JY: Welcome to GearTalk, a podcast on Biblical Theology. We’ve been focusing on books connected to Solomon. Today, Jason and Tom take a look at the Song of Songs. There are at least four different ways this book has been interpreted. We talk about these different approaches and land on a preferred approach. This all sets the table for our walk-through of the book in our next podcast on Song of Songs. When you get a chance, take a look at the resources connected to Song of Songs, highlighted in our show notes.

TK: Welcome, GearTalk. I’m Tom. I’m with Jason, and we’ve been talking about books that Solomon wrote. So we talked about Ecclesiastes, and today we’re moving on to Song of Solomon. Or, Jason, some people call this Song of Songs, so can you help us a little bit here? What do we do with that? What do we call this book?

JD: Well, its title is the Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s. So even by the title, the Song of Songs—think the Holy of Holies. That’s how we express ultimate, maximum expression of something. So the Song of Songs means this is the best song, the highest song, in the same way that the King of Kings is the Supreme King over all others. The Holy of Holies is the holiest of holy places. Here, the Song of Songs is—this is a supreme song over all others, specifically, probably within its genre. So, a specific song related to love, and it is, in that sense, the best of all songs that Solomon wrote, related to—related to marital love. As we’re going to talk about during the podcast, there’s been lots of different views just related to what do we do with this song, because it’s—it’s graphic. It displays—at least on the surface—a husband and a wife, a man and a woman, who are delighting in each one—in each other physically. And historically, the church hasn’t even known what to do with this all the time. And yet, that’s how it’s portrayed. It’s a song about love, a song about very—as it’s captured in the chapter eight of the book—the flame of Yah. That is short for Yahweh, the flame of the Lord. That’s what this song is about. A flame that he puts within the soul of a man, within the soul of a woman, toward a member of the opposite sex, and they are drawn together, and that fire begins to blaze. And as it does, it is beautiful and God-honoring when that fire is set on the right object at the right time. And within this book, it is celebrating love in its proper context. It’s celebrating physical attraction and physical expression within the sacred bonds of marriage, and celebrating it as beautiful, as God-given, and as part of the display of even a greater relationship that God has been working since the beginning of time. So, we’re going to talk about this chief of all love songs that Solomon wrote.

TK: The—kind of setting the table a little bit here—our plan is that today we’re going to just be talking about the book as a whole, and some different approaches people have taken to the book, and then next time, next podcast, we will actually walk through the book and propose at least one possible reading that both of us find more compelling. But Jason, just want to make a point from—I’m looking at an ESV here—but I’m looking at between verse 1 and verse 2, there’s a note, and it says—it’s in italics in my Bible—it says, “The bride confesses her love,” and then it has—it says, “she.” And then it says—there’s a little footnote—and it says, “The translators have added speaker identifications based on the gender and number of the Hebrew words.” So, then I look, and then there’s something before verse 4 that says, “others,” I see “she” again at 5. And then it says, at verse 8, “Solomon and his bride delight in each other. He.” And just wanted to get your thoughts about this, because these are not actually words in the text. They’re supplying something, but they may be leading you down a path that might not be correct.

JD: Yes, Tom. We’re both looking at our English Standard Versions, and the translators of the English Standard Version on Song of Songs has gone over and above what we see elsewhere in the handling of certain—like the translators have interpreted in the headings that they have given. They have done significant interpretation that, even by its nature, counters alternative interpretations. For example, seeing the main male figure in this book as Solomon. Now, for many of our listeners, that might be an automatic like, “Well, who else could it be?” And yet, there’s, I think, a very solid argument for seeing the main character in this book as not being Solomon, but that Solomon is writing about a love that he has witnessed, yet himself never experienced. We have to remember, Tom, that we’re talking about a man who had 700 wives and 300 concubines, and he’s writing the chief among love songs about God’s picture for what the love between—I believe this is what it’s about—a man and a woman should be.

