Song of Solomon

What the Song of Solomon is about

The Song of Solomon — also called the Song of Songs, a Hebrew way of saying the greatest of songs — is love poetry. Two lovers speak, mostly to each other, sometimes to a chorus of friends, in language that is unhurried, sensual, and entirely unembarrassed. There is no plot to speak of. There is longing, searching, praise of the beloved’s body, separation, reunion.

Its presence in the canon has always provoked comment, and that is worth facing directly rather than tiptoeing around. The book says, without qualification, that romantic and physical love between a husband and wife is good — a created good, worth celebrating in poetry of this quality. Very few religious texts of its era or ours say so this warmly.

Its most quoted lines come near the end, and they raise the stakes considerably: Set me as a seal upon your heart… for love is strong as death. Whatever else the Song is doing, it is claiming that this kind of love is among the most serious things in the world.

How it has been read

Christians have read the Song in two main ways, and both have long and respected histories. The plain reading takes it as what it appears to be: poetry celebrating married love, included in scripture because that love is God’s design and not an embarrassment to it. The allegorical or typological reading — dominant for much of church history, and still cherished in many traditions — hears in it the love between God and his people, or Christ and the church, a picture the prophets and the New Testament both use elsewhere.

These readings are not mutually exclusive, and many Christians hold both: the love is real love, and real love is the sort of thing God uses to describe himself. This site does not adjudicate between them.

Why it is worth reading

Because the Bible’s picture of human life is fuller than many readers expect, and the Song is the proof. For anyone who has absorbed the idea that scripture is uneasy about desire, eight chapters here will do more correcting than any argument.