Scripture Reference: He is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, this is my friend, daughters of Jerusalem.” SS 5:16
Background I started reading Song of Songs, honestly because it’s the book after Ecclesiastes. The last time I read the book, I breezed right through but when I finished, I wondered what the book had been about. I thought it was just a bunch of songs written with pretty language. I wanted to go back and study it, but I never did. However, this time when I came upon the book, I decided to spend time to fully understand it’s meaning. What I discovered blessed my soul.
Research: After I read the book, I realized this Song is more than just a book of pretty poem. After I started researching, I found most people shy away from this book and everyone that attempted to speak on this book all started off by saying this book is difficult to understand. I hear all the time that the Bible begins with a marriage and ends with a marriage. Song of Songs is located among the center books of the Bible, the Poetic books and I dare say, this is the image of the love that transcends the physical. It involves a man and a woman.
Most interrupt this book in any one of the following ways: Some say this is a book that speaks about God’s love for Israel. Others proclaim the book to be about Christ’s love for the Church. Some say there are three major characters: The Shulamite, the King and the Shephard. Others say there are only two main characters.
While those interruptions can be applied to this text, I believe they have all missed one single point, the songs begin and ends with the voice of the Shulamite woman. Perhaps that’s because many that I listened to, those who made an attempt to teach on this book, were males. They saw this text through the lens of God or Jesus Christ. God has his eye on the woman. All one needs to do is look at Eve to know this to be true. If you don’t look at Eve you can consider Hagar, Ruth and Naomi and of course Esther. In the book of Esther, God is not mentioned, neither is He mentioned in the Song of Songs, yet he is ever present, acting and reacting in the background.
I have concluded this book is truly about the desire a Woman has for her beloved. Before I tell you why I feel this way and before we get into the book, I’ll give my thoughts about a few of the viewpoints I have discovered.
One of my favorite preachers proclaimed this text to be pornography and should be “avoided.” He is completely wrong. This text is in no way pornographic. I believe individuals bring their own proclivities to the text and therefore, get stuck on terms, like “breast” or ambiguous passages, that uses allegoric language like, “pomegranates” and “flowing water” to give you the image of sexual intimacy. The song perfectly balances decency with the delicate line of intimacy that exists between a man woman. It suggests physical love between a man and woman transcends to the spiritual.
Originally, I made every attempt to understand this Song from the three-character angle. Applying the view of God’s love for Israel or Christ’s love for the Church. But the text broke down. Especially when you reach, chapters 4-6. I believe the King and the Shephard are one, however, if you interpret this text with a three-character framework, you can conclude the song to be about God’s love for Israel or Christ’s love for the church. Many parts of the song can speak of Israel’s Idolatry and God’s continued desire for them to turn from their wicked ways and repent. Unfortunately, that causes the woman to be torn between two loves. Making the woman an adulteress and I don’t think that is the intent.
Because love transcends the physical and elevates into the spiritual, images of God’s love for Israel and Christ’s love for his Bride will manifest. God is love. True love transcends our deepest passions and desires. Therefore, when the King looks at his bride he sings “Arise, come, my darling: my beautiful one, come with me,” we can think about Christ’s call on our lives.
However, the physical act that is absent in Genesis 4:1, is manifested when Solomon makes loves to his bride beginning in Song of Songs, Chapter 4:1. Therefore, I believe there are only two characters in this song. The King who is the Shephard and the “beloved” Shulamite Woman.
Lastly, Song of songs, is also not an allegory or a fairy tale. Although it does read like one. I believe this text is an analogy of the tensions between a woman that desires her husband. I think the emphasis of the images of nature that are splattered through this song harkens to the garden. It points us back to Adam and Eve. Therefore, I believe Song of Songs illustrates a woman’s desire for her Beloved. Hence the term often repeated, “Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.”
In Genesis after Eve eats from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, we discover the first demonstration of a man’s love for his Bride. Adam had no choice but to die with Eve. So, because she ate, he eats. Thus, dying for his bride, harkening to the Love God has for his people, and the Love Christ has for His Church.
After the fall, God places a twofold blessing and curse on Eve that extends to every woman.
· First hope of children will be accompanied with pain
· Second love will be accompanied by her desire for the man and his rule over her.
Genesis 3:16 says, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”
God demonstrated his love when he killed the first earthly creature to cover Adam and Eve. He kills an animal. Foreshadowing what Yahweh did for Israel during the Passover; and what Christ did for the church with his death on the cross.