TK: And at right away, you kind of think, would he be the one who would, based on his history, best be able to write about that one man, one woman kind of relationship?

JD: And in this book, he writes about it, and he writes about it beautifully, but he, I believe, writes about it from the perspective of an observer, I’m going to argue, rather than from the perspective of a genuine lover. And yet, the ESV title says, “Solomon and his bride delight in each other.” And so, even in putting the title there, the reader is led to read the book in a certain way, and it’s very easy to forget the fact that all those headings, and all the he’s and she’s and others, were not part of the original Scriptures. And so, this is going to be an example, Tom, where I do think that the translators have done the reader a disservice by over-interpreting, even in their use of headings.

TK: And this is coming from—both of us would say we appreciate the ESV, so not saying don’t use the translation, just saying this is a feature of it, though, that they’re making some decisions for you that may not be as clear as they appear in the book.

JD: That’s right. That’s right. So, as we enter into the book, we’re going to see different characters. We know that this is written by Solomon, and so it’s a natural question: is he writing about himself? And at two points in the Song, he’s actually going to appear forthrightly. He’s going to be named, and he’s going to have a certain role. But I think it’s going to be good to take some time to dive into the book at those points and consider: how is he being portrayed? Is he being portrayed as the king who understands love? Or is he being portrayed as a man who knows how to abuse women, who has the pick of a thousand, and every night could be a different gal? And is that the portrait of love that we’re seeing elsewhere in the book? And I’m going to propose that it’s not. That Solomon writes this story as one who has recognized his own folly, and part of his wisdom is capturing for the reader what those hoping in the coming Messiah, what those who were truly part of the remnant, were living out in their marital love. And it’s something that he himself failed to do. And he’s laying it before the reader as something that they should strongly consider, because the love that he saw, the love that he witnessed, was beautiful and something he himself never tasted. And yet he’s commending it to the reader as something amazing.

TK: So this, I would imagine of books in our Bibles, there are certain ones that get preached a lot more, that we would more naturally read for encouragement, maybe in a quiet time. This, I would think, would fall into the category of very rarely used. That whole groups of pastors, I would say, would probably say I’ve never preached a sermon from Song of Solomon.

JD: Let alone an entire series of sermons. I think it’s a scary place for people to tread. And honestly, the only place that I, in my own growing-up years—though I’ve heard of other pastors who have preached it on Sunday mornings—the only context where I’ve heard Song of Songs being operative, or, sorry, within my own churches, where I’ve seen it brought up is in youth group. And there, carefully and yet trying to elevate the fact that God has made sexual desire for a certain time and place, and it’s something that can be rejoiced in. And yet, it’s specifically for the context of marriage. That’s been pretty much the limit of the use of Song of Songs in the churches that I have been a part of. And I think that is missing something significant, that it has a vital place to play for the church today in declaring the beauty of marital love, and even marital lovemaking. And yet, recognizing its proper place and even its proper protection within the marital relationship. And this book is celebrating that. And then even as a means, I would say, just as all of the Former Writings do—these poetic books that, in Jesus’s Bible, follow upon the prophets—this group of poetic books, all designed to help clarify how the remnant, living without all the fulfillment that was promised, how the remnant living in exile was hoping in the Messiah. And here you’re seeing the remnant of those who are married. What does it look like for the faithful to live out marriage in a broken and cursed and troublesome world? What does it look like for the remnant of faithful to think about marriage and sexuality and intimacy even as they hope for the world to come, where there will be no more pain and no more brokenness and no more twisted perversions? How should couples think about love in the context of the world? And when we frame it that way, all of a sudden, I think we can begin to see why Song of Songs has a lasting word for the church in the 21st century.

