Essentials of the Song of Songs - Lesson 2

All right, we're considering together the Song of Songs in a brief kind of essentials class, and the whole point of this course, this summary course, is really to entice you to take the fuller course and to dive deeper and deeper into the Song of Songs. So what I want to do here is get you started. We've already mentioned in the last lecture the basic message of the Song of Songs, and it bears repeating in every lecture.

The Song of Songs teaches us that the covenant of marriage designed by God in Genesis 2 was designed to be rock-solid in terms of commitment and white-hot in terms of intimacy, and that marriages that work to keep these two things together can better resist temptation, endure hardship, and promote wholeness. So it's the Genesis 2 world of the ideal, rock-solid and white-hot, but also in the context of a Genesis 3 world, it's a fallen world, and so there's going to be hardship, temptation, and brokenness. And the question is, how do we navigate that? In one sense, the message of the Song is easy.

It comes to us in Song of Songs chapter 8, verses 6 to 10, all right? The question for the Song, and the question has befuddled interpreters for basically 3,000 years, is how does the Song of Songs communicate or teach us that lesson, all right? And I think one thing we need to do that's important here at the beginning of this class is to talk about the various interpretational schemes that have been used by interpreters throughout the ages, and then the one that we're going to use in this course, and perhaps why we're going to use that interpretation, all right? So let's begin, and I'm going to do this. I'm just going to say that we can divide all of the interpretations of the Song of Songs into two basic categories. And what I mean by all of the interpretations of the Song of Songs is that there are a lot.

One scholar has likened the interpretation of the Song of Songs in the Old Testament to the interpretation of the Book of Revelation in the New Testament, right? We all kind of understand that the Book of Revelation is about the last things, the second coming of Jesus, the consummation of the ages, and the new heavens and new earth, but what is the mark of the beast? Who are the 144,000? What is 666? What do those seals mean? When is it going to happen? What nations are involved? If there are 25 commentaries before me on the Book of Revelation, there are probably 27 or 28 different approaches in those commentaries. The Song of Songs is like that. What do we do with the twin fawns? What do we do with the heaps of wheat? What do we do with the declarations to eat, drink, and be drunk with lovemaking? Is that good? Is that bad? Is that kosher, illicit? Those kinds of things.

And again, if you had 15 Old Testament scholars standing up right here, you'd probably have 20 different views on the Song of Songs. All right? And so we want to kind of talk about that so that you're not caught off guard when you perhaps read other people who have written or read about these things or in your own journey in terms of what you might think. So let's divide these into two camps, the figurative camp and we'll call it the natural camp.

I don't want to call either one of them literal because each camp believes that their interpretation is the literal interpretation. All right? And so I don't want to force that on you. We're going to call the figurative camp and the natural camp.

And here's the first one. We'll begin with the figurative camp because that's probably the most well-known in terms of the Song of Songs. And it goes something like this.

The relationship between the man and the woman in the song is a veiled description of the relationship between Yahweh and Israel or Jesus and the church or even other things like a kind of an allegorical or figurative retelling of the history of Israel. For example, at the end, it says, out of the wilderness, the beloved comes up. So you can think someone's coming out of exile and the woman going into the harem or something like that would be the woman going into exile, stuff like that.

There's all these kinds of approaches to it. And so we have this first one. Let me just deal with the first one, the Jewish allegorical interpretation where the Song of Songs is about really the relationship between Yahweh and Israel.

And this is not far fetched. I'd like to say that, think about this, that one of the primary metaphors that Yahweh uses to describe his covenantal relationship with his people is the covenant of marriage that he created in Genesis chapter 2. And so you can think about Hosea and Gomer in Hosea 1 to 3. God is telling Hosea to marry a woman who's going to become an adulteress and that's a whole kind of a parable or a figurative account of what the relationship between Yahweh and Israel is like. Does that make sense? Or you can think of Ezekiel 16 where there's this, I guess you could call it a parable or an account of the Lord coming by and finding this abandoned girl almost dead in the mud.

And he raises her, he loves her, and then he marries her. And the way this woman shows appreciation is she becomes a whore and adulterer. And that's Israel.

So it's not too far fetched. It's not crazy to think that such would be the case here that the man and the woman in the song are a type of Yahweh and Israel. Or perhaps similarly, we might think of that being the case, maybe in the modern Christian interpretation, very popular among the Puritans and the church fathers, would be the Christian allegorical interpretation that the man in the song is Jesus and the woman is the church.

