Who was she?

1 By name.  2 By background and current situation. 3 By character.  4 By relation.  5 By timing of events

1  By name.   By name I believe she is Naamah, an Ammonite.   How does it fit that Naamah was the woman in the Song?

2 I believe Naamah to be the woman in the Love Song due to her background, being an Ammonite.  The Ammonites (along with other Gentiles), the enemies of God and Israel, would have been doing the forced labor under the sun.  She was in forced labor being “made to take care of the vineyards” of others and not her own, which is why she was sun scorched.  Song 1:6. She met Solomon at his first anointing when David was still alive and had control over Amman and the Ammonites.  History of the Ammonites.

Her current situation and initial actions of the daughters of Jerusalem imply that she was not fit to be united to a holy Messiah.  They were staring down at her when they first met.  She implored them to not stare at her based on outward appearance but to accept her because her heart was lovely and holy like theirs.

5 The timing of Jeroboams birth suggests Naamah to be the woman in the Song.  Usually, the firstborn son took the throne and Naamah gave birth to Jeroboam, who ruled after Solomon.  Solomon was anointed 2x and he met his first wife at his first anointing when Solomon was young. (take the first anointing in Song 1:2-3 with 1 Kings 1:38-40,45 and the second in Song 3:11 with 1 Chronicles 29:22.)  This puts Solomon young when he fell in love with his first wife, therefor the mother of his firstborn son, Jeroboam, is more than likely the woman in the Love Song.

Who was it that King Solomon set his love on in the Song of Songs?   She was a natural born enemy of God.  How do we know this?

1. She was a gentile outside a covenant relationship with God, “beside the companions of Solomons friends”  She was originally in Solomon’s circle of friends. Song 1:5-7
2. She is being treated like a prostitute.   Song 1:7
3. She is enslaved by King Solomon during his reign.  I Kings 9:20-23
4. She doesn’t want to be judged. 1:6
5. She has neglected her vineyard. 1:6
6. The enemies did the slave labor 1 Kings 9:20-23, 1 Kings 11:4, Song 1:6,  Dt. 20:10-14 
   1. Being an enemy of God meant you were liable to disease unlike the daughters of Jerusalem Dt. 7:15
7. She was outside of God’s kingdom blessings He promised.  It is so she wants out of enemy slave labor and into fellowship with Solomon where she can find peace with God and physical and spiritual rest.  Song 1:7
8. She was miserably sunburnt.  Enemies of god that did the slave labor were sunburnt or “scorched by the sun” Song 1:6 from working under the hot noon day sun.  The Israelites wouldn’t suffer under the scorching sun, that was the work for the slaves.  The Israelites were experiencing their 40 year rest after killing many of God’s enemies.
9. She inherits the promised land through her union with the king of peace.
10. She was not only took care of the vineyards but also was a shepherdess of young goats.  Song 1:8
11. Her name she earned by 6:12-13 was “Shulammite”  meaning woman of peace.  This is what she was characterized by.
12. She had an unquenchable love in her heart.  8:6

