Song of Solomon Part 2 (Autosaved)

THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY

Song of Solomon

Part 2

"An Hour of Temptation, and

An Hour of Tenderness"

Last time as we began our journey through the Song of Solomon, we identified the main characters of the story as follows:

The shepherd in the story pictures Christ Jesus, that Great Shepherd of the sheep. The Shulamite represents the church or the individual believer who is devoted to Him. Solomon represents the Prince of this world. He uses worldly pomp, power and magnificence in an attempt to win the heart of the Shulamite.

The court women represent those who admire this worldly prince; they resemble the citizens of our world who look askance at those who turn their backs upon the world in order to have a relationship with the shepherd.

It is important to remember that, aside from the Book of Revelation, no other book in Scripture has more divergent interpretations than the Song of Solomon.

Even in some of your Bibles, the translator has provided headings to guide you into who is doing the talking at a given time. Keep in mind that those headings are not from the original text; they are the translators interpretation and are not infallible.

The interpretation we have chosen for this series presupposes that the Song of Solomon begins with the Shulamite having been brought into the chambers of Solomon against her will. She had been a shepherdess caring for her flock in the fields when Solomon spotted her and decided to add her to his harem.

But there was a problem. She was already in love with the shepherd, who is a picture of Christ Jesus. Hence, she resists Solomon’s advances.

So what we have in this beautiful poem is a metaphor of Christ and His church, and of the Tempter and his minions and their attempts to draw us away from our Shepherd.

We ended last time with the Shulamite longing for the freedom she had once known to meet with her beloved, the shepherd, unencumbered by distractions.

Her own brothers had not approved of the Shepherd, and had separated the two by removing the Shulamite from the fields and putting her to work in a vineyard.

From there she was further separated from him by being taken to Solomon’s pavilion. She longs to be with the love of her soul. The women of Solomon’s court (a picture of the world) cannot understand her unwillingness to take advantage of the “incredible opportunity” to be Solomon’s.

In verse 8, they mock her by suggesting she go hang out at the lowly shepherd tents where she might bump into him.

Now in this section of the Song, we will see what happened when Solomon, in all of his glory and armed with all of his personal charm and power, makes his first brazen attempt to seduce the Shulamite from her Shepherd.

Solomon is no type of Christ in this Song; he is a type of the tempter. What he offers the Shulamite is similar to what the archtempter offers to us. Satan always seeks to use the world to draw the church away from its loyalty to the Lord.

Solomon begins with flattery: “I have compared you, my love, to my filly among Pharaoh’s chariots” (1:9). One translator puts it like this: “To a mare of mine in the chariots of Pharaoh have I likened you, my fair one.”

Ironically, this likely didn’t gain many points with her. The horse was considered an unclean animal in Israel. Solomon did better with the next pick up line:

“Your cheeks are lovely with ornaments, your neck with chains of gold” (1:10).

Here he is likely referring to the jewelry the court women had adorned her with, not her natural beauty. In Bible times, the headdress of an Oriental woman was often adorned with dangling beads or small ornaments such as coins.

Solomon had tried to embellish the natural beauty of the Shulamite. So he was actually admiring his own handiwork. Already, he was attempting to conform her to the “look” of his world.

Our enemy does no less. Through flattery (Aren’t you beautiful! Aren’t you talented), the world seeks to lure us into conformity to its ways. Dress like us, talk like us, walk like us, think like us.

It is interesting that what Solomon put on the Shulamite was “chains of gold.” Golden chains, but chains nevertheless! Any time we conform to this world, we allow chains to be wrapped around us. Hence Paul’s warning, “Be not conformed to this world…” (Ro. 12:2)

The Shulamite was not impressed. His sweet words fell on deaf ears. She had no need for the trinkets he had placed around her neck. And we as Christ’s bride, the church, need nothing the world can give. We are made beautiful in His salvation!

But Solomon isn’t finished. He takes it a step further by offering her a crown of gold etched in silver:

“We will make you ornaments of gold with studs of silver” (1:11).

In the Bible, gold is linked with sovereignty, and silver with salvation. First, the gold. We associate gold with rule and riches.

This is exactly what Satan offered Jesus in the wilderness temptation. He took him to the top of a high mountain and showed him “all the kingdoms of the world and their glory” (Matt. 4:8). What was he offering? Rule and riches! But it was with a high price. “If you fall down and worship me.” (vs. 9)

This was Solomon’s tactic. “Let me adorn you with gold, bedeck you with silver!” But if she had yielded to his offer, she must be his. This she refused. No amount of worldly wealth could have ever compensated her for the betrayal of her true love, the Shepherd.

