What is the 'Song of Songs' about?

#43: “What is the ‘Song of Songs’ about?” by Brendon Wahlberg
The Song of Songs, also known as the Song of Solomon, is a very unusual book in the Bible. It is a collection of erotic love poetry that does not mention God. Consequently, its place in the canon of scripture was questioned by many in antiquity. Yet, the famous first century Rabbi Akiva said in its defense, “the whole of the world is not worth the day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel; all the writings are Holy, but the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies.” Akiva’s opinion ensured that the Song of Songs made it onto the final list of accepted Bible books.
The secret of Rabbi Akiva’s great respect for this puzzling book is that he saw it not as erotic love poetry, but as an allegory for the love between God and Israel. For example, where the Song says, “My beloved is to me a bag of myrrh that lies between my breasts (1:13),” an allegorical interpretation might claim that the two breasts represent the two cherubim atop the Ark of the Covenant and that the bag of perfume represents God’s presence resting between them. Later Christians picked up on this theme and interpreted the book as a description of the love between Christ and the Church.
Others find the allegorical approach to be baseless, and they see only a collection of random love poems that celebrate the natural love between men and women. Including the poems in scripture is an affirmation that such love is a holy part of God’s creation, but there is no deeper meaning to be found in the book. They theorize that the poems were sung at weddings in ancient Israel.
Finally, there are those who see the Song of Songs as a sort of drama, a play with three characters who take turns speaking. When viewed this way, the Song of Songs tells of a young woman in love with a shepherd boy, and the powerful King who covets her beauty and tries to make her part of his harem. This last approach is perhaps the most interesting and meaningful, because we can take some powerful life lessons from a dramatic story, while a random collection of verses has less to offer us.
If the Song of Songs is indeed a story, who are the characters? One is King Solomon, the son of King David. The first line of the book says, “The Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s.” (1:1) This line could mean that the book was written by Solomon, for Solomon, or about Solomon. Perhaps it is about Solomon, for the Song of Songs might be a subtle criticism of the promiscuity of the King, and it is unlikely that Solomon would have criticized himself.
What was there to criticize about Solomon? As the powerful King of Israel, Solomon had 1,000 women in his harem, as described in the following passage. “King Solomon loved many foreign women […] from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the Israelites, ‘You shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you; for they will surely incline your heart to follow their gods;’ Solomon clung to these in love. Among his wives were seven hundred princesses and three hundred concubines; and his wives turned away his heart. For when Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart after other gods; and his heart was not true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of his father David.” (1 Kings 11:1-4)
So the problem was that his many wives led Solomon to worship other gods. He should have known better: the Torah specifically forbids the King to have so many wives. “When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, ‘I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me’, you may indeed set over you a king whom the Lord your God will choose. […] And he must not acquire many wives for himself, or else his heart will turn away…” (Deuteronomy 17:14-17) According to the dramatic interpretation of the Song of Songs, despite having so many women, Solomon wants one more, and he only wants her for her looks. Her refusal of his advances and her choice to uphold true love may represent a rebuke to Solomon for his behavior in general. Not only did his promiscuity lead him to other gods, it also offended human ideals of romantic love.
The second character of this drama is a young virgin Shulammite maiden. Solomon wants to add her to his collection, but she is already in love with the third character, a young shepherd boy from her village. The other women in the harem, who are referred to as the “daughters of Jerusalem”, also speak in the story, acting as a sort of chorus.
The following is a summary of the dramatic story of the Song of Songs, along with chapter and verse numbers so you can follow along in your Bible if you wish. One weakness of this interpretation of the book is that it is hard to assign some of the verses to a specific character with real certainty. Some people would say that a particular line was spoken by the King, but some would say it was the maiden. Therefore, take the details with a grain of salt, so to speak. Besides the ambiguity of who is speaking in some parts, there is the difficulty of translation. The Song of Songs is notoriously hard to translate. The meaning of many of the Hebrew phrases is unclear, and many of the individual words are found only in this book, so we sometimes have to guess what they mean.