We get that, for example, from something like the end of the book of Ephesians where Paul is talking about marriage and the marriage covenant and the one flesh relationship. And he says, yeah, and I want you to understand this is a mystery and I'm talking about Christ and the church. All right.

So again, it's not far fetched. I'm saying it's not crazy to think that that's true because really, if you think about this, the marriage covenant of Genesis 2 was always intended and designed to point beyond itself to the marriage covenant of Revelation 21 and 22. God wanted to teach us from the beginning the type of relationship He desired to have with us.

And He did that by way of instruction and the marriage covenant. And so when we read in Revelation 21 and 22, behold, the city of Jerusalem, the new heaven and new earth, Jerusalem coming down like a bride adorned for her husband. All right.

We get it. God has created a world for us in which He wants to relate to us like a bride and groom in a covenant relationship. So that's not too far fetched.

Okay. Another figurative interpretation would be the one I mentioned earlier that it's a veiled recounting of the history of Israel. And then there's another one too that says the song of songs was written late, like in the post-exilic era.

And it represents a veiled critique of the political condition of Israel during that time. Okay. Now, why would I not want to follow one of these particular interpretational schemes for this reason? Number one, the mode of allegory or allegorical interpretation is an interpretational scheme developed by the Greeks after the composition of the song of songs.

All right. And so it would be anachronistic or backwards historically to think that someone wrote an allegorical song before allegorical interpretation was even on the scene historically. Does that make sense? So historically, we can't abide that interpretation, especially if you understand Solomon to be the author of the song as I do.

Now, not everyone understands Solomon to be the author. Some people think, well, they just want to associate it with Solomon. So it has some kind of authority.

All right. But I do not believe that the Bible is intentionally deceptive like that. If it says it's by Solomon, I'm going to salute and submit to that declaration and interpret it in light of that.

At least the Bible is wanting me to interpret it in light of Solomon. And so I'm going to say that it's anachronistic and the allegorical interpretation is something that postdates the composition of the song of songs. That's the first thing.

The second thing is that allegorical interpretation has no control to it. That is, no two allegorical interpreters agree on what any single image means. Does that make sense? You know, one of my favorites is the opening declaration, you know, let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth is an account by one allegorical interpreter of the Holy Spirit coming into a Christian upon conversion.

And I just think, hmm, how do you know, right? You know, and there is no control. It's just a guess or that the twin fonds that the woman's breasts are the Old and New Testaments upon which the church is nourished. Well, how do you know? It says the fonds are twins there and the Old Testament is much larger than the New Testament.

So the allegory and the imagery breaks down. All right. And so there's just no control over what's going on in this allegorical interpretation.

Okay. And so it's exegetically indefensible and historically backwards to engage the allegorical interpretation. Okay.

So the allegorical interpretation could be Yahweh in Israel, Jesus in the church, a veiled account of the history of Israel, or kind of a veiled critique of a political scheme in the post-exilic era, kind of around the time of the Maccabean revolt and the intertestamental period. Okay. Those are the allegorical interpretations or the figurative interpretations.

Then there are a host of what we might call natural interpretations. And what I mean by natural is that they, in some sense, take the poetry at face value and think, oh, there's actually love going on here. It's a real man and a real woman, and we need to figure out what's going on.

And so we have a number of these, and some argue that this is the account of a wedding, and there's one man and one woman, and that the bride is beautiful and adorned, and that the groom is the king, because every groom is king for a day. Does that make sense? And so every groom is King Solomon, and every bride is the maiden in the song. And so there are all these delights, the intoxicating scents, the beauty, the erotic literature in there, all of these different things.

And even the love sickness and the absence and stuff like that, the difficulty of getting engaged and married and being afraid and stuff like that, all of those things are in there. So that's kind of the wedding interpretation. There's also a funeral interpretation of the song, if you can believe it.

One particular scholar, his last name is Pope, who's written a gigantic commentary on the Song of Songs, argues that the Song of Songs was originally a cultic funerary song. Why? Well, because at the end it says, love is strong like death and fierce like the grave. And we know that in certain pagan funeral cultic celebrations in the ancient world, sex was involved as a way of returning to life and promoting life in the midst of death.

I don't need to say much about this interpretational scheme, except that it's highly far-fetched and way out of what we might call the orthodox realm of biblical literature. Does that make sense? So I don't think any author or someone like Solomon is saying, hey, this erotic funeral song is great. I'm going to incorporate it into the canon of scripture and believers are going to be blessed by it.

Does that make sense? It's one of the most far-fetched natural interpretations. So there's kind of the wedding song interpretation. There is the funeral interpretation.