But he also offered her silver. Silver is frequently used as a symbol of salvation in Scripture. Both Joseph and Jesus were sold for silver, highlighting the fact that silver symbolizes the price of life.

Silver is pure and unsullied. It is resistant to corrosion and can withstand the fiercest heat of the refiner’s fire. Hence, silver is a beautiful picture of the sterling life of the Lord Jesus Christ, given up for our redemption.

Just as gold offered to the Shulamite by Solomon represented rule and riches, so the silver he offered her represented an offer of false religion and not true redemption.

If she had taken the silver, it would have been as tragic as Joseph’s brothers taking silver for his life, and Judas taking silver for Jesus’ life. It was silver offered at the price of the denial of her beloved.

The Shulamite turned coldly away from the promises of her tempter. In contrast to the true love she had with her beloved, what Solomon had to offer was trash.

Now we come to An Hour of Tenderness.

As we begin this section, the Shulamite is a virtual prisoner in Solomon’s pavilion. Now the shepherd finally comes to her. How he does this the story doesn’t say.

He makes no attempt to get her away from her circumstances. He simply seeks to strengthen and encourage her, and to assure her of his love, as the Lord Jesus does so often for us in time of trial.

While it is sometimes difficult to decide who is speaking, a clue is found in the gender of the pronouns used. The speaker in the next passage is female. The Shulamite is speaking.

1:12 “While the king is at his table, my spikenard sends forth its fragrance.”

It is likely that “spikenard” her term of endearment for the shepherd. Calling him her spikenard, the Shulamite is saying that he was like the lingering fragrance of costly perfume.

She then gives expression of her love in two ways: First, she rejoices in her prospect:

“A bundle of myrrh is my beloved to me, that lies all night between my breasts” (1:13). Myrrh was a fragrant perfume. It was also an ingredient in the holy anointing oil.

Myrrh reminded her of the shepherd. So much so that she even slept with a portion of it close to her heart. Until she had him in person—which was her prospect—the myrrh served as his reminder.

Then she rejoices in his person:

1:14 “My beloved is to me a cluster of henna blooms in the vineyards of En Gedi.”

Henna was also known as cypress flowers. They grow abundantly in the Holy Land and are used to create beautiful bouquets. Engedi is a town that is sometimes called “the city of palm trees.”

It is located on the shore of the Dead Sea, just on the edge of the wilderness. While in a desolate location, it is saved from barrenness by the presence of a spring.

Because of this spring, vineyards grew in this region. And in these vineyards the Henna flowers flourished. Thus, the henna flowers of Engedi symbolize beauty where one would expect barrenness.

The Shulamite sees her shepherd like these henna flowers, growing in a vineyard on the edge of the wilderness. And her relationship with him also caused her to blossom, even in the wilderness of Solomon’s pavilion.

Like the Shulamite, we also as Christ’s bride should hug him to our hearts, cleaving to the fragrant myrrh of His Word and Spirit, rejoicing in the prospect of soon being with Him at His return!

And let us rejoice in His person. He is like the bubbling spring that feeds our soul while we walk out our life in a spiritually barren world.

Next, the shepherd and the Shulamite talk to each other, and each tells the other of their beauty. He thinks of her, then she thinks of him. First, the shepherd thinks of her and thinks of peace:

1:15 “Behold, you are fair, my love! Behold, you are fair! You have dove’s eyes.”

The dove is the unvarying symbol of peace in Scripture. It was a dove that brought back to Noah the olive twig, informing him that the waters of wrath had abated. The Holy Spirit—the Spirit of peace—descended on Jesus in the form of a dove.

When the shepherd looked at the Shulamite, she brought peace to his soul. Then, the Shulamite looks at him and thinks of paradise.

1:16 “Behold, you are handsome, my beloved! Yes, pleasant! Also our bed is green.”

She’s looking forward to their honeymoon, which she dreams of taking place in some secret, shady forest. For her it will be paradise to finally be with him. Then she talks of the place she imagines they will live:

1:17 “The beams of our houses are cedar, and our rafters of fir.”

She did not need to pomp and splendor of Solomon’s wealth. All she needed to be filled with bliss was a clearing in the forest and a house of cedar. It will be glorious to her because of his presence there!

Next, the Shulamite expresses a problem starting in Chapter 2.

2:1 “I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.”

The problem was that she could only see herself as a simple flower of the meadow. It could read, “I am only a blossom of the plain.” She wondered how he, her wonderful shepherd, could see anything in her at all!

And don’t we, as our great Shepherd’s bride, think the same thing at times? In times of failure we wonder how he could still love us. We often don’t feel worthy of his love. He is so perfect, and we are not.

We see ourselves as the Shulamite did—as just a wayside weed, a creature of the humble valley. Yet the shepherd responds with encouraging words that we will look at next time.