During the week following a Jewish wedding, family and friends treated the newlyweds like royalty. Modern couples have a “honeymoon” and usually travel to some special place where they will be left alone.But eventually the couple has to return to life with its problems and duties, and so did Solomon and his wife.
8:14)
The quest for her husband (5:2–9). The Shulamite had another disturbing dream. (See 3:1–4.) She heard her husband calling to her (note that he doesn’t call her his “bride”) and asking her to let him in. Apparently she had locked the door and gone to bed without him. But she had bathed and was comfortable in bed and didn’t want to be disturbed. Perhaps she wasn’t in the mood for romance. She didn’t respond to his voice, but she did respond when she saw his hand come through the opening for the door latch and when she smelled the fragrant perfume on his hand. The king didn’t force his way in, but surely he was disappointed when his beloved rejected him.
Realizing her mistake, the Shulamite went to the door, but when she did, she discovered that he was gone. Her heart sank, for love is a delicate thing, easily misunderstood and quickly hurt. She called, but he didn’t answer, so she went in search of him. This time the city guards didn’t cooperate with her; instead, they wounded her and took her cloak. Did they think she was a prostitute out looking for business? The beloved seemed to have most of her trouble in the night and not when she was walking in the daytime with her king. First John 1:5–10 comes to mind. She told the daughters of Jerusalem that she was faint from love (2:5), for she was learning that there’s a price to pay in marriage if we want to mature in our affection. They asked her what made her beloved so special, and her reply was another description of how handsome he was.
The beauty of her husband (5:10–16). Perhaps if she had told him this on their wedding night, he wouldn’t have left her temporarily or been so quick to leave before she could open the door. “Love is patient, love is kind” (1 Cor. 13: niv), but love needs to be nourished with kind words and actions. Again, the measures she used to describe his attractiveness are different from those we use today, but they do convey the right message. “White and ruddy” describes a man radiant with health and strength, just like David (1 Sam. 16:12; 17:42). “Ruddy” comes from a word that means “red,” which could suggest a red tint to the hair or perhaps the “bronzed” complexion of the person who has an active life outdoors.
A head like fine gold means a valuable head; that is, his brains were worth something. A body like ivory and marble speaks of beauty and strength. “Like Lebanon” also suggests beauty and strength, but this time she points to the famous and valuable cedars of Lebanon. The beautiful phrase “altogether lovely” says it all. Over the years, our bodies change and we get old, but the husband and wife who grow in their appreciation and evaluation of each other will never cultivate a critical attitude. “Young in heart” is the secret of a long and happy marriage.
Their meeting in the garden (6:1–13). It’s now daylight and the women of Jerusalem offer to help her to find her husband, but the Shulamite knows him well and knows where he has gone. One of the important elements in a marriage is getting to know each other so well that we can “read each other’s minds” and anticipate actions and words. “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine” expresses it perfectly (6:3; see 2:16; 7:10). Solomon was not lost to her even though they weren’t together. He was feeding his flock in the garden and she knew where to go.
The moment he saw her, he welcomed her and began to extol her virtues. He didn’t scold her for keeping him outside the door or for walking about the city alone at night and getting bruised by the watchmen. Tirzah was the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel after the nation divided. “You are fit for a king!” is what he was saying. The Jews thought that Jerusalem was the most beautiful of all cities (Ps. 48; Ps. 50:2; Lam. 2:15). “Terrible” means “awesome, majestic.” Remember, he is speaking about a woman and comparing her to an impressive army on the march. Her eyes alone captivated him and overcame him. He used a number of the similes that she had used in 4:10–16, although he wasn’t present to hear her words. They are starting to become very much alike, something that often happens in marriages.