TK: That’s good. Jason, the book has been interpreted lots of different ways, and if I just kind of throw out some categories, we could maybe kind of lay out some possibilities. You might see them in a book. You might see them in a commentary, a study Bible, something like that. So I think for lots of years, this was the church kind of restricted itself to an allegorical interpretation. So how would you kind of think about that as you process that? So allegorical—another category would be a cultic interpretation, and then there’s kind of a more lyrical one, and then there’s a dramatic interpretation, which is, no, this book is actually telling a story, but you still have to interpret what story is it telling? Like whose story is it? We already talked about that. Like is Solomon the hero or is he not the hero of the story? But as we think about this, what would you say—like how would you briefly summarize, say an allegorical interpretation of the book?

JD: Well, with the allegorical interpretation, what we’ve got is church history that began to see—well, when it looked at the strong, evocative language within the book, the idea was marriage and sexuality is at best extremely private. And the Bible wouldn’t be talking about such things. At worst, it is part of the world. And we don’t want to touch that. The world has twisted and perverted, and the Bible certainly could not be a place that celebrates human sexuality. So when we read Song of Songs, even though that’s what appears to be the case on the surface, actually, every character and every interchange, every description, is actually pointing to something else. So ultimately, that something else is, this is a song celebrating the relationship of Yahweh and his people. That is, God and Israel. Or, it is celebrating Christ and his Church. That’s where marriage finds its ultimate context, and it’s where everything is pure. Human marriages are messed up, and sexuality gets twisted. So the Church historically would read this book allegorically, saying that everything in the book represents something else. In the same way, Tom, that we would see in the parable of the soils, you know, the word, the seed is sown, and there’s different kinds of soils. And there’s one soil that falls among the rocky ground, and it takes quick root, but then dies. And there’s seed that falls on the thorny ground, and it can’t even take root, and it dies. And then Jesus said, the seed is the word of God. And when that word falls on the human heart, that there’s different kinds of hearts, different kind of soils in the heart. And for some, the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the desire for other things, they come in and choke the word, just like the thorns and thistles choked out the seed. And Jesus can talk that way, that the parables are many allegories, and the interpretation is given right away. And so historically, many in the church have said, Song of Songs is a bigger allegory. And so they would see things, for example, like a description of two breasts, and they would say, this must be the Old and the New Testament that every man must delight in. The Old Testament and the New Testament. And every image in the book is given a referent, but the referent has no control. There’s no biblical warrant for justifying the interpretations that are given, apart from the fact that we know in scripture, human marriage is a parable for the relationship between Christ and his church. So we have that basis, but then—and I think that’s a justifiable informing theology to how to read this book. But there’s nothing in the book itself that would suggest this is anything other than a real human marriage celebrating sexuality as a gift of God. And so there’s no—when it comes to warrant, there’s no inner biblical interpretation where other authors are using the Song of Songs and interpreting it in spiritual ways, in allegorical ways. There’s no one that—nothing within the book that says the interpretation of this tower, or of the teeth that are like a flock of goats where none is missing. There’s nothing in the book that suggests these similes, “this is like this,” are supposed to be read in any other way than, this is a husband describing his real love, his real girl. And they are celebrating their intimacy and delighting in their companionship. There’s nothing in the book that would suggest we’re to read this as an allegory. And yet, at least in the specifics, with respect to the general category, we’re seeing what appears to be the depiction of a man and a woman in love with one another, and God endorsing their expression of love toward one another, both verbally and the way that they describe one another’s body, their delight in one another’s body. And then we can step back and in a general sense say, the beauty that’s being experienced between this man and this woman points to something even greater, that the Bible itself, Old and New Testaments, celebrate. And so, there is a sense in which, from a general perspective, we can see the allegory operative, but not in a specific way. And we have to first see that the biblical text itself is calling us to see a real man and a real woman in love with each other.

TK: Because we’re getting no clues from the text that it’s other than that. Certainly, the allegorical interpretation solves certain problems. Somebody would have—if he thought, I, like you said, “I can’t imagine a holy book like the Bible would speak this way. Therefore, this book can’t mean what it appears to mean on the face of things.”

JD: And there’s where I think we would, what we need to do is be able to say, okay, I’ve got a conscience issue here. I’m concerned in my conscience that this would actually be in the Bible.

