Song of Solomon

THE

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INTRODUCTION

The Song of Solomon, called in the Vulgate and Septuagint, "The Song of Songs," from the opening words. This title denotes its

superior excellence, according to the Hebrew idiom; so

holy of holies, equivalent to "most holy"

(Ex 29:37);

the heaven of heavens, equivalent to the highest heavens

(De 10:14).

It is one of the five volumes (megilloth) placed immediately

after the Pentateuch in manuscripts of the Jewish Scriptures. It is

also fourth of the Hagiographa (Cetubim, writings) or the third

division of the Old Testament, the other two being the Law and the

Prophets. The Jewish enumeration of the Cetubim is Psalms,

Proverbs, Job, Canticles, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther,

Daniel, Ezra (including Nehemiah), and Chronicles. Its

canonicity is certain; it is found in all Hebrew

manuscripts of Scripture; also in the Greek Septuagint; in the

catalogues of MELITO, bishop of Sardis, A.D. 170 (EUSEBIUS,

Ecclesiastical History, 4.26), and of others of the ancient

Church.

ORIGEN and JEROME tell us

that the Jews forbade it to be read by any until he was thirty years

old. It certainly needs a degree of spiritual maturity to enter aright

into the holy mystery of love which it allegorically sets forth. To

such as have attained this maturity, of whatever age they be, the Song

of Songs is one of the most edifying of the sacred writings. ROSENMULLER justly says, The sudden transitions of the

bride from the court to the grove are inexplicable, on the supposition

that it describes merely human love. Had it been the latter, it would

have been positively objectionable, and never would have been inserted

in the holy canon. The allusion to "Pharaoh's chariots"

(So 1:9)

has been made a ground for conjecturing that the love of Solomon and

Pharaoh's daughter is the subject of the Song. But this passage

alludes to a remarkable event in the history of the Old Testament

Church, the deliverance from the hosts and chariots of Pharaoh at the

Red Sea. (However, see on

So 1:9).

The other allusions are quite opposed to the notion; the bride is

represented at times as a shepherdess

(So 1:7),

"an abomination to the Egyptians"

(Ge 46:34);

so also

So 1:6; 3:4; 4:8; 5:7

are at variance with it. The Christian fathers, ORIGEN and THEODORET, compared the

teachings of Solomon to a ladder with three steps; Ecclesiastes,

natural (the nature of sensible things, vain); Proverbs, moral;

Canticles, mystical (figuring the union of Christ and the Church). The

Jews compared Proverbs to the outer court of Solomon's temple,

Ecclesiastes to the holy place, and Canticles to the holy of holies.

Understood allegorically, the Song is cleared of all difficulty.

"Shulamith"

(So 6:13),

the bride, is thus an appropriate name, Daughter of Peace being

the feminine of Solomon, equivalent to the Prince of Peace. She

consort and daughter, and He a suppliant drenched with night dews, and

a king in His palace, in harmony with the various relations of the

Church and Christ. As Ecclesiastes sets forth the vanity of love of the

creature, Canticles sets forth the fullness of the love which joins

believers and the Saviour. The entire economy of salvation, says HARRIS, aims at restoring to the world the lost spirit of

love. God is love, and Christ is the embodiment of the love of God. As

the other books of Scripture present severally their own aspects of

divine truth, so Canticles furnishes the believer with language of holy

love, wherewith his heart can commune with his Lord; and it portrays

the intensity of Christ's love to him; the affection of love was

created in man to be a transcript of the divine love, and the Song

clothes the latter in words; were it not for this, we should be at a

loss for language, having the divine warrant, wherewith to express,

without presumption, the fervor of the love between Christ and us. The

image of a bride, a bridegroom, and a marriage, to represent this

spiritual union, has the sanction of Scripture throughout; nay, the

spiritual union was the original fact in the mind of God, of

which marriage is the transcript

(Isa 54:5; 62:5;

Jer 3:1,

&c.; Eze 16:1-63; 23:1-49;

Mt 9:15;

22:2; 25:1,

&c.; Joh 3:29;

2Co 11:2;

Eph 5:23-32,

where Paul does not go from the marriage relation to the union of

Christ and the Church as if the former were the first; but comes down

from the latter as the first and best recognized fact on which the

relation of marriage is based;

Re 19:7; 21:2; 22:17).

