Song of Songs
Unless you are convinced that you live in a mechanical universe, driven by chance and logic, where every action and thought and feeling is predetermined and you have eliminated from your soul all notions of love, reading Song of Songs will take your breath away.
It is too sensuous, surely, for the Bible. Too racy for a theologian. Too poetic to be true. Too exasperating to satisfy. Too rooted in history to be allegorical.
Solomon, in all his riches and might is overcome with love for a swarthy young Lebanese woman, who is self-conscious about her tanned skin having been mistreated by her brothers and forced to spend too long in the sun tending the sheep. Nevertheless, Solomon is love-struck, and there’s no turning back. Equally, the Shulamite is overcome with desire and love for her beloved, King Solomon. And she is not the only woman after Solomon.
The language is excessive and relentless and, if you’ve read SoS before, you’ll know that periodically throughout its eight chapters, the two lovers seem to be at the point of consummating their love when one or the other disappears leaving the other bereft with longing. A repeated phrase ‘do not stir up, nor awaken love, until it pleases’ is the book’s standard response.
Song of Songs has many interpretations, all of which can be true because this is a study of love. Therefore it can be applied to God’s relationship with Israel, or Christ’s relationship with the church, called His bride in the New Testament, or simply the nature of romantic love itself.
But I want to look at two passages in SoS and contrast the Shulamite’s explorations of the city after sunset – chapter 3 v1-4 and chapter 5 v 2-8
On my bed by night
I sought him whom my soul loves;
I sought him, but found him not.
I will rise now and go about the city,
in the streets and in the squares;
I will seek him whom my soul loves.
I sought him, but found him not.
The watchmen found me
as they went about in the city.
“Have you seen him whom my soul loves?”
Scarcely had I passed them
when I found him whom my soul loves.
I held him, and would not let him go
Ch 3 v 1-4
I slept, but my heart was awake.
A sound! My beloved is knocking.
My beloved put his hand to the latch,
and my heart was thrilled within me.
I arose to open to my beloved,
but my beloved had turned and gone.
I sought him, but found him not;
I called to him, but he gave no answer.
The watchmen found me
as they went about in the city;
they beat me, they bruised me,
I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
that you tell him; I am sick with love.
Ch 5 v 2-8
Despite the consistent theme of love between Solomon and the Shulamite, there are some obvious differences. In chapter three, the Shulamite is on her bed but awake, whereas in chapter five, she is asleep and dreaming. In chapter 3 she ventures out after dark into the city to find the king, encounters the watchmen who don’t bother her, then finds the king, and won’t let him go. In chapter 5, however, she is mistreated by the watchmen who wound her, and, despite her best efforts, she fails to find him.
My argument is this: love may be ecstatic, but it is not static.
For the sake of this interpretation, King Solomon is the Son of David and therefore a ‘type’ of Christ, and the Shulamite woman is either the church or any individual who finds Christ so attractive, and the love of God so overwhelming that all resistance is relinquished and true Christianity, true spirituality, has been birthed in the life of the believer.
As is often said, true Christianity is not a religion, it’s a relationship.
If we’re familiar with the New Testament, the term usually employed to describe followers of Christ is disciple’ meaning ‘apprentice’ rather than ‘student’.
Apprentice
The point is this: disciples learn. They become like their master, ending up thinking and living and operating like Him. If we translate this discipleship model into the love dimension of Song of Songs we see a similar progression, particularly from chapter 3 to chapter 5.
By the time we reach chapter 3, the Shulamite has left Lebanon and is living in Jerusalem. The King comes and goes and on this particular night, the Shulamite has retired for the night but can’t sleep ‘At night, on my bed, I sought the one I love, I sought him, but I did not find him’. She has loved him from a distance and has even moved from Lebanon, but the time has come to find him. This is often the state of mind of a person who has heard of Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah, the Christ, and is profoundly moved, and drawn to Him, but no personal relationship has begun.
The critical point is whether she will continue in that state of dissatisfaction or do something about it. Such is her love for Solomon that she breaks through the social mores of the day (not too different from now) and goes out into the dark streets to look for him. It takes time ‘I will rise now and go about the city, in the streets, and in the squares’; she doesn’t give up.
Finally, she finds him ‘I found the one I love, I held him and would not let him go’. The unbeliever who is attracted to Christ has crossed a line and left everything familiar to find Him; nothing else will do.
In terms of this argument, the relationship has truly begun.
But later, we read chapter five and wonder at the contrast with chapter three. The sweet violins and love described in chapter three are displaced by the suffering and separation of chapter five. How is this part of our discipleship as believers?
First, we see that the Shulamite has fallen asleep. In the Bible, sleep is synonymous with death.
In sleep or death we cannot love or live, we are rendered inert. Mystics may use the phrase ‘the dark night of the soul’ as a common experience for believers who love the Lord and yet hit the buffers and everything seems to vanish, be absent, withdrawn, including the felt love of the Christ. Doctrinally, the believer comes to a new point of revelation that when Christ died so did they. Paul puts it like this: ‘I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me, the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me’ Gal 2v20
In the middle of receiving this revelation, the disciple may feel like he or she may need to go back and repeat the same ‘conversion experience’ of chapter 3 i.e. to rise up and go about the city in the dark looking for the King. But this time it all goes terribly wrong. The watchmen, who were previously indifferent, are now aggressive: ‘The watchmen who went about the city found me, struck me, they wounded me…took my veil away’. Like the Shulamite, we cry out, often to friends, ‘If you find my beloved tell him I am lovesick’.