TK: Right.

JD: And then we have to consider, do I need to recalibrate my conscience to celebrate what the Bible celebrates in the context that the Bible celebrates it? And I think that’s actually where we need to go. We need to see our own consciences recalibrated so that with purity and honor and respect, we could preach a sermon series out of Song of Songs in a way that honors God, is careful even to children’s ears, and yet beautiful and pure. And I will argue, I pray, by the end of our two podcasts or so, also instilling hope in the coming Messiah and his claiming his ultimate bride. That all of that could be part of a series on the Song of Songs.

TK: So if you think about it, Jason, if the allegorical interpretation—if there’s almost like two sides, and there’s a side where it says, “I can’t imagine a celebration of human sexuality and human love, so I’m going to move the interpretation fully to an allegorical interpretation,” there’s clearly another side that would say, “Let’s do the opposite.” Which is, there’s zero, there’s nothing here pointing to anything greater. It would only be a celebration of human love. And we’ll get there, but you can just imagine it, if there’s almost two—a North Pole and a South Pole, you can imagine people camping out on both sides. But I mentioned that another interpretation people have had—and you wouldn’t see this so much in Christian writings—but what would we say a cultic interpretation would be of this book?

JD: Well, what’s crazy—yes, we wouldn’t see this in what we would consider Christian circles, but there are secular, pagan, non-believing commentators who have written this book, and they’ve argued, actually, what we have in store here—what’s being presented to us—is sacred marriage between gods. And so this is a book that really expresses pagan idolatry to its extreme, where you have male and female gods and goddesses that are engaging in intercourse and delighting in each other. And so it’s just a twist on the Christian allegorical interpretation, but it fills it with—what it’s doing, is it’s saying, “Well, this is an ancient Near Eastern love song, and what’s actually being celebrated is sacred intercourse.” And maybe even with the Song being used at pagan shrines, where male and female cult prostitutes represented the gods, so as they engaged in activity, they were—it was as if the gods were engaging. And I just think such a view has no place in Scripture. From Moses forward, such views are completely pagan in the realm of idolatry and would be condemned. And so this book would have been disqualified from the canon if that was a proper interpretation of the text. It would have been recognized, this is not God’s Word. And yet throughout time, godly prophets and priests and poets have affirmed in these pages is pure doctrine. And so I think we can just push aside the cultic view, even though it’s historically been there, it’s not even one we should consider as possible. And I know of no conservatives, true Christians who even think in those categories.

TK: I think sometimes, though, you can bump into a work published again outside of Christian circles, though, where they would find such a view very compelling because they would understand there’s no difference between the God of the Israelites and the gods of the Canaanites. That there’s just the Israelites are wholesale borrowing from the Canaanites very similar views of God.

JD: Right. That’s right. Yeah, the level to which we minimize the distinctiveness of the biblical text and we lose sight of the fact that this is God’s Word separate from all other ancient sources, the level to which we minimize that this is God’s Word and just treat it as any other ancient book, all of a sudden we can gain all kinds of wacko jacko interpretations. And yet we have the responsibility as men and women of the Word to recognize such heresy and thwart it, not consider it, and help our people not buy into it.

TK: That’s good. So Jason, we talked about a lyrical, then, interpretation, and that would not then be allegorical like we talked about, and that would not be this cultic—which version, which you said that also is allegorical—it’s just from a different perspective. But what would we mean by a lyrical interpretation of this book?

