up in the morning.” They, like our lonesome nice guys and the girls that get played by bad boys, want commitment. They don’t want to sneak out in the morning; and they don’t want the other party to do so. They are all about the bed, the sporting, the ravishing, and the honeycomb; and they want it to last. The lovers are intoxicated; but they are more aware than they’ve ever been. “It is good for us to be here” (Matthew 17.4), they say with Peter, though about something else. They want to tabernacle together. They want to get to ‘know’ each other (Genesis 4.25), not just have a passing acquaintance. This takes time, scrutiny, play, practice, experimentation. Their love is like a fantasy come into focus. Solomon’s love-song about his amorous relationship is idyllic except for occasional references to swiftly resolved love-spats. But what are love-spats but arid spaces for new sparks to form? Is it not true that ideal love includes these minor breaches that must be made up by romantic overtures?
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