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Song of Songs
SONG OF SONGS, SONG OF SOLOMON (Heb. shîr ha-shîrîm). This is unique among biblical books, for it centers in the joys and distresses of the love relationship between a man and a woman.
I. Name. The Hebrew name, “Song of Songs,” is taken from 1:1, which introduces the book as “the song of songs which is Solomon’s.” This use of the Hebrew superlative declares the book the best of the 1,005 songs of Solomon (
II. Authorship and Date. There is considerable range of opinion as to the authorship and date of the book. R. H. Pfeiffer concludes that the Song of Songs is “an anthology of erotic poems,” of about 250 b.c., using the language as the sole criterion for the date. The frequent use of Aramaic forms and words, the presence of names of foreign products, a Persian word, and a Greek word are taken as evidence for a late date. On the other hand, it has been pointed out that these usages are not inconsistent with authorship by Solomon. In view of the extensive commerce and widespread diplomatic relations of Solomon, the presence of foreign terms, especially for articles imparted or imitated from foreign sources, is to be expected. The use of Aramaic is not a valid indication of date and may be accounted for by the northern origin of the Shulammite (
III. Content. Though the book is difficult to analyze, the divisions of Delitzsch are often followed: (1) the mutual admiration of the lovers (
IV. Interpretation. There is great diversity and much overlapping among interpretations of the Song of Songs. Various views are: (1) allegorical, (2) typical, (3) literal, (4) dramatic, (5) erotic-literary, (6) liturgical, and (7) didactic-moral.
1. The allegorical view may be Jewish, Christian, or a combination of these. The first regards the Song as descriptive of the love of God and his people Israel; the second discerns the love of Christ and the church or the individual believer. Usually this view denies or ignores the historicity of the events described. Hippolytus and Origen introduced this interpretation into the church, and this has been the popular or prevailing position, along with the typical view. There are two major arguments in its favor: (1) It explains the inclusion of the book in the canon. (2) It harmonizes with the biblical use of marriage as an illustration of the Lord’s relationship to his people. Opposing arguments include the following: (1) Other reasons may be advanced for its presence among the canonical books. (2) Elsewhere the figure of the marriage relationship is made the basis for specific teaching. (3) Nothing in the book itself invalidates its historicity. (4) The necessity of interpreting details leads to fanciful and absurd interpretations.
2. The typical interpretation combines literal and allegorical views, maintaining both the historicity and the spiritualizing of the book. In support of this view: (1) The superlative of the title connotes spiritual meaning. (2) Solomon is a type of Christ. (3) Marriage also is a type (cf. above). Against this view: (1) Spiritual value does not demand typology. (2) The definition and application of “type” are debatable.
3. The literal view is that the book presents actual history and nothing more.
4. The dramatic interpretation regards the Song as a drama based on the marriage of Solomon to a Shulammite girl. Here may be included the Shepherd hypothesis (Jacobi, Ewald, et al.), which proposes a triangle of Solomon, the girl, and her shepherd-betrothed. On this hypothesis, the girl refuses the blandishments of the king and remains true to her shepherd. The book is not labeled drama, which was not a widely used Hebrew literary form. If the book were merely a drama, its presence in the canon is not explained.
5. The erotic-literary view (Eissfeldt, Pfeiffer) is that the book is simply a collection of love songs.
6. The liturgical view regards the Song as borrowed pagan liturgy associated with fertility cults. It is inconceivable that a work of such an origin should be in the canon.
7. The didactic-moral interpretation holds that the book presents the purity and wonder of true love. It regards the book as history and also agrees that the love portrayed does direct us to the greater love of Christ, in accordance with the history of Christian interpretation. The purpose of the Song of Songs, therefore, is to teach the holiness and beauty of the marriage-love relationship that God ordained.
Bibliography: L. Waterman, The Song of Songs, 1948; R. Gordis, The Song of Songs, 1954; W. J. Fuerst, Ruth, Esther, Ecclesiastes, The Song of Songs, Lamentations, 1975; D. F. Kinlaw, “Song of Solomon,” EBC, vol. 5, 1985.——CEDV
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915)
(shir hashirim; Septuagint Asma; Codices Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, Ephraemi, Asma asmaton; Vulgate (Jerome’s Latin Bible, 390-405 A.D.) Canticum Canticorum):
I. CANONICITY
II. TEXT
III. AUTHORSHIP AND DATE
IV. HISTORY OF INTERPRETATION
1. The Allegorical Interpretation
2. The Typical Interpretation
3. The Literal Interpretation
V. CLOSING HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS
LITERATURE
The full title in Hebrew is "The So of Songs, which is Solomon’s." The book is called by some Canticles, and by others Solomon’s Song. The Hebrew title implies that it is the choicest of all songs, in keeping with the dictum of Rabbi `Aqiba (90-135 AD) that "the entire world, from the beginning until now, does not outweigh the day in which Canticles was given to Israel."
