How Should the Book of Song of Solomon Be Interpreted?

Scholars and theologians have offered numerous suggestions to understand the challenging poetic message of the Song. Their presuppositions determine how the book is understood.

First, allegory has historically been the most common approach to the Song. Jewish tradition sees it as a story of God’s love for Israel. Christian tradition has seen it as Christ’s love for the Church. Although love is a key element in the Song, forcing an allegory strains the message of the text and imposes arbitrary meanings. Therefore, allegory has generally been rejected by modern scholarship as a valid approach to the Song.

Second, it is common to interpret the Song as a drama. As a drama, Solomon and the Shulammite (see comments at 6:13 for this name) have the main roles with a chorus as minor speakers. The lack of plotline in the Song and the subjective imposition of scenes make a dramatic reading forced. Most importantly, full-fledged dramatic literature of this type was not known among the ancient Israelites.

Third, some critical scholars see the Song as a sacred marriage story drawn from ancient pagan Near Eastern fertility cults. However, annual fertility rituals are absent from the Song. Furthermore, it is doubtful that the sacred monotheistic Scriptures would borrow from pagan fertility rituals.

Fourth, a common current interpretation of the genre of the Song is that it is an anthology of love poems. The Hebrew title of the book provides readers with a literary clue to the book’s genre—and therefore its interpretation. Shir Hashirim (the Song of Songs) is a collection of love poems or a song composed of many songs—thus a “song of songs.” Those who differ with this interpretation argue it fails to see the intrinsic unity in the Song as well as the intertextual links within it.

Fifth, recently it has been again suggested that the Song should be read as a messianic document. John Sailhamer and James Hamilton have both argued that the Song was written from a messianic perspective in order to nourish a messianic hope.

Sailhamer views the Song as an allegory not of Messiah’s love for the Church, but for His love for divine wisdom. He cites “Beneath the apple tree I awakened you . . .”(8:5b) as an intertextual reference to the prologue of the book of Proverbs and the fall in Gn 3 (J. H. Sailhamer, NIV Compact Bible Commentary [Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1994], 359–60). In his view the beloved is understood as “wisdom” and Solomon represents the promised seed of Gn 3:15.

Hamilton proposes a more likely messianic view. He posits a nonallegorical but symbolic interpretation, with King Solomon, as the son of David, representing “the ultimate expression of David’s royal seed . . . the Davidic king, with all the messianic connotations that status carries” (Hamilton Jr., “The Messianic Music of the Song of Songs,” 331). Hamilton sees the theme of the Song as the “recovery of intimacy after alienation, which appears to match the hope engendered by Gn 3:15 for a seed for the woman who would come as the royal Messiah to restore the gladness of Eden” (339-40).

After demonstrating the development of this theme of recovered intimacy through the Song, Hamilton points out that “I am my beloved’s, And his desire is for me” (Sg 7:10) functions as the climax to the Song, using the same word for “desire” as in Gn 3:16. This word (Hb. tesuqah) is used only three times in the Hebrew Bible (Gn 3:16; 4:7; Sg 7:10). The first two uses refer to the alienation of the fall. Thus the Song appears to be making a direct allusion to the alienation found in the curse of Gn 3:16, suggesting that the messianic king will ultimately reverse the curse on the woman.

These views notwithstanding, it remains best to understand the Song as primarily a poetic presentation of a biblical view of ideal love and marriage. This is not to treat the book as a sex manual, but rather as divine guidance for the most sacred earthly relationship created by God. It treats marital love as a spiritual creation. Roland Murphy correctly concludes that “the eventual canonization of the work . . . can best be explained if the poetry originated as religious rather than secular literature” (Roland E. Murphy, A Commentary on the Book of Canticles or the Song of Songs, Hermenia—A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible [Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 1990], 94–95). Love and marriage are divinely ordained and not mere cultural mores.