What we know about the book is it was written by Solomon. Solomon, in fact, wrote more than 1000 Songs, he had 700 wives and 300 concubines, but only one remains. Signaling, God’s plan for a man to have one wife, and it symbolizes how God views the intimate relationship between those two.
Chapter 1 begins with Solomon imagining the way his beloved thought about love. It starts like many other fairytales, with a young maiden utterly infatuated, singing.
Most who view this song with three characters, state that the bride is singing to her Shephard and not Solomon. The state the tension is in the Shulamite’s desire to be with the Shephard, but because of cultural being forced to marry King Solomon. I don’t see it that way at all.
What is presented is a young woman, hopeful about love. Yet we find out she is insecure, for she sings, “I am dark but I am lovely.” She reveals that she has had a difficult life because of her brothers, she tended to their vineyards and had neglected her own. She is not from among the royals, nonetheless, with gladness she goes down, with her friends to graze her goats by the tents of the shepherds. Her friends take her to that place where she could find the King.
What struck me about this young woman was her awareness concerning love. She knew. She sings about oil and perfume because those things exuded joy and that is pleasing. She wants the king to capture her and take her way.
How different that was for my life. Love was ambiguous when I was a girl. Based up images I had watched on television. Shows like Good Times, Jefferson and The Cosby Show, portrayed images of the marital relationships. Unfortunately, I grew to understand, those were not real. My own life did not present me with images of love or marriage. My mother was married, not divorced, in a relationship with another man. My father absent. My Stepfather, although, loving had been in and out. My grandfather had died and most of my grandparent’s children’s relationships were dysfunctional.
My earliest recollection of “desire” had been based on replicas. I had been influenced by Artists like, Mary J. Blige’s, You Remind Me. Mary described love based on the way a man walked, talked, moved, dressed and danced. Everything physical nothing spiritual or emotional; emphasis placed on the exterior. You can say, Lauryn Hill was more emotional and spiritual, but, Ex-Factor revealed her downfall. Her image of love was painful, extremely emotional, insufficient and Idolatrous. Evident by her cry at the end of Ex-Factor, where she asks her love, where were you, when I needed you? That part—when he doesn’t respond and the song fades tells us all we need to know.
The King is infatuated with the Shulamite when they are introduced among friends. He is delighted to have found her. “I liken you, my darling, to a mare among Pharoah’s chariot horses. Your cheeks are beautiful with earrings, your neck with strings of jewels. We will make you earrings of gold studded with silver.”
He is her everything. In Oasis. In Chapters 1-2 we glimpse a budding love that spouts and is celebrated by friends. They are together in the fertile fields daydreaming together. She shares her insecurities with her beloved, “I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valley.” A quote often used to describe Christ. He reassures her of his love, “you are a lily among thorns.” She is the only one.
Chapter 2 Before Chapter 2 ends we find the Shulamite woman has fallen in love, she sings to him, “Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest,” so is her beloved. “I delight to sit in his shade.” Have you ever been there?
Have you ever been so in love with a man that you delight to sit in his shade. “Let him lead me to the banquet hall, and let his banner over me be love.” She is faint with love. Her beloved must hold her head-up and wrap her in his arms, making her feel secure.
Yet she sends out this warning, “Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you by the gazelles and by the does of the field, do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.” Don’t do it until you’re ready. She repeats this warning throughout the song indicating she is well aware of the challenges and yet her desires remain strong for the man she loves. What is abduently clear in chapters 1,2 is they need each other. She needs him and He needs her.
These types of stanzas can certainly apply to God’s love for the Israel and Christ’s love for the church—without context. It’s true that God will search for those he loves, we are all prodigal at some point. But he searches for his loss sheep, or the loss coin. When God finds His beloved, he gives them life. Arise my beloved, come with me.
Songs like Beyonce’s “Church Girl,” specifically targets women that belong to God, She calls them out to walk on the other side.
“I am finally on the other side, I finally found the urge to smile. Swimmin’ through the oceans of tears we cried. You know you got church in the morning. But you're doin' God's work, you're goin' in. She ain't tryna hurt nobody. She is tryna do the best she can. Happy on her own, with her friends, without a man.”
Satan deceived Eve, so Beyonce deceives the world by painting an image that is contrary to God’s word. She gives them permission to walk into darkness and experience the life of a thot. She teaches women to depend on her body, drop it and pop it like a thotty for anyone with a large enough rack. All this in the name of freedom. Freedom only comes in the completeness of God. That completeness won’t be demonistrated by shaking your jewels at a party or in the club.
Our world is saying we are mistaken. Men can be intimate with men, woman can be intimate with woman and still experience the image of Real Love. They are deceived as well. What they desire is only physical and they try to use scriptue to turn the truth into a lie. God doesn’t see gender?
God never presents an image of man with a man, or a woman with a woman. Never in the intimate bounds reserved for the relationship between a husband his wife. He never strays outside of this word. Jesus holds up God’s image and Paul defends it . You deceive yourself if you belive God is in the center of those types of relationships. The Bible states God said, “it’s not good for man to be alone. The solution was Eve. God put Adam into a deep sleep and give him back what he took out---his rib. When he finds his wife, he finds that connection and there’s no way this can be found in the same sex.
Don’t fall in love with the wrong one! Make sure it’s right. And what does that look like, he is always searching for his love.
“Listen! My beloved! Look! Here he comes, leaping across the mountains, bounding over the hills. My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Look! There he stands behind our wall,
gazing through the windows, peering through the lattice. He is always searching for his beloved. To give her life, “Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, come with me.”
But like all things there is some separation between the two. However, even when the King is absent, he affirms her love, he sees her on the Mountainside in the clefts of the rock, “show me your face, let me hear your voice.” He hopes while she is on the mountainside that she catches those foxes, those foxes that ruin the vine. Meaning those details that can tear their love apart. Catch them.
Things seem so happy between these two. But separation from her love brings her back into the darkness. Chapter three we find her dreaming in the dark of night dreaming of her beloved. He is absent and her desire is to be with her beloved. She leaves the Palace and goes out to the city streets. In the she finds him, but rather than going back to the palace, she takes him to her mother’s house.
“Scarcely had I passed them, when I found him whom my soul loves. I held him, and would not let him go until I brought him into my mother’s house. Even with the joy of being with her beloved, she warns, “daughters of Jerusalem to not awaken love until it so desires.” Chapter 3 begins with her dream and ends with her dreams coming true.
There’s a wedding. “Look it’s Solomon’s carriage, escorted by sixty warriors.” Sixty warriors for his sixty bridges? Maybe. But only one was the focal point—the Shulamite woman—number sixty-one. It’s a beautiful occasion, the King arrives, in all his glory and the Shulamite calls out to the daughters of Jerusalem,
“King Solomon made for himself the carriage; he made it of wood from Lebanon. It’s posts he made of silver, its base of gold. Its seat was upholstered with purple, it’s interior inlaid with love. Solomon took the time to prepare for his bride and he wore his crown, the one his mother crowned him on the day of his wedding, the day his heart rejoiced.”
The entrance of the chariot, “marked the triumphant entry of the King on his wedding day.” One could convey this to the future triumphal entrance of Jesus Christ the King, when he sis bride. She is without spot or blemish. Pure. Every eye will see him, “Daughters of Jerusalem, come out and look, you daughters of Zion. Look on Solomon the King.”
Chapter 3 is all about the Shulamite. She goes from being the insecure maiden to the bride. Chapter 4 is all about the King. This is where lines get blurred. The song grounds itself in human passion and desires.
I am not one to get into chapters and scriptures numbers always being tied to season and changes, however Chapter 4 is the beginning of something new. It is their wedding night a new season. Genesis Chapter 4 begins with, “Adam made love to his wife Eve,” it signified a new season for this couple. The beginning of all things. It’s demonstrated in love.
Chapter 4 gives us a picture of this love. “How Beautiful you are, my darling, how beautiful,” he says. Chapter 4 uses language to describe the very essence of love. Her eyes were like “doves.” He connects to her spirit. She is beautiful and strong, yet as subtle as “two gazelles gazing among the lilies.” She is all together beautiful. Now here is where the passion of love slips in and out of the text.
You are a garden locked up, my sister, my bride, you are a spring enclosed, a sealed fountain. Meaning she is pure. A virgin. Without spot or blemish.
Your plants are an orchard of pomegranates with choice fruits, with henna and nard, nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with every kind of incense tree, with myrrh and aloes and all the finest spices. She is sweet to the taste, exquisite to the soul.
Ultimately, she changes and becomes, “a garden fountain, a well of flowing water streaming down from Lebanon.” No longer a Maiden, she calls out, “Awake north wind and come south wind! Blow on my garden, that its fragrance may spread everywhere. Let my beloved come into his garden and taste its choice fruits.
That’s it. Next verse they are among friends and the King says.
Chapter 5 Verse 1, the King says, “I have come into my garden my sister, my bride; I have gathered my myrrh with my spice. I have eaten my honeycomb and my honey; I have drunk my wine and my milk. Eat, friends, and drink; drink your fill of love.”
Life goes on for the King and the Queen. After the singing has stopped and the grand wedding is over, we find the Shulamite woman alone in the darkness without her king. Insecurities set in once again. Oh, the little foxes that ruin the vine. While she sleeps, she dreams of her beloved. She thinks he’s trying to get into her door, she gets up and goes to open it, but he not there. Once again, she goes out to the city streets chasing, searching for the one she desires. This time when she is stopped by the Watchmen, they beat her and take away her crown. In the streets they disrespect her.
This reminded me of something. Way far off this point but thinking about what we will do for our man when we love them. And how you have to be careful with who you fall in love with as we can find ourselves chasing after those who don’t love God.
I know this person who loved her man so much, when their resources were low, she’d take it to the streets. Once she described one of these encounters and all I could say was wow. That right there is love. As twisted as it seemed, they are still together. Love has a way of covering a multitude. It is universal and even extends to those ungodly relationships that practice the principle.
When the Shulamite awakes, she returns to the palace, and tells her friends that if they find the king, tell him, “I am faint with love.” Her friends ask her, this question, “How is your beloved better than others, most beautiful of women? How is your beloved better than others, that you so charge us?
This is where the description of a love that transcends the physical is manifested. It’s so beautiful and begins, “My beloved is radiant and ruddy, outstanding among ten thousand.” It’s a portrait of Christ, He is pure and spotless without blemish and innocent. He is loving yet strong. “His mouth is sweetness itself; he is altogether lovely.” Just as Christ will be when he reigns as King.
As for her beloved, the daughters of Jerusalem ask, “Where has your beloved gone, which way did your beloved turn?” Jesus turned left and was crucified.
We now wait for his return.
Chapter 6 The Shulamite woman confesses, as for King Solomon, he has, “gone down to his garden, to the beds of spices, to browse in the gardens and to gather lilies. I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine; he browses among the lilies.” Insecure and filled with jealousy, the Shulamite leaves.
When the King returns, he is greeted by the daughters of Jerusalem, he appears? Like the dawn, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, majestic as the stars in procession?
The King proclaims, “I went down to the grove of nut trees to look at the new growth in the valley, to see if the vines had budded or the pomegranates were in bloom. Before I realized it, my desire set me among the royal chariots of my people.
The daughters of Jerusalem cry out for the Shulamite, “Come back, come back, O Shulamite; come back, come back, that we may gaze on you!”
Chapter 7 he goes in search of her and finds her dancing. This part of the text is truly not clear, but that’s the way I see things. Once again, he reassures her of his love, they are alone together and once again sharing in the intimacy between two people. He describes her beauty, just as he had previously done, where he previously described her using seven phrases, his love has grown. He describes her using ten adjectives—he knows her. She is beautiful.
There she relents, repents and returns. Isn’t that how Christ’s love works for us. No matter how far in darkness we go, no matter how beat and battered we endure in the darkness, he calls us beautiful and takes us back. Just like Hosea took back his wife.
Chapter 8 When the couple returns, the friends sing, “Who is this coming up from the wilderness leaning on her beloved?”
The Shulamite woman sings happily once again, “Under the apple tree I roused you; there your mother conceived you, there she who was in labor gave you birth. Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is strong as death, it’s jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like a blazing fire, like a might flame. Many waters cannot quench love, rivers can’t sweep it away. If one were to give all the wealth of one’s house for love, it would be utterly scorned.”
Then the friends ask, “We have our sisters, what shall we do for our sister, if she is a wall, if she is a door?
The Shulamite filled with love responds, “if she is a wall we shall build a tower, if she is a door, we will enclose her with panels.” Until she is ready and willing to sacrifice it all for her King. “I am a wall and I have become the one that brings him contentment.” She submits. Christians submit to Christ; we are sealed until the day of his return.
One day like the Shulamite woman, we will sing, “come away, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or like a young stag on the spice-laden mountain.”
Come Lord Jesus! Come!
Pease, Love, Blessings