As the story opens, the young maiden lives in the north of Israel where she works on one of the King’s vineyards as a tenant farmer. Solomon has camped nearby to inspect his grape crops, and he sees the maiden and is taken with her beauty. The maiden is praising her young shepherd boyfriend (1:2-4) when she is summoned into the King’s tent (1:4). Women of the harem welcome her (1:4). We learn that the maiden’s skin is dark from tending grapes in the sun all the time (1:5-6) as she stands there wondering where the shepherd is at that moment (1:7). The harem women begin to tell her to go find him (1:8) when the King enters, reclines on a couch, and starts praising the maiden’s facial beauty and jewelry (1:9-10). The harem promises her even more jewelry (1:11) but the maiden can only stand and talk about her beloved the shepherd (1:12-14).
The King keeps praising the maiden’s beauty (1:15; 2:2) while the maiden steadfastly praises only her true love and talks about the house they’ll share, and how they first saw each other and fell in love (1:16-17; 2:1; 2:3-10). She describes what the shepherd said to her as their love grew (2:11-15). The maiden says (and she repeats it three times in the story) that love should not be rushed – it has to awaken when it is ready (2:7). Therefore what the King is doing is wrong. But Solomon will not release her, and she has to travel back to Jerusalem with him. On the way, she dreams she is in the city, looking in the streets for her beloved. She finds him in the dream, and they escape to her mother’s house (2:16-17; 3:1-5). But it is only a dream.
The King’s grand procession approaches Jerusalem. Solomon rides on a litter, a fancy travelling couch accompanied by many soldiers, and the rest of the harem comes out to greet it (3:6-11). The King is looking forward to another wedding, with the maiden. Many of his wives were princesses - daughters of foreign rulers, married to him to cement political alliances. But the Shulammite maiden was just a poor peasant – she must have been truly beautiful to so powerfully attract Solomon. The King extols her beauty at length, complimenting every part of her individually, discussing her virginity with great interest, and calling her his sister and bride (4:1-15). But the maiden is oblivious to his seduction, imagining the consummation of her love with the shepherd (4:16; 5:1).
In Jerusalem, the maiden dreams that her shepherd has come to find her. This time, the dream is more frightening than the last. The shepherd seems to be there, being intimate with her, but suddenly he vanishes. When she takes to the street looking for him, she dreams she is found and beaten by guards (5:2-7). The maiden wakes up and begs the harem women to tell the shepherd (if they see him) how much she misses him (5:8). The women ask what makes this boy so special (5:9) and of course the maiden tells them in detail (5:10-16). They ask where he has gone (6:1) and the maiden says her love is with his sheep and in his lily gardens (6:2-3). She then speaks words that have become famous in Jewish weddings, words which are sometimes inscribed on wedding rings: “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.” (6:3)
The King is not finished trying to win her with over-the-top praise of her beauty, calling her perfect and complimenting every part of her body at great length. He lets her know how much he wants to make love to her (6:4-13; 7:1-9). Again, the maiden refuses the King. “I am my beloved’s, and his desire is for me.” (7:10) She speaks passionately to her shepherd as if he was there with her (7:10-13; 8:1-3). Again, she entreats everyone there not to force love, but to let love run its natural course. “I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, do not stir up or awaken love until it is ready!” (8:4)
With that final refusal, Solomon evidently relents, and we find the maiden returning north, home to her village. Her brothers spot her coming (8:5). She walks up the path, leaning on her beloved shepherd at last. As they walk, the maiden talks about how strong true love is, and how it helped her resist Solomon. “For love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. If one offered for love all the wealth of one’s house, it would be utterly scorned.” (8:6-7) She reassures her concerned brothers that she remains a virgin (8:8-12), and hurries off with her shepherd to be with him alone (8:13-14).
It is impossible to say for sure if this dramatic interpretation of the Song of Songs is correct in general. But viewed in this way, it has important things to say about love and marriage. Love is natural and beautiful, but it cannot be forced to grow. True love is between two people who belong to each other, and has nothing to do with wealth or power. Solomon was wrong to let his desire come between two young people, and for all his flattery, his shallow, superficial attraction could not equal the deep and honest feelings shared by the two peasants.
If this interpretation is correct, then how did this book end up in the Bible in the first place? It is not a grand story of God and mankind, like the Exodus story. Was it included simply because it was a story of Solomon, and, as we know, even critical stories about the Kings of Israel were preserved? We may never know. Even if God is not in the Song of Songs, we are invited to think about God in relation to the book, simply because it is there in the Bible. Whether you look for God’s presence in the symbolism of the poetry, as Rabbi Akiva did, or if you see the story as an example of how God wants us to love each other - with delight and faithfulness - you can take something important from the Song of Songs.