I. Canonicity.
Early Jewish and Christian writers are silent as to the So of Songs. No use is made of it by Philo. There is no quotation from it in the New Testament, nor is there any clear allusion to it on the part of our Lord or the apostles. The earliest distinct references to the So of Songs are found in Jewish writings of the 1st and 2nd centuries AD (4 Esdras 5:24,26; 7:26; Ta`anith 4:8). The question of the canonicity of the So was debated as late as the Synod of Jamnia (circa 90 AD), when it was decided that Canticles was rightly reckoned to "defile the hands," i.e. was an inspired book. It should be borne in mind that the So of Songs was already esteemed by the Jews as a sacred book, though prior to the Synod of Jamnia there was probably a goodly number of Jewish teachers who did not accept it as canonical. Selections from Canticles were sung at certain festivals in the temple at Jerusalem, prior to its destruction by Titus in 70 AD (Ta`anith 4:8). The Mishna pronounces an anathema on all who treat Canticles as a secular song (Sanhedhrin, 101a). The latest date for the composition of the So of Songs, according to critics of the advanced school, is toward the close of the 3rd century BC. We may be sure that it was included in the Kethubhim before the ministry of our Lord, and so was for Him a part of the Scriptures.
II. Text.
Most scholars regard the text of Canticles as comparatively free from corruption. Gratz, Bickell, Budde and Cheyne have suggested a good many emendations of the traditional text, a few of which commend themselves as probable corrections of a faulty text, but most of which are mere guesses without sufficient confirmation from either external or internal evidence. For details see Budde’s able commentary, and articles by Cheyne in JQR and Expository Times for 1898-99 and in the The Expositor, February, 1899.
III. Authorship and Date.
The title in the Hebrew text ascribes the poem to Solomon. That this superscription was prefixed by an editor of Canticles and not by the original writer is evident from the fact that the relative pronoun employed in the title is different from that employed throughout the poem. The beauty and power of the book seemed to later students and editors to make the writing worthy of the gifted king, whose fame as a composer of both proverbs and songs was handed on to later times (
The question in debate among recent critics is whether the So was composed in North Israel in preexilic days, or whether it is post-exilic. The author is at home in Hebrew. His vocabulary is extensive, and the movement of the poem is graceful. There is no suggestion of the use of lexicon and grammar by a writer living in the period of the decadence of the Hebrew language. The author is familiar with cities and mountains all over Palestine, especially in the northern section. He speaks of the beauty of Tirzah, the capital of North Israel in the 10th century BC, along with the glory of Jerusalem, the capital of Judah (
IV. History of Interpretation.
1. The Allegorical Interpretation:
All interpreters of all ages agree in saying that Canticles is a poem of love; but who the lovers are is a subject of keen debate, especially in modern times.
First in point of time and in the number of adherents it has had is theory that the So is a pure allegory of the love of Yahweh and His people. The Jewish rabbis, from the latter part of the 1st century AD down to our own day, taught that the poem celebrates a spiritual love, Yahweh being the bridegroom and Israel the bride. Canticles was supposed to be a vivid record of the loving intercourse between Israel and her Lord from the exodus on to the glad Messianic time. The So is read by the Jews at Passover, which celebrates Yahweh’s choice of Israel to be His spouse. The Targum interprets Canticles as an allegory of the marital love of Yahweh and Israel. Origen made the allegorical theory popular in the early church. As a Christian he represented the bride as the church or the soul of the believer. In more recent centuries the Christian allegorical interpreters have favored the idea that the soul of the believer was the bride, though the other type of the allegorical view has all along had its advocates.
Bernard of Clairvaux wrote 86 sermons on the first two chapters of Canticles; and a host of writers in the Roman church and among Protestants have composed similar mystical treatises on the Song. Devout souls have expressed their fervent love to God in the sensuous imagery of Canticles. The imagery could not become too fervid or ecstatic for some of these devout men and women in their highest moments of beatific vision. Whatever may be the final verdict of sane criticism as to the original purpose of the author of the Song, it is a fact that must not be overlooked by the student of Canticles that some of the noblest religious souls, both Hebrew and Christian, have fed the flame of devotion by interpreting the So as an allegory.
Cheyne suggests (EB, I, 683 f) that the So was too joyous to be used, in its natural sense, by the Jews after the destruction of Jerusalem, and hence, they consecrated it by allegorical interpretation. The suggestion may contain an element of truth.
It is an interesting fact that the Psalter has so few expressions in which love to Yahweh is expressed (
Christian scholars found it easy to follow the Jewish allegorical interpreters; for the figure of wedlock is employed in the New Testament by both Paul and John to represent the intimate and vital union of Christ and His church (
The entire body of true believers is conceived of as the bride of Christ. Naturally the purity of the church is sullied through the impure conduct of the individuals of whom it is composed. Hence, the appeal to individuals and to local churches to live pure lives (
Sober inquiry discovers no sufficient justification of the allegorical interpretation of the So of Songs. The pages of the mystical commentators are filled with artificial interpretations and conceits. Many of them practice a familiarity with Christ that is without example in the Biblical devotional literature.
2. The Typical Interpretation:
The allegorical interpreters, for the most part, saw in the So of Songs no historic basis. Solomon and the Shulammite are introduced merely as figures through whom God and His people, or Christ and the soul, can express their mutual love. In modern times interpreters have arisen who regard the So as primarily the expression of strong and passionate human love between Solomon and a beautiful maiden, but by virtue of the typical relation of the old dispensation, secondarily, the fitting expression of the love of Christ and the church.
The way for this modern typical interpretation was prepared by Lowth (Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews, Lectionaries XXX, XXXI) in his modified allegorical view, which is thus described by Canon Driver: "Bishop Lowth, though not abandoning the allegorical view, sought to free it from its extravagances; and while refusing to press details, held that the poem, while describing the actual nuptials of Solomon with the daughter of Pharaoh, contained also an allegoric reference to Christ espousing a church chosen from among the Gentiles" (LOT, 451). Few interpreters have been found to follow Theodore of Mopsuestia and Lowth in their view that the So celebrates the marriage of Solomon and an Egyptian princess; and Lowth’s notion of a reference to the espousal of a church chosen from among the Gentiles is one of the curiosities of criticism. Of the typical interpreters Delitzsch is perhaps the ablest (Commentary on Ecclesiastes and the So of Songs).
The typical commentators are superior to the allegorical in their recognition of Canticles as the expression of the mutual love of two human beings. The further application of the language to Yahweh and His people (Keil), or to Christ and the church (Delitzsch), or to God and the soul (M. Stuart) becomes largely a matter of individual taste, interpreters differing widely in details.
3. The Literal Interpretation:
Jewish interpreters were deterred from the literal interpretation of Canticles by the anathema in the Mishna upon all who should treat the poem as a secular song (Sanhedhrin, 101a). Cheyne says of Ibn Ezra, a great medieval Jewish scholar, he "is so thorough in his literal exegesis that it is doubtful whether he is serious when he proceeds to allegorize." Among Christian scholars Theodore of Mopsuestia interpreted Canticles as a song in celebration of the marriage of Solomon and Pharaoh’s daughter. This strictly literal interpretation of the So was condemned at the second council of Constantinople (553 AD). For the next thousand years the allegorical theory reigned supreme among Christian interpreters. In 1544 Sebastian Castellio revived the literal theory of the Song, though the allegorical view remained dominant until the 19th century.
Herder in 1778 published a remarkable little treatise entitled Lieder der Liebe, die altesten und schonsten aus dem Morgenlande, in which he advanced theory that Canticles is a collection of independent erotic songs, about 21 in number, which have been so arranged by a collector as to trace "the gradual growth of true love in its various nuances and stages, till it finds its consummation in wedlock" (Cheyne). But the greatest and most influential advocate of the literal interpretation of Canticles was Heinrich Ewald, who published the 1st edition of his commentary in 1826. It was Ewald who first developed and made popular theory that two suitors compete for the hand of the Shulammite, the one a shepherd and poor, the other a wise and wealthy king. In the So he ascribes to Solomon 1:9-11,15; 2:2; 4:1-7; 6:4-13 (quoting the dialogue between the Shulammite and the ladies of the court in 6:10-13); 7:1-9. To the shepherd lover he assigns few verses, and these are repeated by the Shulammite in her accounts of imaginary or real interviews with her lover. In the following passages the lover described is supposed to be the shepherd to whom the Shulammite had plighted her troth: 1:2-7,9-14; 1:16-2:1; 2:3-7,8-17; 3:1-5; 4:8-5:1; 5:2-8; 5:10-16; 6:2 f; 7:10-8:4; 8:5-14. The shepherd lover is thus supposed to be present in the Shulammite’s dreams, and in her waking moments she is ever thinking of him and describing to herself and others his many charms. Not until the closing scene (
Within the past quarter of a century the unity of Canticles has been again sharply challenged. An account of the customs of the Syrian peasants in connection with weddings was given by the Prussian consul at Damascus, J. G. Wetzstein, in 1873, in an article in Bastian’s Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 270 ff, on "Die syrische Dreschtafel," in which he illustrated the Old Testament from modern Syrian customs. Driver thus describes the customs that are supposed to throw light upon Canticles: "In modern Syria, the first seven days after a wedding are called the `king’s week’; the young pair play during this time king and queen; the `threshing-board’ is turned into a mock-throne, on which they are seated, while songs are sung before them by the villagers and others, celebrating them on their happiness, among which the watsf, or poetical `description’ of the physical beauty of the bride and bridegroom, holds a prominent place. The first of these watsfs is sung on the evening of the wedding-day itself: brandishing a naked sword in her right hand, and with a handkerchief in her left, the bride dances in her wedding array, lighted by fires, and surrounded by a circle of guests, half men and half women, accompanying her dance with a watsf in praise of her charms" (LOT, 452). Wetzstein suggested the view that Canticles was composed of the wedding-songs sung during "the king’s week." This theory has been most fully elaborated by Budde in an article in the New World, March, 1894, and in his commentary (1898). According to Budde, the bridegroom is called King Solomon, and the bride Shulammith. The companions of the bridegroom are the 60 valiant men who form his escort (
V. Closing Hints and Suggestions.
Having given a good deal of attention to Canticles during the past 15 years, the author of this article wishes to record a few of his views and impressions.
(1) Canticles is lyric poetry touched with the dramatic spirit. It is not properly classed as drama, for the Hebrews had no stage, though much of the Old Testament is dramatic in spirit. The descriptions of the charms of the lovers were to be sung or chanted.
(2) The amount that has to be read between the lines by the advocates of the various dramatic theories is so great that, in the absence of any hints in the body of the book itself, reasonable certitude can never be attained. (3) The correct translation of the refrain in
`I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
By the gazelles, or by the hinds of the field,
That ye stir not up, nor awaken love,
Until it please.’Love between man and woman should not be excited by unnatural stimulants, but should be free and spontaneous. In
`I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
Why do ye stir up, or awaken love,
Until it please?’That this refrain is in keeping with the purpose of the writer is clear from the striking words toward the close of the book:
"Set me as a seal upon thy heart,
As a seal upon thine arm:
For love is strong as death;
Jealousy is cruel as Sheol;
The flashes thereof are flashes of fire,
A very flame of Yahweh.
Many waters cannot quench love,
Neither can floods drown it:
If a man would give all the substance of his house for love,
He would utterly be contemned" (
(4) Canticles discloses all the secret intimacies of wedded life without becoming obscene. The imagery is too sensuous for our taste in western lands, so that words of caution are often timely, lest the sensuous degenerate into the sensual; but I have been told by several Syrian and Palestinian students whom I have had the privilege of teaching, that Canticles is considered quite chaste among their people, the wedding-songs now in use among them being more minute in their description of the physical charms of the lovers.
(5) Canticles is by no means excluded from the Canon by the acceptance of the literal interpretation. Ewald’s theory makes it an ethical treatise of great and permanent value. Even if Canticles is merely a collection of songs describing the bliss of true lovers in wedlock, it is not thereby rendered unworthy of a place in the Bible, unless marriage is to be regarded as a fall from a state of innocency. If Canticles should be rejected because of its sensuous imagery in describing the joys of passionate lovers, portions of Proverbs would also have to be excised (
LITERATURE.
C. D. Ginsburg, The So of Songs, with a Commentary, Historical and Critical, 1857; H. Ewald, Dichter des Alten Bundes, III, 333-426, 1867; F. C. Cook, in Biblical Commentary, 1874; Franz Delitzsch, Hoheslied u. Koheleth, 1875 (also translation); O. Zockler, in Lange’s Comm., 1875; S. Oettli, Kurzgefasster Kommentar, 1889; W. E. Griffis, The Lily among Thorns, 1890; J. W. Rothstein, Das Hohe Lied, 1893; K. Budde, article in New World, March, 1894. and Kommentar, 1898; C. Siegfried, Prediger u. Hoheslied, 1898; A. Harper, in Cambridge Bible, 1902; G. C. Martin, in Century Bible, 1908; article on "Canticles" by Cheyne in EB, 1899.