1.  She was outside a covenant relationship with God therefore an enemy.  Song 1:7 “beside the flocks of your friends”  She is beside the flock of God.  Beside the friends of Solomon.  It is so, but it doesn’t have to be that way.  So she says “Why should I be like a veiled woman beside the flocks of your friends.”  She is outside a covenant relationship with God and is being treated like a prostitute.  Her being dark like the tents of Kedar refer also to her being an enemy of God outside a covent relationship with Yahweh.  Ps 120:5  David lived among these evil descendants of Ishmael.  Gen 25:13, 1 Chronicles 1:29,  Is 21:17.
2. She is being treated like a prostitute.  She is not a prostitute but is being treated like one.  A veiled woman was a prostitute.  “Why should I be like a veiled woman…”  Why should I be regarded as a prostitute.  Prostitutes were despised.  And obviously anyone continuing in prostitution was outside a covenant relationship with God and therefore an enemy of God.  She is outside the flock of God, it is so, but she knows the Character of God and Solomon as being forgiving and loving.  Solomon was a king that loved his enemies and made peace with them.
   1. The idea that she was worshipping other God’s is a metaphor for spiritual adultery.  The soul has but one husband either Satan or God.  Since she was being despised and judged like a physical prostitute it is only because she had forsaken her true God and Husband.  Ez. 16:32 “You adulterous wife! You prefer strangers to your own husband!” see also Jer. 3:1,9,20; Hosea 2:2; 2 Cor. 11:2
3. She is enslaved by King Solomon. Solomon enslaved God’s enemies that were in Israel when he became king.  They were David’s enemies and she was there when Solomon became king so He enslaved her.  Solomon and God’s people Israel are put here for “brothers” in Song 1:6.  Are we not all from the same mother, Eve.  Aren’t we all family.  We ought to be at peace not war.  When she makes her request in Song 1:7 for her slavery to not be so she says  “Why should I be treated like a veiled woman..” who was in forced labor.  Compare Song 1:6 with 1 Kings 9:20-21 ….”Solomon conscripted the descendants of all these peoples remaining in the land—whom the Israelites could not exterminate—to serve as slave labor, as it is to this day.”  This laboring in the sun was not easy, but harsh and heavy  2 Chronicles 10:4 “Your father put a heavy yoke on us, but now lighten the harsh labor and the heavy yoke he put on us, and we will serve you.”  Since she was enslaved by King Solomon we know that she was his and God’s enemy. 2 Chron. 8:8.  When Israel was conquering more land they became strong and put the Canaanites to forced labor. Judges 1:28, 30,34,35
4. She is under the Wrath of God.  Enemies of God were under His Wrath, some got completely destroyed during David reign and other’s that lived into Solomon’s reign were put to forced labor. Dt 20:1, 10-14  and were sunburnt.
   1. There is another reason why she is an enemy of God.  See “angry” in Song 1:6.  Wether God is punishing us through someone else or directly.  If she is under the just punishment of God it is because He is angry and we have offended him and we deserve it to be so.  The brother’s were angry with her.  Yes, this is her mother’s brothers who were angry with her and she was more directly feeling their anger and hatred but she is also justly receiving this miserable treatment because she was a sinner neglecting worship of the One True God. This forced labor is not a blessing for obedience, but a curse for disobedience due to her sinful behavior of not taking care of her God given responsibilities.  Namely to cultivate a growing love relationship with God.  This is the vineyard she neglected.  The vineyards are the false God’s
5. Another indication that she was an enemy of God before Song 1:2, is the fact that she was a sinner.  Jews were not born sinless.  Jews in the old testament were not born with pure or renewed hearts.  Ez. 36:26.  In Song 8:6 the love shared between the born again bride and the greatest type of Christ to have ever lived thus far is one and the very same with “the Flame of the Lord”.  God wanted her to take care of her vineyard and she neglected it.  Due to the sinful neglect of her own vineyard she is put into slavery by her mother’s sons.  She was supposed to bear fruit.  Because she sinned and disobeyed God and worshipped other God’s she was a sinner and in her mind she is at enmity against God (thus enemies) rebelling and neglecting to cultivate a growing relationship with God proven by bearing fruit in her vineyard.  She neglected to do her duty and catch the foxes.  Song 1:5-6 is the bride to be given an account of her past, the reason for her sunburn,  she was a natural born Gentile, sunburnt, enemy of God until the very Flame of the Lord entered her and she was born again and desired to be married to the greatest type of Christ to have lived thus far, Solomon, and Song 2:15
6. A slave in Israel under the control of Solomon would have been an enemy due to Laws on Warfare in Dt. 20:1, 10-14
7. Her having the sunburn from working outside gave her away that she was an enemy of God, so her prayer to daughters of Jerusalem, who love God but aren’t sunburnt, her prayer to them is “Do not stare at me because I am dark, darkened by the sun….”
8. Also the word “friends”  is used in Song 1:7  Friends fear no punishment from the king.  But enemies will.  She doesn’t want to be looked down upon because her dark sunburn that makes people think she is an enemy of God.  Yes, she is sunburnt still but she is born again Song 8:6.  Solomon reassures her that she has nothing to worry about, her sunburn/or remnants of a past sinful life won’t keep him/Him from intimacy with her.  In his eyes she is “the most beautiful of all women.” 1:7  beauty being a reference to both the inside and out.
9. That’s the old life, an enemy of the king and God.  But now I want to repent and joyfully serve my king and God in his kingdom as his wife.  In her words of Song 1:2-4 and Song 1:7.  “Let him kiss me..”  is a request.  She is asking for something from him.  She is not commanding but asking out of love to him/Him for the king to kiss her over and over again.  The bride is saying I know you love me and I delight in Your Love more than any other experience so show me your love over and over again in greater heights in majesty, depths, lengths and widths.
10. Her nick name of “Shulamite” Song 6:13  intimates peace, Princess of peace.  Peace the opposite of enmity, hatred.  By Song 6:13 she has proven herself to be at peace with both God and man by her love, the Very Eternal Flame of God in her!  Song 8:6
11. What do I love, where is my greatest delight, tel me you whom I love, where you graze you flock,  where do you provide nourishment for your sheep, joy and rest in this world is found in Christ alone!  She wants to be where he/He is and where he/He nourishes his/Sheep both physically and spiritually.