We may not use such romantic language but, in essence, all we feel is the absence of Christ who seemed so close. We are wounded, stripped of everything that once seemed to be created by our love for the King, for Christ.
What is this? It is a test. A test of faith, of love, and the combination of love and faith: faithfulness.
‘The watchmen who went about the city found me, struck me, they wounded me…took my veil away’
How will the Shulamite respond? She is asleep, inert. She has failed in her attempts to find the King, her beloved. All seems to be lost. At the point of her greatest weakness, she turns a corner and understands that her love for the King cannot be sustained by her own love. Her love failed to find him. She has come to a new realisation, that the love that sustains their relationship; the faith, the love, and the faithfulness, all that is needed, is found in Solomon.
In terms of Galatians 2v20 ‘the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God’. The relationship between believer and Christ is not dependent even on the faith of the believer, but His faith; the One who loved him in the first place.
She cries out, this time not from seeing the sun in all its glory but at night, knowing that although she cannot make the sun move to her, the sun is still shining beyond her horizons. She confesses, ‘My beloved is…chief amongst ten thousand…he is altogether lovely…my beloved has gone to his garden’
The Shulamite has reached a new juncture in her relationship with her beloved, Solomon, the king. She doesn’t have to strive. She has learnt to trust. Whether Solomon is away in his garden, close by her side, or sharing her bed (yes, Song of Songs is surprisingly intimate), his love for her is constant and immeasurable. And so, when she trusts in this, she finds that his love has so filled her, that she has found a new buoyancy. A new source of buoyancy may be more accurate.
Finally, to root this in the New Testament, Paul’s letters to Romans, Galatians, and Colossians make the same progression.
• Romans chapters 1-5 deal with our new-found relationship with God through Christ - the ‘justification by faith’ chapters. But then we hit chapters 6 and 7.
‘Do you not know that as many of us as were baptised into Christ were baptised into His death?...knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Christ…’ ch 6v3,6
• Galatians chapter 1 and most of 2 deal with the start of our relationship with Christ but then we read the verse above Gal 2v20.
• In Colossians, the opening two chapters deal with conversion to Christ, then we read ‘For you died and your life is hidden in Christ in God and when Christ who is our life…’ Col 3v3,4
Jesus taught the same progression.
In the early days of the disciples’ faith and following of Christ Jesus said, ‘God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him may not perish but have everlasting love’ John 3v16
In passing, SO loved. Just like Solomon’s love for the Shulamite woman. And just like the Shulamite woman, self-conscious of her dark skin. the effect on her of being in the fields too long, so, as lovers of Christ, we are painfully aware of our imperfections and cannot quite believe that God should even have a passing interest in us let alone SO love us. And yet that is what Jesus taught. You and I are SO loved by God.
We may, at this point believe that our relationship to God, our lover, depends on our faith to believe, or our ability to love. And that is our experience. The disciples, like the Shulamite, rose up and followed Christ. The fishermen left their nets. Matthew left his money-changing table. Simon the Zealot, a terrorist dedicated to the military overthrow of the Romans, stopped attending weapons training camps, and so on.
But then, shortly before Jesus’s arrest, he teaches the disciples the lesson they are about to learn by bitter experience.
‘I am the vine, you are the branches…the branch cannot bear fruit by itself…without Me you can do nothing…you did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should bear fruit; fruit that remains’ John 15 v 1-16
This is a terrible blow to our pride and ego if we think for one moment that it is our faith, our love, our dedication, or our passion that is required to be a Christian, to follow Christ. Everything in us cries out ‘No, Lord. I chose you. You are so wonderful, I left everything to follow you!’ But less than a few days later, after Jesus was arrested, they all ran away, failures. Peter tries to follow but ends up denying Christ three times before the cock crows, and weeps bitter tears when Jesus turns to look at him.
If you are a Christian believer, you may have faced this switch and realised that even the relationship you thought you had with God through your love for Christ is an apparition. The woman, the Shulamite, is convinced it was her love that found the king. But it turns out that after she fell asleep her love was insufficient and she was injured in her failed attempt to find the king, just as Peter’s failed attempt to be faithful to Christ caused him such bitter tears.
The true gospel is this: that we needed to die so that all that self-generated love and faith could be crucified with Christ. To be biblical, our connection with Adam and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil could be forever severed, and we could be transferred to the source of true life, love, and faith – the tree of life i.e. Christ Himself.
Now, at last, we have reached the Sabbath. No more work. No self-generated Christianity.
Any and all of the fruit we may bear springs from One source.
The wonderful news of the Good News, or gospel, for Peter who wept and the disciples who all failed, is that the other side of our failure is His love. The woman was right. Even though all seemed lost, even though the king may be in his garden, His love is better than wine.
The final two verses in the Song of Solomon are like two texts, short and yet convey everything.
Solomon first:
‘You who are in your garden, I have told my companions to listen for your voice…but let ME hear it!’
The woman replies: