Essentials of the Song of Songs - Lesson 5

In this next lecture on the essentials of the Song of Songs for Biblical Training, we're going to continue our work through the Song of Songs kind of incrementally, part by part, section by section. And in this lecture, we're going to tackle parts two and three, the arrival of the Beloved and the arrival of Solomon. Now, you will recall from our last lecture that I said, after each major adjuration, so in your Bibles, it might be, do not arouse or awaken love, but in the discourse charts here, or my translation will be, if you incite or provoke love, that kind of thing.

After each major adjuration oath curse, there's going to be a different person arriving. At the beginning of part two, the Beloved Shepherd will arrive. At the beginning of part three, the not so Beloved Solomon will arrive.

And at the beginning of part four, the woman will arrive coming out of the wilderness with her Beloved Shepherd leaning upon her. And so we're going to begin here in part two, the arrival of the Beloved, the arrival of the Beloved. Now, each of these arrival scenes begins with the same basic grammatical verbal structure.

And so it's easy to see, once again, I think perhaps the best way to instruct this particular point is to turn to our discourse charts with the translations. And we can just read these few verses here, and I'll show you, and you can follow along your Bible. And it's just verses eight and nine, and that will show you or give you a sense of how someone is arriving.

And each person arrives in their own kind of unique way. And we'll read how the Beloved arrives, and we'll read how Solomon arrives later, and then how the woman arrives. You can kind of get a sense for the beauty of the song in this particular category.

So in chapter two, verse eight, the text begins this way, the sound of my Beloved. It just kicks off that way. And then it says, behold, he is coming, leaping over the mountains, jumping over the hills.

My Beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Behold, he is standing behind our wall, looking through the windows, peering from or through the latticeworks. The text is highly structured here, and it's got two parts, and both parts begin this way.

Number one, in 2 8b, behold, he's coming like Superman, you know, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. And then in 2 9b, the other behold clause, behold, he is standing. Behold, he is standing.

Now, what's interesting and important to understand here is that the Beloved comes in in verse eight, like a Superman, leaping over mountains, bounding over hills. But once he arrives at the harem and the harem wall complex, later in the text, it says, behold, he's standing behind our wall, right here in 2 9a. He is stopped dead in his tracks, unable to get in.

Well, think about that with me for a minute. This guy can jump over mountains. He's not really jumping over mountains and hills, just so you know.

But he's described as vigorous and vital and strong, perhaps the ultimate Israelite crossfitter, if you would. He is leaping and bounding, arriving in strength and vitality, and he's stopped by this puny wall, right? The reason being, it's the harem wall. And the harem wall was a highly guarded, highly fortified complex, right? The king's harem was to be protected at all costs from all intruders.

No male figure would ever be allowed to get in to that harem complex ever, unless they were eunuchs who were servants or protectors of that harem complex, all right? So there'd be female attendants and eunuchs, eunuchs meaning they were no longer able to engage the women in an intimate or sexual way. That had been removed from them, you could say. And getting over that wall would have meant sure and certain death for the beloved, and that would have ended the whole program for the woman.

There would be no more beloved, okay? And so we have here the arrival of the beloved in strength and vitality, but ceased or halted by the wall of the harem complex. And so he can only call to the woman, he can only call to the woman through the windows and through the latticeworks to talk with her. And so here you can see in 2, 8 and 9, the shepherd arrives.

We've talked about the shepherd in B being locked out of the harem, all right? Then in verses 10 to 15 of chapter 2, the shepherd calls the woman to return. And he'll do it in this way, spring has arrived, the birds are singing, the flowers are blooming, come away, it's time for us to be united in marriage and no longer endure this harem complex ordeal, all right? So he speaks to her to come away with him, calls to her to return. The woman, the woman responds, the woman responds by saying, go and wait, go and wait.

And so the man calls her out in verses 10 to 15, and the woman responds, you're going to have to go away and wait for me until I can get out. And it's worth reading just that so you can get a sense of it, because this is the woman talking. She said, this is my beloved answered and said to me, this you can see here, you know who's talking, my beloved answered and said to me, arise my friend, my beautiful one, come away, for behold, it's springtime.

Arise my friend and come away, and then show me your appearance, let me hear your voice, et cetera, et cetera. This is all the beloved talking to the woman in verses 10 to 15 or 14. Then the woman speaks in 15 to 17 and says, catch for us the foxes, the little foxes spoiling the vineyards.

Indeed, our vineyards, our bodies are in blossom. And then she makes the first of a series of covenantal formula declarations in 216. And so you're going to see this occurring all over the place.

It's one of the major themes that runs throughout the song that the woman is committed to the beloved in a Genesis 2 kind of exclusive, permanent, lifelong, one flesh relationship. They're not married yet, but that's what she's committed to. Remember if the woman is being asked to consider the beloved shepherd or King Solomon, she's being asked to make a choice between the way in which God designed marriage in Genesis 2 and the way in which Solomon corrupted marriage in first Kings 11.

All right. And here she's going to say in verses 2, 16, or in chapter 2, verse 16, my beloved belongs to me and I belong to him, the one who shepherds or grazes among the lilies. All right.

This is very similar to the very well-known oath formula or covenant formula in the Hebrew Bible. I will be your God, you will be my people, and I will dwell in your midst. It's called the tripartite, three part, fancy word for three part covenant formula.

I will be your God, you'll be my people, and I will dwell in your midst. We have the same three parts here. My beloved belongs to me and I belong to him, the one who shepherds or grazes among the lilies.

And here we don't know exactly what it is just to be honest, but it's the one who is living in the garden. Now, where's the garden? Genesis 2, right? Genesis 2 is the place of the garden. So all of that garden imagery is meant to make us think back to the Genesis 2 ideal of marriage, not to the first Kings 11 corruption of marriage.

Okay. And then the woman says, and this is how she sends him away. So again, you can hear the woman talking until the storm passes and the shadows flee, turn and be like my beloved, a gazelle or a stag upon the rugged mountains.

So, so one of the key things here is every time the woman is talking about a beloved, every time the harem or the daughters of Jerusalem mentioned the word beloved, they're talking about this boy right here, the one beloved shepherd, the singular beloved shepherd. And that's why they sometimes call this the shepherd interpretation because it says, my beloved belongs to me. I belong to him, the one who shepherds or grazes among the lilies.

So he's the shepherd. Okay. We can put it that way.

There's the shepherd and the King. You could think of it this way. One is the kind of the bucolic boyfriend and the other, if we can use some film, like the singing in the rain film language, the, uh, the, the Royal rascal Solomon, the bucolic boyfriend and Solomon, the Royal rascal.

And so, so this is the bucolic boyfriend, the shepherd. Okay. And the woman is describing her experience in the harem as a storm.

She's saying, when the storm passes and the shadows flee, I'm in the harem and this is a wilderness experience. It's a storm experience. And so she says, turn and be like a gazelle or young stag upon the rugged mountains.

And that brings the woman to then to, to, um, to an expression of lovesickness in the song and the very next section, after the woman expresses her commitment and the, and her commandment for the beloved to go and wait, the woman or the author of the song in the song of song, Solomon, uh, places in the song, the first of two dream accounts, the first of two dream accounts. And these dream accounts are told from the perspective of the woman, the dream accounts have, um, have erotic nuances to them, whereby the woman is expressing her desire to be united to her beloved in a one flesh relationship, whereby the possibility of harem life is removed from her. Once the woman is no longer a virgin, she's no longer qualified to become a member of Solomon's harem.

So this is a great desire of her. And so it's just worth reading for a second here, because it'll give you a sense of what I call it, the spicy nature of the song of songs, where you could see in chapter three, verse one, if you follow along in your Bible or on the charts provided by the course, the woman, it begins, the dream account begins this way upon my bed during the nights, upon my bed during nights. So there's this woman having this recurring dream over and over again.

And the whole idea of the plural form for nights is indicating that it's happening over and over again. It's not just one thing, but she's there for a while. And each night she's longing for the beloved and she's searching for the one whom her soul loves searching and searching and searching, but she cannot find him, cannot find him, cannot find him.

Then it says at the end, right? Uh, and in verse four of chapter three, when I had found the one whom my soul loves in my dream, I seized him and I would not let him go until I brought him into the house of my motherhood. That is into the chamber of my conceiving. And you can see here how the house of motherhood and the chamber of conceiving is a euphemistic way for the woman expressing.

She would like to be sexually united to her beloved so that she's no longer qualified for harem life. The both dream accounts here and later in five function in this very same way. The woman is steadfastly resolved to be with the beloved shepherd, but she's away from the beloved shepherd.

So she's lovesick. And that lovesickness is expressed by these dreams of longing for her beloved. After that dream account, we get our second oath, curse, adjuration, as you can see on your chart here in Roman numeral two F. And that brings us to the end of part two of the song.

So one of the things you can observe is that parts one and parts two are relatively short. And in fact, part four is going to be relatively short, only spanning verses five to 14 in chapter eight. The lion's share of the song appears in part three with the arrival of Solomon after the second oath curse.

And we can in some sense, call these the temptation narratives of the wilderness, the temptation narratives of the wilderness. And the woman is, the song is characterizing the woman's time in the harem as one, a storm from the previous section and to a wilderness experience in the second or in the third section here. Think about this.

Remember that in the Old Testament or in the New Testament in the Bible, the wilderness is the place of testing. When Israel comes out of Egypt and crosses the red sea, where do they go? The wilderness. And they're tested there for 40 years.

When Elijah defeats the prophets of Baal, he goes into the wilderness and there's this time of testing for him as someone who wants to give up and not pursue the Lord's work anymore. When Jesus is baptized, the spirit drives him into the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights in order to be tested or tempted. And that's exactly what's happening here.

In fact, if we can turn in our translations to the opening here, you can see once again in chapter three, verse six, that someone is arriving after the adjuration, right? It says, who or what is this coming up from the wilderness? Like columns of smoke, billowing myrrh and frankincense from every scented powder of a merchant. Behold his bed, and here we go, the one that belongs to Solomon. There are 60 mighty men around it from the mighty men of Israel, all of them seized by the sword, another euphemism, meaning they've been made eunuchs, each with his sword upon his thigh because of the terror of the knights, right? Now notice that this bed and Solomon and all these warrior eunuchs are coming up from the wilderness, right? They're bringing the test to the woman and that's what's happening here.

You can see King Solomon has this portable bedroom. It's lavish. You can see that in verses 9 to 11.

And then there's this declaration at the end that invites the women of the harem training camp. They're in the visiting team locker room, the house of the women, and there's this declaration or this statement. We don't know who's making it.

The harem collectively or someone, come out and look, oh, daughters of Zion, which is a synonym for daughters of Jerusalem, upon King Solomon. So it's Solomon who's present now. Look upon him with the crown which his mother crowned him on the day of his wedding, that is on the day of the joy of his heart.

And so here, the daughters of Jerusalem, the women who are the virgins without number are being asked to come out and line up in some sense to be selected by Solomon because he's out there with the crown with which his mother crowned him, which would be another euphemism for Solomon's intent to be united to one of those women sexually. Now, after the arrival of Solomon's portable love shack, we'll use the language of the B-52s, after Solomon arrives in his love shack and the virgins assemble, Solomon unleashes his first temptation narrative, you could say, or his first temptation. He's trying to woo this particular woman to become a member of his harem.

And that's a fairly lengthy wooing in chapter four, verse one, all the way to five one. And so just in terms of what's going on from four, one to five, one, you can see in four, one to seven here in this entire complex from chapter four, one to five, one, Solomon is trying to woo the woman of the song to become a member of his harem. So it says, it begins with flattery.

Behold, you are beautiful, my friend. Behold, you are beautiful. Your eyes are doves behind your veil.

Then it goes to hair, then to teeth, then to lips, then to mouth, temple, neck. And then finally, breasts, the famous twin fawns of the gazelle grazing among the lilies. So at this point, you can think it's fairly innocuous, eyes and hair and teeth and lips and mouth and neck.

But once he gets to the breasts, you know exactly what he's after in this particular capacity. That is, he's asking the woman to become a member of his concubine because he's moved from generic descriptions of female beauty above the neck to female beauty below the neck, where all of the, in some sense, spicy activity would occur. Okay.

And it has in there, when the day passes and the shadows flee, I will come. And there's no blemish on you. And he entices her with love making and wine.

And it concludes with this statement. I have come to my garden, my sister, O bride. I have gathered my myrrh with my spices.

I've eaten my honeycomb with my honey. I have drunk my wine with my milk. And then it says, eat O friends, drink and be drunk with lovemaking.

Now, this is an illicit invitation by Solomon. And this is one of the things you can imagine that you can appreciate here. When we are in part three of the song, all of the invitations to sexual intimacy are invitations to first Kings 11 sexual intimacy.

Does that make sense? That is to intimacy. That is not the Genesis two intimacy. In fact, all of the verbs here in five, one, eat, drink and be drunk are plural.

So Solomon is inviting the entire harem in some sense to participate in this activity by way of celebration. All right. Come out and look upon Solomon with which the crown that his mother crowned him with on the day of his wedding, the day of the joy of his heart.

He's here to experience all the delights of the sons of men. And that's exactly the language used in Ecclesiastes chapter two, when the King has a harem or concubines or what the text says, breasts and even more breasts. All right.

To entertain himself. And that's what's going on here. So there's no beloved shepherd so far in part, in part three here, only Solomon, the daughters of Jerusalem and the woman.

All right. And this part, and so far you have Solomon in four, one to five, one speaking to the woman, wooing her to become a member of the harem. This precipitates and provokes the woman to have a second dream.

Okay. The woman, this, you know, Solomon's put this way, Solomon's lengthy appeal to the woman's beauty and the intoxicating experience of his harem is met with a second dream. And the second dream has the same function as the first dream.

It's a dream of longing due to love sickness that would make her unavailable to Solomon if the dream were to be fulfilled. And so just because it's such an important part of this song, we can just read a few parts of it where it says here in five, two, I was asleep, but my heart was awake. The voice of my beloved pounding open for me, my sister, my friend, my dove, my perfect one, that, that declaration in five, two C open for me, my sister, my friend, my dove, my perfect one is the pounding of the beloved's voice in Hebrew.

It's alliterative. They all end with the E sound. So pith-hee, lee, ah-ho-thee, ra-yee-thee, yon-oh-thee, ha-tam, or ha-ma-thee.

All right. The pounding of the beloved be with me, be with me, be with me in her dream. And then you can see she's taking her clothes off.

The, the language of hands and fingers and head and palms, those are all euphemisms for reproductive parts. They're all dripping with myrrh, flowing with myrrh, with the drops of the night. They are sexually ready to be united.

But at the end, it says, I opened for my beloved, but my beloved had departed. He went away and my soul went out when he spoke. I searched for him, but I did not find him.

This is verse six. And then the guards found me. They struck me.

They removed my covering from me. That's the end of the dream. And kind of this, like, all of a sudden, at the moment of their union, the beloved disappears and she's beat up by the city guards.

Now, the beloved was never there because this is the dream and the city guards are not there beating her up. But that's part of the dream. Does that make sense? A woman cannot get out of the harem complex and just wander around the streets like she would like to in the middle of the night.

That would be completely not permitted in this particular context. But that's exactly what's going on in the dream and its expression of the woman's longing. No marriage is happening here.

There's been no sexual union and one flesh relationship created. In fact, there is no sexual union throughout the whole song. In fact, it ends like, let's go away and be united.

But the union has not happened in the song itself. And so we're left kind of with the couple riding off into the sunset. In section B, which is the second subsection of part three that runs from five, nine to eight, four, you can see there's some back and forth going on between the harem and Solomon and the woman.

So in some sense, section B, you can think section A is mostly Solomon and the woman going back and forth and then the woman describing a dream. Section B is perhaps the most complicated section in terms of who is speaking to whom, because you have really three parties at work here. You're going to have, you're going to have the harem asking a question.

You're going to have the woman responding and Solomon wooing. And then you're going to have some parts where you don't know if it's Solomon or the harem that's doing the wooing or the question asking, but it doesn't matter because both Solomon and the harem are after the same thing. The woman attempt, trying to get the woman to become a part of the harem, trying to get the woman to become a part of the harem.

And so it begins with the harem's question in five nights that the harem is talking here. Why, right? Why do you adjure us this way? Okay. Then the woman's response, desire.

The woman responds for desire for her beloved once again. And so you could see in the text in verse 10, where it says, my beloved is radiant and ruddy outstanding among 10,000. Then at the very end in 16, this is my beloved.

And this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem. So here's the thing. The harem asked this question in verse nine, how is your beloved better than any other beloved that you place us under oath or under this adjuration in this way? So the women of the harem are asking this question.

You're in the harem. Don't you want to do this? And they say, why would you put us under this oath? Why would you bring down a curse upon us? Why don't you want to enter into harem life? And the woman describes her beloved as kind of, as an extravagantly beautiful, like rock star, movie star, fashion model kind of person. His hair is black, wavy like a Raven.

His eyes are like doves. His cheeks are mounds of spices. His lips are dripping with myrrh.

His arms are like ready for this rods of gold, right? His torso is a plate of ivory with sapphires. Think of that six pack. His thighs are pillars of white marble.

His appearance is like Lebanon and his mouth is sweet. And it says he is completely desirable, entirely desirable. This is my beloved.

And this is my friend. And so that's the woman talking. And then the harem talks to her back again.

They say, not only why it's the second question of the harem, why have you put us under this curse? And therefore, well, now that you've described this amazing guy, we want to take a look at him. And so in six, one to three, they say, Hey, where's your beloved gone? Oh, most beautiful one among the women. Where's your beloved gone? So that we may search for him with you.

She says, Hey, my beloved has gone down to his garden. Remember the garden is Genesis two to the mound of spice to graze in the gardens and to gather lilies. And again, here, look at, I belong to my beloved and my beloved belongs to me.

The one who grazes are shepherds among the lilies, that tripartite covenant formula. Once again, here was kind of a break some sections up a little bit, but you can see that the garden imagery here, I don't want you to overthink it. Like, where is he? You know, is he out in the mountains? Is he in a garden? No, he's just gone, right? It's a song, right? It's like the boy in the country music song is gone.

And it's time, you know, it's time to like find where he is. And the women are asking that question. Where in the world is he? After the women asked the question, where Solomon enters into a second temptation.

And then, and, um, and then the woman responds by her desire to leave the harem in six 11 and 12. These are some of the most enigmatic verses in the, in the song of songs, but it's simply these, and these texts are hard. And I guess almost every Bible translation or commentary is going to have a different take on them.

And here's what I'm going to tell you about it. We don't know exactly what the text means in all of its individual pieces, but we do know what it means generally that the woman has taken off and that the woman is no longer around in the harem in either, either by way of refusal or by way of just like going back to her room or something like that. So she says, I've gone down to the grove or the garden of Walnut trees, to the growth of the Valley, to see if the vine is budded.

And then she says, I do not know why my soul has placed me here among the chariots of a willing or ready people. It's a tough text to translate, but because of the context, we know that this is the woman speaking at this point, the woman speaking, and she's telling us that she has no intention of participating in harem life. And that's why in the very next line in chapter seven, we get the declaration, return, return, O Shulamite, return, return.

So we may look upon you. Why should we look upon you like the dance of two armies? Gang, the dance of two armies, it's a war and she's terrifying like a troops with banners. And so the, the, the, the women in the harem and even Solomon there are wondering why is giving us such great resistance? Why is she like so fierce? Why is she so resistant? And she is steadfast in her love for the beloved.

And so you get into the second temptation or the third temptation account there that runs from seven, one to 10. This concludes in verse 11 with the woman's response again, commitment and desire. I just, I, my beloved, I belong to my beloved.

My beloved belongs to me and his desires for me. Then the woman calls for the shepherd to return in seven, 12 to eight, three, where you can see here in seven, 12, it says, come my beloved. Let's come, come my beloved.

Let's go out to the field. Let's spend this night in the villages. Let us rise early for the vineyards.

Let us see if the vine has budded, the blossom opened, the pomegranates bloomed there. I will make love to you. The mandrakes have given forth their fragrance.

Now it doesn't mean that they're going on a road trip or some kind of honeymoon or like that, but the woman here, this is the woman. I belong to my beloved, come my beloved. The woman is speaking and she's calling the beloved to return and to come with her to the garden of Genesis two, where she will make love to him and end the terror of the night as is described in the Song of Songs.

This ends with the final oath curse of the song in eight, four, and that brings us into part four, the arrival of the woman out of the wilderness with the beloved leaning upon her. So we've covered parts one, two, and three. And in our final lecture, we'll cover part four, which is kind of the didactic wisdom climax of the song.

And so we'll spend a little more time on this briefer section because that's the section that in some sense informs everything that's gone before.