The number of queens and concubines in his harem was much lower than in his later years (6:8; 1 Kings 11:3), so this was written very early in his reign. But of all the women in his life, the Shulamite was his favorite as well as the favorite of her mother and the other queens in the palace. In the eyes of the Shulamite, Solomon was “altogether lovely [beautiful]” (5:16), and in Solomon’s eyes, his wife was “the only one of her kind—unique” (6:9). Even the daughters of Jerusalem praised the Shulamite for her beauty. They had been with her at night and saw her as fair as the moon, and now that it was morning, she looked as lovely as the dawn. As the sun ascended, she looked as awesome as an army, a phrase the king had used (v. 4). Some see verse 10 describing the king and his wife riding off in the royal palanquin.
The beloved wife decided she wanted to visit their garden to see if the spring had brought new growth to the trees and vines, so there was a temporary separation from her husband. But then a remarkable thing happened: she found herself “among the chariots of the people of the prince” (v. 12 margin). Her husband’s army was arriving, and the garden looked like a battlefield. But gardens are for beauty and nourishment, not for battles. Is there a suggestion here that marriage should be neither a battleground nor a playground, but a garden that is carefully cultivated and thoroughly enjoyed? The first marriage took place in a perfect garden (Gen. 2:18–25), and marriage ought to be like a garden. This takes work, but it’s worth it! Noticing her absence, the daughters of Jerusalem call for her to return so they can gaze upon her beauty, but in her modesty, she asks, “Why look at me? What is there to look at?” Solomon answers the question from 6:13c to 7:9.
They express their mutual love (7:1—8:4). “When you look at me and my wife,” replied Solomon, “you are seeing two armies!” The Hebrew is mahanaim and takes us back to the time Jacob was about to meet his brother Esau and was very much afraid (Gen. 32:1ff.). God gave him a vision of an army of angels sent from heaven to protect him, so Jacob called the name of the place “Mahanaim” because he saw two armies—the army of God above him and his own army of retainers around him. The wrong kind of military language is often used with reference to marriage, such as, “My wife is a battleaxe!” or “My husband’s on a campaign to buy a boat!” But the Song of Solomon sees the wife and husband like two armies marching together, each helping and defending the other (6:4, 10). They don’t battle with each other, but they attack anything that will threaten their marriage.
Most of the similes in 7:1–9 have been used before in the book, but a few are new. He describes her beauty from foot (v. 1) to head (vv. 5, 9). Both food and drink are referenced in 7:2, describing the intimate area of her body, and this suggests that the husband is nourished by the love of his wife. Oriental “fish pools” were beautiful and peaceful, even though filled with life, and so were her eyes (v. 4). Previously, Solomon had been so smitten by her look that he was overcome (6:5), but now he can watch her eyes and find beauty and excitement. If today you compared a woman’s neck or nose to a tower, you would offend her, but not so in that day. The reference isn’t to size or prominence but to proportion and fitness. Like a tower on the city wall, or even standing alone in the land, it was in the right setting and had its own beauty. Hair “like purple” isn’t referring to dyed hair but to royal curtains or tapestries. Whereas the king had been transfixed by her eyes (6:5), now it’s her hair that captures him.
In verses 6–9, he introduces a fascinating new metaphor. He sees his lovely wife as a palm tree, beautiful and fruitful, and their intimate love as his climbing the tree and eating its fruits. (“Grapes” in v. 7 kjv should be “fruit,” referring to dates.) Kissing her was like drinking wine, and he told her so. Her reply was that she hoped the wine would flow gently over his lips and teeth and please him. Again she assures him of their mutual love and devotion (v. 10; see 2:16; 6:3). “His desire is toward me” reminds us of Genesis 3:16, where the Lord said that Eve’s desire would be for her husband. Sexual attraction in marriage must be a mutual experience, and the husband and wife must work at making themselves desirable.
Now the bride wants to make a visit to the country, something Solomon had wanted to do before and she had refused (2:8–17). Sometimes visiting another place gives a freshness to marriage relationships, and she promised to give him her love (7:12). A husband and wife have conjugal obligations to each other (1 Cor. 7:1–7), but they shouldn’t look upon married love as a dutiful responsibility. It is also a gift they share with each other, as they shared the feast and the joys of visiting the garden. Mandrakes have long been associated with sexual passion (Gen. 30:14), although there’s no evidence that they work as a sexual stimulant. The Shulamite enjoys fruit that is both new and old, suggesting that they’re brave enough to try something new but wise enough not to abandon what they know really works.