There's another interpretation scheme that's popular among some evangelicals, where the Song of Songs doesn't have any message to it at all. Doesn't have any message to it at all. And there's no unity to it.

It's a random collection of erotic poetry from Israelite life. A random poetry of erotic poems from Israelite life. And the argument simply would go something like this.

God created sex. Sex is good. So let's talk about it.

Now, I believe all those things. God created sex. Sex is good.

And we need to talk about it. And the Song of Songs talks about it. But I don't think wisdom literature in the canon of scripture ever has no message to present to the people of God.

The book of Proverbs, it says, this is to teach wisdom. And the height of Hebrew wisdom is find a woman of strength. Ecclesiastes says, fear God and keep his commands.

The book of Job teaches us that God is sovereign even in the midst of suffering. And Song of Songs is a book that teaches us that marriage should be rock solid and white hot. And marriages that can do that can endure hardship, resist temptation, and promote wholeness.

And that there actually is a unity to this song, we can argue. And so I call this the ancient Near Eastern Viagra approach. That is, this literature is simply a bunch of random songs intended to say sex and sexuality is good and valid, and we can celebrate and enjoy it.

And I believe all that to be true, but I don't believe that that's what's going on here in the Song of Songs. There's too much evidence that there's unity of theme and unity of structure throughout the song to go with that interpretation. Okay? So we've got the two-person wedding scheme.

We've got the funeral scheme. We've got the random collection of erotic poetry scene. And then there's one that's called the shepherd hypothesis.

And I guess in some sense, or the dramatic interpretation, and we can in some sense make it a distinction like this way. We're not going to call it the dramatic interpretation or the shepherd interpretation, but in the natural interpretational scheme, there's this question. There's the woman of the song, and is there one man that the woman is considering, or are there two men? All right? And the so-called dramatic interpretation or shepherd interpretation is an interpretation that says, no, there's not one man.

There's actually two men that are being considered here. And so scholars like Walter Kaiser, George Atheis, Ian Proven, and myself will hold to these views, to this view. I know that, for example, Dan Block holds to this view by way of personal communication and others.

And so I really appreciate this view. And in fact, that's the view that we're going to take in this particular class is that there are two men present in the song. And I already told you that the Song of Songs is a correlate to Proverbs 1 to 9. And in Proverbs 1 to 9, a young man is being asked to make a decision between two women.

And in the Song of Songs, a young woman is being asked to make a decision between two men. And that's the approach that we're going to take. It's not a cultic funeral view.

It's not the Jewish allegory view. It's not any of the other views. We're going to hold to this one view throughout our interpretation of the song.

So I can put it this way, perhaps, in my notes here. The Song of Songs is not an allegory. The Song of Songs is not an erotic psalter.

It's not a wedding song. Actually, no one gets married in there and no one has sex in the song. It's hoped for and anticipated, but there is no sexual union that ever occurs in the song.

You know, I challenge any interpreter to find that for me. It's not a wedding song or a cultic song. There's no wedding that occurs because there's no sexual union that occurs.

It does state in Chapter 3 that Solomon has come in order to engage in a wedding experience, but we know that the wedding experience of Solomon is an illicit harem experience. And so what is the song? The song, I'm going to argue in our particular course, is a unified wisdom composition that sets before the reader two paths, the way of wisdom in life and the way of folly and death. It's the only book in the canon of scripture dedicated to the single topic of marriage.

There are two men in the song. There is Mr. Wisdom, the shepherd or the beloved shepherd, and he's called the beloved and he's one who shepherds among the lilies. And so that's why we call it the shepherd interpretation.

The beloved shepherd represents the ideals of the Genesis 2 marriage, an exclusive one-flesh covenant, true love worthy of waiting and fighting for. And the Song of Song is going to play out in that particular category when we look at the structure of the song. Solomon represents in this song, Mr. Folly, Mr. Folly.

Remember in Solomon's life, he had one of the largest harems that you could ever imagine. 700 queens are royal wives and 300 concubines are, you can say, those women he wanted to exploit sexually. Okay? Harem life was a life of luxury, ease, and prestige.

It would have been extremely tempting for a woman to want to be a part of that world. Solomon has full access to the harem. The beloved shepherd has no access to the harem.

Solomon is repeatedly trying to woo the woman. The woman is repeatedly declaring, no, I belong to my beloved. My beloved belongs to me, the one who dwells among the lilies.