JD: By lyrical, we’re just highlighting that this is a love song made up of just lots of independent love songs that celebrate the love between a man and a woman under God. Many godly commentators have approached the book this way. They see no progression in the book itself. And they just see a number of independent poems, love poems, that are tied together more in series than in progression. And by that I mean you could switch the love poems around and it would have no impact on the book, on the book’s message, because what you’ve got is even as many as 20 or 40 love poems that are just disconnected, independent, and this is the greatest of all love songs—the Song of Songs—the greatest of all love songs, in that it is the ultimate collection of independent love poems, like nothing found anywhere else. And I have a number of challenges with this. I don’t think it’s a heretical interpretation, but I think that it misses, it misses a handful of features. One, we see throughout the book, in three different instances, a full refrain. In 2:7, “I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or the does of the field, that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases.” 3:5, “I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or the does of the field, that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases. 4:8, “I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases.” The use of those refrains suggests to me this is actually a structuring device in the book, that is dividing the book into segments. Not only that, we have consistent characters. So, there is this overarching use of refrains that provides structure to the book, but then the songs are not random. The language that is used by the woman of her man, she calls him “my beloved.” My beloved. Over and over again. And when he looks at her, he calls her, designates her “my love.” My love. And so, we have this consistent characterization that unites all these poems into an overarching poem. And then, there’s these repeated images that show up, like the garden, the city, the images of shepherding, nature, that tie these songs together. It really—it portrays something. You’ve got the man, the woman, you have the mention of Solomon, you have these chorus girls that are part of Solomon’s harem, it appears. And the unity of the book suggests we don’t have disparate poems here, but that there is an intentional structuring. And then as we’re gonna go through the book, I think there’s even a movement, a movement in this story of love delighted in and love longed for, love challenged, love testified to, and then finally love affirmed. That it’s this movement, this progress that makes the sense of a drama. And that’s the fourth way that this book has been interpreted as a drama. And to me, that’s the most convincing. That it’s loose—it’s not like we are walking through the Book of Esther, for example, and where that could be acted out as a play—no, we wouldn’t want Song of Songs acted out as a play. And that may even be part of the reason that the drama is less explicit. But nevertheless, there is drama, and there is movement from tension and challenge all the way to resolution and peace and joy. Even with the couple in chapter eight, in one another’s embrace, it seems toward the end of their lives and reflecting on God’s faithfulness and recognizing that what they had was none other than the flame of Yahweh, the flame of the love of God that had put—that He had birthed within them, and He never let that love, that flame be quenched. So I think that the text itself pushes against the idea that this is merely a lyrical consortium of tunes, of poems, about love, but is instead a dramatic song that unpacks a developing love story between a man and a woman. And because this love is pure and right and true, their love foreshadows, anticipates, the greater love between God and his people realized ultimately through Christ and his church. But before we get there, we start with this human marriage.

TK: That’s really helpful, Jason. It just reminded me, as you were talking, when we talked about Ecclesiastes, about life under the sun, that we have a love here that’s portrayed as pure and perfect, but these people are also living under the sun. So they are living after Adam and Eve’s sin. And somehow reading this, having to just keep in mind the context of where we are in the biblical story. I want to get—you touched on it here—but a dramatic interpretation, then, you just were kind of playing that out. But what are two possibilities of this?

JD: There really are two possibilities, and I think most of the church—at least the church that I grew up in—only has understood one of these two possibilities. And it’s very clear that the ESV translator had one angle, and that is the two-character drama, where you have this drama in the book is portraying the developing love between Solomon and Mrs. Solomon, called the Shulamite. Or, I mean, in Hebrew, it’s the Shulamite versus Shlomo. And so you can even begin to hear the similarity between these two, where the titles that are given to each—Solomon and the Shulamite—are built off the same structure. And so you’ve got Solomon and Mrs. Solomon, and that the whole book is actually their own developing love saga. Chapters 1–3 developing their relationship, which then climaxes in their wedding in chapter 4. And then the final half of the Song really shows their love flourishing, being challenged, until in chapter 8, the two appear at the end of their lives, kind of to reminisce on what God has given them. At the very heart of the book, in chapter 4, you have the—sorry, in chapter 3, the woman is crying out for her man. She longs to express her love for her beloved. And then immediately, in 3:6, after she says, “I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases.” And then we read, “What is coming up from the wilderness like columns of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, with all the fragrant powders of a merchant? Behold, it is the litter of Solomon! Around him are sixty men, some of the mighty men of Israel, all of them wearing swords.” So we see this depiction of Solomon being elevated, and the classic interpretation would be, well, now we’re getting the description of her man. He wasn’t there. She longed for him to come, and now he’s showing up. And he’s the great one of this story, the ultimate lover. But the challenge, Tom, naturally, to this interpretation is first, outside the book, Scripture really portrays Solomon as someone far from the biblical ideal of a husband.  Think Genesis 2, think Ephesians 5, and we’re not thinking about Solomon.

