I just read Song of Songs, as I do whenever I get to it from my never-ending circuit of reading through the bible in its entirety. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read it since becoming a believer 24 years ago, nor can I say how many different bible versions I might have read it from.
Allegory?
Over the years I have attempted to get a better understanding of this little book by both listening to sermons and podcasts about it, and by reading scholarly articles and commentaries. I even read a whole book about Song of Songs many years ago by Watchman Nee, where he dissects it verse by verse. What I have concluded in this search (at least for now) is that the more common explanations from both the traditional Jewish and Christian perspectives which make this poetic description of two lovers into an allegory of some sort, doesn’t seem appropriate. Especially, since the bible itself never makes such a connection. Honestly, I’m just not convinced that it goes much beyond the fact that it is merely a racy, Hebraic styled poem. Here is how one Old Testament scholar describes how the two traditions have handled Song of Songs, while also hinting at the underlining challenges of its subject matter…
“Famously, the erotic nature of the Song constituted a challenge for the framers of the canon, both Jewish and Christian, and their response was to read the poems allegorically—in the case of the early rabbis, as the love between the Holy One and Israel, and in the case of the Church fathers, as the love between Christ and the Church.” — The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary by Robert Alter
A Unique Blessing
This last reading however, something struck me for the first time which might point to why God gave us Song of Songs. For whatever reason, this scene popped into my head after reading it once again…
Mark 12:18-25 (HCSB) – Some Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Him and questioned Him: “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaves his wife behind, and leaves no child, his brother should take the wife and produce offspring for his brother. There were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and dying, left no offspring. The second also took her, and he died, leaving no offspring. And the third likewise. So the seven left no offspring. Last of all, the woman died too. In the resurrection, when they rise, whose wife will she be, since the seven had married her?” Jesus told them, “Are you not deceived because you don’t know the Scriptures or the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like angels in heaven.”
…and it got me thinking:
“Is it possible that God is maybe just giving us through this little book a poetic picture of the beauty of the process of a man and a women becoming one-flesh, which is solely unique to this current age?”
Think about it, the bible in its very first chapter says this…
Genesis 1:26-28a (HCSB) – Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness. They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, all the earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth.” So God created man in His own image; He created him in the image of God; He created them male and female. God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth…”
And then, in the second chapter it goes into more detail…
Genesis 2:21-24 (HCSB) – So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to come over the man, and he slept. God took one of his ribs and closed the flesh at that place. Then the LORD God made the rib He had taken from the man into a woman and brought her to the man. And the man said: This one, at last, is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh; this one will be called “woman,” for she was taken from man. This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife, and they become one flesh.
Here’s where I’m going…
Maybe, Song of Songs is just a reflective pause in the middle of our bibles, which is meant to show us that the God who created us understands on a deeply human level the beauty of the becoming one-flesh process; and that in addition, it is a unique blessing which can only be experienced by us in the current temporal age where we should just embrace it while it can be enjoyed.
However one might attempt to understand the significance of Song of Songs, it does make sense why in two other books associated with Solomon being their author as well, we have this…
Ecclesiastes 9:9 (HCSB) – Enjoy life with the wife you love all the days of your fleeting life, which has been given to you under the sun, all your fleeting days. For that is your portion in life and in your struggle under the sun.
Proverbs 5:18 (HCSB) – Let your fountain be blessed, and take pleasure in the wife of your youth.
Godspeed, to the brethren!
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