Sermon Tone Analysis

“The Song of Songs, which is Solomon's.

May he kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!

For your love is better than wine.”

One does not have to get far into this obscure little book, “The Song of Solomon,” before one gets the idea that this is no ordinary biblical book.

2.14 - “Oh my dove, in the clefts of the rock, In the secret place of the steep pathway, Let me see your form, Let me hear your voice; For your voice is sweet, and your form is lovely.”

4.1 - “How beautiful you are, my darling, How beautiful you are!

Your eyes are like doves behind your veil; Your hair is lock a flock of goats that have descended from Mount Gilead.”

5,10 - “My beloved is dazzling and ruddy, Outstanding among ten thousand.

His head is like gold, pure gold; His locks are like clusters of dates and black as a raven.”

And on and on it goes.

What are we to make of this strange, strange book so different from any other book in the Bible.

The name of God is never mentioned in the Song of Solomon.

It is never referred to by New Testament writers.

It seems to be mainly concerned with Solomon and some woman that he is in love with.

It is poetical.

It is written in the form and expressing the values of  Ancient Near East cultures, which is very distant culturally from our own.

What possible purpose could Solomon have for writing the book in the first place, and why is it in the canon of Scripture?

I want to introduce this great, beautiful book to you this evening.

I will do that mainly by investigating three main ways of interpreting this book.

I will weigh in on what my opinion of how this book should be interpreted, and then I will finish by asking the question, “Why is it important how we interpret this book?”

The church of Jesus Christ in America, at least, and in most of the West, I would argue, has lost something, and it is my belief that if we recover the Song of Solomon, if we understand it as it was meant to be understood, that we will begin to recover what we have lost.

Historically, this little book was not nearly as neglected as it is today.

Verses from within it were memorized and quoted and written down.

Of all the Old Testament books, in the course of history, no book as had more commentaries written about it than this little book.

It was a treasure of comfort to Christians in difficulty, but somehow we have come to neglect it.

There has been some renaissance lately of interest in this book, which one might think would be a good thing, but I am going to argue the opposite.

We have renewed interest in this book for what I believe are all the wrong reasons.

I am very concerned about this, I do not take that fact lightly, and this is why I take up the subject.

I said there were three main interpretations of this book.

The first interpretation is what is known as the allegorical interpretation.

James Durham, in his excellent commentary on the book, which I highly recommend, by the way, explains what is meant by interpreting the Song allegorically.

He writes: “This song is not to be taken literally, that is, as the words do at first sound; but it is to be taken spiritually, figuratively, and allegorically, as having some spiritual meaning.”

Now, what does he mean by that.

He means that, while written in the form of a love poem between Solomon and an unnamed Shulammite bride, it is not to be taken that way.

Durham again: “The divine mystery intended, and set forth here, is the mutual love and spiritual communion that is betwixt Christ and the Church.”

So what the Song intends, and the way we are to interpret it, is that it is written in a love poem, but what is to be understood is not love between Solomon and his bride, but Solomon is representative of Christ, and the woman is representative of the Church, or if we want to take it even more personally, of the individual believer.

So it works out the love Christ has for the church, and the love the church, his bride has for Christ.

Probably the best known allegory that most of us are familiar with is the book series, “The Chronicles of Narnia,” written by C. S. Lewis, which is an allegory.

Aslan the lion represents Christ, and the White witch represents Satan, and the four kids represent all humans, etc. etc. etc.

So it is not a “neat” story, a neat fantasy story, but it is meant to convey truth in an unusual way, which it certainly does.

We know this is an allegory because C. S. Lewis told us it was.

One strength of this interpretation is that , historically, the allegorical interpretation of the Song, was the accepted interpretation.

The church is virtually unanimous, or almost so, up until the 19th century in accepting the allegorical interpretation as the correct understanding of the Song.

John Owen, the famous puritan theologian accepted this interpretation.

Jonathan Edwards understood the Song this way, as did Charles Spurgeon, John Newton, John Gill, Matthew Henry, and we could go on and on and on.

My point is that some good strong men and women of faith have held to the allegorical understanding of the Song.