As she closes her monologue, she expresses regret that she can’t show her love to him spontaneously, as a sister can do to a brother (8:1–4). In that society at that time, for a wife to kiss her husband in public would be considered uncouth, so they had to wait until they were alone. She wanted to be a “big sister” to him and kiss him, take him home to her mother, and learn from her mother how to treat him. Once again, the image of food and drink is used to describe their love: he would embrace her and she would provide the wine and pomegranate juice. The seeds of the pomegranate are found in sacs that contain a tasty juice.
They pledge unending love and faithfulness (8:5–14). The daughters of Jerusalem see the couple returning home from their honeymoon trip to the villages, and they note that in the royal carriage she is leaning on her husband in love. (See 3: for a parallel picture.) As they come to her native village, they see a prominent apple tree, and the king reminds her that she had been sleeping under that tree, weary from work, when first he saw her. Then he pointed to her girlhood home and reminded her that there she had been conceived and delivered.
But those days were ended. Now they belonged to each other and needed to be true to each other. He asked her to make him the seal on her heart and arm, for a seal speaks of ownership and protection. Their love brought them together, and their love would keep them together. The grip of death and the grave can’t be broken, and neither can the hold of love. A husband and wife aren’t envious of each other but they are jealous over one another, and that jealousy is powerful, like the very fire of God. The bride picks up this image of the fire and says that such love can’t be put out by water, and it’s not for sale! Any man who offered to buy love would be scorned and rejected. By speaking in this way, the king and his wife affirm their unending love for each other.
Verses 8–14 form an appendix to the story. As the Shulamite returns to her girlhood home with her husband, she remembers what her brothers said about her when she was younger. They didn’t think she was ready for marriage because she hadn’t yet matured. The images of the wall and the door have to do with the girl’s virginity. If she was a door, a woman of easy access, then she would not be fit to be a bride, but if she kept herself pure, behind a wall, as it were, then they could give her away to the man who asked for her. The Shulamite boldly stated that she was a wall and entered the marriage bed a pure virgin. But in spite of her brothers’ sneers, she developed physically and had breasts that her husband admired (4:5–6; 7:3, 7–8).
Now that she is married, her brothers will not be able to enlist her help in caring for the vineyard. But Solomon owns the vineyard and, as his wife, she has a share in it! Verses 11–12 seem to speak about a new “work contract” she negotiated between her husband and her brothers, providing them with more money for their labors. They might be able to hire extra help to replace their sister.
The book closes with the Shulamite in her garden, chatting with some friends, and her husband calls to her because he wants to hear her voice. Where there is love, the husband and wife want to be together and share their ideas and feelings. Yes, there’s a place for other companions, but nobody must replace the mate God gives to us. How does the beloved respond to his call? She tells him to hurry up and leave with her, because the “mountains of spices” (her breasts, 4:5–6) are awaiting his touch. Of course, her companions in the garden don’t understand this code word, so she doesn’t embarrass anybody. Husbands and wives frequently have a secret language of love that others don’t understand.
Observations The presence of immature people in a congregation would make it difficult to preach from this book, but a series of lessons from the Song of Solomon would be very helpful to a class of engaged couples or newlyweds. The book would be ideal as a basis for premarital counseling. If in our teaching and preaching we do allegorize some portions, we must first of all give the basic interpretation. Since the relationship of Christ and His church is like that of a husband and wife, there are certain applications that we can make.
I S A I A HIn using this book in public ministry, we must be wise as serpents and harmless as doves and not allow our good works to be classified as evil. Some people are against anything in the pulpit that deals with sex, while others wonder where they can get the help that they desperately need. Wise is the minister and teacher who can keep the right balance.