She was being treated like an immoral spiritual prostitute.  Prostituting herself to other god’s.  God ought to be her husband in whom is redemption when in a Covenant relationship with Him.  But she neglected Him followed other god’s and now is having a change of heart.  It is so, it is true she did sin and deserved to be judged and despised but doesn’t want it to be that way in Song 1:7

Knowing that the woman in the Song of Solomon was an enemy of God in Solomon’s kingdom is crucial to your understanding of the whole Song and consequently your idea of the Love of God will be not so clear and true.

The Song of Songs illustrates a greater love than just that of a man and a woman.  Solomon marries a born again enemy Song 8:6, 1 kings 9:20-23 ( the enemies of God did the vineyard and slave labor work) , in Song 1:6 she is in slave labor doing vineyard work.  By the king to whom peace belongs unites himself in marriage to a born again enemy of God and loves her to full spiritual maturity as fast as possible with by his unmeasurable wisdom fueled by the infinite flame of the Love of the Lord.  The Song communicates to our hearts the Love of God through a mediator like Christ but not Christ rather a the greatest type of Christ to have lived thus far.  Solomons words would have been Christ’s words, for Solomon loved his wife as Christ loved the church in the Song of Songs, where Solomon is the most excellent lover and a beloved above all others, thus the greatest husband ever thus illustrating Christ’s glory in many ways.  She marries the greatest type of the coming messiah to have ever lived so far!  “Greater Love has no one than this…”

The Song illustrates the Holy Love of God in a marriage context better than any other love Song.  It is the Song of Songs.  It is superlative in it’s nature.   It is superlative in its nature to communicate to our minds and hearts the flame of God better than any other song.  Marriage is the best earthly illustration anyone could use to communicate what is better felt than understood.   It reveals the Love of God to the whole heart like no other Song.  Thus you have the title “Song of Songs”.   Of all marriage songs in the bible Ps. 45 and other Songs Solomon wrote,  1 Kings 4:32  “He also spoke 3,000 proverbs, and his songs were 1,005.

The main purpose of the Song is for you to get a better grasp of the Love of God by putting yourself in her shoes and meditating on the text and seeing King Solomon, the husband,  perfectly loving his enemy slave wife.  Herein is the perfect illustration of God loving his enemies.  God loving his enemies Israel.  Christ’s sacrificial love to the church.

Romans 5:8  “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

The perfect match displaying the Glory of God.

Once Solomon’s enemy but she is seated at his table feasting in Song 1:12.

At the end of the Song her vineyard was quite fruitful and the credit went to Solomon and those who helped her become more mature and holy bearing both high quantities and qualities of fruit.

Other notes as I wrote

What great love is on display here!!!  Solomon courted, married and sanctified his wife.  From babe to the highest level of holiness possible here on earth in the Song of Songs.  He demonstrated God’s love to her by faithfully loving her in marriage.

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