Another strength of this interpretation is that it attempts to be faithful to Christ's words in John 5.39 - “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me.”

So we go back to the Song and say, does this Song speak of Christ?

How does it?

The allegorical interpretation answers that question.

The allegorical interpretation has generally fallen out of favor with theologians today.

Its greatest weakness is that it cannot come to some consensus on what all the imagery in the Song means.

Here is one commentators thoughts: “Church interpretation, in spite of 2000 years labour, has yet brought to light no sure results, but only numberless absurdities, especially where the Song describes the lovers according to their members from head to foot and from foot to head.”

James Durham, bless his heart, in his commentary, has to bend over backwards to explains some of the imagery in the Song.

For instance, 6.8, “There are 60 queens and 80 concubines, and maidens without number, but my Dove, my perfect one is unique.”

He writes: By queens, concubines, and virgins then, we understand believers of different growths and degrees.

Now, I am sorry, but that stretches things too far for me, I do not see it that way, and I don't think many others would either.

I do not hold to the allegorical view of the Song, although, as we shall see, I do not think they are far off of the truth.

The second interpretation is what I call the, “What You See Is What You Get,” interpretation.

That is, it is an oriental love poem because it is meant to be an oriental love poem.

It is Solomon pouring out his love for this Shulammite woman, and in doing so, his purpose is to describe for us, a holy, pure, love for his bride to be.

That God intended this book to be, the marriage manual to end all marriage manuals.

One well known preacher captures this understanding as to the Song's purpose quite well.

“The Song of Solomon is preemintently the cry of the body in its essential yearning.

And what is the essential yearning of the body?

For love.

Therefore the theme of this book is love…It is a revelation of all that was intended in the divinely given function that we call sex.

It is sex as God intended sex to be, involving not just a physical activity, but the whole nature of the man.

Another writer put it this way, it is a “vision of love and friendship, passion and respect, sexual and emotional intimacy - in one fulfilling relationship.”

There are certain strengths to this interpretation.

One is that it makes the book easy to interpret.

It is all about love and relationships.

Who can argue that believers what with all the garbage in the culture need to be exposed to a pure, vital love relationship and what that looks like.

This interpretation is the one that theologians and pastors generally hold to these days.

While researching this sermon I would say that this view is held by 80 to  90% of pastors and theologians, at least of the ones whom I read.

I do not hold this view.

I reject it, and I reject it quite strongly for several reasons.

I think it is important to lay out clearly why I reject this view because I think it has such strong consequences for the church at large.

First, I reject this view because to hold it you have to say that Solomon uses the obvious to explain the obvious.

What I mean by that is that Solomon had no deeper meaning when he was writing this great love poem, than the love of a man for a woman.

Now I am not saying that that is not an important object of a poem.

It certainly is.

What I am saying is that, to hold this view, you have to say, here we have the wisest person that has ever lived in the history of the world.

God specially grants Solomon wisdom.  1 Kings 3.12, “Behold, I have given you a wise and discerning heart, so that there has been no one like you before you, nor shall one like you arise after you.”

Now stop and ponder the import of those words.

In terms of wisdom, no person will ever be wiser than Solomon.

Ever.

So to hold the “marriage manual” view of the Song, you have to say that the greatest Song ever written, by the wisest man who ever lived, has no deeper meaning than the plain, obvious meaning of the words.

No one writes poetry like that.

When you write poetry, you do not use the obvious to explain the obvious.

You write so that it makes people think, slows them down, and gets them to say, “what is going on here.”

It gets them to stop and reflect.

The beauty of Proverbs is that, the longer you linger over each individual proverb, the deeper you see the meaning of the proverb.

I am not, by nature, a very reflective person.

Reflective people do not make good Marines.

When your Commanding Officer tells you to do a frontal assault on a heavily fortified enemy position, because that is what the situation requires, it does not pay for you to be very reflective.

You just have to do what is required and hope for the best.

I had an English class in college where we were reading the poems of Robert Frost.

We were discussing this one poem, the title of which escapes me, which talked about normal rural New England themes, for which Robert Frost is so well-known.

So we get to class and the professor says, “what is the meaning of this poem.”