TK: Right.

JD: Even Deuteronomy 17, where it says, “Do not multiply your wives.” This is God’s ideal for a royal figure in Israel. And Solomon, in 1 Kings 11:3, has 700 wives, princes, and 300 concubines. And then we read his wives turned his heart away from God. I mean, his very first wife is the Pharaoh of Egypt’s daughter. So the outside material raises the question, “Would this be Solomon? Is he really talking about himself?” But then the internal material, I believe, also leads us to say, wait, this book isn’t about Solomon. Solomon in this book only shows up two times in chapter 3 and in chapter 8. And in both instances he is elevated as if haughty. But he’s also portrayed at a distance like he’s the world’s ideal, but he is far from my heart. Consider where I was just reading as Solomon enters in with his parade of mighty men, all of them wearing swords, experts in war. King Solomon, it says, “made himself a carriage from the wood of Lebanon.” He is touting himself around the town. “He made its posts of silver, its back of gold, its seat of purple;its interior was laid with love,” inlaid with love by whom? “The daughters,” plural, “of Jerusalem.” So, what is the voice of the woman declare? “You go out, O daughters of Zion, and look upon King Solomon with the crown with which his mother crowned him on the day of his wedding, and the day of his gladness of heart.” He urges the women to go out. And I want to propose, she’s saying, “You can have him.” I think that’s what she’s saying.

TK: I think she says the same thing in chapter 8. At the end of 8.

JD: Go ahead, Tom.

TK: Where it says here, Solomon 8:11, it says, “Solomon had a vineyard, he let out the vineyard to keepers. Each one was to bring for its fruit a thousand pieces of silver. My vineyard, my very own, is before me; you, O Solomon, may have the thousand, and the keepers of the fruit two hundred.” So, that idea almost of Solomon has his thousands, he has his whatever, but as for me, he can keep it all, I’m doing something different.

JD: Yes, when we get, when we go through the book, we’ll focus here more, but Solomon had a vineyard. That’s the language of sacred place in marriage. That’s the marriage bed. That’s the place that has to be opened up in a context of intimacy.

TK: And that’s the language used throughout the book.

JD: It is. Yeah, exactly. That’s the language used throughout the book of what the man and the woman had, but here it says Solomon had a vineyard where? At Baal, Hamon. Baal is a Canaanite god. It can also mean husband, but Hamon is multitude. Right here, it says—this is contrasting, I’m going to argue, with verse six where it says the love that she’s enjoyed and that the man has enjoyed is the flame of Yahweh. Now, we have Baal’s name associated with Solomon. His vineyard is at Baal Hamon. That is husband of a multitude. That’s who Solomon is. And then he let out the vineyard to keepers. Anybody was free even to go. I believe what it’s saying is ravish his concubines. But she says, “Solomon can have his thousands. I want my one. My vineyard, my very own is before me.” So that was the second text. Those are the two texts that mentioned Solomon. And in my reading, Solomon is here portrayed not as the hero, but as a distant, flaunting, even abusing, using, objectifying women. He can have as many as he wants. But for this woman who has found true love, she wants to preserve herself for her man. She is his, and he is hers. And so that leads me, Tom, to say I don’t think the two-character drama is right. What I see in this book is a three-character dramatic interpretation wherein there is this love triangle between the villain Solomon, the Shulamite woman, and the Shulamite shepherd. And this is going to influence how we read a number of the texts. And I think at points, we have to even see tension in the text, where this woman has been captured as one of thousands of concubines for Solomon’s harem, and yet her love is toward her man.