Ultimately, we're going to find and discover as we work through the song in terms of who's talking and what's going on, that the woman is going to reject Solomon. In Song of Songs 8, 11, and 12, where it says Solomon had a vineyard at Baal Hamon and he gave out that vineyard to its keepers. And the keepers would bring in its fruit for a thousand pieces of silver.

And she says, my vineyard, which belongs to me is still before me. Keep your money, Solomon. I don't want anything to do with harem life.

Solomon does not exemplify the marriage ideal of Genesis 2, but he does exemplify the tragedy of 1 Kings 11. And in 1 Kings 11, which is the end of the account of Solomon's life, it says that he had 700 wives and 300 concubines and that these wives and concubines led him into idolatry where he did evil in the eyes of the Lord. And he caused the Lord to be angry with him.

It says the anger of the Lord burned against Solomon. And in fact, this very harem experience and the way in which it turned him into, turned him to idolatry is the reason that God tore the kingdom from him. And then we have the Northern and the Southern Kingdom that follows immediately after his death.

In fact, you can think of this, 1 Kings 8, where Solomon dedicates the temple and prays the big prayer that Yahweh's house is a house of prayer and he will hear his people forever from this house, represents the climax of Israel's kingdom and theocracy and God's reign in the Mosaic covenant in Israel. And then in chapters 9, 10 and 11, three chapters later, Solomon is a full-fledged idolater, leading all of Israel into idolatry and God is bringing the nation of Israel to an end. And you know, in basically 250 years, 230 years, God will bring the Northern Kingdom to an end in 722 BC.

And then the Southern Kingdom to an end in 586 BC. All of this precipitated by Solomon's harem idolatry. All right.

So he is not the ideal, but according to Ecclesiastes 2, even in the midst of his extensive sin and folly, that God allowed his wisdom to remain with him in order that he might pass along to us this very important message so that we do not follow in his footsteps. I'll make one more statement here about the interpretation and then we can bring this particular lecture to a close, is this, even though the Song of Songs is not allegorical, that is, it's not about the relationship between Yahweh and Israel or Jesus and the church, the Song of Songs can have a typological application. That is, God created marriage in Genesis 2 in order to provide a connection between men and women, right? It was not good that man should be alone.

And even though man was in the garden with God and with all the animals, there was still an existential aloneness that couldn't be solved by that reality. God is transcendent and wholly other. The animals were not created in the image of God and man needed a helper suitable for him.

And he created the woman and the marriage covenant. And the woman and the marriage covenant are the climactic events of chapter 2 in Genesis that brings day six from not good to very good. We know that that marriage covenant points us eschatologically to Revelation 21 and 22.

And so there's this pointer to it when Paul says, Ephesians 5, this marriage covenant thing is a mystery, it's speaking of Christ and the church. Meaning this, the relationship that God desires to have with his people is one of covenantal union. It's one of intimacy and friendship and love and fulfillment and pleasure, right? And God said, what can I do to teach my people about that? I'm going to give them a marriage covenant.

So all of the desire, all of the wonder, all of the great things in marriage are intended to point us to the greater marriage covenant that we will experience one day in the new heavens and new earth. And the marriage covenant and this earth was built in such a way that it could never ever fully satisfy us, right? It would be, you know, it had pleasure, but the pleasure would end. It had satisfaction, but the satisfaction would need greater and greater satisfaction to last, right? And so God used the marriage covenant of Genesis 2 to create a longing for us to have something better.

We were created for a different world. And so every believer has the hope of experiencing the marriage covenant of Revelation 21 and 22, having that fulfilled in them, right? Every believer will be a bride of Christ as a collective member of the church. It's a wonderful thing.

And so there is, I don't want to totally discount the allegorical interpretation, but I do want to, I do want to, in terms of like the principle of, of Yahweh and Israel being in the marriage covenant and Jesus and the church being in a marriage covenant, because the Bible describes them in that kind of covenant, right? We live in a covenantal relationship with God and marriage is the way that he describes that. But I, but the application of it in terms of like breasts and twin fawns and the Old and New Testament and the Holy Spirit coming into us does not work. The natural marriage covenant that is the longing for intimacy and affection and closeness and security that we get from marriage is what God is going to give us in the new heavens and new earth without end and without, and without any flaw in it.

And so those things are connected. So we're going to say that the Song of Songs is a wisdom composition designed to help young women originally make a decision between two different men, Mr. Folly, Solomon, and Mr. Wisdom, the beloved shepherd. And that from that and all the longing and desire we can see, we can make typological applications to what the believer might experience in the new heavens and new earth to the Christian life.