Summary: Bible - Song of Solomon

The GIST

The Song of Solomon, also called the Song of Songs, is unlike anything else in the Bible. It is a book of love poetry, eight short chapters in which a woman and a man speak to and about each other with open delight and longing. There is no law in it, no history, no prophecy, and God is not its stated subject. There is a vineyard, a garden, a city at night, spring arriving after winter, and two voices trading praise. Its opening line gives the title: "The song of songs, which is Solomon's." In Hebrew idiom that phrase means the best of all songs, as the holy of holies is the holiest place.

How such a book came to be Scripture, and what it means there, has been argued for two thousand years. Jewish tradition has read it as the love between God and Israel, and Christian tradition as the love between Christ and the Church. Most modern scholars read it as what it appears to be, a celebration of love and desire between a woman and a man. It has survived all its interpreters and remains among the most beautiful poems in any language.

What It Says

The Song has no plot in the ordinary sense. It moves by scenes, moods and refrains, and scholars do not agree on how to divide it. What follows goes through it in order.

The woman speaks (chapter 1). The poem begins in the middle of desire, in the woman's voice: "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine." She describes herself to the daughters of Jerusalem, the chorus who listen throughout. She is dark from the sun, "black, but comely," because her mother's children made her keep the vineyards, and her own vineyard she has not kept. She asks her beloved where he pastures his flock at noon, and he answers playfully that she should follow the tracks of the sheep. Then the compliments begin, each trying to outdo the other. To him she is like the horses of Pharaoh's chariots. To her he is a bundle of myrrh, a cluster of blossoms in the vineyards of Engedi.

Lily and apple tree (chapter 2). "I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys," she says, and he replies that among other women she is a lily among thorns. He, to her, is an apple tree among the trees of the forest, in whose shade she sits with delight. "He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love." She is faint with love. Here the first refrain appears, addressed to the chorus: "I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please." Love is not to be forced or hurried.

Then comes a celebrated song of spring. She hears him coming, leaping on the mountains like a roe or a young hart, standing behind the wall and looking through the lattice. "Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away." And then: "For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone." Flowers appear, birds sing, the fig tree ripens. The scene ends with a line of mutual belonging that will return: "My beloved is mine, and I am his."

The search by night (chapter 3). The mood changes. "By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not." She rises and goes through the streets, asks the watchmen, and just past them finds him and will not let him go until she has brought him to her mother's house. The refrain to the daughters of Jerusalem is repeated. Then, abruptly, there is a pageant: a procession coming up from the wilderness in clouds of myrrh and frankincense, the litter of King Solomon surrounded by sixty armed men, and the king wearing the crown of his wedding day.

The beloved described (chapters 4 and 5:1). Now the man speaks at length, praising her from the head down in images drawn from the countryside. Her eyes are doves, her hair a flock of goats streaming down Mount Gilead, her teeth newly washed sheep, her lips a scarlet thread, her neck the tower of David hung with shields. "Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee." She has stolen his heart with one glance. Then the central image of the book: "A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed." The garden is full of pomegranates, spices and running water. She answers by calling on the winds to blow on her garden and inviting him in. He comes, and a voice urges the lovers to eat and drink their fill.

The second search (chapters 5 and 6). A second night scene is darker than the first. "I sleep, but my heart waketh." He knocks, his hair wet with dew. She hesitates, and when she opens the door he is gone. She goes out to look for him, and this time the watchmen beat her and take her veil. She begs the daughters of Jerusalem to tell him she is sick with love. They ask what makes him so special, and now it is her turn to describe: he is radiant and ruddy, "the chiefest among ten thousand," his head like gold, his hair black as a raven, his body like ivory and marble. "This is my beloved, and this is my friend." Where has he gone? Down to his garden, she says, and the refrain returns reversed: "I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine."

He praises her again. She is as beautiful as the cities of Tirzah and Jerusalem and as overwhelming as an army with banners. There may be sixty queens and eighty concubines, but she is the only one.

The dance and the invitation (chapter 7). She is called back, addressed as the Shulamite, and praised once more, this time from the feet upward: her feet in their shoes, the curve of her thighs, her neck like an ivory tower, her eyes like the pools of Heshbon, her head like Mount Carmel. She is like a palm tree, and he will climb it. She replies, "I am my beloved's, and his desire is toward me," and invites him out into the fields and vineyards at daybreak to see whether the vines have budded.

Love and death (chapter 8). She wishes she could show her love openly, as one may kiss a brother in the street. The refrain is given a last time. Then comes the passage in which the Song states its theme outright: "Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave." Its flames are fire. "Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it." A man who offered all his wealth for it would be utterly scorned. The poem closes with a few short pieces: an exchange about guarding a little sister, the woman's confident answer, a comparison between Solomon's rich vineyard and her own, which is hers to give, and a last call to her beloved to hurry to her like a young hart on the mountains of spices.

Why It Matters

The Song gives love poetry a place in sacred Scripture, and that fact alone has shaped how Jews and Christians think about the body and desire. It presents love between a man and a woman as mutual. She speaks first and last and at greatest length, she seeks as much as she is sought, and the language of belonging runs in both directions. Modern feminist critics have treated it as a key text for that reason.

Its presence in the canon was contested. Some ancient rabbis were uneasy about it, and its acceptance was tied to its attribution to Solomon and to reading it as an allegory. Rabbi Akiva, in the first and second centuries, defended it in the strongest terms: all the Writings are holy, he said, but the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies. He also condemned singing it in taverns like an ordinary song. In Judaism the allegorical reading, God's love for Israel, was dominant for more than a thousand years, the book became central to Jewish mysticism, and it is read at Passover. In Christianity, from Origen onward, it was read as the love of Christ for the Church or of God for the individual soul; Gregory of Nyssa preached fifteen homilies on it, and later the bride was also identified with the Virgin Mary. A literal reading, proposed early on by Theodore of Mopsuestia, was condemned, and only returned to favor in modern times.

Scholars now mostly hold that it is erotic poetry celebrating human love, with parallels in Egyptian and Mesopotamian love songs. The heading connects it with Solomon, but its language points to a much later date, and most place it around the third century BCE. Whether it is one poem or an anthology is still debated.

Who Should Read It

Read the Song of Solomon if you love poetry, or if you want to see how frankly and joyfully the Bible can speak about love. It takes less than half an hour and is best read aloud. It suits couples, anyone interested in the long history of allegorical reading, and readers who have assumed that Scripture has nothing warm to say about desire.