TK: Can we stop there for one second, Jason? Because we don’t—obviously it’s a category we don’t have in our present lives. What is a concubine? How should I think of that? Because it’s differentiated from a queen here, so what’s the difference?

JD: One would have the certainty, due to covenant, of the protection of the husband, for him to provide for her and protect her, and even being bound in covenant before God, but also before a father, her father, and that would be the wife. A concubine has no such status, but is a maid in waiting, a servant in the house, and then also one who can be exploited by being called upon to do sexual favors for the king whenever he sees fit. So, for Solomon to have 700 wives and 300 concubines, I mean, it just, it’s mind-blowing. But it was known, even in this book, it’s, the language is there, “Solomon, you can have your thousand. But my love, my beloved, is mine.” And so, it’s grieving, but it was part of the ancient world. And some people today would use the language of a mistress, where there’s no covenantal commitment, but we can enjoy each other’s—yet we can take pleasure in one another, in companionship, in one another’s bodies. But it’s—there’s no commitment. And that would probably be the most comparable reality, where there’s some level of commitment in a mistress. But here, you have multiple mistresses, and like you don’t have a clue when you would be called upon at any time. We see this idea come up again in the book of Esther. And sometime, it would be good to go through that book. But where Esther is one of many women, and she goes through months and months of preparing her body for the moment when she will first see the king, and when he will first see her. And we’re, I believe, supposed to read this kind of material and say, this is not right. This is broken.

This is not as God called it to be. And a book like Song of Songs gives us testimony that Solomon himself, on the flip side of his foolishness, recognized it, and is here, I believe, celebrating the love between this shepherd and the Shulamite. A love that he never had, but that he witnessed and now wants the world to know. So, in this sense, Solomon is not the king, but instead—sorry, Solomon is the king, but he’s not the main lover in this story. When the woman calls out for her man, the man’s response is—or she says to the man, “Tell me, you whom my soul loves, where you pasture your flock, where you make it lie down at noon; for why should I be like one who veils herself besides the flocks of your companions?” You’re a shepherd boy, and I want to know where you’re shepherding so that when I am free to flee this palace, I can find you and we can embrace. That’s what I think is going on in the very next chapter. There’s tension. While the king was on his couch, my nard gave forth its fragrance. So, all of a sudden, she has been brought into the very room of the king. And then it says, “My beloved is to me a scarlet, a sachet of myrrh that lies between my breasts. My beloved is to me a cluster of henna blossoms in the vineyards of Engedi.” I think she has mentioned, “I’m in the presence of the king, but my heart and my mind is with my beloved.” It’s not that the king is her beloved. No, she mentions the king as a distant figure, and then she speaks of her beloved, who is close to her heart, and beloved, and fragrant, and she’s longing to be with him. That there’s actually a contrast going on in chapter 1:12–14, rather than a continuum. And we see that at different places in the book, where she is contrasting her man with Solomon. And it climaxes at the end of the book, where she does not appear to be in the royal palace, but in her native village, and she is enjoying the embrace of her man, and then the book ends, as you already pointed to, Tom, with her contrasting her love with the pseudo-love that Solomon is able to bring. And what’s amazing is that it appears Solomon is the author of this Song. He crafts the story the way that he does to diminish the view of himself and to elevate the view of the shepherd boy and his girl. It’s similar, I believe, to how Moses portrays the Pentateuch, contrasting his failure of belief with Abraham’s belief. And Moses is the author of the whole. That Moses is able, as a hero, to display his own brokenness and mess-ups in order to point the readers to the life and model of faith in Abraham. Similar to here, Solomon writing this book to elevate the nature of true love between a man and a woman, as God defines it, as God approves of it. Marital love. Solomon writes the story in order to celebrate it, yet knowing he himself, due to his own sinful choices, never had the chance to enjoy it in quite this way.