Above all, the Song seems to correspond to, and form a trilogy with,

Psalms 45 and 72,

which contain the same imagery; just as

Psalm 37

answers to Proverbs, and the

Psalms 39 and 73

to Job. Love to Christ is the strongest, as it is the purest, of human

passions, and therefore needs the strongest language to express it: to

the pure in heart the phraseology, drawn from the rich imagery of

Oriental poetry, will not only appear not indelicate or exaggerated,

but even below the reality. A single emblem is a type; the

actual rites, incidents, and persons of the Old Testament were

appointed types of truths afterwards to be revealed. But the

allegory is a continued metaphor, in which the circumstances are

palpably often purely imagery, while the thing signified is altogether

real. The clue to the meaning of the Song is not to be looked for in

the allegory itself, but in other parts of Scripture. "It lies in the

casket of revelation an exquisite gem, engraved with emblematical

characters, with nothing literal thereon to break the consistency of

their beauty" [BURROWES]. This accounts for the

name of God not occurring in it. Whereas in the parable the

writer narrates, in the allegory he never does so. The Song

throughout consists of immediate addresses either of Christ to the

soul, or of the soul to Christ. "The experimental knowledge of Christ's

loveliness and the believer's love is the best commentary on the whole

of this allegorical Song" [LEIGHTON]. Like the

curiously wrought Oriental lamps, which do not reveal the beauty of

their transparent emblems until lighted up within, so the types and

allegories of Scripture, "the lantern to our path"

[Ps 119:105],

need the inner light of the Holy Spirit of Jesus to reveal their

significance. The details of the allegory are not to be too minutely

pressed. In the Song, with an Oriental profusion of imagery, numbers of

lovely, sensible objects are aggregated not strictly congruous, but

portraying jointly by their very diversity the thousand various and

seemingly opposite beauties which meet together in Christ.

The unity of subject throughout, and the recurrence of the same

expressions

(So 2:6, 7;

3:5; 8:3, 4; 2:16; 6:3; 7:10; 3:6; 6:10; 8:5),

prove the unity of the poem, in opposition to those who make it consist

of a number of separate erotic songs. The sudden transitions (for

example, from the midnight knocking at a humble cottage to a glorious

description of the King) accord with the alternations in the believer's

experience. However various the divisions assigned be, most

commentators have observed four breaks (whatever more they have

imagined), followed by four abrupt beginnings

(So 2:7; 3:5; 5:1; 8:4).

Thus there result five parts, all alike ending in full repose and

refreshment. We read

(1Ki 4:32)

that Solomon's songs were "a thousand and five." The odd number

five added over the complete thousand makes it not

unlikely that the "five" refers to the Song of songs, consisting of

five parts.

It answers to the idyllic poetry of other nations. The Jews explain

it of the union of Jehovah and ancient Israel; the allusions to the

temple and the wilderness accord with this; some Christians of

Christ and the Church; others of Christ and the individual believer.

All these are true; for the Church is one in all ages, the ancient

typifying the modern Church, and its history answering to that of each

individual soul in it. Jesus "sees all, as if that all were one, loves

one, as if that one were all." "The time suited the manner of this

revelation; because types and allegories belonged to the old

dispensation, which reached its ripeness under Solomon, when the temple

was built" [MOODY

STUART]. "The daughter of Zion at that time was

openly married to Jehovah"; for it is thenceforth that the prophets, in

reproving Israel's subsequent sin, speak of it as a breach of her

marriage covenant. The songs heretofore sung by her were the

preparatory hymns of her childhood; "the last and crowning 'Song of

Songs' was prepared for the now mature maiden against the day of her

marriage to the King of kings" [ORIGEN].

Solomon was peculiarly fitted

to clothe this holy mystery with the lovely natural imagery with which

the Song abounds; for "he spake of trees, from the cedar in Lebanon,

even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall"

(1Ki 4:33).

A higher qualification was his knowledge of the eternal Wisdom or Word

of God

(Pr 8:1-36),

the heavenly bridegroom. David, his father, had prepared the way, in

Psalms 45 and 72;

the son perfected the allegory. It seems to have been written in early

life, long before his declension; for after it a song of holy gladness

would hardly be appropriate. It was the song of his first love, in the

kindness of his youthful espousals to Jehovah. Like other inspired

books, its sense is not to be restricted to that local and temporary

one in which the writer may have understood it; it extends to all ages,

and shadows forth everlasting truth

(1Pe 1:11, 12;

2Pe 1:20, 21).

"Oh that I knew how all thy lights combine, and the configurations of their glorie,

Seeing not only how each verse doth shine, but all the constellations of the storie."--HERBERT.

Three notes of time occur [MOODY

STUART]: (1) The Jewish Church

speaks of the Gentile Church

(So 8:8)

towards the end; (2) Christ speaks to the apostles

(So 5:1)

in the middle; (3) The Church speaks of the coming of Christ

(So 1:2)

at the beginning. Thus we have, in direct order, Christ about to come,

and the cry for the advent; Christ finishing His work on earth, and the

last supper; Christ ascended, and the call of the Gentiles. In another

aspect we have: (1) In the individual soul the longing for the

manifestation of Christ to it, and the various alternations in its

experience

(So 1:2, 4; 2:8; 3:1, 4, 6, 7)

of His manifestation; (2) The abundant enjoyment of His sensible

consolations, which is soon withdrawn through the bride's carelessness

(So 5:1-3,

&c.), and her longings after Him, and reconciliation

(So 5:8-16; 6:3,

&c.; So 7:1,

&c.);

(3) Effects of Christ's manifestation on the believer; namely,

assurance, labors of love, anxiety for the salvation of the impenitent,

eagerness for the Lord's second coming

(So 7:10, 12; 8:8-10, 14).