TK: And that would correspond to what we read in Ecclesiastes as well. Solomon writing and saying, “I did not live this way. I tasted every pleasure, and sought something that I never was able to receive earlier in my life.” So this view would correspond with that of Solomon getting to a point of saying, “You know what, I am renouncing how I lived earlier.” So it shouldn’t be surprising that he would see how he lived in terms of marriage and women and say, “Now that I’m at this stage in life, I’m going to point to something different as God’s ideal.”

JD: That’s right. That’s right, Tom. I think you’re reading this rightly. In Chapter 9 of Ecclesiastes, “Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vaporous life that he has given you under the sun.” He doesn’t say, “Enjoy life with the wives whom you love.” It’s just “the wife,” the singular woman that God has given you delight in her. And he unpacks that, the nature of that love, and that call to beauty. And I’ll just add this, Tom, that there’s a real sweetness to me as I look at Song of Songs, and I consider those who God saved out of deeply broken pasts, filled with sexual sin, and Solomon himself—while he’s able to recognize his own brokenness—was able to, in his regenerated state, taste and see the beauty, such that he could even be used by God to write properly and truly about love. Even though his own story was different, that all of a sudden—so it’s like a pastor who’s able to—who himself was redeemed out of a lot of brokenness, can justly and purely call the young men and the young women of the congregation to pursue being virgins until their wedding night. Because this is right, and this is good, and I elevate it to you, urging you to pursue purity God’s way. That’s not hypocrisy, so long as he’s honest about himself. And in this book, Solomon is absolutely honest about himself, and he is urging people, though, to taste something that he missed, to see the beauty, the flame of Yah. That is the flame of Yahweh. See it as it was intended to blaze between one man and one woman, lastingly. And God has redeemed Solomon’s perspective. He’s purified the perspective and now made him a mouthpiece for truth. And this Song is celebrating that truth, and we’ll get to look at it in greater detail when you and I come together next.

TK: Perfect. Well, Jason, thanks for this. I hope this has been encouraging as you’ve listened to this, and given you a hope for, I can’t wait to hear how I might possibly learn from this book, delight in this book, preach from this book, use it as I’m talking to my friends, my children, in my own marriage. It’s—I think it’s a help to think of any Scripture—and I use this when I’m teaching about the Gospels. Like to—the thought—it’s at the end of John where John says, “Now Jesus did many other signs which are not recorded in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” And just talking about Jesus’s—the stories Jesus did, the, they’re not randomly selected like, “Hey, here’s another weird thing he did, or wow, this was a neat thing that he did, let’s include this one too.” They’re all there for a reason. In the same way, Scripture, this book—when Paul said, “All scripture is God breathed, is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, training in righteousness,” to say, “Okay, there is something here that was so important, this book had to be included.” And even approaching a book with that perspective, not even knowing what it might be, but valuing it for that reason. It’s a reason I think, when we talk about a book or a passage, we shouldn’t make jokes about the book or the passage. This would certainly fall in that category. It’s up to us to discover the beauty of it and the value and preach, teach, read it rightly, but to value it, say, there’s a reason this book is here, and I want to find out why.

JD: That’s a good word, Tom.

TK: All right, Jason, well, look forward to next time, and we’re going to walk through this book. In the meantime, both you and I are going to the Evangelical Theological Society meetings next week. Hope to get some interviews, too, Jason, which would be really awesome with different guests.

JD: Yes, it would be. So many godly men and women that are all going to be gathered in one place, thinking deeply about deep things. And we hope to be able to capture some of that for the podcast to benefit our listeners.

TK: All right. All right, Jason. Well, I will see you in San Diego on Monday.

JD: Awesome.

TK: All right. Thanks for listening.

JY: Thank you for joining us for GearTalk. For resources related to biblical theology, visit handstotheplow.org or jasonderouchie.com. Be sure to check out our show notes for links to resources on both sites related to Song of Songs.